Cry Wolf

Chapter Thirty

"I dislike compromise as a rule," Danjermond said as he worked at binding Jack's hands and feet. "But one has to be flexible in times of emergency."

Laurel sat on an elegant Hepplewhite shield-back chair in the front hall, her wrists bound to the arms with straps of white silk, her ankles bound to the front legs. She wanted to scream, but silk clogged her mouth, leeching away the moisture and literally making her gag.

She watched Danjermond with a sick sense of dread pushing at the base of her throat and a strange, lethargic numbness dragging down on her. Dreamlike. No, nightmarish. If she could believe this was a nightmare, then it wouldn't be real. A trick of the mind. She couldn't decide what would be better-to be alert and terrified with the reality of the situation, or to be stunned senseless and believe it was all a bad dream.

Danjermond looked up at her, as if he had expected some response to his statement. He had taken the time to change out of his tuxedo and neatly bandage the hand he had cut during the fight. He was now in black jeans, boots, and a loose-fitting black shirt, an outfit that made him look like a modern-day warlock.

He had spread a blanket out on the floor so as not to get Jack's blood on the Oriental hall runner, and he checked and double-checked the bindings on his unconscious prisoner to make certain they were tight enough to hold but not so tight as to make impressions beneath the padding he had used first. The Bayou Strangler's victims were the ones who were to have bruises on their wrists, not the Strangler himself.

Laurel's gaze kept slipping down to Jack. She wasn't certain he was breathing. He had been unconscious nearly half an hour. Utterly motionless. Blood, sticky and brilliant red, matted his hair and glazed his temple and cheek like candy on an apple, but she couldn't tell whether or not he was still bleeding. Dead men don't bleed. She stared at his chest, willed it to move.

"I would rather have brought him to trial," Danjermond went on. He rose gracefully and picked up a glass of burgundy from the hall table, sipping at it thoughtfully, savoring the wine. "That was my intent all along. A murderer on a spree in Acadiana, running unchecked, no one able to stop him-until he reached Partout Parish. That was why I left the bodies where they could be found. There are, of course, many ways of disposing of bodies so as not to leave a trace. A man can get away with murder again and again if he is intelligent, careful, coolheaded."

He finished his drink. The grandfather clock chimed the hour. Eleven. Jack still didn't move.

With a sigh, Danjermond hauled him up off the blanket and maneuvered him into a fireman's lift. Without a word to Laurel, he went down the hall, toward the kitchen. She heard the back door open and close, then silence.

Oh, God, Jack, please be alive, please come around. I don't want to die alone.

Alone. As Savannah had been, as Annie had been, as all those other women had been. God knew how many. He had left six bodies to be found because that suited his plans. There could have been dozens more, all of them gone without a trace, swallowed up by the Atchafalaya, never to be seen again, the victims' cries for pity heard only by the swamp.

The numbness began to fade, and fear took its place. Tears rose to burn the backs of her eyes.

A vision of Savannah's face floated through her mind. The scents of formaldehyde and ammonia with death lingering, cloyingly sweet, beneath it all. The stainless steel table. The draped figure. Prejean murmuring something apologetic. Savannah's face-not as it had been in life, but as death and its aftermath had distorted it.

The back door opened and closed again. Footsteps sounded in the kitchen, in the hall. She bit down hard on the gag and tried to beat back the tears with her lashes. Don't show fear. He feeds on fear. It gives him power.

"All right, Laurel," Danjermond said, kneeling down to untie her feet. "We're going to go for a little drive." He looked up at her and smiled like a snake. "To my little place in the country."

Laurel knew the action was both futile and foolish, but she kicked him anyway, as hard as she could with her bare foot, catching him square in the diaphragm. He fell back, wheezing as the air punched out of his lungs, the look on his face worth whatever price he would make her pay.

Coughing, he rolled onto his knees and forced himself to his feet with one arm banded across his belly. He leaned against the hall table, sending her a sideways glare of pure, cold hate.

"You'll pay for that, Laurel," he ground out between short, painful gasps.

She met his glare evenly. Don't show fear. It gives him power.

"Defiant little bitch," he said, straightening slowly. A fire lit in his clear green eyes, glowing bright as he came toward her. "Just as your sister was," he said, smiling. "Right up to the end. She defied me. Dared me. I think she quite liked being tortured. There was a certain… exultant quality to her screams.

"And she laughed," he said softly, bending over her, careful to stay to the side. He brought his face down even with hers so she could see the wicked pleasure on his features as he spoke. "She laughed as I took my blade and cut her breasts."

Slowly, he reached out and cupped her breast with his long, elegant hand, testing its weight, molding its shape. He rubbed his thumb over the hard nub of her nipple, around and around, his gaze locked on hers, then began to tighten his fingers, squeezing and squeezing until she could no longer hold back the whimper of pain.

"She was completely insane by the end," he whispered.

Laurel shuddered, trembling with revulsion as much as fear. She had expected him to strike back at her physically, but this was much worse. Psychological torment, giving her the intimate details of her sister's murder. She would rather have been beaten. And he knew it.

"She wanted the sex," he said, untying her wrists from the arm of the chair. "Even when she knew I was going to kill her, she had an orgasm. Even as I tightened the scarf around her throat, she had an orgasm as powerful as any I've ever experienced." He met her eyes once again, that slight smile curling the corners of his wide, sensual mouth. "But then they say death is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Perhaps you'll experience that kind of ecstasy, as well, Laurel."

She was shaking uncontrollably as he hauled her up out of the chair and tied her hands behind her back. Thoughts of Savannah flashed through her mind. Thoughts of the two of them as children, before Ross had entered their lives and twisted the paths they would take. In that moment she hated him as much as she hated Stephen Danjermond. More. But it wasn't going to do any good to dwell on the past. The present held a clear and imminent danger. She was going to need all her energy, all her strength-physical and mental-directed to getting out of this alive.

Danjermond guided her out of the house the back way and took her around the side to an old carriage house that now served as a garage. They bypassed the Jaguar in favor of an old brown Chevy Blazer. He stuffed Laurel in the passenger's side and closed the door.

While he walked around the hood, she twisted around awkwardly to see Jack facedown on the seat behind her. He lay motionless, body bent at an awkward angle, feet on the floor behind the driver's seat. The dark blanket had been tossed carelessly over him and covered him from chin to boots.

In minutes they were driving out of town without having passed a car or a pedestrian who might have taken notice of them. When they were well beyond the town limits, alone on the bayou road, Danjermond pulled over and untied the gag.

Laurel spat the wad of cloth out of her mouth, glaring at him in the gloom of the cab. "You won't get away with this," she charged hoarsely, her throat and mouth parched.

Danjermond flicked a brow upward as he slid the Blazer into gear and started them on their journey once again. "What a trite line, Laurel. And ridiculous. Of course I'll get away with it. I've been getting away with it since I was nineteen."

He chuckled at her involuntary gasp of horror, like an indulgent adult amused at the naivete of a child. "I was a college student," he began, leaning over to push a cassette into the tape player. Mozart whispered out of the speakers, orderly and serene. "I was an excellent student, naturally, with a great future ahead of me. But I had certain sexual appetites that required discretion.

"My father introduced me to the pleasures of the darker side of sex-indirectly. As a boy I once followed him on a visit to his mistress, and watched them through a window, fascinated and aroused by the games they played. I followed him many times after that before I realized he knew. When I was fourteen, he allowed me to visit her myself. To be properly initiated.

"I learned the privileges of wealth and the wisdom of discretion early on. So I knew better than to appease myself with a coed. Whores are much better at pleasing a man, anyway, and so much more expendable. I got carried away with one. Strangled her while we were in the throes of passion.

"No one ever suspected me. Why would they? I was the handsome, talented son of a prominent family, and she was just another whore who fell victim to a professional hazard."

Laurel listened, shocked and repulsed at the lack of feeling in his voice. He was completely without remorse, completely devoid of conscience. Emotionless, soulless; he had said so himself that day at Beauvoir. There would be no appealing to his sense of mercy or humanity, because he didn't have any. Escape was their only hope, and that hope was so slim as to be nearly nonexistent. She couldn't leave Jack, couldn't take him with her even if she could somehow get away. And what chance did she have out here, barefoot with her hands tied behind her back? None. If Danjermond didn't get her, something else would.

They turned off the bayou road and onto a narrow dirt track that led deeper into the swamp. Branches slapped at the sides of the truck as it crept down the path. The growth was so thick, the headlights barely penetrated. Laurel felt cocooned within the dark confines of the Blazer, cocooned in a bizarre world where Mozart played while a murderer calmly told her his life story.

She tried to memorize the turns they took, tried to gauge how far they had gone, but everything seemed distorted-time, distance, reality. Her arms ached abominably from being held in such an unnatural position. Every lurch of the truck sent pain shooting between her shoulder blades.

She glanced into the backseat at Jack, and her heart flipped over as his left eye blinked open for a moment. He was alive. Though not much, it was something to hang on to.

"You surprised me, Laurel," Danjermond said. He slowed the Blazer to a crawl as he piloted it through a shallow stream. As they climbed back onto what passed for solid ground out here, he stared at her across the cab, his lean face lit by the glow of the dashboard instruments. "I really didn't think you would break into my home. Even after you lied to Kenner, I believed you were too 'by the book' for that."

"I don't give a damn about the book," she said. "I believe in justice. I'll take it whatever way I can get it."

He smiled at that, truly pleased, and faced forward again as the path turned and ran along a bank. "I was right. You're much stronger than you thought, Laurel. It's really too bad I had to catch you with evidence that could incriminate me. I would have enjoyed a longer game."

He would have put her through Scott County all over again-the accusations, the disbelief, the desperation, all of it-for his own amusement. Laurel wanted to berate him for calling life and death a game. She wanted to rail at him for playing with the system he had sworn to uphold, but there seemed no point in it. He believed he was above it all-the law, the rules of society. And to date he had no reason to think otherwise. He had fooled everyone, had gotten away with the ultimate crime again and again.

"What will you do with us?" she asked flatly, deciding it was better to know than to imagine.

"I will lead the sheriff out to the site of a grisly murder-suicide I heard about through an anonymous tip. Poor Jack went over the edge at last. Couldn't deal with what he'd done to you. Took a gun and shot himself in the head."

Thereby obliterating the head wound Danjermond had already dealt him. And she would die exactly as the others had died, tying Jack firmly to the series of murders. Danjermond would see to every detail. No one would question the outcome.

"Not quite the glamour of a trial," she muttered.

"No. I do regret that. But still, there will be a good deal of regional and national news coverage, and as district attorney I will, naturally, act as spokesman for the parish."

"Naturally."

"Don't take it too hard, Laurel," he said, as he piloted the Blazer into a ramshackle shed that was tucked between trees and nearly obscured by vines. He cut the engine and turned to face her. "You couldn't have won. You couldn't have stopped me."

Laurel said nothing. She stared at him across the narrow space of the cab, remembering clearly the way he had looked over the dinner table in the house she had grown up in. "You believe in evil, don't you, Laurel?"

Yes, she did believe in evil, and she knew without a doubt that she was looking into the face of it.

He hauled Jack out of the truck first, carrying him out of the shed and out of her sight. Laurel struggled against the cloth that bound her hands, while her gaze scanned the cab for some kind of weapon-both acts useless. Danjermond was back for her quickly, and guided her ahead of him by her bound hands, down the muddy bank to an old bâteau that bobbed among the reeds.

At his prodding, she climbed in and sat on a black tarp on the flat bottom of the boat, with Jack lying in a heap behind her. Laurel leaned back and brushed her fingertips along the scuffed leather of his boots, trying to take some comfort in his nearness, and then her fingers stumbled over the lump of a knot.

Danjermond's attention was on the outboard motor. With a snap of his wrist, it roared to life and the boat eased away from the shore.

The black water gleamed like glass under the light of a partial moon. Bald cypress and tupelo trees jutted up from the smooth surface, straight and dark, looming above the swamp. In the near distance, thunder rolled and lightning flashed pink behind a bank of clouds. South, Laurel thought automatically, fingers picking awkwardly at the knot behind her. A storm moving up from the Gulf.

A storm, Jack thought dimly. Or was the rumbling in his head? Dieu, his head felt like an overripe melon that had met abruptly with the business end of a hammer. He forced his eyelids open-a monumental effort-and tried to take stock of his surroundings. A boat. He could hear the weak whine of a small outboard, feel the buoyancy of water beneath him, smell the rank aromas of damp and decomposing vegetation that was the bayou.

Fighting against the urge to cry out, he turned his head a scant inch and tried to make out the image above him. Women. Two. One. The shape blurred and multiplied, came together, then divided. Trying to clear his vision drained his strength, and he slipped back toward oblivion.

"I find the swamp a fascinating place, don't you, Laurel?"

Laurel. He struggled into full consciousness again, the strain making him dizzy. Laurel. Danger. Danjermond. The fight came back to him in broken snatches, just the memory intensifying the pain in his head. Danjermond had clubbed him. He had a concussion at the very least. At worst, what he was lapsing in and out of was not consciousness but existence. He forced a message down from his battered brain to his fingers, flexing them slowly, slightly. They moved-he thought.

He rested then, and conversation came to him in bits, fading in and out like a radio with poor reception.

"… a perfect world in many ways," Danjermond said, his voice hollow and distant, as if it were coming down a long tunnel.

"… for predators… senseless killing…"

"… thrill of the hunt…"

"… sadistic son of a bitch…"

He almost smiled at that. Laurel. She would stand up to a tiger and spit in its eye before it had her for lunch. Her courage never ceased to amaze him. She wouldn't back down from Danjermond. But Danjermond would kill her just the same.

While I lie here and let it happen.

Blackie's face loomed up behind his eyelids, snarling, taunting. "Good for nothin', T-Jack. Always were, always will be."

The boat seemed to spin beneath him, and nausea crawled up the back of his throat. An old hand at hangovers, he fought off the sensations, opened his eyes, and focused them hard on Laurel's back until the pounding in his head was so loud and relentless, he thought it a wonder no one else heard it. Gathering his strength, he made one effort to push himself up, but at that moment the motor cut and the bâteau bumped gently against a dock. Knocked off balance, he slumped back down, groaning as his head hit the bottom of the boat.

Laurel fought against the overwhelming urge to turn toward the faint moan. It was best not to react. If Jack was coming around, she didn't want Danjermond to know. They needed whatever slight edge they could get. She groaned, twisting her head to the side, as if trying to alleviate a cramp in her neck. Danjermond flicked a glance at her as he tied the boat off.

They had moved toward the storm as the storm had been moving toward them. It was overhead now. The sky was rumbling and crackling. The first flurry of fat raindrops hurled down on them, as Danjermond grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up on the rickety dock beside him. The boards groaned and dipped, elastic with rot, but they held as he turned and herded her onto shore and toward a tar-paper shack that teetered on stilts a few yards back from the dock.

The rain came harder. Lightning shattered the black of the sky, and the clouds ripped open, drenching them. Gasping, Laurel ducked her head as the water sluiced down her face. Danjermond hustled her up the steps and produced a key to the padlock that held the door shut.

The cabin was pitch-black inside, but the scent of blood assaulted her nostrils and balled in her throat. Human blood. Her sister's blood. Laurel squeezed her eyes closed as fear surged through her in a flood tide and bile rose up the back of her throat. Beneath the noise of rain on the tin roof, she could hear Danjermond shuffling around, striking a match.

"It isn't much, but it's dry," he said, playing the humble host. Amusement tinted his voice as he reached out a hand and cupped her chin. "Now, Laurel, you're not the sort to hide. Open your eyes and face your destiny head-on."

He had lit candles, half a dozen or more. Tall tapers with flames that flickered and danced, their light waving sinuously over the meager contents of the ten-by-twelve room. A small dresser stood along the wall to her left with a cluster of candle stands on its scarred surface. A straight chair sat directly in front of her. Beyond it stood two more small, spindle-legged stands, one on either side of the bed, both of them crowned with a flickering candle.

All this Laurel took in through her peripheral vision, the facts filing themselves away in her brain while her attention was riveted on the bed. It was iron. Black iron. Slender pieces curved into graceful shapes to form the headboard and footboard. The four posts were low, entwined with pencil-slim iron vines and topped with polished brass finials in the shape of a spade. It was beautiful. Sinister. White silk ties hung from the headboard. A drape of sheer, pristine white silk covered the mattress, but dark stains showed through like shadows. Bloodstains.

Savannah had lain on that bed and had the life bled out of her, choked out of her. And Annie. And women whose names she would never know. Their screams filled her head like the echoes of ghosts. Their pain clawed at her. Their panic rose in her throat.

The thunder rolled. Lightning flashed through the window as bright as a spotlight. The rain poured down, pounding like nails on the roof.

Beyond the cabin stretched miles of wilderness. No one to help her. No one to hear her cries. No mercy. No justice. She thought of Jack and what might have been if fate had taken a kinder path for them both. Wondered dimly if any of it had ever been within their power.

Then Danjermond's hand closed on her arm and he led her toward the bed.

The rain came down as hard as hailstones, pelting exposed skin, slicing and pounding. A real frog strangler. Frogs, hell, Jack thought, coughing as the water pooled in the bottom of the boat and drifted into his mouth.

Strangler.

The word slapped him into consciousness, and he jerked his head up, grunting hard at the pain, the dizziness. Laurel. She was gone. Danjermond was gone. Danjermond would kill her. And you're lying in a goddamn boat in the rain. Worthless, good for nothing, son of a son of a bitch.

Gritting his teeth against the agony, he tried to right himself, confused at first that he couldn't seem to move his arms. Pain came in staccato bursts as he rolled partway onto his back and took the pounding rain full in the face. His hands were tied behind him. His feet were tied.

But he had moved his feet. He thought. He tried now with some success. They were bound but not tightly. Loose enough to struggle against. Loose enough that he could work his boots off, and the binding with them.

The task sapped his energy, left him gasping for breath and choking on the rain, but he managed to get his feet free. Slowly he rolled over onto his knees and tried to bring his head up an inch at a time. The pain beat relentlessly, like a mallet inside his skull, the rhythm syncopated with a driving urgency.

Laurel. He had to get to Laurel. He would die in the process or in the aftermath, of that he had no doubt, but he had to try. For her… to make her proud… to show her he loved her… he hadn't told her… should have told her… wished he could have made it work…

The thoughts swirled around his brain as he struggled to stand in the boat, and the blackness swirled with them. Flecked with stars… promising relief… beckoning… sweeping in…

Fighting him was futile, but she fought him just the same. There was a principle involved. Honor. She would not go meekly to her death like a sheep to the proverbial slaughter. She wouldn't make it easy for him, would do her utmost to spoil his enjoyment.

The instant Danjermond's hand settled on her arm, Laurel jerked away from him and bolted for the door. He lunged after her, catching hold of her ponytail and jerking her back hard enough to make her teeth snap together. Laurel shrieked, in anger and pain, and twisted toward him, lashing out with her feet, kicking at his knees, his shins, any part of him she could hit.

His lips pulled back against his teeth in a feral snarl, and the back of his hand exploded against the side of her face, snapping her head to the side, bringing a burst of stars behind her eyes and the taste of blood to her mouth. The room seemed to swirl once around her, and unable to use her arms for balance, she staggered sideways and fell. On her knees, she tried to scramble for the door, never taking her eyes off it, willing herself to stand, to run, to get away. Adrenaline pumped through her like a drug, driving her forward even when Danjermond caught hold of her bound wrists and hauled her up and back, wrenching her arms in the sockets.

But her struggles stilled automatically as the blade of a dagger glinted in the candlelight.

Laurel's heart drummed, impossibly hard, impossibly loud, as the blade came nearer and nearer her face. It was slim and elegant, like the hand that curled around its golden hilt. The blade was polished steel that had been ornately engraved from the guard to the tip. Beautiful, deadly, like the man who held it.

"I would prefer if you would cooperate, Laurel," he said, stepping in close behind her, his left hand sliding along her jaw, fingers pressing into her flesh. The knife inched nearer.

The pitch of his voice was the same even tone that had always somehow managed to strike a nerve in her, but no longer was it devoid of emotion. Anger strummed through every carefully enunciated word as he brought the dagger closer and closer. Her breath caught hard in her lungs as he touched the point of it to the very tip of her nose.

"Be a good girl, Laurel," he murmured, sliding the dagger lightly downward. Over her upper lip to her lower lip. He let it linger in the valley between as if he were contemplating sliding it into her mouth. "I know Vivian raised you to be a good girl."

"Be a good girl, Laurel. Don't make trouble, Laurel. Keep your mouth closed and your legs crossed, Laurel." Somehow, she didn't think this was a situation that had come to her mother's mind during those lectures on comportment.

Laurel said nothing, afraid to speak, afraid to breathe as the blade point traced down her chin, down the center of her throat to the vulnerable hollow at its base. If she struggled now, would he slice her throat and be done with her? That seemed preferable, but there were no guarantees. If she waited, bought time-even a minute or two-might she find another chance to break away?

Outside, the storm had rolled past and gone on its way toward Lafayette, but the rain continued, pelting the roof, tapping at the single, small window like bony fingertips. What kind of chance at survival would she have in the swamp? What kind of chance would she have here?

The dagger rested in the V of her collarbone, the point tickling the delicate flesh above. The sensation made her want to gag. She swallowed back the need, felt the tip bite into her skin. Every cell of her body was quivering. She felt as fragile as a twig, poised to snap in Danjermond's grasp. Her eyes filled, but she held back the tears, held back the hysteria, grabbed her sanity with both mental hands, and hung on as Danjermond's words about Savannah echoed in her head-"She was completely insane by the end."

She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He had killed her sister for sport, meant to climb on the bodies of his victims to fame in a profession he mocked with every breath he took.

"Damn you," she whispered, seizing her anger and hate and using them as shields to beat back the terror. "Damn you to hell."

Danjermond leaned close, bringing his face down next to hers, rubbing his cheek against hers. "I don't believe in an afterlife, Laurel," he murmured, dragging the dagger down between her breasts, where her heart pounded beneath the thin fabric of her T-shirt. With a slight motion of his wrist the point nipped into the cotton and nudged her breast. "I'd say, if there's a hell, it's here and now, and you're in it with me."

A scream tore from her throat as Danjermond sliced violently downward with the blade, opening her T-shirt from neck band to hem. Instinctively, she bolted back, colliding with his long, lean body, her hands pressing against his engorged sex. His left arm snaked around her middle and held her there as he eased his pelvis forward and raised the dagger slowly to her left breast.

Razor-sharp, the blade kissed along the plump swell beneath her nipple, and her blood beaded, bright red, along the knife edge, rolling across it like pearls to splash down on the floor. The pain came seconds later, throbbing with her heartbeat. And finally the tears spilled over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks, pale counterpoints to the drops of blood sliding down her rib cage.

"Be a good girl, Laurel," he purred, rubbing himself rhythmically against her. She shuddered in disgust as he traced his tongue up the line of her throat to her ear and caught the lobe between his teeth. "There's no justice out here for you to find, Laurel," he whispered. "The only law is my law."

He dragged her back to the bed, ignoring her resistance. With the dagger, he sliced the ties that bound her hands and quickly shoved her down on the bed, planting a knee in the middle of her chest to pin her down with his weight. Using the ties that had tethered other victims to this deathbed, he lashed her to the headboard.

"Too bad it's raining so," he said conversationally as he sat on the bed beside her, admiring the sight of her glaring up at him. Taking up the dagger, he dipped it in her navel and drew it lightly up the quivering flesh of her belly, between her breasts. "I would have brought Jack in and tried to rouse him for the performance. He should witness what his imagination only hints at, see for himself the power of it, the seduction. He has the darkness within him. Before he dies, he should witness the glory of it unleashed."

The blade hooked under the neck band of her T-shirt and, with a practiced move, he sliced it open. With the tip of the dagger he peeled back the ruined garment on either side, baring her to his gaze.

"Dainty," he whispered, rubbing the flat of the knife against her uninjured breast. "Exquisitely feminine."

"What happened to make you hate women so?" she asked, choking with revulsion as he dipped a thumb in the blood from the wound he had inflicted and painted it across first one nipple then the other.

Danjermond raised a brow. "I don't hate women," he said, sounding amused. "This is my hobby. It's nothing personal."

"I consider being murdered highly personal."

He rose with a sigh and rounded the foot of the bed to sit on the straight chair. He dropped the dagger on the floor at his feet and casually began to unbutton his shirt. "Well, yes, I suppose you would, all things considered. But then, that's been a longtime problem of yours, hasn't it, Laurel? You tend to personalize everything. That's what got you into such trouble in Georgia. You were too personally involved. You couldn't see the forest for the trees. We both know how important perspective is in building a case. A prosecuting attorney must be cold, thorough, detached. Emotionalism only leaves the door open for surprises from the opposition. As you've discovered for yourself, Laurel, I am a very thorough man. I don't tolerate surprises."

Without warning, the cabin door exploded inward, the rotted frame splintering, rain and wind sweeping in, and Jack with it. His momentum carried him forward, and he bowled into a stunned Danjermond before the district attorney could do more than turn and gape at him. The wooden chair disintegrated into kindling beneath their combined weight and the two men crashed to the floor.

Laurel screamed Jack's name and struggled to sit up, trying to see. She could hear the struggle-the scuff of boots on the floor, the grunts and cruses. She knew in her heart what the outcome would be. Jack was fighting literally with both hands tied behind his back, and he had to be barely conscious. Danjermond would kill him, just as surely as he would kill her-unless she could somehow manage to get herself free.

She wriggled up toward the headboard, inches at a time, trying not to strain against the ties that held her by her wrists, trying to move into a position that would give her some slack. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated on shutting out the sounds of the fight and tried to focus her mind on her bonds. Silk. Smooth, strong, slick, slippery. Her hands were small, fine-boned, her wrists delicate. If she concentrated, moved just right, didn't tighten them by struggling…

Jack struggled to keep Danjermond pinned beneath him, but his strength ebbed and flowed in erratic bursts, and his faulty sense of balance made it difficult to determine which way was up. He fought as best he could with his knees and his feet, jabbing, kicking when he could, ignoring the pain that screamed through his head and bit into his side.

Danjermond writhed beneath him, twisting, heaving upward. He reached for the dagger that had skittered across the floor, and Jack threw his weight hard against him, sending them both crashing into a table along the wall, and sending the table crashing to the floor.

Candles rolled like tenpins, their flames licking at anything in their path, catching hungrily at the old tar paper that lined the walls of the shack.

The men rolled away from the fire, still struggling for supremacy. Jack managed to catch his adversary in the belly with his knee, but Danjermond struck back viciously, slamming his fist into the side of Jack's head. The pain sent Jack rolling, plummeting toward unconsciousness like a diver shooting toward the bottom of a black, black ocean.

He fought against it, held his breath, and fought to claw his way back up through the dark, up through the fireflies that swarmed in his brain. His vision cleared enough for him to make out flames licking greedily up the wall and three wavering versions of Danjermond silhouetted in front of the glow. Three devils from hell. Three Danjermonds raising an arm, three daggers gleaming, slashing toward him.

He dove for the man in the center, his shoulder hitting solid mass at the same instant the dagger plunged into his back. He felt a rib break, then a strange vacuum sensation in his chest. What little strength he had left sucked out of him, and he fell heavily to the floor, mouthing Laurel's name.

"Jack! Jack!" Laurel shouted his name to be heard above the roar of the fire that was devouring the wall of the shack. She shouted a third time, frantic to hear him answer, knowing that he wouldn't.

She had seen Danjermond rise, had seen the dagger slash down. Jack was dead. She was alone. It wouldn't matter that she had managed to work one hand free. She wouldn't have time to untie the other. Danjermond was on his feet already. Coming toward her. The dagger dripping blood. Jack's blood. Danjermond smiled like Lucifer himself against the backdrop of flame.

Don't look at him, work the knot, work the knot. Crying, coughing against the black smoke that was beginning to press down from the ceiling, she scrambled across the bed, fumbling to free her left hand.

Jack raised his head a fraction of an inch. All he could see were Danjermond's feet. Moving toward Laurel. From some deep inner well he drew the last drops of will and courage he had and swung his legs. He hit Danjermond in the backs of the knees, and the district attorney's legs buckled beneath him, sending him sprawling headlong into the flames.

The screams were terrible. Inhuman. Engulfed in flame, he managed to stand and tried frantically to run, stumbling and falling across the bed. Laurel screamed and flung herself off the other side as the silk spread ignited in a flash.

She staggered back from the ghoulish scene, choking on the smoke, eyes stinging so badly, she could barely hold them open. There was nothing to be done for Danjermond. And in that terrible, fire-bright moment, she didn't know whether she would have tried. All she knew with any certainty was that the cabin was going up like a tinderbox, and if they didn't get out quickly, she and Jack would share Danjermond's fate.

Crouching low to escape the worst of the smoke, she ran around the foot of the bed and dropped to her knees beside Jack's sprawled form.

"Jack!" she screamed, the sound almost consumed by the roar of the fire. "Damn you Jack, don't die on me now!"

She pulled at him, gritted her teeth, and threw all her strength into dragging him toward the door, shouting every inch of the way. Her curses and pleas penetrated the fog of Jack's consciousness. Her determination made him move his legs when he wasn't sure he could remember how. He latched onto the sound of her voice and the feel of her hand and the incredible power of her will, and used it all to propel himself forward. At the door, he caught hold of the splintered frame and got his feet under himself.

"Hurry!" Laurel shouted, wrapping an arm around his waist and trying to take his weight against her as they stumbled down the steps and started toward the bayou.

The rain was still falling, but it was no match for the old dried wood of the shack. The cabin lit up the night sky like a torch. The fire devoured it as if hell had opened up to consume all evidence of the atrocities that had been practiced there, devouring the perpetrator, as well, condemning him to a justice that was absolute.

Weak, choking from the smoke, staggering under Jack's weight, Laurel fell to her knees on the muddy bank, and Jack went down like a ton of bricks beside her.

"Oh, God, Jack! Don't die!" she demanded, bending over him. "Don't be dead! Please don't be dead!"

She bent over him, bawling, her tears combining with the rain to splash down onto his face. With hands shaking violently, she touched his soot-covered cheek, his lips-trying to feel his breath, fumbled to find a pulse in his throat. Was it weak and thready, or was that her own?

His lashes fluttered upward, and he looked at her. Tried to smile. Tried to catch more than a teaspoon of air. "Hey, angel," he whispered, then had to try to breathe again. "Mebbe I'm one of the good guys after all."

Then darkness swept over him like a velvet blanket, and he surrendered to the pain.