KILLING ME SOFTLY Read online

  Her heart kicked hard. Every instinct for survival told her to break the contact between them, look away, focus on the statue of a woman seated on a park bench overlooking the bayou, waiting for a lover who never returned. But she didn't move. "All that just from my eyes?"

  "I'm a photographer." He raised a hand to her face, but rather than touching, he traced the outline through the smoky air. "You can look for my secrets all you want, but know that before all is said and done, I'll have yours, too."

  Because God help her, she would give it to him.

  "Be careful what you wish for," she shot back with a silkiness that pleased her. Refusing to give an inch, she slipped under his arm and let a slow smile of her own curve her lips. "Some secrets are best left buried."

  Without waiting for a reply, she crossed the porch, went down the steps and headed for her hotel.

  Cain caught up with her near the statue. His hand found her wrist, his fingers closed around flesh and bone—gently. She turned slowly, felt her pulse jump when she saw the glitter in his eyes.

  "A pretty lady like you in the middle of the night—" his fingers moved with the words, slid to skim the inside of her palm "—maybe you should let me take you back to your hotel room."

  The words shimmied through her like an intimate caress, leaving warmth everywhere they touched. She felt herself lean into him, reach up to him, forget every damning reason she had for staying away from this man.

  His gaze slipped down her body, then returned to her face with equal leisure, revealing the glow of invitation—and the burn of warning. "Be very sure…"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The desire to taste and feel and discover stunned her. Renee looked up into his brutally handsome face and felt her breath catch, her heart race. The night pulsed in perfect rhythm with the dance of his fingers against her hand, creating an intimacy that could tempt even a nun.

  Renee was not a nun—but nor was she naive.

  Women come and go from my bed faster than I can develop the film of what happens there…

  One week was all she had. One day was already gone. Six remained—at most. In only a few hours Cain had blurred the lines between them. He was good at that. He knew how to manipulate any situation to get what he wanted, how to use size and strength, even his reputation, to twist circumstances to his advantage. He wasn't above using sex to intimidate and control.

  Nor was she—but tonight was not the time to carelessly toss down gauntlets he was sure to pick up.

  "Not necessary," she said, twisting her wrist from his hand.

  He made no move to stop her, just watched her with a dark light in his eyes. "Maybe not tonight, cher. But soon."

  It was the soon that fed the ache deep inside. But she ignored the temptation and kept her face blank as she turned. This time she had no problem walking away.

  The sun was barely up when she arrived at the library. She sat quietly on a bench, sipping coffee from the shop across the street and jotting in a notebook. The steady breeze blowing in from the bayou whipped her hair against her face, but she made no move to brush it away.

  Intrigued, Edouard leaned back in his chair and watched her through his office window.

  "I can be on the next plane to New Orleans," Etienne said from the Hart Office Building in Washington.

  "No." The word came without hesitation. "There's no need to feed a fire." Etienne's abrupt return would accomplish nothing except extra publicity, which Edouard categorically did not need. "Everything's under control."

  Sometimes it still amazed Edouard that someone as excitable as his brother had gotten himself elected to the highest echelons of government.

  But then, that's what smooth talking and an easy smile could do for you.

  "You'll take care of it then?"

  Edouard glanced toward the library and frowned. Of course he would take care of it. That's what he did, what he'd done since the time they were boys and Etienne had come home dead drunk for the first time. Just because Edouard didn't have a fancy office and a face that had been on the cover of national news magazines didn't mean he wasn't capable.

  Family came first. The town second. There wasn't time for a third.

  "I've got someone looking into her," he told his brother. Cain had T'Roy, but Edouard preferred to do his own dirty work. "If she's got a hidden agenda, I'll find it."

  The call wound down, and Edouard swiveled in his chair to review the contents of the folder open on his desk—the desk his grand-daddy had occupied until his death at the age of eighty-four. The articles clipped from various newspapers stared back at him, nasty reminders of how fast a man could go from hero to goat. His nephew had been doing his job, leading the investigation against a dangerous criminal organization. But in the blink of an eye—

  Not the blink of an eye, he corrected. The stroke of a pen. Cain's investigation had been going fine until his informants started turning up dead and critical evidence went missing, whipping the media into a frenzy. Stories about a cop turned dirty had been splashed all over the front pages.

  Then Cain had been found with Savannah's blood on his hands, and the suspicions had turned into an unholy witch hunt. With the heat turned up, illegal activities had conveniently dried up, leaving his nephew with a burning thirst for vengeance but no more than a phantom to follow.

  Someone had gone to great lengths to frame Cain for a crime he did not commit.

  Edouard had gone to even greater lengths to clear him.

  Yanking open his desk drawer, he looked for a cigarette that wasn't there. Some said his thirst for justice was his downfall. At least, someone had said that. But she hadn't understood. To her the world was a simple place. A friendly place. Pretty and untarnished. She believed in white picket fences and rainbows, fairy tales and promises that lasted forever.

  Vietnam had taught him otherwise. He'd learned the truth about the dark side of human nature there: a man with his head in the clouds was doomed to stumble and fall.

  A man needed a purpose. Goals. That's what kept him strong. Kept him focused.

  It was why he'd come home from 'Nam with nothing worse than a head full of silver hair, whereas so many of his buddies had come home in body bags.

  Frowning, Edouard leaned down and opened the bottom drawer of his desk, fumbled under a stack of reports and pulled out an old wooden frame. The black-and-white picture had weathered, but they were all still there, young and innocent and drunk on the promise of the future. He couldn't believe how young they looked—couldn't believe he'd ever been that young.

  Or that naive.

  Only a week later, three of them had landed in 'Nam.

  Two tours later, only two of them had come home.

  Holding the photo, Edouard leaned back in his chair and turned toward Renee Fox. She'd stopped writing in the notebook, now just looked toward Main Street

  with the oddest expression on her face.

  He wasn't nearly as uneasy about her presence as he wanted everyone to think. The criminal, after all, always returned to the scene of the crime.

  It just took time.

  And while he was pretty dog damn sure Renee Fox was not responsible for hanging Cain out to dry, maybe, just maybe, she would lead Edouard straight to the bastard who was.

  The buzz of his intercom broke his thoughts. "What's up, Becca? I told you not to interrupt unless it was urgent."

  "It is urgent," his secretary said. "It's about Travis."

  "Comeaux?" he asked, frustrated. Travis Comeaux and Lem Lemoine had a habit of showing up in the strangest of places. "Where's he passed out this time?"

  "That's just it," Becca said. "His wife says he didn't come home last night."

  "That's nothing—"

  "His car is there. Keys are in the ignition, and Millie swears there's blood on the seat. But she can't find Travis anywhere."

  Gone. It was all gone. Every article, every piece of microfiche, every magazine—everything with the slightest reference to Cain and Savannah was gone.


  "How can it be gone?" Renee asked the librarian. "Are you sure it's not somewhere else?"

  The research librarian, Lena Mae Lamont, closed the file cabinet. "I'm sorry, but there's nowhere else it would be."

  "Maybe in a local collection section?"

  Lena Mae shook her head. "I've already looked there."

  Someone had beat Renee here. She knew it as surely as she knew she was being stonewalled. Maybe last night, or maybe days or weeks before, but someone had deliberately scrubbed information about Cain and Savannah from the public domain.

  Frustration tightened her chest, followed quickly by a punishing stab of disappointment. She'd researched the case as much as she could from afar, using the Internet to secure articles from the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Baton Rouge Advocate, but instinct insisted that the payoff would come here in Bayou de Foi, from the accounts and opinions of the locals.

  Accounts and opinions that were now missing.

  Renee had a feeling she knew just who to thank for that little stumbling block, too.

  "Maybe you can help me with this," she said, handing Lena Mae a slip of paper. "It's a book. Louisiana Lore and Legends." It had come up when she'd done an Internet search on Robichaud and murder. "I couldn't find it either."

  Lena Mae, an attractive dark-haired woman with light brown eyes and olive skin, accessed the card catalog and checked the Dewey Decimal number, then led Renee to a section on Louisiana history—a section Renee had already checked.

  "I'm sorry," Lena Mae said after scanning every shelf. "It seems to be missing, as well."

  "Could someone have checked it out?"

  A search in the library's surprisingly elaborate computer system refuted that possibility.

  "But why?" Renee took a deep breath, reminded herself to stay calm. "I understand why someone might take the files pertaining to the murder investigation, but what does this book have to do with anything? It was published in 1954."

  Lena Mae frowned. "Because of the legend, I suppose."

  Renee blinked. "Legend?"

  The lines remained carved in Lena Mae's face, but she forced a laugh. "You know us Louisianans. We've got legends about everything."

  "I wasn't aware of one pertaining to the Robichauds," Renee said.

  "And I'm afraid I can't tell you what it is, either." Lena Mae glanced nervously toward the front door. "The Robichauds fund this library, and with Etienne in the senate, they're real cautious of what information gets released. If you want to know, you'll have to talk to one of them."

  It was starting. Less than twenty-four hours after her arrival, the town was shutting its doors and barring its windows. The stream of information was already drying up.

  But Renee had learned something—Cain was not the first Robichaud to tango with murder.

  "Never heard … her," Gabe said above the garble of static coming across the mobile phone. "You … me to run … through NICS?"

  "Not yet," Cain bit out as the hotel came into view through the lingering rain. Almost an hour had passed since T'Roy's phone call, but the P.I.'s revelations still burned like a hot poker to the gut. "I want to see what I can get out of her first."

  He looked forward to it, actually.

  "Let … know if … change your … ind."

  "Will do." Scowling at the lame connection, Cain swung into the parking lot. Damn phone company didn't seem to understand that the Robichauds hadn't forked over big bucks for the substandard cellular service to continue.

  "Cain … Prejean's … spotted."

  He killed the ignition. "Where?"

  "…murder…"

  Reaching for the door, Cain went very still. "Repeat that."

  "…courier murdered…" Gabe's voice broke in and out of the crackle. "Prej … running from … scene."

  Cain squeezed his eyes shut, opened them a moment later. His former partner had been one of the few to stand by Cain during the Grand Jury trial, even though he'd been there that night, had seen Cain kneeling with Renee's blood on his hands. "No." He shoved open the door and stepped into the drizzle. "I don't give a rat's ass what it looks like, Alec did not kill that courier."

  "…just thought … should know."

  "I'll be there tonight," he said, striding toward the town's signature hotel. Once, he'd found great pride in the massive columns that flanked it. Now, he couldn't look at them without seeing the ruins south of town. "We'll talk then."

  Without breaking pace, Cain wound down the call and pushed through the doors, shoved the damp hair from his face and took the curving stairs two at a time.

  The door at the end of the hall served as a flimsy barrier to a former undercover cop accustomed to infiltrating ironclad criminal organizations. He could knock it down with a shove, but something he didn't understand kept him from just barging in.

  He knocked loudly and placed his finger over the peephole.

  "Yes?" Her voice rasped with the roughness of sleep.

  He wondered if he had visited hers, as she had visited his. "Can I help you?"

  Despite his anger, his body responded. "You better believe you can." In ways that could easily destroy them both. "Open up and I'll show you how."

  Silence. Absolute, deafening silence.

  "Don't make me use my key," he warned, sliding his hand into the front pocket of his suddenly tight jeans.

  A sigh. He heard it through the two-inch layer of wood, as provocative and damning as though it brushed his neck. "Cain."

  "Don't pretend you're surprised. This is what you wanted, non?"

  More silence, followed by another sigh. "Non."

  Sweet Mary Mother of God. Her voice flowed like honey when she spoke in English, but when she used it to caress a word in French, even one simple syllable, it conjured images of sin and—

  "Don't test me." To prove his point, he jingled his keys.

  A chain rattled, followed by the click of the dead bolt. Slowly, the wood eased from between them to reveal her leaning against the door frame. She didn't look frightened, as Millie had. She looked resigned.

  "Far be it for me to test one of the mighty Robichauds."

  The words, the tone, had the effect she no doubt intended. For a second, a damning fraction of a second, shame taunted him.

  Do you make it a point of personally trying to run off every visitor to Bayou de Foi?

  He pushed the question aside and strode into her room. The bed caught his eye first, the tangled sheets and indentation on one of the feather pillows. Then he noticed the heap of damp clothes on the floor near the bathroom, the stylish, slightly muddy boots. And despite everything, the thought of this buttoned-up woman getting caught in the rain fired through him. He turned toward her, took in the bulky hotel-provided robe wrapped around her body and gaping at the chest. Her damp hair was still tangled and pushed back from her face. She wore no makeup. Water slid down her legs.

  "What in God's name are you doing answering the door dressed like that?" he demanded.

  A smile flirted with her pale lips. "You didn't give me much of a choice, did you?" She moved from the door, leaving it open. "Had I taken the time to get dressed, you would have barged in using your key." She arched an eyebrow. "Care to tell me which would have been more indecent?"

  The image formed before he could stop it, of walking in to find her sliding out of the terry robe and into something more … appropriate.

  "Do they train you to deceive?" he asked in a deliberately quiet voice. "Or does that just come naturally?"

  At first he thought she would say nothing, sidestepping his demand as she'd done the day before. But she angled her chin. "You know."

  "You didn't really think I wouldn't find out, did you?" It hadn't even taken that much effort. "A quick Internet search and there you are, True Crime's newest addition, acclaimed for your ability to dig up secrets and hang them out to dry." As far as smut TV went, True Crime ranked right up there with the most offensive. "Is that how you get your kicks?" When her eyes flar
ed, he took a deliberate step closer. "Telling lies and exploiting scandal, no matter who you screw in the process?"

  "I'm here to do a job, Cain. A job I take very seriously. Screwing you has nothing to do with it."

  "Your job is snooping into my life?"

  Defiance flashed through her eyes. "At the moment, yes."

  The tightening started in his gut and shot out through his body. There was anger, yes, a cold feeling he'd lived with day in and day out during the weeks after Savannah vanished, but damn it, it was the disappointment that punished. He'd wanted to believe her. He'd wanted to believe she was just a woman passing through town.

  Now the truth burned. Renee Fox had come to Bayou de Foi to resurrect Savannah—and nail him to the wall—all in the name of journalism. "You stood there on the porch last night, smiling, when all along you knew you were here to crucify me?"

  The first trace of nervousness flitted across her face. "I'm not here to crucify you."

  "Then what would you call it?"

  "Research," she said with that stubborn tilt to her chin. "I'm here to see if there's a story to tell."

  "A story?" The word, the simplicity it implied, sickened. He'd seen the show, after all, and he knew there was nothing simple or innocent about the scandals it exploited. "This is my life you're talking about, not some sordid little it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night tale."

  "I'd think an innocent man would welcome the opportunity to clear his name."

  "Trust me, cher," he said very quietly, with absolutely no emotion to his voice. "You can't clear my name."

  She staggered back from his words, as though he'd pummeled her with fists and not the truth. "No?" Determination glowed in her eyes. "Why not?"

  He stared down at her, at the way her hair tumbled from her face, revealing skin ridiculously beautiful and flawless for a woman her age. The blast of lust was obscene—and dangerous as hell. He had no business being attracted to this woman, not when she was out to destroy his life.