Cry Wolf (18 page)

The slap came hard and fast and turned her head. Tears rushed up from deep inside and poured down her face, her cheek stinging and half numb. Vivian grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a shake.

“Don't you
ever
say that!” she said fiercely, her eyes bright with temper and tears. “Your father is dead. Mr. Leighton is head of this house now, and you will be a good girl and mind him and show respect. Do you understand me, Laurel Leanne?”

Laurel stared at her, wishing she didn't have to say yes. Wishing she could dare say no and still have Mama love her. But she couldn't, and she knew it. Mama already didn't love Savannah most of the time.

“Do you understand me?” she repeated, her voice trembling, on the verge of the kind of hysteria that always came before one of her spells.

“Y-yes, Mama,” Laurel stammered, anger and sorrow tumbling together inside her like a pair of fighting cats. “I-I'm sorry, Mama.”

That quickly, Vivian's temper cooled visibly. Her hold on Laurel's arms eased. She bent down awkwardly, so as not to wrinkle her new hot pink dress, and stroked Laurel's hair back from her forehead again and again, wiping tears into it. A trembling smile wobbled across her perfectly painted mouth. “That's my girl. I know you'll be a good girl. You know what's important, don't you, Laurel? You're always such a good girl,” she whispered, sniffling. “Mama's little pet. You run along now and play elsewhere.”

And Laurel had run. She had run out to find Savannah in the rickety old boathouse down on the bank of the bayou. They sat in the old wooden
bâteau
Daddy had let them use, and Savannah hugged her and wiped her tears. Laurel desperately wanted her to say everything would be all right, but Savannah had stopped saying that after Vivian and Ross had come back from their honeymoon.

So many things had changed so fast. Daddy gone. Ross Leighton taking his place. Some nights it just scared her so to think of it that she couldn't sleep, and she tried to sneak into Savannah's room as she always had, but Savannah kept the secret door locked now and wouldn't tell her why.

“I wish we could take the boat and float all the way to New Orleans,” she mumbled against her sister's shoulder. “I wish we could run away.”

“We can't,” Savannah murmured, stroking her hair.

“We could go and live with Aunt Caroline.”

“No,” she whispered, staring out at the water. “Don't you see, Baby? There's no getting away.”

The way she said it made Laurel scared all over again, and she shivered and looked up at her sister, feeling all hollow and achy inside at the sadness in Savannah's eyes. Then Savannah smiled suddenly and tickled her.

“But we can go out on the bayou and pretend we're shipwrecked on a jungle island,” she said, twisting around to untie the
bâteau
from its mooring.

And they let the boat drift out of the old cypress shed that looked like a junk heap and smelled like fish, and headed up the bayou to a place where they could pretend the world was perfect and Ross Leighton didn't exist.

“Dat Armentine Prejean, she kin cook, her,” Mama Pearl declared, shaking her wooly head as she snapped beans into a plastic bucket wedged between her tiny feet. “She don' cook nothin' good for Vivian, but she kin cook, I tell you. If she wasn' cookin' for Vivian, you would'a ate her dinner,
chère
.”

Laurel glanced up from the shrimp salad she was picking at. She had changed out of her skirt into a pair of faded denim shorts and a loose purple cotton blouse, and was feeling comfortably inconspicuous again with her glasses perched on her nose. Everyone had trailed out onto the back gallery of Belle Rivière and settled in, cocooned in the quiet of the courtyard and the warmth of the afternoon. “The meal was fine, Mama Pearl. I just didn't have much of an appetite, that's all.”

Pearl snorted, her fleshy face folding into creases of supreme disapproval. “Nothin' but bones, you. You gonna dry up an' blow away if you don' get some fat on you.”

Savannah stretched back on the cushioned lounge and set her book aside. “Aw, you know what they say, Mama Pearl, a girl can't be too rich or too thin.”

Pearl snorted again.
“Sa c'est de la couyonade.”

Caroline twirled the ice in her glass of tea, her dark eyes carefully fixed on Laurel. “We saw you on the news last night, darlin'. Standing toe to toe with that televangelist.”

Pearl cackled and slapped her knees. “You give him good, talk about! Even knowed your Bible verse!
Ma bon fille!
I tell ever'body at church dis mornin', dat's
my
girl!”

Laurel made a face that was a cross between a smile and a frown and said nothing. What little appetite she had managed to work up for the shrimp salad fled, and she laid her fork across the plate.

“The Delahoussayes are good people,” Caroline said evenly. She let that hang in the air while she recrossed her legs and arranged the hem of her slim pale yellow skirt. “Would it be difficult to stop Baldwin from harassing them?”

Laurel shrugged. “Maybe not. They could talk to Judge Monahan. But that doesn't stop Baldwin from waging his war against sin in other ways.”

“A little action is better than a whole lot of talk,” Caroline said. She took a sip of her tea and set it back down, tracing a fingertip down the side of the sweating glass.

“Lord knows,
action
is right up the Revver's alley,” Savannah said dryly, winning herself a frown from Laurel. “If Jimmy Lee is a man of God, then the Marquis de Sade is right up there in heaven, tying the lady angels to the pearly gates and licking his lips.”

Mama Pearl flung a bean down and scolded Savannah in a rapid stream of Cajun French that rolled off Savannah like water off a duck. Inside the house the telephone rang. Savannah unfolded herself from the chaise in no particular hurry and went to answer it. Pearl collected her bucket and waddled in after her, muttering under her breath.

Laurel quelled the urge to go after them. She could feel Caroline's gaze weighing on her.

“You still belong to the Louisiana Bar Association, don't you?” her aunt asked innocently.

“Yes, but I'm not ready to take anything on,” Laurel argued, her fingers curling into fists on the glass table-top. “I don't need the trouble.”

Caroline rose, brushing an imaginary crumb from her loose-fitting chocolate silk tunic. She moved a step toward the house, glancing at Laurel as if in afterthought. “Neither do the Delahoussayes.”

Laurel ground her teeth as her aunt sauntered through the French doors that led directly into her study. “I came here to rest,” she muttered, crossing her arms and sitting back in her chair. “I came here for peace and quiet.”

No one answered her. Mama Pearl had gone off to the realm that was her kitchen. Even as Laurel thought of seeking out Savannah so she could vent her spleen, she heard the Acura start and squeal away from the front of the house. Aunt Caroline had given her words of wisdom and retreated.

Suddenly restless, Laurel stood and paced along the gallery for a moment. The afternoon breeze caught at the hem of her blouse, stirred the trailing fronds of a hanging fern, fluttered the pages of Savannah's abandoned book. Sorely in need of a distraction, Laurel bent and snatched up the paperback.

Evil Illusions
by Jack Boudreaux.

The cover depicted the swamp at night, misty and dark, the water shining like black glass under a pale moon. Among the dense growth along the bank, a pair of eyes peered out, glowing red. The artwork was enough to make Laurel shiver. She turned the book over and read the back copy as she stepped down off the gallery and wandered along a brick path toward the back of the courtyard.

Master of suspense
, New York Times
best-selling author Jack Boudreaux creates another spine-tingling read guaranteed to keep the bravest cynic awake nights.

Something is stalking the town of Perdue, Louisiana, preying on children and spreading a terror that threatens to tear the town apart. By day Perdue maintains the facade of a picture-perfect small town, but appearances are illusion, and evil lurks in the woods beyond, waiting for the sun to set.

Beautiful young widow Clarie Fontaine has come to Perdue with her daughter to claim an inheritance the locals say is cursed. Haunted by a violent past, she hopes to make a fresh start. But even as she begins a new career as a nurse practitioner in the local clinic, a shadow is falling across her path to happiness. A shadow of menace . . . and death.

As terror tightens its grip on the town, Claire must decide whom she can trust. Is the dashing Dr. Verret a worthy candidate . . . or a killer? Is resident magician Jalen Pierce a harmless huckster, or is his innocent guise . . . an
Evil Illusion . . .

Intrigued, Laurel settled back on a stone bench in a corner of the courtyard and opened the book at random.

Night clutches the swamp in a grip as cold and black as death. Fingers of mist slither among the trunks of the cypress like ghostly snakes. From somewhere in the distance comes a roar that calls to mind prehistoric times, primeval swamps, ancient monsters.

Fear runs in rivulets down Paula's back. As she sits in the
bâteau,
waiting, watching, a sense of evil presses in on her. It is thick and heavy in the air. As thick as the mist. As suffocating as a blanket. She claws at the collar of her blouse and tries to swallow, swings around at a rustle in the underbrush behind her.

A nutria screams as it meets its death. A cottonmouth breaks the surface of the bayou, its long, lithe body wrapped around the thrashing body of a bullfrog. Overhead a winged black shape swoops down from the branches of a tree. Another night predator. An owl . . . a bat . . . something hideous . . . something terrifying . . . And a scream rips from Paula's throat. Hot, wild, raw. A scream like the nutria's. The scream of prey. Heard by no one. Swallowed up by the night.

“I'm flattered.”

Laurel jumped, her heart leapfrogging into her throat. Jack stood not two feet away, leaning indolently against one of Aunt Caroline's Grecian lady statues, his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans, one leg cocked. He looked tough and sexy in a faded black T-shirt depicting a dancing alligator and the slogan “Gator Bait Bar.
Restaurant et Salle de Danse
.” The cut above his left eye only added to his aura of dangerous mystery, and somehow complemented the tiny ruby that winked blood red on his earlobe.

Laurel gathered her indignation and hopped to her feet, slapping the book shut. “You scared the life out of me!”

Jack grinned at her outrage. “My editor will be glad to hear it. She pays me bags full of money to scare people.”

“That's not what I meant, and you know it. What do you think you're doing, sneaking up on me?”

He pressed his hands to his heart and looked too innocent to be believed. “Me, I was just walking along, thinking to myself I oughta do the neighborly thing and stop by for a visit.”

She crossed her arms and tapped her toe, eyeing him with open suspicion. Jack stepped closer, lifted the book from her fingers, and tossed it onto the bench.

“You know what your problem is, sugar?” he murmured, sliding his arms around her. She jumped, eyes wide at his nerve, and tried to bolt back, but he locked his hands behind her at the small of her back and held her easily. His wicked smile cut across his face. “You're too tense. You gotta loosen up, angel.”

“Let go of me,” Laurel demanded, holding herself as rigid as a post as her nerve endings snapped like whips in response to his nearness.

“Why? I like holding you.”

“I don't want to be held. I don't like to be held.”

He studied her expression for a long while, reading something like fear. Fear of him? Or was it something deeper, more fundamental? Fear of intimacy, maybe. Fear that she might actually enjoy it.

“Liar,” he said softly, but set her free just the same. She should have been afraid of him. He was a user and a bastard. If he'd had a shred of decency, he would have left her alone. But she intrigued him, little bundle of contradictions that she was. And he wanted her. He couldn't escape that fact, and he didn't want to deny it.

He pulled his cigarette out from behind his ear and dangled it from his lip as he bent to retrieve the book.
Evil Illusions
, his latest best-seller, for all it meant to him. He wrote to kill time, to give himself some outlet, some way to vent what was inside him. He had never set out to become a success, an attitude that drove his editor insane. She wanted him to go on tour, to play the celebrity. He refused. She wanted him to court booksellers and distributors. He stayed home. His attitude exasperated her, but Jack just laughed it off and told Tina Steinberg she had enough energy, enthusiasm, and ambition for both of them.

“Are you ever going to smoke that cigarette?” Laurel snapped.

Jack glanced at her from under his brows and grinned, cigarette bobbing. “Nope. I quit two years ago.”

“Then why do you keep sticking that cigarette in your mouth?” she asked peevishly.

His gaze held hers and all but caressed it, devilish lights dancing. “I've got an . . . oral fixation. You wanna help me out with that, sugar?”

Laurel scowled at him and at the wave of liquid heat that washed through her as her gaze strayed to the sexy curve of his lower lip and she remembered the feel and taste of his mouth on hers.

“Why horror?” she asked suddenly, reaching out to tap a finger against the book cover.

A wry smile pulled at one corner of Jack's mouth.
Because it's my life. Because it's what lives inside me. Dieu
, she'd run like a rabbit if he told the truth. Lucky he'd never had any particular aversion to lying.

“Because it sells,” he said, tossing the paperback down on the bench.

Better she think of him as a mercenary than a lunatic. A mercenary probably still stood a chance of getting her into bed. And a mercenary he was, after all. Hadn't he spent half the afternoon rummaging through old newspapers, studying Miss Laurel Chandler's life as a prosecuting attorney? Not because he wanted to know more about her as a person, he told himself, but because he found her intriguing as a character. He had even jotted down a few notes about her for future reference, thinking she would make a fascinating heroine with her mix of fragility and strength.