The Perfect Stranger (17 page)

And it was the cop who turned to Saura after disconnecting the call. “I have to go.”

“I know.”

But he didn’t move, surprised her by hesitating. “Does the name Darci mean anything to you?”

No, she started to say, but then the memory clicked. “Maybe,” she said, slipping from the bed. Against the cool morning air she reached for his flannel shirt. “At the party,” she said, sliding an arm into a sleeve. “There was a girl looking for Marcel…”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“No, we talked briefly, I—”

John’s eyes went wild. “Get down!” he shouted, lunging, but the window shattered with his words. The pain was immediate. She felt herself stagger, felt John catch her.

Then everything just stopped.

“S
aura!”

He rolled from her and slid an arm around her waist, dragged her away from the window. On the other side of the bed he grabbed his Glock and held it ready as he crouched over her.

The blood on his hand turned everything inside him horrifically cold. It was not his own.

“Sweetheart,” he said, more desperately this time. His heart slammed hard and quick. He had two rounds. He could hold the shooter at bay. But if there were more of them—If they came at him from multiple directions—If someone burst through his door as another came up at the window—

He would have to leave her. He could not tend to her and stave off an attack at the same time. He had more ammo in his closet. He could—

Silence. The clarity of it struck him. He hated to look away from her, but had to. Sun poured in through the blown-out window, but he no longer saw the glint of a shotgun.

“John.”

The sound of his name kicked through him. He turned back and found her watching him through eyes so glassy something inside twisted.

“I—I’m okay,” she said.

He swallowed hard. “Tell me where you hurt.” But even as he ran his hands along her body, he couldn’t stop watching. Stop listening. “You’re bleeding.”

“The glass—” she struggled to sit “—not the gun. It’s just cuts.”

For a sweet moment the tightness inside him released, and he tucked her into his lap and rocked her against him, felt his throat go tight when she curled her arms around his waist.

The simple gesture slayed him.

Beneath his bloodstained shirt she was still warm and soft and naked, but as John stared toward the window, as he kept his Glock pointed and his finger on the trigger, he felt neither warmth nor softness. Only nakedness. More naked than he’d ever allowed himself to be.

And that’s when the tightness returned.

“This isn’t the way to New Orleans.”

John steered the old Mustang out of a right turn and picked up speed, but neither confirmed nor denied Saura’s observation. Dark sunglasses hid his eyes, but she could tell that he checked the rearview mirror. He had one hand on the wheel, the other in his lap. Next to it lay his Glock.

He’d been this way ever since easing her from his lap and instructing her to get dressed. His eyes had been grim, a grimness that seeped more deeply through her with every silent breath he took.

She’d assumed they were going to the city to meet up with Darci. But they traveled west, not east. And as the oak and cypress and pine raced by in a blur of brown and green—and minutes dragged into miles—she realized John and the girl must have agreed to meet somewhere else.

The second he turned down the partially concealed dirt road, the thoughts blurred. Her throat tightened as she saw the grand old house in the distance, barely visible through naked tree branches. During the spring and summer, when foliage was at its peak, a passerby would never know the house was there.

But then, no one just passed by the Robichaud ancestral home. Ridiculously secluded, the gothic estate had stood for over a hundred years, sheltering and guarding.

It was the perfect place for a secure meeting.

Slowing, John turned into the circular drive and stopped next to Cain’s convertible. Just ahead she saw two other cars—those belonging to Renee and Uncle Edouard—but no sign of the girl Darci.

“What time is the meeting?” she asked, glancing toward John.

He slid the gearshift into park. “In thirty minutes.”

“Good, that gives us a little time to—” She wasn’t sure why she broke off. Maybe because he’d made no move to turn off the engine. Or maybe because he’d made no move, period. Not to look at her. Not to reach for the door. He simply…sat there. “John?”

Against the steering wheel, his hand tightened, and slowly, he faced her. “Cain’s waiting for you.”

She felt herself go very still. “For
me,
” she said with a quietness that had nothing to do with anything soft or tender. Because she knew.
For her.
Her brother was waiting for her. Not them. “Darci’s not coming here,” she whispered.

The muscle in the hollow of his cheek thumped. “No.”

Just
no.
Somehow she breathed, even as her throat constricted and everything flashed a thousand shades of stark, brutal white. It all made sense. Everything. The near unbearable silence of the car ride. The way he’d quit looking at her. Quit touching.

And something inside her snapped. She moved so fast he had no time to block her, no time to stop her from yanking the sunglasses from his face.

What she saw almost made her want to put them back on.

Nothing. She saw absolutely nothing in his eyes. No warmth. No tenderness. No pain or hurt or struggle. Nothing.

Deep inside, something fragile and beautiful, something she’d never imagined she would feel again, want again, simply shattered. But when she spoke, her voice was calm. “You’re not coming back, are you?”

His eyes went hard. “I’m a cop. I have a job to do.”

She looked at him, looked for one trace of the man from the night before. Saw only the
étranger
she’d once thought she could have without wanting. Love without loving. “And that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it?” Hearing the hurt creep in, she stripped it from her voice. But could do nothing for her heart. “You’re a cop—but what about the man?” For emphasis she paused. “John.” Again she waited, looking for a wince or a flicker, anything. “Isn’t that what you asked for last night? For me to say your name, not your rank?”

She saw him swallow, saw his throat work, but he said nothing, just watched her as if she were a witness giving him a statement about a petty crime.

“Who was it?” she asked, as she should have done many times before. “Who was it that died and took you with him?” Her heart pounded on the question, the realization. “Who was it that died and turned you into such a coward?”

The planes of his face tightened. His mouth flattened into a hard line. He glanced at the dashboard, then back at her. “I need to go.”

The words struck her as pathetically prophetic. He needed to go. To run. Because he didn’t know how to stay. Didn’t want to try. “You accused me of having a death wish,” she said, “but you’re the one so dead inside you don’t even feel it when the knife you lift is to your own heart.”

Now he winced. And now the olive of his eyes took on a dark glitter. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” The question was slow, emotionless. “Isn’t that why you picked me to begin with? Because you knew I wouldn’t care if you walked away? That I wouldn’t stop you?”

The ice-cold questions sliced with brutality. She felt herself go very still, felt those fragile places inside start to bleed.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

Never looking away from her, he took the sunglasses from her hands and slid them back over his eyes.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” she asked. “You’re just going to let me walk away.”

He put his hand to the gearshift. “I never asked you to stay.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said softly. She was not going to cry. And she was not going to break. Not again.

Because it was the only thing to do, she opened the door and, once again, walked away.

And once again, he made no move to stop her.

“Darci?”

John knocked a second time, harder. He’d waited for over an hour at the Broad Street library, in the children’s section, just as they’d discussed. He’d worn the L.S.U. baseball cap, and he’d held the book about dinosaurs at bedtime in his hands. But no one had approached him. There’d been one young woman cruising through chapter books, but when he’d approached her, she’d made it clear she was not there for him. And the voice had been wrong.

Now he stood outside a small apartment near the Tulane campus. He’d traced Darci’s call to her cell phone, from which he’d secured registration information.

“Darci,” he called again. A car sat in the driveway. He was having the plates run to see if it was hers. But no one answered the door, despite the soaring music of a soap opera leaking through the thin walls.

He should leave, he knew that. Just as he knew better than to let himself remember the pained look in Saura’s eyes when she’d realized he wasn’t coming back. That he was letting her go. He’d wanted so damn bad—

He’d wanted. That was the problem. He’d wanted, and he’d taken, and in doing so he’d violated the cardinal rule by which he lived his life.

Frowning, he stepped away from the door, but abruptly spun back and put his hand to the knob, and turned. He crossed the threshold and glanced at the lock, saw that it had to be locked from the inside—or with a key. Which meant—

“Darci!”

A cop learned to trust his instincts, and John’s were screaming. He ran through the front room toward the bedroom. And saw her. Lying in bed. Face down. Before he even reached her, he knew she was dead.

This time he called it in. And this time he stayed. He was still waiting for the black-and-white when his cell phone rang. He reached for it, saw the name in the caller ID window: Francois Hebert.

It meant nothing to him. At first. But then the memory sliced in and he jabbed the talk button. “D’Ambrosia.”

“Detective,” came a voice belonging to a woman, not a man. “This is Violet Hebert.” Recognition made him go very still. The old woman he’d interviewed the day before, the one who’d been spotted leaving the warehouse after it exploded, who’d admonished her cat as John had tried to pull information from her. Her cat named Francois.

Francois Hebert. The name of one of Nathan Lambert’s final callers.

“I—I’ve remembered something.”

“You sure I can’t talk you into coming? I’m sure Mimi can fit you in…”

Saura watched Renee slide her purse over her shoulder. A pedicure sounded heavenly, but if she spent one second longer with her old friend, Renee would see. And if Renee saw, she might reach out. And if she reached out, if she put her arms around Saura…

It stunned her how badly she wanted that. For so long she’d insisted to herself that she didn’t want to reconnect with anyone. Now, she realized that she did. Because of John. Because he’d shown her, through harsh brutal example, what happened when someone walked through life without living.

“Next time,” Saura said with a smile that was surprisingly unforced. Inside she hurt, but that only meant that she lived.

And loved.

As Renee drove away, Saura wandered behind the house, to where the gardens tapered into a copse of oak and cypress. As a child, the lore of the area had fueled her imagination. She and Cami had searched for buried treasures, those of the Old South and the pirates, a legendary stained glass window smuggled out of France hundreds of years before. They’d been so innocent…

Now she walked the familiar path and breathed the familiar air, and for the first time since John had driven away, she didn’t stop the moisture burning her eyes. Instead she put her forehead to the solid trunk of an oak, and allowed herself to remember. To feel. Everything. Not just those broken moments in his car when she’d realized her plan for reclaiming her life had worked beautifully, even as it backfired, but further back. To the look in his eyes when she’d come to after the gunshots to find him hovering over her. To the way he’d touched her before Lambert had picked her up. The way he’d kissed her. To so many other moments, when he’d touched her and made her want. Made her feel.

Standing in the cool dampness of early February, with decomposed leaves at her feet and centuries-old trees towering against a whitewashed sky, she could see him as he’d been that first night, when he’d sat in the back of Lucky’s wearing his olive shirt and camouflage pants, nursing a drink he never drank and watching her as a cop on a stakeout might watch a suspect.

The soft crunch came from behind her. A stick, she realized, turning with her brother’s name on her lips. He’d always loved to see how close he could get before she heard.

The sight of the gun stopped her cold.

It could be an ambush. John knew that. He’d suggested a neutral meeting spot, but Violet had insisted on her house. That it wasn’t safe to be seen together in public. That he come alone.

Kevlar in place, he lifted his hand and knocked. Cain waited, hidden, at the back of the house.

The door opened and Violet glanced nervously beyond him, toward the sleepy street, empty except for two parked cars, which had also been there the day before.

“Come in,” she said. “Quick.”

His instincts were in overdrive now, a hard pounding of blood through his veins. He did as she instructed, was barely inside before she closed the door and fastened a series of chains and bolts. He’d noticed them the day before, had attributed them to protection. Now he wondered just who the hell this woman sought to keep out. And why she’d called Nathan Lambert.

“Mrs. Hebert,” he started. “You sounded frightened. Has someone else come here? Is someone threatening—”

She glanced from him toward a crack in the brocade curtains. “You sure no one followed you?”

“We’re safe,” he assured her.

Her eyes, still oddly bright, met his. “Then follow me.”

There was a manual full of reasons why he shouldn’t, especially when they reached the shadowy hallway with its four closed doors. Cain waited just outside. All John had to do was give the signal and the house would be entered from all directions. Whoever waited behind those closed doors wouldn’t stand a chance.

Quietly, John unholstered his Glock.

Halfway down the hall, with her hand on an old glass knob, Mrs. Hebert glanced back at him. “Aren’t you—” With long silver hair falling into her face, her eyes widened. “What’s that for?”

But then the door opened, and as John heard Cain enter through the kitchen, he lifted his gun.

And forgot to breathe.

“Do exactly as I say and this won’t hurt any more than it has to.”

Until John, Saura had felt nothing. With his hard eyes and gentle hands he’d freed something inside her, and the floodwaters moved through her and she felt. Everything.