The Perfect Stranger (6 page)

“You don’t know my sister,” Cain snapped, and the sudden blast of heat almost made John break out in a sweat. Yanking off his jacket, he tossed it onto a chair and found a sudden interest in the magazines.

He most definitely knew Cain’s sister.

“Things like danger and inappropriateness have never stopped her,” her brother said. “She used to get off on doing what everyone told her she couldn’t, just to prove she could.”

John shot Cain a look. “Used to?”

“Up until about two years ago.”

“What happened then?” The second he spoke, he made the connection. Two years before Cain Robichaud had been railroaded off the force and out of town. The lynch mob called the media had come dangerously close to picking up the ball the grand jury had dropped.

Saura, apparently, had been caught in the crossfire.

Cain held quiet a long tense moment before answering. The shadows about him, lighter in the months since his lover turned up alive, deepened. “She…” he hesitated “…had a breakdown. It was like she just went away. She was there on the outside, but there was nothing inside. No life. No…anything.”

The image formed before John could stop it, and once again he could see her across the bar. The hurt in her eyes. The aching combination of courage and fear. The resolve.

And then, later, after they’d made love, when he’d lifted a hand to her face, and felt tears. He’d looked at her then, their bodies still wrapped together, and had seen a bleakness that would have sent him to his knees, if he’d not been on his back. “And now?”

“That’s a damn good question.” Cain scowled. “Now I look at her and I see something again. A spark. A…secret. Determination. I noticed it when I got back from Mexico.”

The time frame drilled through John. Cain had returned from Mexico five weeks ago…

“But I know my sister,” he was saying. “And no matter how hard she pretends, she hasn’t healed. Not all the way. She’s still broken inside.”

John wanted to deny it. All of it. That she wasn’t healed. That she was broken inside. That she was hurting—that he’d no doubt made it worse. He looked toward the barred window again and into the light drizzle, but saw only her eyes. As they’d been that night in the bayou. The way they’d sparkled last night, when she’d toyed with him. Then, less than an hour before, the dark glow of passion when she’d pulled back from his kiss and gazed blindly at him. There’d been no masks there in that old kitchen. She’d known who he was. She’d recognized him. She hadn’t yet learned Lambert had not sent him to kill her. And still, she’d lifted her mouth to his and pulled him closer, kissed him with the same urgency she had that night in the bayou—

She was broken inside, he reminded himself. And so incredibly off-limits it defied everything he believed in.

Saura dropped a handful of marshmallows into a chipped mug. Ready to indulge, she crossed the breakfast nook and pulled out a chair, sat. Twelve long-stemmed roses dominated the small round table in the plain vase she’d taken from the cabinet upon returning from the apartment several blocks away. Not quite the color of blood, the deep red buds had just started to open. In two days, they would be breathtaking. A day or two beyond that, they would be gone.

If she kept them at all.

Lifting the mug, she enjoyed the feel of the hot liquid sliding against the serrated edges of her throat. She’d taken a long shower with her favorite lavender body wash, but the smell of smoke lingered. Collette said it could be a few days before the vertigo subsided.

Now Saura glanced at the clock, saw the hour pushing deep into the night. Cain had insisted on taking her home, insisted on making sure she was okay. He’d fixed her a sandwich while she cleaned up. He’d paced while she pretended to nap. He’d read her the riot act once he realized she felt fine. He warned her to leave the dirty work to those trained to handle it.

Such as the hard-eyed detective who’d been nowhere in sight when Saura returned to the waiting room.

Silly man. Her brother had no idea how well trained she was. Slipping in and out of the shadows came ridiculously easily to her. Early on she’d learned the benefit of not being taken seriously. Her uncles would talk about things in front of her as if she either wasn’t in the room or wasn’t capable of understanding what they were saying.

Twenty years had passed since the night her most beloved uncle of all blew his brains out while his children slept upstairs. Saura still recalled the shock of hearing the eyewitness account of her cousin Camille, who insisted two men had been in her father’s study. That one of them put the gun to her father’s temple—then turned it on her. She’d been found in a wooded area three miles from their house late the next day, wet and cold and suffering from exposure. The authorities had written off her near-incoherent ramblings to grief and imagination.

At first it had puzzled Saura why her family publicly accepted the official ruling of suicide, but privately maintained foul play was involved. Only with time did Saura realize her uncles accepted the lie because something bigger was at play—something she believed was still at play, all these years later. A web, a vendetta, that touched them all.

When she closed her eyes, she could still see Edouard and Etienne chopping wood at the back of the Robichaud property. And she could still hear the name upon which they’d vowed vengeance.

Nathan Lambert.

But the slippery man was still alive, still free, and now Alec was dead. Alec, her friend. Alec, who’d stood beside her when the world turned cold. Alec, who’d figured out her secret, when even her brother had not. Alec, who’d contacted her during the final days of his life, asking what she knew about Nathan Lambert. What she could find out.

Alec, whom she would not let down.

Frowning, she set down her mug and picked up her cordless phone, listened to her messages for the third time in the hour since Cain had finally left her alone.

“It wasn’t the same after you left last night,” Lambert said in a sleep-heavy voice. At the time he’d left the message, she’d been en route to the old hotel. “Please let me know you’re okay. I worry about you.”

“It’s after lunch, Dawn.” That was the name she’d given him, the identity she’d created. A woman from a small Mississippi town, in New Orleans to satisfy a taste for adventure. “Call me a foolish old man, but I need to know that you’re okay.” A fishing expedition, she wondered? A way of determining if she’d perished in the fire? “Please. Call me back.”

The final message was brilliant for its simplicity: “Call me back, sweetheart. I’m worried.”

She hadn’t called him back. At least not yet. Not until she retrieved the tapes from the surveillance equipment she’d stashed in his neighbor’s yard and determined if she was the one who’d been targeted to perish in the fire.

She’d never been caught before. Never really come close. She wasn’t a woman to make mistakes. That was her M.O., why demand for her services had once far surpassed supply. She operated with care and precision. She could extract what she wanted and no one would be the wiser. She never left tracks.

She never got caught.

But that was before, she realized, fingering the card that had come with the roses.
True beauty,
it read,
knows no rival.

A ridiculously romantic gesture? Or a moderately clever cover-up? What man, after all, sent roses to a woman on the day he meant to execute her?

Nathan Lambert, she recalled, had played poker with her uncle Troy less than twenty-four hours before his so-called suicide. He’d gone to the funeral. And…he’d sent flowers.

True determination, she thought with one last sip of now lukewarm chocolate, knew no limits.

Standing, Saura turned out the light and headed for her bedroom. No matter how much she wanted to crawl into bed, she had tapes to retrieve.

She had two buttons unfastened when the sound of a fist on wood jolted through the old house. She stood so very still, listening. Waiting. Cain had a key—and as far as she knew, no one else knew where she lived. And no one else had reason to visit during the dead of night.

Another knock. Louder. More forceful.

Instinct and training swirled through her in a rush, and without even thinking about what she was doing, she moved away from the window and pressed her back to the wall, eased toward the dresser that had once belonged to her grandmother. From inside her pajama drawer—the lingerie drawer was much too obvious—she retrieved the new Kahr 9mm she’d purchased after her night with D’Ambrosia. The newest innovation, the gun shop owner had told her. Lightweight and compact, easily concealed and highly accurate.

From afternoons spent at the shooting range, she knew he’d spoken the truth.

Slipping barefoot into the hallway, she told herself she was overreacting. It was probably just a neighbor. Or someone looking for a lost dog. At midnight.

The urgent pounding killed both theories. Her late-night visitor was not here for a social call. And they weren’t going away. If she did not answer, they would come in anyway. That was the purpose of the pounding. A test, much like the phone calls and the flowers. To see if she would open the door willingly. Or—

The memory slammed her from somewhere broken, and before she could even breathe Cain was there again, bruising his hand against the door of Adrian’s condo. In the middle of the night. She’d pulled herself from bed and staggered to the door, not stopping to realize that if her fiancé had locked himself out, he would not be banging against the door as if his life depended on it.

She’d been three feet away when the door flew open, and Cain charged in. She’d never seen him like that, so pale and shaken. It was only later that she’d learned why, that he’d stormed the condo like a commando on a suicide mission because he thought someone had gotten to her, too.

That someone had eliminated her just as they’d done Adrian. With a bullet through the heart.

Shoving aside the images, she lifted the gun and curled her finger around the trigger.

This time, she would not go down without a fight.

J
ohn pulled his hand from the door and took two steps back, caught himself in the boiling moment before he kicked.

He was a cop, damn it. He knew how to stay calm when the world exploded around him. He knew the unexpected beauty of patience. How to use it. Milk it. He’d learned the importance of staying in control. Of never letting emotion slip in. Never letting it bleed through.

Never letting it so much as form.

Standing in the shadow of the old porch, without even a sliver of moonlight to guide him, he reached for his Glock and released the lock, but did not slide his finger around the trigger. Protocol guided his actions—or at least it was supposed to. Sometimes it was instinct that drove him. Instinct that kept him alive while others died.

Instinct that kept him on the porch, when common sense told him to walk away—and something even more dangerous told him to gain access by whatever means necessary.

The memory slashed, another day. Another closed door. Alec walking toward it. John running, shouting for his friend to stop. Alec reaching for the handle. Alec pulling.

The world exploding.

Narrowing his eyes against the horrific aftermath, John ripped his gaze from the door and stepped toward the glow from the small window. She was in there. In bed, he told himself. Exhausted. Cain had been with her until a short time before. John had been watching ever since. No one had come to her door. She was safe. Lambert had not come to finish what he’d started.

Unless he’d come through the rear.

On a violent rush, John pressed his back to the siding and eased next to the window, moved his finger to the trigger and looked inside. And saw her.

She stood beyond the living room, in a narrow hallway with her back to the wall, much as his was. Dark hair fell against her face. Oversize pajamas hung from her shoulders. And in her hand, she held what looked like a 9mm.

The sight of her, of the horrible tangle of uncertainty and courage in her gaze, punched through John like a fist to the gut.

He’d done this to her. He’d meant to protect, but by banging on her door in the middle of the night, he’d sent her into a nightmare he’d never intended.

“Saura.”
His voice. She needed his voice, no matter how smoke-roughened it was. To know that it was him who stood outside. Not someone who wanted to hurt her. “It’s me. D’Ambrosia.”

She didn’t move, didn’t blink. He wasn’t sure she breathed.

“Belle amie.”
He wasn’t a man to use endearments, but damn it, in that moment, it felt right. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

No matter how hard she pretends otherwise,
Cain had said,
she’s still broken inside.

“You can trust me,” he added, and the words scraped. “I just want to—”
See you. Make sure you’re okay. Make sure you stay away from Lambert. That he never has the chance to touch you again. To hurt you. To break you.

Chest tight, John crushed the ridiculous internal dialogue and focused on the one promise he could make. “Talk.”

Through the shadows, he saw something hard and ragged flicker through her expression.

“Tell me what to do.” He kept his voice low, calm, much like he used with victims of domestic violence.
Tell me where it hurts.
“Tell me what you need.”

Finally she moved. With the gun still held in front of her, she lifted her free hand to shove the hair from her face and stepped forward, kept her movements slow, measured. In control.

Because of her family, he told himself. She’d grown up a Robichaud, an impressionable young girl among a family of powerful men. It made sense that she would have learned and absorbed, becoming more dangerous with each day that passed.

He wondered if her family realized.

Somehow he doubted that they did.

“Step away from the window and put down your gun,” she called, and he smiled. He also obeyed, shifted to the old rail.

“Done,” he told her, hating the fact that he could no longer see her, not even her silhouette against the window. But she was moving into position to look at him, he knew. So for effect, he lifted his hands.

Light then, bright and glaring, exposing him standing next to a thirsty fern like a suspect in a lineup. “Just me. No one else.”

Slowly, the door opened. Light glowed through a narrow crack, revealing a chain, but not her. “What do you want?”

“I told you,” he said. “To talk.”

“It’s after midnight.”

“Your brother was here. I didn’t think you’d want an audience.”

Silence then. For just a moment. Then the door closed and the chain jingled, and there she was, standing in the open doorway.

Flannel. The knowledge twisted through him. The too-big pajamas were off-white, with a parade of penguins scattered about. In them, with her hair tangled around her face and her eyes huge and dark, she looked about seventeen years old.

And goddamn it, he wanted to kiss her anyway. Kiss her hard. Pull her into his arms and put his mouth to hers, pick up where they’d left off that morning in the kitchen.

“You can put down your gun,” he said instead.

Her chin came up. “You realize I don’t want you here, don’t you?”

It took effort, but he bit back the dark laughter. “I kind of noticed that.”

“Did Cain send you?”

“Would that make you feel better if he did?”

Her eyes flared in the brief instant before she glanced toward the quiet street behind him. Left, then right. Left again.

She was good, he couldn’t help but think. Thorough. Disturbingly cautious. No one behaved that way without reason.

“Get in,” she said, returning her gaze to his.

The contrast between the point-blank words and the cuddly pajamas tightened through him. “Would you like to pick that up?” He gestured toward his gun. “Or shall I?”

Never taking her eyes from his, never changing the aim of her 9mm, she squatted and retrieved his semiautomatic, then straightened and motioned him inside.

More disturbed by the second, he kept his eyes on hers and moved slowly toward the open door. She backed away when he almost touched, closed the door as soon as he crossed the threshold. Never releasing him from her gaze, she turned the bolt but did not fasten the chain—he didn’t want to wonder why. But did.

She looked at him as if she didn’t have a clue who he was. As if she’d never watched him from across a smoky bar. Never approached him. Never let him touch her. Never lifted her mouth to his. Never cried in his arms.

Never held on as though she couldn’t let go.

“You know I’m a cop, right?” Vanilla. The scent whispered around him, bringing with it the faintest trace of roses. “A detective. One of the good guys.”

She fought it, but he would have sworn he saw her mouth twitch. Her lips were pale, slightly cracked. “I know you have a badge and a gun,” she said, and though the words were hard, the tangle of dark hair against her make-upless face gave them a softness he knew she would hate. The bottle of pale-pink nail polish sitting on the table by the door didn’t help. “But that doesn’t make you one of the good guys.”

He let out a rough breath. “You think I’m dirty?” The question came out harsher than he’d intended. “I saved your life, damn it,” he growled, and this time he moved, despite the guns. He destroyed the distance between them and put his hand to the butt of the 9mm, turned it away. “You really think that’s the action of a man on Lambert’s payroll?”

Her eyes went dark. “If that man wants to gain my trust and make me think he’s on my side—yes. If he wants to use me—yes. If he likes to toy with people, to play with people—”

“No.” He took her shoulders and pulled her close, lifted a hand to slide the hair from her face. Her eyes, damn it. He wanted to see them—needed to see them. And God almighty, even more he needed
her
to see
him.
“What happened to you?” he asked, as the shadow of Cain’s words fell around them. “Who did this to you?”

For a long moment she said nothing. Just looked up at him with her chin at a fierce angle, her mouth a mutinous line.

John wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to kiss a woman more.

“Just because a woman doesn’t take chances,” she finally said, “doesn’t mean something has happened to her.”

In other words, she wasn’t about to tell him.
“Touché.”
But he wasn’t about to let her shimmy away that easily. “But I’m not talking about
not
taking chances.” He paused, could feel the jerky rise and fall of her shoulders beneath his hands. “I was there,” he reminded, making it explicitly clear he’d seen everything she tried to hide. Everything she wanted to deny. “At Lucky’s,” he clarified, when she’d tempted him with an honesty he wasn’t sure he’d ever experienced. “Last night.” When she’d put her arms around him and pretended he was a stranger, even as her body clearly remembered every detail of the last time they’d been together. “This morning.” When she’d pulled back from his kiss and blinked at him, only to tug him back for more. “No matter what you have or have not told your brother, I saw everything. And I know you’re not afraid of taking chances.”

He wasn’t certain what he expected, but it sure as hell was not for her to push up on her toes and lift a hand to his face, tap a finger against his lower lip. “Calculated risks,” she said with a slow, take-no-prisoners smile. “There is a difference.”

Everything inside of him went very still. Because of what he’d seen, he told himself. Because of what he knew. Not because of the words she’d just spoken. Not because he knew they could only lead to one place.

“Tell that to Alec.” For the first time since he’d seen her standing with the gun in her hand, the kid gloves came off. Gentleness had its place. But so did toughness. “He took a calculated risk and look where it got him—”

Her eyes narrowed. “You were there, weren’t you?” Through the shadows of her living room she stared at him as if he wasn’t a man but a window. And through him she could see something that horrified her. “The day he died.”

John wasn’t a man to look away first. He wasn’t a man to yield. But he couldn’t just stand there and let her pick apart his memories. Couldn’t let her see what he’d seen. Hear what he’d heard.
Feel what he’d felt.

“You were the one who tried to stop him.” There was a dawning awareness in her quiet voice, as if she were connecting dots with lines she’d not recognized before. “Gabe told me—You knew it was a setup and—”

He stopped her. “Put the gun down, Saura.”

For a moment she looked confused. Then she glanced at her hand, still clenched around the butt of the 9mm. And much to his surprise, she set it on the old secretary just behind her.

“You were at his funeral,” she whispered. “I saw you—”

“I was his partner,” he said. In his mind, that explained all of his actions regarding Alec.

“But no one else from the force was there.” She kept on, and damn it, he didn’t need to be a detective to realize the tide had just shifted into an unwanted direction. “
Just you.
Because you knew he wasn’t dirty. You knew turning in his badge was part of some elaborate game—”

He reached for her so fast he had no time to think. No time to retreat. He took her shoulders and pulled her close, felt her legs bump against his. “Not a game,
cher.
None of this.” Something hard and dark splintered through him, shredding everything it touched. “Nathan Lambert is a dangerous man. He killed Alec because he got too close, and he’ll kill you, too—”

Dark hair slipped against her face. “I’m well aware of that.”

“I don’t think you are.” He ignored the punishing softness to her voice, the even more punishing softness of her body. “What do you think he’ll do when he realizes there was no body in the hotel? That you weren’t there? That you slipped away—”

“He’ll come after me.” She spoke with a matter-of-factness that fired his blood, as if she wasn’t the least bit concerned about the thought of Nathan Lambert coming after her.

…it’s her death wish I’m worried about.

John ignored the scrape of Cain’s words and forced himself to hear what she was saying. “…that is, if the fire really was meant for me.”

He felt the lines of his face go tight. “That fire was no accident.”

“I’m well aware of that,” she said, still looking up at him as if they were discussing the pros and cons of adding okra to gumbo. “But it’s possible I was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He wasn’t sure which alarmed him more—that she might actually believe what she said. Or that she could be right. “That’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”

“That
you’re
not willing to take?” Finally some emotion bled into her voice. “Is that why you came banging on my door in the middle of the night, Detective?” It was the first time she’d referred to him as anything other than
étranger.
Stranger. “To scurry me into hiding or send me into protective custody?” Against his hands she squirmed, but he refused to let her go. “Or maybe you’re just here to try and scare me—”

“Damn it, Saura,” he growled, grabbing for the tattered remains of a control some called legendary—but the strobe light of images blasted harder. Faster. Darker. Of Saura. And Lambert. Alone. No one to stop him—no one to hear her last breath. “You should be afraid.”

The dangerously quiet words whispered through Saura. The chill started low and spread fast, feathered out to touch her in ways she didn’t want to be touched. In places that had been disturbingly warm only seconds before. Places that immediately went cold.

She wanted to be angry at him. She wanted to rip out of his arms and pull open the door. Send him on his way. Never cross his path again. But the scorched-earth look in his eyes made it impossible for her to look away.

This man…she no more understood him than she understood the quickening moving through her, the urge to lift a hand to his face and touch, to skim her fingers along the dark whiskers of his jaw, to the softness of his lower lip.

“Tell me something.” She refused to allow herself to relent. Not for so much as one heartbeat. “Are
you
scared?” Some would call the edge to her voice a taunt. “Is that what this is about? Is that why you’re here?”