Lucky's Lady (27 page)

He dug a quarter from his pocket and Perret snatched it away from him to make sure it wasn't two-headed. Willis grabbed it back and sent it into the air with a flick of his thumb.

Serena sprang from the bed and lunged for the door.

Perret wheeled toward her.

The quarter never landed.

The back door of the shack swung open. A shot exploded through the air and the coin vanished. Serena's heart leapt into her throat as she jerked around and saw Lucky standing there. He was danger personified in fatigue pants and a black T-shirt, mud smeared across his face and arms, a sleek black gun clutched in his hands.

Perret screamed as if he were seeing an appartition from hell. Whirling toward the door, he reached out for the shotgun propped against the wall. The gun in Lucky's hands bucked once and Pou screamed again as a bullet tore into his shoulder. He fell headfirst through the screen door and landed sprawled on the steps whimpering and crying.

Willis lunged for Serena, one brawny arm catching her around the neck. The momentum of his body carried her backward and to the floor, and they landed against the side of the bed, sending it skidding sideways. The .38 was in his hand and swinging in Lucky's direction before Serena could blink. Acting on adrenaline and instinct, she shoved backward with all her might, throwing Willis off balance. His shot went into the ceiling, sending down a rain of disintegrated Sheetrock.

Serena twisted out of his grasp and hurled herself toward the door, scrambling to get up from her knees. Her ears were ringing from the deafening sound of the shots and the pulse roaring in her veins. She didn't hear Willis behind her, but she felt his meaty hand close on her ankle and yank her leg out from under her. As she fell she turned her shoulders and saw Willis coming down toward her, the gun pointed at her head.

Everything went into slow motion then, time stretching out with its weird elasticity. The gun bore down on her, and behind it Willis's face, ugly and distorted with rage. His mouth opened as he shouted something at her she couldn't hear. Then Lucky flew in out of nowhere. He hit Willis like a freight train and they both went sprawling across the pitted linoleum, Willis's gun flying out of his hand and spinning across the floor like a top.

Lucky hauled Willis up off the floor by his shirtfront and slammed him back against the wall of the cabin. He had dropped his own gun and pulled his knife, pressing the deadly edge of the blade to the man's throat.

Willis's whole body trembled visibly. His face turned gray, and sweat popped out on his forehead and ran down his face like water on the waxy skin of a pumpkin. In a harsh whisper he invoked the names of various members of the holy family as he stared bug-eyed into the face of death.

“Oh, I wouldn't be callin' on them,
cher
,” Lucky said, chuckling softly. A frightening smile lit his panther's eyes and curled the corners of his lips. He caressed Willis's throat with the blade of the knife. “Me, I got a feelin' you're not exactly on the A list up there.”

Willis swallowed convulsively, his Adam's apple scraping the razor edge of the knife. “Jesus, Doucet,” he whispered frantically. “I'm not armed. This is murder.”

Lucky's eyes were cold and bright. “You think I care? There isn't gonna be enough of you left for anyone to prove it. You touched my woman, Willis. I'm gonna kill you. I just wish I could take my time doin' it.”

“Lucky.” Serena's voice floated to him from across the room. Tremulous and soft, it barely penetrated the edge of his consciousness, like a voice from another dimension. “Lucky, don't do it.”

He glanced at her as she came into the periphery of his vision. There were scratches all over her face and neck. Her blouse was torn and dirty and hung open down the front. There was a bloody cut at the corner of her mouth and her lower lip was swollen. Her eyes, her beautiful, soft doe eyes were filled with terror and pain. The maelstrom of his fury surged through Lucky with renewed force.

“He did this to you,” he snarled through his teeth.

Serena said nothing, terrified that her answer would push him over the edge. She could see a part of him fighting to keep the wild rage at bay. The rage flashed in his eyes and rippled in his muscles; his whole body was rigid with it.

He turned back to Willis. “I'll see you in hell, Willis,” he whispered, his voice silky-soft. “But you're gonna get there a long way ahead of me.”

He let the knife bite into the man's skin. Several drops of blood beaded on the blade and ran down it to drip like teardrops onto Willis's shirt. Willis's mouth trembled as he let out a pitiful whimper.

Lucky stared at the blood as the scent of it filled his nostrils. Images whirled in his mind—Colonel Lambert, Amalinda Roca, Shelby. He saw each of their faces in the bright red drops, their eyes wild, mouths laughing. He saw fragmented pictures from his past—other enemies, other battles, other deaths. He felt the cold black ooze seeping in around the edges of his mind, threatening to wash in on him like a wave and sweep him away forever. His hand tightened on the hilt of the knife. Willis sucked in a breath.

Then Serena's voice came again, like a siren's call. “Lucky, no. Leave him for the sheriff. He isn't worth it.” She stepped closer, looking up at him with her battered face, tears swimming in her eyes. “Please, Lucky,” she whispered. “I need you. I love you.”

“He hurt you,” he said, enunciating each word with painful deliberation. He kept his eyes on the knife. The storm raged inside him, pulling at him, tearing at him, and the blackness swirled at the edge of his mind like blood. “He hurt you.”

“Not as much as this will.”

The knife bit a little deeper. Willis made a strangled sound in his throat. Blood trickled across the blade. Lucky stared at it, fascinated, horrified. The blackness swept in a little closer, dimming his vision. He was tired of fighting it. It would be so much easier for everyone if he just let it take him once and for all.

Serena's voice came to him again, so softly it was as if she had somehow spoken the words inside his head. “I'm safe, Lucky. You saved me, now save yourself. Don't do this.”

A part of him wanted to let the knife go deeper. In his mind's eye he could see the blood flowing, swirling up to drown him, just like in his nightmare. It would wash over him and then he would be gone, no more battles to fight, no more betrayals to endure, no more love to forsake. His hand trembled on the hilt. He could feel his control bending, bowing under the weight.

“Hang on,” Serena whispered. “Please hang on, Lucky.”

She stared at him, tears streaming down her face, afraid that if she blinked she would lose him. She could feel the tension vibrating around him. His fierce gaze was on Willis, but she didn't think Willis was what he was seeing. The expression in his eyes was something that came from looking inward and seeing the things one feared most. The most deadly struggle going on in the room was the one Lucky was waging with himself, and if he lost it, Serena had the terrible feeling he would be lost forever. A part of her would not have mourned for a second if Gene Willis had met his end, but revenge was nowhere near worth the price it was going to cost her.

“Hang on, Lucky,” she said again, drawing on some deep reservoir inside her for calm. “You can beat it.”

“I'm tired,” he whispered, his eyes bleak and afraid as he looked through the face of Willis.

“I know,” Serena said, taking another half step toward him. “I know you're tired, but you're stronger than you know. You're better than you know. You can beat it for good. Pull back from that edge. Please, Lucky, for me, for your family, for yourself. Pull back. You can do it. I know you can.”

Lucky stared at the blade of the knife, at the blood dribbling across it. He could feel himself teetering on the precipice, the ground crumbling beneath his boots. The abyss of madness beckoned, but on the other side Serena lured him back with strong; soft words, with the love he wanted so desperately to hang on to, the love he knew he could never keep. The pressures of the conflict built within him like steam until he was shaking from the force of it, as if he might explode at any second, and it kept building and building.

With a great roar of anguish he pulled the knife back and plunged it into the wall beside Willis's head. He pushed himself away from his captive and Willis crumpled to the dirty floor in a dead faint.

Lucky stepped back, swaying unsteadily on his feet as the darkness rushed to the outer boundaries of his mind and vanished in a blinding flash of light. He turned toward Serena, feeling strangely weak and disoriented, as if some vital electrical force had been suddenly drained from his body.

Serena tried to smile at him through the rain of tears streaming down her face. “I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life,” she whispered.

Lucky drank in the sight of her, feeling her every cut and bruise as if it were his own. He wanted to heal her. He wanted to take her back in time and protect her from this nightmare and prevent her from witnessing what she had just witnessed. He wanted a lot of things at that moment—to be stronger, to be whole, to be the kind of man who could have had a future with a woman like Serena—but he contented himself with knowing she was alive and safe, and he pulled her into his arms to prove it to himself.

“
Merci Dieu
,” he whispered, burying his lips in her hair. His whole body was trembling from the internal battle he had just been through. His breath came in shallow gasps. Tears squeezed through the barrier of his lashes. He tightened his arms around Serena as if he were trying to absorb her into his being. “
Je t'aime. Je t'aime, ma douce amie
.”

I love you
. Serena pressed her cheek to his chest and cried with a mixture of joy and relief and belated fear. Lucky loved her. She was safe. He was safe. They would have a chance at tomorrow together. But there was so much more left to face and so many feelings still to be dealt with, not the least of which were her feelings about what she had experienced tonight. They rushed to the fore now that she was in the shelter of Lucky's arms.

“I've never been so afraid,” she mumbled against his chest as the tears came harder.

“I know. I know,
mon chérie
. It's all right now. Everything's all right. You're safe.” He pressed fervent kisses to her temple, her cheek, her lips, trembling at the sweet taste of her. He couldn't get enough of just touching her, holding her, breathing in the faint scent of her perfume. With one shaking hand he began to carefully brush the leaves and twigs from her hair.

“Lucky?”

“Oui.”

“I really like having you hold me,” Serena said, twisting a little in his iron grasp, “but do you think you could untie me first? I'd kind of like to hold you too.”

Lucky pulled back abruptly, swearing in French. He turned Serena around and dealt with the cord that bound her hands. She almost cried at the pain as feeling came rushing back into her fingers and her shoulders were allowed to sag forward, but decided she was too glad to be alive to cry about it.

They dealt with Willis and Perret quickly. Lucky dragged Pou back inside and grumbled while Serena did a cursory first aid job on the man's bullet wound. Then he bound both men hand and foot and tied them each to a bedpost.

“Let's get out of here,” he said when the task was accomplished and the two thugs sat on the floor glaring up at him. “I'll bring the sheriff back later for these two.”

Serena nodded. Now that the danger had passed, she was feeling the effects of what she had been through. She ached all over and felt vaguely dizzy and rubber-legged. Lucky seemed to sense her fatigue and without a word swept her up in his arms. With long, purposeful strides he carried her away from the shack and into the woods.

He wound his way through the tangle of dark forest silently, surely. Serena put her arms around his neck and laid her head against his shoulder, marveling at the sense of safety she felt with him in this place she had feared for so long. But gradually the feeling of safety gave way to a subtle foreboding.

Lucky hadn't spoken a word since leaving the cabin. Serena thought she could actually feel him withdrawing from her. He might have, in a moment of intense emotion, told her he loved her, but she had the terrible feeling that love was something Lucky was more likely to shy away from than embrace. He had told her before that he didn't want her love, that he didn't have anything left inside him to give her. The discovery that he was capable of feeling would not be welcome to a man who had sentenced himself to emotional exile.

She sighed wearily at the thought that while the battle for her life was over and won, the battle for her heart was a long way from being over.

“Hey, it's a real boat,” she said in a weak attempt at levity as they emerged from the woods at the edge of the bayou and she saw the powerboat sitting in the black water. “It's got a motor and everything.”

Lucky eased her over the side and set her on her feet, then frowned as he pulled himself into the boat and dug the keys out of his pocket. “They have their uses,” he said shortly.

“Yes, they do. Be sure and thank the owner on my behalf for loaning it to you.”

“Can't.”

“Why not?”

“'Cause I stole it.”

“You what?” Serena clamped her mouth shut and sank down into one of the passenger seats, feeling giddy at the idea that Lucky would commit a felony on her behalf. It had definitely been too long a day. She needed to go to bed and sleep for a year. Unfortunately, there was no time for that.

“How did you know they had me?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the chills that were beginning to rack her body now that she was away from Lucky's warmth.

Lucky didn't answer her until he'd found a blanket stowed in one of the boat's cubbyholes. He draped it around Serena's shoulders and tucked it carefully around her legs. “The distraction they sicced on me had a big mouth and a little brain.”

“And could she really suck the brass off a doorknob?” Serena asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from her tone.

“I wasn't interested in finding out.” He tipped her chin up and tried to read her face in the dim light of the moon. “Were you jealous?”