Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

The other shoe fell. Laurel felt trapped with Jack on one side and T-Grace staring her down on the other. She shifted uncomfortably on the bench, wanting nothing more than to escape. She shook her head as she abandoned her supper and extricated herself from the bench. "I believe we've already had this conversation, Mrs. Delahoussaye. I'm not practicing law-"

"You don' gotta practice," T-Grace said dryly. "Jus' do it."

Laurel heaved a sigh of frustration. "Really, all you have to do is call the sheriff the next time Reverend Baldwin comes on your property-"

"Ha! Like dat pigheaded jackass would bother with the like of us!"

"He's the sheriff-"

"You don' understand, sugar," Jack drawled. He swung his right leg over the bench and stretched his feet out in front of him, leaning his elbows back against the table. "Duwayne Kenner only comes runnin' if your name is Leighton or Stephen Danjermond. He's got too many important meetings to bother with the common folk. He isn't gonna get mixed up with Jimmy Lee and his Church of the Lunatic Fringe unless a judge tells him to."

"That's absurd!" Laurel exclaimed, rounding on Jack. "That's-"

He raised his brows. "The way it is, sweetheart."

"He's sworn to uphold justice," she argued.

"Not everybody has the same conviction about that as you do."

She said nothing, just stood there for a long moment. He had no such conviction. Jack made his own rules and probably broke them with impunity. He joked about the system, derided the people who tried to make it work. But he knew she didn't.

He watched her, his eyes a dark, bottomless brown, his expression intense. He was trying to read her. She felt as if those eyes were reaching right into her soul. Abruptly, she turned back toward T-Grace.

"There are several attorneys here in town-"

"Who don' give a rat's behind," T-Grace said. She abandoned her plate on the ground, forfeiting her dinner to Huey, who crawled out from under the picnic table and laid claim to the crawfish. T-Grace ignored the dog, her hard gaze homing in on Jack. She walked up to him with her hands on her hips, her chin tipped in challenge. "Jack here, he could help us, but here he sits on his cute little-"

"Jesus Christ, T-Grace!" Jack exploded. He got up from the bench so quickly, it tipped over backward with a crash that sent the hound scurrying for safe cover. "I'm disbarred! What the hell am I supposed to do?"

"Oh, nothin', Jack," she said softly, mockingly, not giving up an inch of ground. "We all know you jus' wanna have a good time." Daring more than any man would have, she reached up and patted his lean cheek. "You go on and have a good time, Jack. Don' bother with us. We'll make out."

Jack wheeled around in a circle, looking for some way to vent the anger roaring inside him. He wanted to yell at the top of his lungs, bellow like a wounded animal. He snatched a beer bottle off the table and hurled it, narrowly missing the bathtub shrine to the mother of God, and still the fury built inside him.

"Shit!"

T-Grace watched him with wise old eyes. "That's all right, Jack. We all know you don' get involved. You don' take responsibility for nothin'."

He glared at her, wanting to grab her and shake her until her bug eyes popped right out of her head. Damn her, damn her for making him feel… what? Like a cad, like a heel? Like a good for nothing, no-account piece of trash?

Bon à rien, T-Jack… bon à rien.

That's what he was. No good. He'd had that truth drilled into him since he was old enough to comprehend language. He had proven it true time and again. He had no business howling at the truth.

His gaze caught on Laurel, who stood quietly, her arms folded against her, her big eyes round behind her glasses. The champion for justice. Willing to sacrifice her reputation, her private life, her career, all for the cause. Dieu, what she must think of me… and all of it true.

That was the irony-and he had a finely honed appreciation for irony-that he was everything T-Grace accused him of and less, that he was exactly what he aspired to be, and now the image he had settled into was turning on him-or he was turning against it.

"I don' need this," he snarled. "I'm outta here."

Laurel watched him stalk away, a little shaken by his outburst. A part of her wanted to go after him, to offer comfort, to ask why. Not smart, Laurel. She had enough trouble of her own without taking on the burden of Jack Boudreaux's darker side… or the plight of Frenchie's Landing…

But as she turned back toward T-Grace, she couldn't bring herself to say no. It was no big deal, she told herself. Just a visit to the courthouse, a phone call or two. She wasn't taking on the world. Just a pair of honest, hardworking people who needed a little justice. Surely she was strong enough for that.

"All right," she said on a sigh. "I'll see what I can do."

For once, T-Grace was speechless, managing only a smile and a nod. Ovide hefted himself out of his chair and dusted remnants of crawfish shells off his belly. Laying a broad hand on Laurel 's shoulder, he looked her in the eye and growled, "Merci, chère."

Jimmy Lee sat on the windowsill, feeling sorry for himself, wearing nothing but his dirty white trousers and a frown. Sweat trickled in little streams down his chest to pool on his belly. He sipped at a glass of brandy, brooding, reliving his humiliation in his mind, tormenting himself with it. He had had that crowd in the palm of his hand, he thought, curling his fingers into a fist. Then that damn Chandler bitch had ruined everything. Of course, he had managed to salvage the situation with his quick thinking, but the moment of glory had been spoiled, just the same.

Women were the bane of his existence. Sluts and whores, all of them. Some came in more respectable packages than others, but they were all alike underneath the wrapping. Wicked as Eve, every last one of them.

He laughed a little at the biblical reference and tossed back a gulp of brandy. Shit, he was even starting to think like a preacher.

The night was still and hot as hell, the air electric with something like expectation. A dark restlessness shifted inside him and he lifted his glass and tried to douse the feeling with the last of his drink. The quiet pressed in on him, irritating raw nerve endings like fingernails on a chalkboard. He longed for the noise of New Orleans, the sounds and smells of Bourbon Street, the dirt and dark alleys of the Quarter, the places the tourists never saw.

A man could get anything he wanted in New Orleans, any way he wanted it.

But he was out here, stuck on the edge of the godforsaken swamp. He had an apartment up in Lafayette, but he had chosen Bayou Breaux as the spot to launch his campaign, and so had rented this one-room bungalow at the edge of nowhere in order to have some privacy.

Bayou Breaux had seemed the perfect choice for his "War on Satan"-the heart of Acadiana, where good Christian people were as thick as ants on a watermelon rind, where times were a little lean these days because of the perilous state of the oil industry and the agricultural economy, where crime was pressing in and people needed something to grab on to and believe in. There were too many Catholics to suit him, but there were also busloads of fundamentalists fervent enough and gullible enough to believe anything. They were the core of his ministry. They would bankroll him into stardom and carry him there on their shoulders.

If Laurel Chandler didn't get in the way.

The screen door swung open with a creak and Savannah Chandler walked in, a seductive vision in her short flowered dress and red high heels. Her gaze scanned the shabby little room, taking in the dingy yellow walls, the cheap, mismatched furniture, the bottle of E amp; J on the battered coffee table, assessing the surroundings the same way she might judge a new boutique.