Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

The press would have a field day. Danjermond would be hailed as a hero. Lifted up on the shoulders of the people of Acadiana without their ever suspecting there was blood on his hands. The case could take him anywhere he wanted to go.

Unless someone stopped him.

He'd thrown the gauntlet at her feet. He had chosen her as his adversary, then turned his back on her and sauntered away as if he didn't have a care in the world, as if he knew she didn't have a chance in hell of besting him. He was bigger, stronger, his mental skills honed to a razor's edge. He was admired and adored. And she was the woman who cried wolf, small and weak, her credibility in tatters, her battle skills rusted and atrophied. The only line of defense between Stephen Danjermond and his future.

If it would have done any good, she would have broken down and cried.

There was enough food in the house to feed an army platoon for a week. The rich, spicy aromas of gumbo and étouffée blended with the milder scents of sundry casseroles with a cream of mushroom soup base and the sweet perfumes of fresh fruit pies and spice cakes. Offerings from neighbors and friends who knew it wouldn't assuage the grief, but brought it anyway to show that they cared.

As she set her purse aside on the hall table, Laurel wondered absently if anyone had taken gumbo or spice cake out to Beauvoir. She supposed someone had. Not these same, salt-of-the-earth folk who had come to comfort Mama Pearl or Caroline's eclectic group of friends, but the women from the Junior League and the Hospital Auxiliary. They would have gone out to deliver their deviled eggs and chicken salad with a thin dose of sympathy. Pained smiles and sugarcoated apologies. Poor Vivian, how terrible to lose a daughter (but at least it was the tacky one). Poor Vivian, you must be beside yourself (it was such a scandalous death). And Vivian would nod and dab at her tears while casting glances askance to see if Ridilia Montrose had put dark meat in her chicken salad.

"Laurel?"

It was all Laurel could do to keep from jumping out of her skin, her nerves were strung so tight. She had hoped to slip upstairs unnoticed. Irrational as the thought was, she was sure her suspicions were written all over her face, that anyone who glanced at her would know what she was thinking and shake their heads sadly over her mental state.

Trying to compose herself, she bent her head and fussed with her glasses as Caroline stepped out of the parlor and came toward her with hands outstretched. Laurel caught her aunt's fingertips and squeezed, but her gaze moved past Caroline to the tall, striking redhead in the dark yellow dress, who came only as far as the doorway.

"Laurel, this is Margaret Ascott," Caroline said, glancing between them. "Margaret is a friend of mine from Lafayette."

Margaret sent her a look of genuine sympathy from big dark eyes. "I'm so sorry about your sister, Laurel," she said in a low voice.

"Thank you," Laurel murmured, too distracted to care just what kind of friend Margaret could be. All she could think was that she envied Caroline her friend. She would have dearly loved to have someone she could spill her heart out to.

Caroline's brow furrowed in concern. "Darlin', you're as pale as milk. You must be exhausted. Come sit down."

She couldn't. There was no way she could sit down and pretend she didn't have knowledge of her sister's killer, nor could she tell them-or anyone-yet. No one would believe her, she thought, her heart thudding wildly. Caroline would say she was under too much stress. Others would point to Scott County and say this was just another wild conclusion of an unbalanced mind.

She needed a plan. She needed to make her brain work until all the rust had flaked off and the gears turned swiftly and smoothly.

"Actually, I was thinking I might just go upstairs and lie down," she said, amazed that she could sound so calm. It was as if her voice and her brain had detached from one another. Her gaze turned to the statuesque Ms. Ascott. "I don't mean to be rude-"

"Not at all," the woman assured her. "I came to offer support and a shoulder, not to be entertained."

"Do try to get some rest, sweetheart," Caroline said, stroking a hand down Laurel's cheek. "And have Pearl fix you a plate to take up with you. You need the nourishment, and she needs to fuss."

"I'll do that."

The afternoon passed like a year in prison. Laurel lay on the bed, her body begging for rest, her mind too overloaded and too exhausted to handle all the information it was trying to process. She forced herself to eat and struggled to keep the meal down as her thoughts dwelled on murder and broken trust. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Danjermond. Too handsome, his features too perfect, his smile too symmetrical. Green eyes glowing into hers in a way that seemed not quite human.

But then, if he was what she thought he was, the word "human" didn't really apply. If he had done the things she suspected he had done, then he had no soul, no conscience, and that made him an animal. The most cunning, the most dangerous predator in nature's chain.

Needing facts, she paged through back issues of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser she had dug out of the recycling stacks in the garage, and read and reread everything she could find on the Bayou Strangler case. But the stories were thin compared with the police reports she was accustomed to poring over, and she knew that critical information would have been withheld for official reasons-to weed out real suspects from the poor crazies who confessed to every crime that came down the pike, to allow genuine perps the opportunity to trip themselves up by revealing information that wasn't known to the general public. While the accounts of the killings were gruesome enough, Laurel knew that details had been toned down and left out. The reality of a murder scene, the horror of a corpse that had been abandoned-

God, an abandoned corpse. She closed her eyes against the sting of fresh tears. That was what her vibrant, beautiful, complex sister had been reduced to by Stephen Danjermond.

He had to be stopped, and she had to be the one to do it.

She thought longingly of her Lady Smith languishing in the evidence room of the sheriff's office, thought fleetingly of simply planting it between Danjermond's eyes and pulling the trigger. But she knew it couldn't happen that way.

Proof. Evidence. Her brain hammered on the words, and she got up from the bed to pace and chew the ragged edge of her thumbnail. He would know better than to keep things around that might implicate him. But might his arrogance outstrip his common sense?

He thought he was invincible. She had seen it in his eyes and had read it in profiles of other serial killers. He had run unchecked long enough to make him believe no one could catch him. That kind of power, that feeling of omnipotence, could ultimately be his downfall.

Keeping souvenirs from victims was a common practice among serial killers. She knew he had kept pieces of jewelry because he had given them to her, drawing her into his web without her even knowing it. Did that mean there were more pieces hidden somewhere?

No one knew where the women had been killed, only that their bodies had been transported and dumped. The bodies had been found in five parishes. Most of the victims had been from a parish other than the one where their bodies were found. Clever. He would know that involving multiple jurisdictions would complicate the investigations.

But the most important question was where had the murders taken place. All in one spot, a lair where he felt safe to practice his depravity? If that was the case, she didn't have a prayer of finding it. The area involved encompassed thousands of acres, much of it the wildest, most remote swampland in the United States. It would be easier to find the proverbial needle.