Cry Wolf

Chapter Twenty

Thunder rolls like distant cannon fire. Clouds scud across the night sky like tattered wisps of smoke. The battlefield runs red.

The captive taunts and screams in the night in the swamp. Agony like a wild euphoria fills the air with electricity and the sweet, cloying scent of blood. Desperation and hate. Need and desire. Emotions twist and tear apart, overwhelming both captive and captor. The walls of the shack tremble with the terrible power of dark needs unleashed in the predator and in the prey lashed to the bed.

More than the hunter had bargained for. Madness strips away control, pulls even the soulless over its edge and into the maelstrom.

Outside, the wind rips through the trees, lays flat the slender stalks that grow in the shallows. The creatures of the night bolt and shy, heads turning, eyes wide, nostrils scenting the air as they turn toward the eye of a vortex of violence. The moon punches a hole in the blackness, but the thunder rolls nearer, and lightning fractures the sky like cracks in glass.

The storm comes. Without. Within. Savage and wild. Screaming. Slashing. Rain pelts the bayou and tears at tender growth. Blood spatters walls, prey, and predator. The silk tightens. The end rushes up from the black depths of hell. The moment explodes with power unimagined. With triumph, with defeat, with release from torment-torment from within and without.

The wind dies. The storm wanes. The need ebbs. Control settles in place like dust. Calm returns, and logic with it.

Another dead whore for the unsuspecting to find. Another crime committed to go unsolved. The predator smiles in the blood-drenched night. An adversary might suspect, but none will believe her.

Laurel didn't awaken, she was torn from sleep. In the middle of a dark, disturbing dream, cold, frantic hands reached into her psyche and pulled her out of one realm of existence and into another. She emerged gasping for air, like a swimmer breaking the surface after a long dive in frigid waters. The air around her was warm and moist, a pocket of heat and humidity that had sucked in through the French doors to escape the storm. The room was dark and still, a stillness that held something other than simple quiet. Loss. She felt alone in a way she had never felt before in her life, and her thoughts turned automatically toward Savannah. She had never been alone; she had always had Savannah.

Heart bumping hard against her breastbone, she fought to untangle her legs from the sheet and raced out onto the balcony in nothing but the camisole and slip she had fallen asleep wearing. Down the corridor she ran to the set of doors that opened into her sister's room. She fumbled with the latch and threw them back, stumbling as she pitched herself into the bedroom.

The stillness lingered here, too, hanging like a shroud. An unseen hand closed around Laurel 's throat as she looked around the room. The bed was unmade, empty, the covers left in a drift, pillows strewn everywhere. It looked the same as the last time she had seen it. She tried to swallow the fear that crowded her tonsils and turned slowly, taking in the jumble of jars and pots and bottles on the dressing table, the discarded clothes draped over chairs and abandoned on the floor. There was no way of telling when last Savannah had occupied the room.

A chill raced over her and seeped bone-deep into her. Tears pooled in her eyes. She twisted her hands together, pacing beside the bed. "Don't be stupid, Laurel," she muttered, her voice cutting and harsh. " Savannah has slept elsewhere more times than you can count. Just because she isn't here tonight-that doesn't mean anything. She's with a lover, that's all."

To distract herself, she tried to think of which one it might be. Ronnie Peltier with his jackhammer penis. Taureau Hebert-the man Savannah had fought over with Annie. Jimmy Lee Baldwin-who preached morals and played bondage games. Conroy Cooper-whose invalid wife had been terrorized only the night before.

The tag lines that accompanied each name swarmed in Laurel 's mind like gnats. She was trained to add up facts as an accountant does a row of figures. She was trained to put puzzle pieces together in her sleep. Tonight she wanted to do neither. The subtotal of the column, the picture that began to take shape-both gave an answer she didn't want to know.

Standing beside the bed, she leaned over and gathered up Savannah 's champagne silk robe, bringing the elegant fabric to her cheek. Cool, soft as a whisper, smelling of Obsession. She didn't want to think that Savannah was ill. She didn't want to face the truth that the sister who had mothered her and shielded her had declined to this point without her doing anything but judging. How many times had she wished Savannah would block out the past, rise above it, get beyond what Ross Leighton had done to her? While Laurel herself had lived to atone for that same past, ignoring her martyrdom, calling it a career.

Tears spilled across the silk, and she wished with all her heart her sister would walk through the door so she could go into Savannah 's arms and beg her forgiveness. But no one came through the door. Only the empty room heard her cry.

Drained, she tossed the robe back on the rumpled bed and wandered back out onto the balcony. The latest fit of rain had passed, leaving everything dripping. Moonlight caught on droplets, turning them to diamonds. The wind rustled restlessly in the trees. Laurel curled an arm around the pillar outside her own room and leaned against it, her gaze traveling the distance to L'Amour.

Some people said it was haunted. She wondered if the ghosts that haunted Jack had anything to do with the history of the house, or if they were his own, brought here with him from Texas.

He'd been at the heart of the Sweetwater incident, Vivian had said. Sweetwater was a Houston subdivision built by developers that touted the good life, a place to raise families. A little piece of heaven that backed onto a little piece of hell. Illegally buried in the field beyond, drums of chemical waste poisoned the ground. Laurel hadn't followed the case except in snatches caught on the nightly news. She had been wrapped up in legal battles of her own. She remembered the barrels had been almost impossible to trace. The trail had led from dummy company to dummy company.

Jack had unraveled the snare for the feds. He was the best man for the job, she supposed, because, if Vivian's information was correct, he had been the one to lay the paper trail away from Tristar. If she hadn't known him, she would have called him a dozen names. Ruthless, godless, greedy bastard would have been one of the nicer ones. But she did know him. She knew he had clawed his way up through the ranks because he thought he needed to prove himself. What must it have done to him to reach the peak only to find out he was on the wrong mountain? He said he had crashed and burned and taken the company down with him.

And his wife?

The word lay bitter on Laurel 's tongue. She might have said she didn't want him, didn't want any kind of a lasting relationship, but the bald truth was she didn't want to think of his loving someone else.

But had he loved her, or had he killed her?

A light winked on in one of the second-story windows of L'Amour, faint, as if it came from a room within the depths of the house. Faint, yet it pulled at her like a beacon. She needed to know who he really was. Which Jack stood behind the final facade? The shark, the rogue, the man who claimed he didn't care about anyone but himself, or the man who had held her and offered her comfort, who had come to her rescue, who had distracted her from problems and fears?

She couldn't see him as a killer. Killers didn't warn potential victims away or walk them home to keep them safe. No, "homicidal" wasn't a word she could apply to Jack. Troubled. Angry. Wounded.

Wounded. The word struck a chord inside her. The light in the old house beckoned.

Jack climbed the stairs to the second floor, bone tired, his body aching, begging for sleep. But he knew his mind would never grant the wish. Not tonight. Ignoring the rustlings of mice in a pile of fallen wallpaper down the hall, he shuffled into his bedroom and flicked on the lamp that perched on his desk a level above the old black Underwood typewriter. A white page glared up at him, reminding him not of deadlines or plot twists, but of Jimmy Lee Baldwin. Jimmy Lee standing above his devoted followers, asking them where demented minds get the inspiration to kill.

Their eyes meet in the dim light of the woods. Predator and prey. Recognition sparks. Realization dawns. Awareness arcs between them. Strange needs commingle. Dark desires intertwine. It is understood that the game will end in death. She opens her arms to welcome it, to end the torment that has haunted her life.

A slim silver blade gleams in the dark…

What followed was death, presented in a way that was disturbingly seductive, poetically artistic, gruesome and graphic, and frightening as hell.

That was his job-to frighten people, to keep them awake nights and tighten their nerves until every sound heard in a lonely house held the potential for unspeakable terror. People called it entertainment, not inspiration. He wouldn't think otherwise. To believe it inspired meant to take responsibility, and everybody knew Jack Boudreaux didn't take responsibility for anyone or anything.

"They say she never met him here."

Jack's head came up, and he looked toward the door, not entirely certain what he was seeing was real. Laurel stood just outside the chipped white door frame, against a background of black. A pale portrait of a woman in a flowing skirt painted with old cabbage roses, a blue cotton blouse with the tails hanging down. She was a vision, an angel, something he should never have touched. Better to have longed from a distance and had her only in his imagination. No one could take that away.

"Madame Deveraux," she said and took a step nearer. "Her wealthy, married lover, August Chapin, built this place for her. Everyone in the parish knew. He flaunted his obsession for her, much to the shame of his poor wife."

Jack found his voice with an effort. "She never met him here?"

"Mr. Chapin, yes. The man she truly loved, no." She walked into the room slowly, lingering by the tall French doors, out of the glow of the desk light. "She loved a man named Antoine Gallant. A no-account Cajun trapper. He refused to set foot in the house Chapin built to house her as a whore. They met in secret in a cabin in the swamp.

"Of course, they were found out. His pride smarting sorely, Chapin challenged Gallant to a duel, which he meant to win by tampering with the pistols. Madame Deveraux learned of the plot just minutes before the duel was to take place. She rushed to warn her love, but the men had already stepped off the distance and had turned to take aim. In order to save Antoine, she hurled herself in front of him and took Chapin's shot herself. She died in Antoine's arms."

She wandered to the old rolltop desk and stood behind it with her hands resting on the high back. Her expression was somber, searching as she slowly scanned the room with her eyes. "I grew up hearing her spirit still haunted this house."

Jack shrugged, avoiding the penetrating stare she turned on him. "I haven't seen her."

"Well," she murmured, "you have ghosts of your own."

Oui. More than you know, angel.

"Someone mentioned Sweetwater today," Laurel said, treading carefully. "You were Tristar's man, weren't you?"

He smiled bitterly and took a bow, backing away from the desk. "C'est vrai, you got it in one, sugar. Jack Boudreaux, star shyster. Wanna bury some poison and get away with it? I'm your man. I can tie the trail in a Gordian knot that loops around and around, and twists and doubles back and dead-ends. Holding companies, dummy corporations, the works." He jammed his hands at the waist of his jeans and stared up at the intricate plasterwork medallion on the ceiling, marveling not at it but at his own past life. "I was so clever, so bright. Working my way up and up, never caring who I stepped on as I climbed that ladder. The end always justified the means, you know."

"In the end, you brought them down."

One dark brow curving, he pinned her with a look. "And you think that makes me a hero? If I set houses on fire, then put the fires out after the people inside had all burned, would I be a hero?"

"That would depend on your motives and intent."

"My motives were selfish," he said harshly, pacing back and forth along the worn ruby rug. "I wanted to be punished. I wanted everyone associated with me to be punished. For what I did."

"To the people in Sweetwater?" she asked cautiously, studying him from beneath the shield of her lashes.

He halted, watching her intently out of the corner of his eye, old instincts scenting a trap. "Where are you trying to lead me, counselor?" he asked, his voice a low, dangerous purr. Slowly, he moved toward her, his gait deceptively lazy, his gaze as hard as granite behind a devil's smile, one hand raised to wag a finger in warning. "What kind of game are you playin', 'tite chatte?"

Laurel curled her fingers into the fabric of her skirt and faced him squarely, her face carefully blank. "I don't play games."

Jack barked a laugh. "You're a lawyer. You're trained to play games. Don't try to fool me, sugar. You're swimmin' with a big shark now. I know every trick there is."

He stopped within inches of her, leaning down, meeting her at her level, his nose almost touching hers. In the soft lamplight his eyes sparkled like onyx, hard and fathomless.

"Why don' you just ask me?" he whispered, his whiskey-hoarse voice cutting across her nerve endings like a rasp. "Did you kill her, Jack? Did you kill your wife?"

She swallowed hard and called his bluff, betting her heart on his answer. "Did you?"

"Yes."

He watched her blink quickly, as if she were afraid to take her eyes off him for even a fraction of a second. But she held her ground, brave and foolhardy to the last. And his heart squeezed painfully at the thought. She was waiting for a qualification, something that would dilute the truth into a more palatable mix.

"I told you I was bad, angel," he said, stepping back from her. "You know what they say, blood will tell. Ol' Blackie, he always told me I'd be no good. I shoulda listened. I coulda saved a whole lotta people a whole lotta grief."

He drifted away from her in body and mind, losing himself in a past that was as murky as the bayou. Wandering across the room, past the heavy four-poster with its sensuous drape of white netting and its tangle of bedclothes, he found his way to another set of French doors and stood looking out into the dark. The wind had come up again and chattered in the branches of the trees, a natural teletype of the next storm boiling up from the Gulf. Lightning flashed in the distance, casting his hard, hawkish profile in silver.

Laurel moved toward him, skirting the foot of the bed. She should have left him. Regardless of the details she was waiting to hear, he was trouble. She may even have had cause to be frightened of him-Jack, with his dual personality and his dark secrets, a temper as volatile as the weather in the Atchafalaya. But she took another step and another, her heart drumming behind her breastbone. And the question slipped past her defenses and out of her mouth.

"What was her name?"

"Evangeline," he whispered. Thunder rattled the glass in the windows, and rain began to fall, the scent of it cool and green and sweet. "Evie. As pretty as a lily, as fragile as spun glass," he said softly. "She was another of my trophies. Like the house, like the Porsche, like crocodile shoes and suits from Italy. It never penetrated the fog that she loved me." He ducked his head, as if he still couldn't believe it.

"She was the perfect corporate wife for a while. Dinner parties and cocktail hours. Iron my shirts and brew my coffee."

Amazed by the sting of his words, Laurel wrapped an arm around an elegantly carved bedpost and anchored herself to it. This woman had shared his life, his bed, had known all his habits and quirks. But she was gone now, forever. "What happened?"

"She wanted a life with me. I loved my work. I loved the game, the challenge, the rush. I was in the office by seven-thirty. Didn't go home most nights until eleven, or one, or two. The job was everything.

"Evie started telling me she wasn't happy, that she couldn't live that way. I thought she was temperamental, cloying, selfish, punishing me for working hard so I could give her fine things."

Regret burned like acid in his throat, behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw against it, whipped himself mentally to get past it. "The first Sweetwater story had broken, and I was working like mad to cover the company's ass in triplicate. I barely took time to shave or eat."

Tension rattled through him like the thunder shaking the windowpanes as the scenes played out in his memory. His emotions rushed ahead frantically, knowing the ending, torn between the need to protect himself and the need to punish. He drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils and curled a fist into the fragile old lace of the curtain.

"One night I came home in a bitch of a mood. Two o'clock. Hadn't had a meal all day. There wasn't anything in the kitchen. I went looking for Evie, spoiling for a fight. Found her in the bathroom. In the tub. She'd slit her wrists."

"Oh, God, Jack." Laurel 's arm tightened around the pillar. She brought a hand to her mouth to hold back the cry that tore through her, but the tears still flooded and fell. Through them she watched Jack struggle with the burden of his guilt. His broad shoulders were braced against it, trembling visibly. In the lightning glow she could see his face, his mouth twisting as he fought, chin quivering.

"The note she left was full of apologies," he said, his voice thickening, cracking. He cleared his throat and managed a bitter smile. "'I'm sorry I couldn't make you need me, Jack. I'm sorry I couldn't make you love me, Jack.' Sorry for the inconvenience. I think she did it in the bathtub so she wouldn't leave a mess."

This time when the urge came, Laurel let go of the post and let herself go to him. "She made her own choice, Jack," she murmured. "It wasn't your fault."

When she started to lay her hand against the taut muscles of his back, he twisted away and swung around to face her. His eyes were burning with anger and shame, swimming with tears he refused to let fall.

"The hell it wasn't!" he roared. "She was my responsibility! I was supposed to take care of her. I was supposed to look out for her. I was supposed to be there when she needed me. Bon Dieu, I might as well have taken the blade to her myself!"

He whirled and cleared a marble-topped table with a violent sweep of his arm, sending antique porcelain figurines crashing to their doom on the cypress floor. Laurel flinched at the sound of shattering china, but didn't back away.

"You couldn't have known-"

"That's right, I couldn't have," he snapped. "I was never there. I was too busy manipulating the illegal disposal of toxic waste." He threw back his head and laughed in sardonic amazement. "Jesus, I'm a helluva guy, aren't I? Huh? A helluva match for you, Lady Justice."

She pressed her lips together and said nothing. She couldn't condone what he'd done at Tristar-it was both illegal and immoral-but neither could she find it in her to condemn him. She knew what it was to get caught up in the job, to be driven to it by demons from the past. And she knew what guilt could do to a person, the changes it could wreak, the pain of it eating inside.

"You didn't kill her, Jack. She had other choices."

"Yeah?" he asked, his voice thin and trembling, his face a mask of torment. "And what about the baby she was carrying? Did he have a choice?"

The pain was as sharp as ever. As sharp as the razor blade that had ended his dream of a wife and a family. It sliced at his heart, severed what was left of his strength. He turned back to the French doors and leaned into the one that stood closed, pressing his face against the cool glass, crying silently while rain washed across the other side, soft and cleansing, never touching him. He could still see the pathologist's face, could still hear the disbelief in his voice. "You mean she hadn't told you? She was nearly three months along…"

His child. His chance to atone for all his father's sins. There and gone before he even had the joy of knowing. Gone because of him, just as Evie was gone because of him.

Not for the first time he thought he was the one who should have sliced open a vein and drained his life away.

Laurel slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back, her tears dampening the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She could see it all so clearly. Jack, so eager to prove himself, scrambling up that sheer granite face of the odds that were stacked against his making anything of himself. Then all of it crumbling beneath him, sucking him down and crushing him with the weight of the debris. He must have thought he'd had everything he ever wanted right in the palm of his hand, and then it was swept away, and every line of degradation his father had ever hammered into him must have come rushing back.

He shoved her away so suddenly, so unexpectedly, Laurel nearly fell. She stumbled back against the table, her shoes crunching over a fortune in shattered porcelain. Jack wheeled on her, his face dark with rage.

"Get out! Get outta here! Get outta my life!" he shouted in her face. "Get out before I kill you too!"

Laurel just stared at him, at the wild gleam of pain in his eyes, the muscles and tendons that stood out in his neck, the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. She should have run like hell. Inside he was as fractured as any of the statuettes grinding to dust beneath her feet. She wasn't in much better shape herself. She certainly wasn't strong enough to take on his healing too.

She should have run like hell. She didn't.

She fell in love.

He was trying to push her away, not because he didn't care, but because he cared too much; not because he didn't feel, but because his heart was so badly battered. Losing her heart to him wasn't the smart thing or the timely thing. It wasn't the choice she would have made with her logical, practical attorney's mind, but logic had nothing to do with it.

She met his pain and fury with her chin up and her eyes clear. "Why should I go?"

Jack stared at her, dumbfounded. He thought he could actually feel the gears in his mind slipping. "Why?" he repeated, incredulous. He swept his hands back over his hair, turned around in a circle, stared at her some more. "How can you ask that? After all I've just told you, how can you stand there and ask that?"

"You didn't kill your wife, Jack," she said gently. "You didn't kill your child. You're not going to kill me, either. Why should I leave?"

"I can't have you," he whispered, more to himself than to Laurel.

She stepped up to him, calm and fearless, and whispered, "Yes, you can."

He wanted to tell her she didn't understand. He couldn't have her, couldn't care, because he didn't deserve her and because everything he ever wanted was ripped away from him in the end anyway. He didn't need the pain, didn't think he could stand it. But he said none of those things. The words simply wouldn't come.

All he could think as he stared down into that earnest, angelic face was that he wanted to hold her. Just for a little while. Just for what was left of the night. He wanted to hold her, and kiss her, and find some comfort in her body.

Use her.

He'd be a bastard to the very end, he thought. No use fighting his true nature. It wasn't as if he hadn't warned her.

It wasn't as if he didn't need her…

Longing welled inside him, and he reached out to touch her, to ease the ache, to fill the hole in his heart if only temporarily. She sank against him, so small, so fragile. His… for the moment… for the night… for a memory he could hold forever.

Outside, the storm shook the night with sound and fury, but in this room all was stillness except the beating of hearts, the caress of flesh against flesh. Mist blew in through the open door and settled like silver dew, shimmering on the cypress floor when the lightning flashed, but all that touched them was a warmth that glowed from needs within.

Every sense was heightened. Every sense was filled. The fragrance of her skin. The hardness of his muscle. The taste of tears, of gentleness, of desire. The sound of breath catching. The growl of passion. The contrast of light skin on dark. The delicate lacework of her lashes as they swept against her cheek. The planes and angles of his beard-shadowed jaw. Laurel immersed herself in it all. Jack soaked it up greedily.

He touched her like a blind man trying to see with his fingertips, tracing the lines and gentle curves. Fingers fanned wide, he skimmed her jaw, her throat, the slope of her shoulders. He cradled her breasts then let his touch flow downward, over her ribs to her tiny waist, along the subtle flare of her hips.

As he mouthed phantom kisses across her eyelids, along her jawline, his fingers explored her most tender flesh. Laurel whispered his name, and need shuddered through them both.

He wouldn't be an easy man to love. He had branded himself unworthy, thought of himself only in terms of his flaws. He would push her away in the name of caring, break her heart and call it fate. But she went to him. She went to him and offered him everything she was, everything her heart could hold. Without words. Without strings.

He took her in his arms, and they fell across the bed. Springs creaked, linens rustled. The storm rolled on toward Lafayette, thunder sounding like the faint echo of hoofbeats, rain hissing like the sound of steam.

One arm hooked behind her gracefully arching back, Jack bent himself over her and took her breast in his mouth. Her nipple budded beneath the coaxing of his tongue, beneath the wet silk of her camisole, and he drew on it hotly, greedily.

His fingers caught in the hem of the garment and pulled it up. She lay back and stretched her arms above her head. He pushed the camisole to her wrists and held it there, held her there, pinned to the mattress. His eyes locked on hers as he kneed her legs apart and settled his hips against hers.

Laurel 's breath fluttered in her throat, not with fear but with anticipation. He would never hurt her physically. He would break her heart-of that she had little doubt-but she trusted him implicitly with her body. She offered herself totally, opened herself, wound her legs around his hips.

And he filled her. Slowly. Inch by inch. His eyes on hers. Giving her the essence of his maleness, being welcomed and embraced by the warm, tight glove of her woman's body. Pressing deeper, deeper, until she gasped his name. When the joining was complete, he cast the silk aside and gathered her to him in a crushing embrace.

It went on forever. It could never have lasted long enough. They moved together, body to body, need to need, heart to heart. Scaling peaks of pleasure, soaring from height to dizzying height.

Jack lost himself in the heat, in the bliss, in the comfort she offered him without words. He gave himself over to desire, thought nothing of right or wrong, only of Laurel. So sweet, so strong. He wanted to give her everything, be everything for her. He wanted to press her to his heart and never let her go. She filled up the hole inside him, flooded all the pain away, made him believe for a moment he could start over… with her… have a family… have peace… find forgiveness.

Foolish thoughts. Foolish heart. But for this night he would cling to them as he clung to the woman in his arms, and soothe his aching soul with visions of love.