Sins of the Storm (15 page)

He strode toward the light glowing from the window and pulled open the screen door, slid his key into the lock and pushed inside.

The suitcase stopped him cold.

Beauregard nudged at his hand, but when Jack looked up, everything stretched and blurred. His house, he knew. It was his house, his rug and piano. The air-conditioning blew. Light shone from a single lamp.

But the children were there, in their torn clothes, playing alongside the dirt road. And the other dog, half-starved, limping. And the sun. It beat down without mercy or reprieve, glared like a spotlight. The sand stung.

But then the sting became rain, and the light slipped into darkness. And the headlights cut through the fog. And he was running, limping, going down on his knees….

Because of her eyes. She sat without moving, neatly dressed in khaki slacks and a white shirt, with her hair combed and pulled behind her face, her legs crossed, her eyes…flat. Cold.

And then he saw the map.

It sat on the old sea trunk, no longer encased in plastic, no longer hidden behind a stack of towels. It sat, and it condemned. “Camille—”

Mechanically she stood. “Do you have any idea…any idea at all what went through my mind when I heard that thud from the bathroom?”

The explosion shattered the afternoon, the smoke and the shrapnel, the brutal moment of silence, followed by cries of agony. He’d tried to run, tried to reach them, the children….

“I was scared,” Camille said, but there was absolutely no emotion in the words. Her voice. “I thought you were hurt,” she said with another step toward him. “I thought—” She broke off as her eyes flashed. “I didn’t think twice about giving Gator the map…the map my father had left for me…
the map he’d given his life for!
” Viciously she stopped and stripped the emotion from her voice, her face. “Because I thought you were hurt.”

Everything inside Jack tightened, twisted. “I know.” And God help him, his voice wasn’t empty like hers, like his had been for so long. The awareness left his throat raw. “You were so damn brave—”

“Foolish,” she snapped. “I fell for it, Jack…fell for it all. Like a good little puppet I did exactly as you wanted, handed over what I thought was my father’s map.” She grabbed it from the table and shoved it at him. “All so you could stay in control. So you could try to stop me just like you’ve always tried to stop me…convince me I was in danger—”

“No.” With the word he moved, reached for her. “That’s not what happened.”

The blue of her eyes, the blue he’d damn near drowned in the night before, darkened. “No?”

“No.” She stiffened when his hands found her arms, but she didn’t step away. “The trap wasn’t for you.” She wasn’t even supposed to be there. “But for him…for Gator.” Only Jack hadn’t known it was his own father he was trying to catch. “I brought the map home and planted a fake…but, Sweet Mary, I never meant for you to get caught in the cross fire.”

Her chin came up at a fierce angle. “Because you never even planned to tell me, did you?”

The rain slashed harder, drenched him as he dragged the body into his arms and searched for a pulse. But knew he would not find one.

“I was trying to protect you—”

“
Protect
me.” She spat the words at him. “Protect me with lies? Protect me by shutting me out?”

Just like you did all those years before.

She didn’t say the words, didn’t need to. They both knew.

“That’s not protecting,” she said with a deceptive quiet. “That’s control.”

Everything inside him stilled.

She twisted hard and stepped back, held up her hand to keep him from following. “I knew better,” she said. “When I came back, when I knew I would see you…” Her eyes narrowed. “I knew you’d shut yourself off, that you were broken inside. I knew that, and I told myself to stay away. Stay clear. I told myself to be Cameron Monroe, to be a stranger, to make sure Cami Rose never surfaced. Because I knew if she did—”

It was all slipping, so hard and so fast, with the sun and the sand, the darkness and the rain, slipping and swirling. “Damn it, Cami—”

“She would see the pain,” Camille said in that horrible rote voice as if she were talking about a freaking stranger, and not herself. “And she would want to help.”

“She’s you,
’tite chat.
” No matter how badly he’d wished otherwise. He’d wanted her to be a stranger, damn it. He’d wanted her to be someone else—
anyone
else. He’d wanted to live in the moment, without all those ties that bound. Then she wouldn’t have known…would never have been able to touch. “Camille…Cameron…they’re both you.”

“But you’re not Jack,” she said, lifting a hand to her chest. There, she rubbed. “The blinders are finally off. And now I can see what I wouldn’t let myself see before. I don’t know you anymore…you are a stranger, someone hard and isolated, who doesn’t know how to live in a world where you don’t control every variable.” Eyes glittering, she shoved the hair from her face. “And I can’t live like that.”

The words seared like acid. “So you’re just going to walk away.” The rain kept falling, but he didn’t move, not for a long, long time. “Just like you did before…find the first excuse you can and walk away.”

Her eyes flashed. “I had no way of knowing—”

“That Lambert would follow you to Florida, no. But you were the one who got in that car, Camille.” He could see it now, see it so damn clearly. She’d been a loose cannon since the night her father died. For years he’d tried to fix that, tried to stop her. Protect her. But she didn’t want his protection. She only wanted to keep spinning, to duck out when the consequences caught up with her. “You were the one who tucked tail and ran,” he said against the boil in his gut. “Who drove to Florida without telling a soul.”

Maybe it was a breath…maybe it was a hard broken laugh. But the sound ripped from her throat as the light in her eyes went completely out. “There you go, Jack. Make this my fault. Do whatever you need to make yourself feel better.” She managed one step before Beauregard rolled to his feet and nudged at her hand. She opened her fingers, stroked them along his ear. “I’m not going to stop you.” Her eyes met his. “I can’t give my heart to a man who doesn’t know the difference between control and love.”

The dust settled and the rain slowed, leaving only the debris. And the cold. It seeped through him one cell at a time, the insidious death he’d vowed to never feel again.

Beauregard whimpered, but Jack didn’t look, just let all those broken edges crystallize as he found the most insolent smile he could, nice—and slow. “Who said anything about love?”

B
efore, he’d kissed her. All those years ago, that chilly morning when he’d crushed what was left of her heart, he’d slipped from her arms while she pretended to sleep and dressed, turned to her and leaned close, pressed a kiss to her forehead and told her he was sorry.

That he never should have lost control like that.

Cold and naked and refusing to shake, she’d clenched the threadbare quilt—and vowed not to break. Because finally she’d realized. Finally she knew. Jacques Savoie could not give her what she wanted.

Because even then he’d been carefully constructing his life, one steady, predictable layer at a time.

And she had not been part of his plan.

Just as she wasn’t now.

All those years ago, she’d watched him walk away, hadn’t moved until she heard the car engine. Then she’d gone to the balcony door and watched him drive away.

Now it was she who straightened her shoulders, she who lifted her eyes. But she didn’t step toward him, didn’t insult him with a kiss to the forehead. She just let her mouth flatten.

Who said anything about love?
he’d asked in that empty stripped-bare voice, the one that embodied the man he’d become.

“No one,” she answered. Then she tore her hand from Beauregard’s silky fur and walked toward the door, opened it and stepped into the warmth of twilight, kept right on walking until she reached her rental. Saura had dropped it off earlier. Now she opened the door and slid inside, started the engine.

This time it was she who drove away, and Jack who made no move to stop her.

Through the darkness, the red glow of taillights vanished.

Jack moved from the window to the front door, pulled it open and let Beauregard bolt into the night. But Jack didn’t follow, didn’t move, just stood as the breeze resurrected the scent of lavender.

Resurrected.
The word stabbed deep.

From the moment he’d found her snooping around Whispering Oaks, he’d known the nice and slow world he’d carefully constructed was about to shatter. Where Cami walked, trouble followed. It had been that way as long as he could—

He stopped the lie before it could form. It hadn’t been that way as long as he could remember. Just since the night she’d seen her father murdered. That’s when everything had changed. That’s when everything had fallen apart. That’s when the sweet little girl had broken, when the desperation had started. The stunts. The recklessness.

Fourteen years hadn’t changed a damn thing.

Love me…

Now, Christ…the scent of lavender seared his soul.

Big, tough, untouchable Jacques Savoie is going to smell like a flower….

He never should have touched her. He never should have let himself close. Let himself touch and taste, let himself remember what it felt like to hold her. To hold on.

The need to go after her almost sent him to his knees. To find her and pull her into his arms, to destroy the hurt he’d seen glistening in her eyes. The hurt he’d put there. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that he did know how to live in a world where he didn’t control everything.

But the truth wouldn’t let him move.

With the whispers of morning pushing through the curtains, Camille stared at what she’d just written. Propped up in bed, she’d been writing for hours. Sometime after midnight, she’d tried to sleep, but the clutter in her mind wouldn’t let her. She needed to get it all out, let it spill onto the paper, before the truth, the memories, ate her alive.

I.

The word stopped her.
I.
First person, not third. Everything else she’d written, every word, was from the perspective of a third-party observer. But somewhere between night and dawn, the tense had changed, and it was no longer Cameron Monroe who wrote. No longer Cameron Monroe who remembered. But Camille. Camille Rose Fontenot.

Troy’s daughter.

Troy’s little girl.

It all came harder then, faster, like water busting through floodgates, surging, rushing forward.

Her hand froze. The words blurred, lost form, and then there was only him, her father, standing at the top of the sweeping staircase at Whispering Oaks, counting to ten. She’d scrambled away…

Two.

…and run through the massive foyer.

Three.

…through the dining room.

Four.

…outside, around the house.

Five.

She’d wanted to stump him. She’d wanted to hide so cleverly he would give up without finding her….

Six.

She’d never heard another number. She’d crouched behind the old well and waited. And waited…

On a hard slam of her heart, Camille pushed her notebook aside and reached for her jeans, dressed, grabbed her purse and went for the door. Inside her rental she flicked the ignition and backed out, gunned the car toward the main highway. Not even the sight of Russ, watching her still, no less covertly than before, slowed her. Instead she fumbled for her cell and jabbed out Saura’s number.

Jack ran. Beauregard broke through the scrub and raced toward the house first, Jack a close second. His lungs burned. His leg ached. He stopped at the porch and reached down to rub his thigh, knew it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. His doctors had warned him about that. Shrapnel wounds could heal, but the nerve damage, the pain, never fully went away.

With more of a limp than usual, he made his way up the steps and across the porch, reached for the door. He needed to—

Christ. He hated that word.
Need.
It was the one thing he’d never wanted to feel again. To want. He’d just wanted to walk through life without strings or complications, to make sure nothing ever blew up in his face again.

Even if that meant pushing away the one person who made him want…

His cell was ringing as he pushed inside. He grabbed it and checked caller ID, frowned.

“The alarm’s going off,” his secretary told him. “Over at Whispering Oaks.”

He stilled. “You don’t say?”

“You said you wanted me to let you know—”

“I know what I said.” He also knew his father was still downtown. The danger, not that there’d ever really been any, had passed. And he was done chasing his tail. “Send Russ.”

Camille worked her way through the old house one room at a time. Her father had had ample time. She’d been outside behind the well for a seeming eternity while he’d been inside. Alone.

He’d had more than enough time to hide the stained glass window.

All those broken misshapen pieces, the ones that had sliced so badly in the weeks and months after her father’s death, the ones that had seemed disjointed and unimportant, the ones she’d shoved so deep she’d eventually forgotten, slipped through her now. And fell together.

Her father had taken her to Whispering Oaks two days after their trip to Isle Dernier. He’d suggested a game of hide-and-seek….

Now Camille’s fingers stung. Upstairs in the master chamber, the room where she and Jack had made love, she scraped her hands along the floorboards—and found the loose plank. It all stilled then, even as her heart pounded.

After over an hour of combing the old house, inspecting the floors and the walls, trying every stair on both staircases, she kneeled on the bare floor and closed her eyes, saw her dad.

Her throat burned. Her heart hurt. But she opened her eyes and pushed forward, worked at the board until it lifted—and saw the vault.

“Daddy,” she whispered, because in that moment he was there, right beside her. Her hands wanted to shake, but she wouldn’t let them, just reached inside and pulled out an old canvas knapsack—the one her father had brought with him to Isle Dernier.

And with the sun pouring in from the French doors, she reached inside—and felt the glass.

In 1789 darkness came to France. The Church became the enemy, the upper class the hunted, their possessions symbols of greed and inequity. Cathedrals and chapels were destroyed, nuns and priests executed. Chaos reigned.

In the northwestern province of Brittany, a noble family of deep faith saw the Reign of Terror destroying their beloved land and went to desperate measures to make sure their family survived. A son and a daughter were smuggled out of the country. With them, they carried a symbol of their family’s legacy…a storied, beautifully crafted stained glass window from their family’s chapel.

Now Camille rocked back on her heels and let the swell of warmth consume her. Her legacy. Her family. It had been her ancestors who had risked everything, her ancestors who’d made their way to Louisiana, who’d found a way to prosper. Her family who’d protected their legacy. Her family who’d been viewed with a mix of awe and suspicion…her family who the locals had turned to when they needed healing.

Her family who’d been forced to hide the stained glass during the darkest days of the Civil War.

Her grandmother’s great-grandmother who’d taken the secret of the rapture with her to the grave.

Her father who’d died trying to reconstruct the clues…

“Oh, Daddy.”
The tears started. Hot and salty, they burned and flowed. “You found it…”

All this time, all these years, the stained glass window had been here all along.

Camille wasn’t sure how long she sat on her knees tracing her finger along the exquisite depiction of angels and demons, sin and salvation. But she looked up when the creak of a floorboard broke the silence.

Saura.
She stood and started for the door, stopped abruptly.
Because of the silence.
It rang through the stillness—and sent her heart into a hard, unsteady rhythm.

There was no reason for her cousin to be quiet. No reason for her not to call out…

Maybe it was instinct. Or maybe just caution, her imagination. But on a sickening surge of adrenaline, Camille grabbed the stained glass and backed toward the French doors.

“You’re talking about my mama, boy. No matter what y’think of me, ya can’t really think I’d try to hurt her.”

Jack kept his expression blank, his body still. But sitting across the small table from the man he’d once called father, the years fell away, and he could see Gator as he’d been a lifetime ago, walking up the steps to his mama’s house with a bouquet of daisies in his hand. It had been Mother’s Day.
Flowers,
he’d told his son.
Never forget to give your mama flowers.

There’d been so many other moments, other kernels of advice.
Take care of your mama, boy. That’s what a son does. Make her life easier, better.

“If not you, then who?” Jack asked, but in his gut, he already knew. The fire had been set the night Marcel Lambert had put his plan against Gabe into motion. No one had connected the series of residential fires to Lambert, but all the pieces fell together now, and Jack realized his grandmother had almost lost everything as a result of a diversion.

“I wuz there that night,” Gator said. “When I saw the smoke coming from the direction of Mama’s house—”

They both turned as the door to the small interrogation room pushed open and his secretary hurried inside. “Sheriff, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but—”

Jack stood, started toward her. Because of her voice, her eyes. The agitation. The nervousness. “What is it, MaryAnne?”

She lifted her arm, revealing the cordless phone in her hand. “Call came in a few minutes ago,” she said. “I thought it was a crank at first, ’cuz no one was sayin’ anything. But then—”

Jack didn’t let her finish. He grabbed the handset and brought it to his face, went absolutely still.

“…don’t force my hand, sweetheart.”

And before another word was spoken, he started to run. Because Christ God Almighty, he knew. He knew that voice.

And he knew whose voice he would hear next.