The Perfect Stranger (9 page)

“Because of Alec,” she whispered, startled by the quick play of emotion across D’Ambrosia’s face, the anger and the regret and the—guilt. “He was your partner.” And now he was dead.

He released her hand and moved away from her, crossed the kitchen and braced his hands against the edge of the sink.

She knew better than to follow. She knew better than to reach out—

“Don’t.” He twisted toward her, and with absolutely no warning or transition, the anguished man vanished, replaced by the stone-faced cop. “Don’t pretend like you have a damn clue what I’m thinking, and don’t pretend we’re in this together. We’re not. I’m a cop. You’re not. And I meant what I said last night. Stay away from Lambert.”

“You’ll be watching. Yes, I know,” she said through yet another wave of frustration. “But there won’t be anything you can do, will there? Because you can’t get close to him, and I can.” And that was the bottom line. She could accomplish what he could not. “Which means you can’t stop me without putting us both in danger.”

He leaned against the counter, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Is that another risk you’re willing to take?”

The urge to give him a good hard shove surprised her. “What? You think just because you can shoot a target blindfolded and do your little martial arts dance on your pier without falling into the lake means you don’t need help? That you’re invincible?”

“Prepared,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

“Prepared for what?” She tried not to notice the play of sunshine and shadows against his face. But did. “Operating in the dark?”

“For anything.” The cleft in his chin deepened. “For everything. For Lambert—for you.”

At least that’s what he wanted to believe. But he hadn’t been prepared for his partner’s death. For being there when he died, but not being able to change the outcome.

“Operating in the dark,” he was saying, “keeps your senses alive.”

It was an odd statement coming from the man who’d looked at her from across the voodoo-queen’s-cabin-turned-dive with absolutely no life whatsoever in his eyes.

“And you think that makes you a good cop,” she guessed. It was the only reason a man who wanted to feel nothing would work so damn hard to keep his senses sharp.

“Sharply-hewn senses make me good at a lot of things,” he said, grabbing a neatly folded dish towel from the counter. “You of all people should know that.”

She did. In cruel, explicit detail. That was part of the problem.

He took the towel in both hands and held it out to her. “Would you like to try?” he asked, stepping toward her. “See what it feels like to rely on nothing but touch and sound and scent?”

Her body responded, sending a rush of heat swirling through her. Without her eyes, she would have to rely on her hands to guide her. She would reach out, and he would be there. She would touch, and she would feel. And even as she spun away she would still hear the sound of his breathing, still teeter dangerously close to drowning on the scent of soap and sweat and leather and man.

She took the towel—and dropped it to the floor. “This isn’t about me.” It was about Alec—and bringing down Lambert.

John’s eyes took on a slow burn. “I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. His gaze dropped along her body, and despite the jacket concealing her curves, every nerve ending quickened. “I may be a cop, but I’m also a man,” he said as he lifted his eyes back to hers. “And when the instincts of one collide with the needs of the other, it’s smarter to indulge, than to ignore.”

Indulge.
The word whispered through her like a seductive promise—or an even more seductive threat. “Be very specific here, Detective. Just what are you indulging by trying to keep me away from Lambert? Instinct—or need?” She let a beat of silence spill between them before continuing. “The cop?” she asked. “Or the man?”

For a moment he did nothing. Said nothing. Just stood, more naked than not, and watched her with a gleaming intensity that made her heart thrum low and hard.

Then, slowly, a smile curved his mouth. “Who says there’s a difference?”

He did, whether he knew it or not.

“Would you like me to go into more detail?” He stepped toward her. “About my needs—my instincts?” Lifting a hand to her face, he skimmed his fingers along her cheekbone. “The questions that play through my mind when the lights go off?”

Once, when Saura was seven, her uncle Edouard took her hunting. She’d fought him every step of the way, had no desire to see anyone raise a gun to a deer or rabbit, and pull the trigger. But Edouard had insisted. Saura could still remember the moment they’d seen the doe in the clearing, drinking from a stream. She’d looked pretty and peaceful, and maybe Saura had read too many stories, but all she could think was that the deer was someone’s mother. That she had a baby somewhere. Waiting for her to come back to her. As Saura herself had once done.

But mothers didn’t come back from suicide.

She’d frozen, watching Edouard lift the rifle and bring it to his face, squint through the sights and slide his finger along the trigger.

Then she screamed.

Standing in the middle of D’Ambrosia’s oddly quaint kitchen, she thought of the deer, knew how it must have felt in that one moment when she’d glanced up and caught sight of man and gun. The moment before she’d bolted into the woods.

D’Ambrosia didn’t have a gun trained on her, at least not one with bullets. But his quietly spoken, deliberately explicit questions had the power to destroy—and he damn well knew it.

“Nice tactic,” she said with a calm that belied the fight-or-flight rhythm of her heart. She knew what he was doing, using sex to blur the issue and scare her off. For effect, she lifted her hands, and clapped. “Very smooth.”

“Should I take that as a no?”

“Take it any way you want.” Turning, she strolled to the table and picked up her purse, told herself it didn’t matter that he would think he’d succeeded in scaring her away. Maybe that was actually better. Let him think he was in control. She’d accomplished what she’d set out to. She’d given him the tape.

And in doing so, she’d received much, much more.

With a wistful glance at the main room she’d not gotten a chance to explore—the huge leather recliner and old chintz-covered sofa, the small television and neat stack of magazines on a pine table, one of her brother’s photographs on the wall near a shadow box—she turned back to D’Ambrosia. “I gave you the choice, Detective. Remember that.”

Then she headed for the door through which he’d let her almost an hour before. She pulled it open and welcomed the cool swirl of the breeze, swallowed hard when his hand came down on her wrist. “This isn’t a game.”

Bracing herself, she turned to him one last time. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Are you?” His voice was different. “Are you sure?” Still low and dark, but pulsing, not flat. Smooth, not rough. “Is that what you tell yourself when you let Lambert touch you?” he asked silkily. “When you used to parade around the French Quarter as a blonde or a redhead?”

T
he question slammed into Saura. He knew. Somehow, some way, he’d learned her secret. Knew of her past.

“Is that why so many people think you’re dead?” he went on in that same quiet voice. “Because you know when to play and when to back off?”

Ripping her hand from his grip, she did back away. A stranger, she remembered thinking.
Her
stranger. A man just passing through. Who didn’t know who she’d been or what she’d done. Who could not touch her. Could not hurt her.

Did not have a weapon lifted to her heart.

She could not have been more wrong.

“I wish that it was,” she whispered against the burning of her throat. “Do what you have to,” she added as the breeze from the pecan trees slapped a few strands of hair into her face. “But respect me enough to let me do the same.”

The muscle in his cheek started to pound, and when he reached for her again, she stepped back. Again.

“This isn’t about respect,” he said.

“No, it’s not.” The words were soft. Calm. But inside, the chaotic threat twisted through her. The game she didn’t want to play had just shifted.

Knowing what had to be done—
the only thing that could be done—
she walked away.

He didn’t try to stop her.

He looked like death warmed over. That was John’s first thought when Gabriel Fontenot pulled open his door. The assistant district attorney with the fabled poker face had a reputation for cracking witnesses as easily as he could turn a worthless hand of cards into a profit. That was the Robichaud in him. Armed with evidence or flat-out bluffing, no one ever knew. The finesse came from his mother’s side. Or so rumor had it.

Robichauds didn’t waste time on finesse. Not when they wanted something.

And Saura Robichaud definitely wanted something.

Frowning, John shoved aside the thought and focused on the man squinting at him through bloodshot eyes. The man who usually wore designer suits but now wore only a threadbare New Orleans Saints division championship T-shirt—
that
hadn’t happened in a long time—and a pair of faded jeans. His feet were bare. Rolled-up newspapers littered his porch. His face needed a razor. His hair needed scissors. And from the looks of him, he could damn well use a cup of coffee. Or ten.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” John said.

Gabe lifted his hand to his face and rubbed. “You didn’t.”

John glanced beyond him, into the small uptown house Gabe had shared with his fiancée. The lights were off and the blinds shut, but through the shadows he saw the bar separating the kitchen from the main room, the carton of Chinese on the counter. And the handgun. It was small and silver, several years old he would guess. Next to it lay bullets. Three, he counted.

And something inside him went horribly, brutally tight. “Gabe—”

“I got your messages,” his friend said, pulling the door open wider. “You want to come in?”

Playing it cool, feeling as if he was walking a thin, dark line, John stepped into the cool darkness of Gabe’s house. Once, the decor had been a swank combination of antique and post-modern. Now on a quick glance John saw the walls stripped of all art. Several pieces of furniture gone. No candles or framed photos or other knickknacks that screamed of a woman’s touch.

And in that one awkward moment, John thought of Saura, of her quirky little row house, and wondered if she knew just how broken her cousin was.

“How’s your mom?” he asked, because he wasn’t quite sure what else to say. “That new security system working for her?”

Relief flashed in Gabe’s eyes. “So far.”

“Any luck convincing her to move?” Her house had been broken into three times in four weeks. But nothing had ever turned up missing. “She really needs to get out of there.”

“I told her that,” Gabe said. “Uncle Eddy told her that. Cain told her that. But once her mind is made up, it’s made up. She’s not about to be run out by some bored teenagers with too much time on their hands.”

“I’ve got a couple of black-and-whites passing by pretty regularly,” John said. “That should help.”

“Thanks.” Gabe veered into a kitchen so austere that John’s looked downright homey. No magnets on the refrigerator. No salt and pepper shakers or fruit or—anything but dishes in the sink. And an empty bottle of whiskey. Next to a small, amber prescription bottle. “Care for a drink? I probably have a beer—”

“On the clock,” John said, cringing at the cold recognition that slid into Gabe’s eyes. It had been almost ten weeks since he’d been on any kind of clock, since he’d put on a suit and slipped behind the wheel of his BMW, driven to the courthouse.

Looking away, Gabe pulled open the fridge. “Water, cola—”

“Gabe.” John didn’t think twice about stakeouts or kicking in doors. He could lay it on the line for informants and comfort victims. He could interrogate and he could grill, he could make defense attorneys wish they’d never called him to the stand. But standing there in that depressing kitchen, he didn’t have a damn clue what to do for his friend. Pretend he didn’t see what he saw. Confront it head-on. Thump him on the back.

Knock some sense into him.

Saura would hug him. She would march right up and pull him into her arms, hold on as tight as she could. Then she would give him hell.

“I’m not here for a drink.” Or small talk, despite the fact that he’d been the one to initiate it.

Gabe pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and closed the door. “Have you found her then?”

John glanced at the pistol, back at Gabe. “Not yet,” he said, hating the frustration that tightened through him. “But I have a few leads.”

“Maybe there is no woman,” Gabe said. “I didn’t see—”

“I saw her.” Could still see her, a tall woman with white hair, moments after the explosion, running from the warehouse Alec had walked into. “She’s real, and she was there.”

And he’d bet his last dollar she’d seen something. That she knew something.

Gabe let out a rough breath. “If that bastard had anything to do with Alec—”

“I’ll prove it,” John finished for him. That was what he could do for Gabe. Find the evidence to bring Lambert down. “Gabe—” he said again, more awkwardly this time. But he couldn’t not say anything. Couldn’t just leave it alone. Couldn’t stand at another man’s funeral and for the rest of his life wonder…

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked, crossing to the bar, where the pistol lay with its chamber spilled open.

For a moment Gabe said nothing, just walked to stand beside John and stabbed a hand into his uncombed hair. “It was hers,” he finally said, without one sliver of emotion. “I found it while looking for laundry detergent.”

John closed his eyes, opened them a moment later. Gabe was a good guy. He hadn’t deserved what happened with Val—and he sure as hell didn’t deserve for reminders to keep cropping up. “You want me to take it? Bring it down to the station?”

Gabe nodded. “That would be great.”

The little blast of relief was juvenile and he knew it, but John briskly went about getting a plastic bag from the cabinet, then securing Val’s pistol. That he knew how to do.

“I met your cousin,” he said, sealing the bag. “Saura.”

Gabe lowered the bottle of water. “Saury? Is she okay?”

It was an odd response to a simple statement. But then, John
was
a cop, and Gabe
was
an attorney. They were trained to look for the dark side. “Fine,” he said, “at least for the moment.”

“I worry about her,” Gabe said, then took another swallow of water. “She’s been through hell.”

John tensed, felt something cold slide through him. He knew the basics. Saura had been engaged, and her fiancé had been killed. She’d gone into seclusion after that, prompting those who’d known her face but not her name to think she, too, had died.

But damn it, the need to know more twisted through him. She’d been hurt. Badly. By the look he sometimes caught in her eyes, he’d say devastated was a better word. But she was back now, nonchalantly flirting with danger in the name of bringing Alec’s killer to justice, driven by something that John didn’t understand—or maybe he did.

It’s her death wish I’m worried about.

“That’s what I hear,” John said, seizing the opening. Sometimes you really could kill two birds with one stone. “And I’m hoping you can help make sure it never happens again.”

Marcel Lambert’s lakefront home was every bit as beautiful as his brother’s. The charming two-story, built in the style of a plantation home, dominated a heavily treed lot that sloped down to Lake Pontchartrain. The home had been in his wife’s family for decades, but after Katrina they’d done extensive renovations, sparing no expense as they selected the finest marble and granite and wood, fixtures that cost more than many New Orleaneans made in a week.

At the far side of the back room, a wall of plate-glass windows showcased the view of the lake. “It’s really something when a storm comes in,” Caro, Marcel’s wife was saying, while Saura studied the stone path trickling down to a boathouse. Despite the strategically-placed solar lights, little else could be seen. The trees were too dense. The shadows too thick.

“I’ll bet sunrises are spectacular,” she said, returning her attention to her hostess. There was no one standing in the shadows. No one watching or waiting. That was only her imagination. And yet deep inside, she shivered.

Two days had passed since she’d seen D’Ambrosia—but his words, his threat, lingered.

If you…breathe the same air that man does, I’ll know.

“Amazing,” Caro answered. “Sometimes Marcel and I take our morning coffee on the verandah and—”

“I’m sure our guest is not interested in our morning coffee,” Marcel said, smiling indulgently as he took his wife’s hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. A famed restaurateur who frequently appeared on morning news shows, Nathan’s younger brother knew how to use a smile as effectively as he did cayenne pepper.

“But if I can steal you away for a few minutes, the reporter from the
Picayune
just arrived. She’d like to ask you about the ice sculpture.”

Caro’s eyes brightened. “Yes, of course,” she said, flashing Saura an apologetic smile as her husband led her away, leaving Saura alone with Nathan for the first time since she’d arrived. He’d sent his chauffeur to pick her up, had called at the last minute explaining he had a few unexpected calls to make and would need to meet Saura at the party.

Now he took her hand in his and drew it to his mouth. “Have I told you how happy I am you decided to join me?” he asked. “I’ve been worried about you.”

Her smile was authentic. She was happy to be there, as well. Happy to be near Nathan. Happy to have a chance to learn whatever she could—even if she couldn’t shake the feeling she was being watched. “You’re too good to me.”

Looking elegant as always in his glowing white tuxedo shirt with black bow tie, he squeezed her hand. “No,” he said in his richly cultured voice. “You are the one who is too good to me.”

She wasn’t sure what made her heart kick. Wasn’t sure why she abruptly looked across the room. Why everything inside her tensed.

Until she saw him. He emerged from a group of well-known lawyers and judges and started toward her with none of his usual composure. His eyes were—wrong. They were dark and shuttered, wild somehow. And his hair. It was parted at the side like always, falling against a cowlick at his forehead, but it was too long. And his face—he needed to shave.

Not D’Ambrosia. But her cousin. Gabe.

Uneasiness quickened through her as he approached with recognition and disbelief hot in his eyes. “If you’ll excuse me—” she started, but it was already too late.

Gabe blocked her retreat. “Lambert,” he stunned her by saying. From the tight set of his unshaven jaw, she’d expected him to literally yank her away from Nathan—one of two men Gabe’s sister swore she saw in their father’s study the night he allegedly committed suicide.

“What’s the matter?” Gabe taunted, raking his gaze over the shimmery silver dress that hugged all the way down her body. “You have to slip down yet another generation to find a woman who can’t see straight through you?”

Nathan’s eyes went stone cold. “Fontenot,” he said. “Finally decided to show your face again?”

“Just remember,” Gabe said, and Saura’s heart moved into an uneven rhythm. Not one trace of recognition. Not one sliver of familiarity. “When this one gets done with you,” he slurred, smelling so strongly of whiskey it was as if he’d splashed it against his throat instead of cologne, “you so much as touch anyone under eighteen and you’ll find yourself behind bars faster than your money can—”

“Easy there,” Nathan interrupted smoothly, pulling a small phone from his pocket. “Let me call your uncle. He can send someone for you—”

“Leave my uncle out of this.” Gabe shot Saura a quick, hot glance. “If I so much as hear a rumor that you’ve come anywhere near my family—”

His words broke off so abruptly Saura knew something had killed them. She followed the direction of his hard gaze, and saw the woman. Tall, slender, swingy brown hair. Intelligent eyes. Locked onto Gabe’s.

Evangeline Rousseau was her name. She was an A.D.A., just as he was, with the exception of integrity. Gabe had it. Not only had she set him up for a hard fall, she’d come horribly close to getting him killed in the process.

The urge to protect wound deep. Saura wanted to charge across the room and tell the other woman to stay the hell away from Gabe. Make it explicitly clear what would happen if she did not. The Robichauds had influence around these parts—

But Saura could not move. Could not say a word. Because she was not a Robichaud when she was with Nathan. She was Dawn. A simple woman with stars in her eyes.

“Ah, yes, your family,” Nathan said with buttery insincerity, and Gabe swung back toward him, eyes no longer bleary, but hot and hard and one hundred percent lethal.

“How
is
your mother?” Nathan asked. “I heard she’d had some trouble lately. Some break-ins? And your sister. I was so relieved to hear that waitress killed down in Florida didn’t turn out to be our dear sweet Camille.”