Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

He waited until she was almost even with the truck before calling out to her. "Miss Chandler! Miss Laurel Chandler, please don't pass us by!"

She shouldn't have slowed down. She should have kept right on marching for the bar. She didn't want to go any deeper into this than she was already. But her feet hesitated automatically at the sound of her name, and something pulled her toward Jimmy Lee Baldwin. Not his charisma, as he would probably have preferred to believe. Not his air of authority. But something that had been with her since childhood. The need to stand up to a bully. The need to try to make people see a charlatan for what he was. The need to fight for justice.

She turned and marched right up to the front of his stage and glared up at him.

"Join us, sister," Jimmy Lee said, holding his hand out toward her. "I don't know what hold this vile place has over you, but I know, I know you are a good person at heart."

"Which is more than I can say for someone bent on harassing law-abiding citizens," Laurel snapped.

"The law." Jimmy Lee bobbed his head, a grave expression pulling down his handsome features. "The law protects the innocent. And the guilty would hide like wolves in sheep's clothing, hide behind the law. Isn't that true, Miss Chandler?"

Laurel went still. His eyes met hers, and a chill of foreboding swept over her skin despite the heat of the day. He knew. He knew, and the bastard was going to use it to his own end. Without looking, she could feel the curious eyes of his fifty or so followers falling on her. He knew. They would know. That she had failed. That justice had slipped from her grasp like a bar of wet soap.

"My friends…" Baldwin 's voice came to her as if from a great distance down a long tin tunnel. "Miss Chandler has herself been a soldier in the fight against the most heinous of crimes, crimes against innocent children. Crimes perpetrated by depraved souls who would masquerade among us, showing us righteous faces by day and by night subjecting our children to unspeakable acts of sex! Miss Chandler knows of our fight, don't you Miss Chandler?"

Laurel barely heard him. She could feel the weight of their gazes press in on her, the weight of their judgment. She had failed. "… unspeakable acts of sex…" She shivered as she felt herself drawing inward, pulling in to protect herself. "… unspeakable acts of sex…" "Help us, Laurel! Help us…"

Jack watched her go pale, and he damned Jimmy Lee to eternal hell. His own personal philosophy of life was live and let live. If Jimmy Lee wanted to make a buck off God, that was his business. If people were stupid enough to follow him, that wasn't Jack's problem. He would have gone right on ignoring Baldwin and his band of lunatics. He wasn't out to fight anyone's fight. But the bastard had gone too far. He had somehow, some way managed to hurt Laurel.

Before he could even fathom what lay beneath his response, Jack hopped onto the hood of Baldwin 's borrowed truck and proceeded to climb over the cab. He jumped down onto the flatbed, landing right smack behind Jimmy Lee, who bolted like a startled horse, but didn't move quickly enough to get away.

Jack caught hold of Baldwin 's arm and deftly twisted it behind the preacher's back in a hold he had learned the hard way-from his old man. He grinned at the man like a long lost brother and spoke through his teeth at a pitch only Jimmy Lee could hear. "You got two choices here, Jimmy Lee. Either you can suddenly succumb to the heat of the day, or I'll break all the fine, small bones in your wrist."

Baldwin stared into those cold dark eyes, and a chill ran down him from head to toe. He'd heard rumors about Jack Boudreaux… that he was wild, unpredictable, affable one minute and mean as sin the next. Boudreaux was, by all accounts of the people who read his books, seriously unbalanced. The hold tightened on his wrist, and Jimmy Lee thought he could feel those small bones straining under the pressure.

"That's right, Jimmy Lee"-the smile chilled another degree-"I'd sooner break your arm."

Restless murmurs began rumbling through the crowd like distant thunder. The preacher ground his teeth. He was losing his momentum, losing his hold on them. Damn Jack Boudreaux. Jimmy Lee had had them on the brink of a frenzy, champing at the bit to launch him on the road to televangelist greatness. He cast a glance at his followers and back at the man beside him.

"Sin," he said, and the pressure tightened. "I-I can feel the heat of it!" He rolled his eyes and swayed dramatically on his feet. "Oh, Lord have mercy! The heat of it! The fires from hell!"

Jack let him go and watched with a mixture of cynicism and satisfaction as Baldwin staggered away across the flatbed. Obviously a disciple of the William Shatner/Captain Kirk school of acting, Baldwin stumbled and swayed, contorting his face, wrenching his back, calling out in staccato bursts as his audience gasped in alarm. Several women screamed as he finally collapsed onto the bed of the truck and writhed for another thirty seconds.

People rushed for the stage. Jack strolled across to the prostrate form of the preacher and calmly snatched up the microphone.

"Hey ever-body! Come on inside and douse those fires of hell!" he called, grinning like the devil. "Drinks are on me! Laissez le bon temps rouler! And tell 'em Jack sent you!"

The contingent of Frenchie's patrons who had been standing at the back of the crowd or lounging on the gallery sent up a wild chorus of hoots and cheers and made a mad dash for the bar. Jack hopped down off the truck. Laurel didn't even look up at him, but turned and started back for the Jeep.

"Hey, sugar, where you goin'?"

"Home. Please," Laurel said, emotion tightening around her throat like a vise. There was a pressure in her chest, in her head. She wanted-needed-to escape.

Jack caught her by the arm and shuffle-stepped alongside her. "Hey, hey, you can't run off, spitfire. T-Grace is gonna have the place of honor all set for you."

"What for?" She stopped and wheeled on him, her body vibrating with tension, her face set in lines of anger and something like shame tinting the blue of her eyes. "I failed. I lost."

Jack's brows pulled together in confusion. "What the hell are you talkin' about? Failed? Failed what?"

She'd choked. She'd lost it. If it hadn't been for his coming to the rescue, there was no telling what humiliation she might have suffered. She felt as if Baldwin had reached right into her and pulled out that part of her past to hold it up to his followers like a science experiment gone wrong.

"You stood up to him, Laurel," Jack said softly. "That was more than anyone else was willing to do. So you didn't deliver the knockout punch. So what? Lighten up, sugar. You're not in charge of the whole damn world."

His last line struck a chord, brought back a memory from her stay at the Ashland Heights Clinic, brought back Dr. Pritchard's voice. How egotistical of her to think that she was the center of all, the savior of all, that the outcome of the future of the world rested squarely on her shoulders.

She was overreacting.

She had come here to heal, hadn't she? To take control of her life again. If she ran now, from this, she would be giving in to the past when she had vowed to rise above it.

She looked up at Jack, at the concern in his eyes, and wondered if he even knew it was there.

"Thank you," she murmured. She wanted to reach up and touch his cheek, but it seemed a dangerously intimate thing to do, and so curled her fingers into a loose fist instead.

Jack eyed her suspiciously. "For what?"

"For rescuing me."

"Oh, no." He shook his head and backed away from her a step, raising his hands as if to ward off her gratitude. "Don' make me out to be a hero, sugar. I had a chance to make a fool outa Jimmy Lee, that's all. Me, I'm nobody's hero."