Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

"Yeah, well I'm real happy about it, too, Jack," Laurel shot back, his reaction stinging like a slap in the face. She sniffed and wiped a hand under her nose. "I really need to fall in love right now. I really need to be in love with a man who's dedicated his life to self-torment."

"Then just drop it," Jack said cruelly. "I never meant to give you more than a good time."

"Oh, yeah, it's been a riot," Laurel sneered, fighting the tears so hard, her head was pounding like a trip-hammer. "It's been a regular Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde laugh a minute!"

"Fair exchange for a little research," he said, driving the knife a little deeper and hating himself for it.

"I don't believe you," Laurel declared, grabbing onto that disbelief and clinging to it desperately, swinging it at him like a club. "I don't believe that's the only reason you've been with me."

"You can't dismiss evidence just because it doesn't suit you, counselor," he said coldly.

"Tell me there's a book," she demanded, glaring at him through her tears. She grabbed his arm and tried in vain to turn him toward her. "You look me in the eye, Jack Boudreaux, and tell me there's a book with me in it. You couldn't be that cruel and be so tender with me at the same time."

Jack had thought once that she would be a lousy poker player because he could see everything she felt in her eyes, but she was calling his bluff now with more guts than any man he'd ever faced across a table. And damned if he could do it. He couldn't look down into that earnest, beautiful face and tell her he'd never done anything but use her.

"I don't need this," he grumbled, waving her off.

"No, you don't, do you, Jack?" Laurel said, advancing as he backed away across the thin grass. "You'll be happy to sit in that dump of a house, beating on yourself for the next fifty years or until your liver gives out, whichever comes first. That's a helluva lot easier than taking a chance on finding something better."

"I don't deserve anything better."

"And what do I deserve?" she demanded. "You called me arrogant. How dare you presume to know what's best for me? And what a fool you are to take the blame for someone else's weakness. Evie needed help. She could have gotten it for herself. Other people could have tried to help her. It wasn't all on your shoulders, Jack. You're not the keeper of the world."

"Oh, Christ, that's rich! The pot calls the kettle black! You take everything on as if God Himself appointed you! You take the responsibility, you take the blame. Well, I've got news for you, sugar: I don' wanna be one of your great causes. Butt outta my life!"

Laurel stood there and watched him stalk away, so filled with pain and impotent fury that she couldn't seem to do anything but clench her muscles until she was trembling with it. "Damn," she muttered as a pair of tears slipped over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. The wall of restraint cracked a little, and another drop of anger leaked out.

"Damn, damn, damn you, Jack Boudreaux!" she snarled under her breath.

Without a thought to the consequences, she turned and slammed her fist against the rough bark of a persimmon tree, scraping the thin skin on her knuckles and sending pain singing up her arm. Good. It was at least a better kind of pain than the one burning in her chest.

She loved him.

"Damn you, Jack," she whispered.

Blinking against the tears, she lifted her hand and sucked on her knuckles, trying to think of what to do next. She had more important things to think of than her broken heart. She would go home and regroup. Spend some time with Aunt Caroline while her brain turned over clues and theories, trying to come up with a picture of a killer. Not because she didn't believe anyone else could do it, but because she was bound by duty and love for a sister who had sheltered and cared for her.

Danjermond was waiting for her beside Caroline's BMW. His coffee brown jacket hung open, the sides pushed back. His hands were in his trouser pockets. But if his stance was casual, his mood was not. Laurel sensed a tension about him, humming around him like electricity in the air.

"I'm surprised at you, Laurel," he murmured, his gaze as sharp and steady as the beam of a laser.

The word "surprised" translated to "disappointed," but Laurel wasn't particularly interested in what Stephen Danjermond thought of her, one way or the other. He was Vivian's choice for her, not her own, and she was through trying to please her mother. Without a word of comment, she dug a hand into her bag to fish out the keys.

"You lied," he said flatly.

She didn't bother asking him how he knew any of what had happened in the interrogation room; she had been a prosecutor, had stood on the other side of two-way mirrors herself. Poker-faced, she looked up at him. "I was with Jack the night Savannah died."

"But not all night," he insisted. "I could hear the hesitation in your voice. Slight, but there. And Boudreaux's reaction-good, but guarded. He was surprised you would lie for him. So am I. I thought you were a purist. Justice by the book."

"Jack didn't kill Savannah," she said, sorting out the proper key and resisting the urge to back away from him.

"How do you know?" he queried softly. "Instinct? Would you know the killer if you looked him in the eye, Laurel?"

She stared up at him, remembering the feel of a gaze in her dreams. Eyes without a face. Memory stirred uneasily. "Perhaps."

"The way you knew the defendants in Scott County were guilty? Instinct, but no evidence. You need evidence, Laurel," he persisted. "No one will believe you without evidence."

"The charges are being dismissed, Ms. Chandler… lack of sufficient evidence… You didn't do your job, Ms. Chandler… You blew it…" The voices echoed in her head, bringing with them shadows of the stress, the desperation. The combination threatened to shake her, but she held firm against them.

"You're the one who'll try this case if Kenner can make an arrest, Mr. Danjermond," she said evenly. "Maybe you should be more concerned about finding some evidence yourself instead of worrying about what I'm doing or not doing."

He said nothing while she unlocked the door to the BMW and pulled it open. She stepped around it on the pretense of tossing her handbag on the seat, but was just as glad to put the distance and the steel between them.

"Isn't that right?" she said, turning toward him once again.

He smiled slightly, a smile that for its strange perfection made the nerves tingle along the back of her neck.

"Oh, I am working on it, Laurel," he said softly, his green eyes shining as if he had sole possession of a wonderful secret. "Rest assured, I will have enough evidence to get a conviction. More than enough."

He let that promise ring in the air for a moment, then changed directions so smoothly and quickly, Laurel thought it was a wonder she didn't lose her balance. "Are you coming to the dinner tonight?"

"No," she said, appalled that he might think she would even consider it. "After all that's happened recently, I'm sure you understand that I'm not feeling up to it."

"Of course," he murmured, reaching into an inside jacket pocket to extract a long, slim cigar. He trimmed the end with a pocket-size device, snipping it cleanly and efficiently. "I understand completely. You've lost your sister. The best suspect we have is your lover-"

"What about Baldwin?" Laurel snapped, an odd, niggling feeling of panic fluttering in her stomach. "What about-"

"He isn't intelligent enough," Danjermond said sharply, cutting her off with his look as much as his words. His eyes were as bright and fervid as gemstones beneath the dark slash of his brows. "He's a petty con man with delusions of grandeur. Do you really believe he could have committed crime after crime without implicating himself?"