Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

"Tell me," she said at last. "Do you not still see those children from Scott County in your sleep?"

The abrupt change of subject jolted Laurel for a second. The question brought the faces up in her memory, and she had to force them back into the little compartment she tried to stow them in during the day. "Yes," she murmured.

"But that's over and done with," Caroline said. "Why can't you let them go?"

"Because I failed them," Laurel said, tensing against the guilt. "It was my fault. I deserve to be haunted by that-"

"No," Caroline cut her off sharply, her dark eyes bright with the strength of her feelings. "No," she said again, softening her tone. "You did all you could. The outcome was not in your hands. You had no control over the attorney general or the lack of evidence or what other members of the community did, and yet you blame yourself and let that part of your past torment you."

Laurel didn't try to argue her culpability; she knew what the truth was. The point her aunt was making had little to do with her, anyway.

"Are you saying Savannah blames herself for the abuse?" she asked, incredulous at the thought. "But what happened was Ross's fault! He forced himself on her. She couldn't possibly believe that was her fault."

Caroline stroked a fingertip thoughtfully along her cheekbone and raised a delicately arched brow. "You think not? Savannah is a beautiful, sensual, sexual creature. She always has been. Even as a child she had a certain power over men, and she knew it. You think she hasn't blamed herself for being attractive to Ross or that Ross hasn't taken every opportunity to blame her himself? He is and always has been a weak man, taking credit that isn't his due and shedding blame like water off a duck's back."

A fresh spring of hate for Ross Leighton welled up inside Laurel, and she recognized that a large part of her anger was for the fact that Ross had never been made to pay for his crime. Justice had never been served. Some of the blame for that was hers, she knew, and the guilt for that was terrible.

If only she had found the courage to tell their mother or go to Aunt Caroline. But she hadn't. Vivian was still in ignorance of her husband's atrocities. Caroline had found out the truth years after the fact. There had been no justice for Savannah… so Laurel had spent her life seeking justice for others.

I'm not trying to atone for anything!

God, what a lie. What a hypocrite she was.

Caroline rose gracefully from her chair, tucking her letters into a patch pocket on the full yellow skirt that hugged her tiny waist and swirled around her calves. She came around the table and slipped her arms around Laurel 's shoulders, hugging her tight from behind. "The past is always with us, Laurel," she said gently. "It's a part of us we can't ignore or abandon. And it's not always easy to keep it behind us, where it belongs. You'd do well to remember that for yourself, as well as for your sister."

She pressed a kiss to her temple and went inside, leaving Laurel alone on the gallery to listen to the birdsong and to think.

When her thoughts had chased one another around her brain sufficiently to give her a headache, Laurel turned her attention back to the mail, thumbing through the bills and pleas from missions. At the back of the stack was a plain white envelope with no address, return or otherwise.

Puzzled, she opened the flap and extracted not a letter, but a cheap gold necklace with a small golden butterfly dangling from it. She lifted the chain and watched the butterfly turn and sway, and a strange shiver passed over her, like a chill wind that had slipped out of another dimension to crawl over her skin.

The wheels of her mind turned automatically, searching for the most logical explanation for the necklace. It was Savannah 's-though Savannah 's tastes were much more expensive. Laurel had forgotten it on the seat of the car-but why was it sealed in an envelope?

No answer satisfied all the questions, and none explained the knot of nerves tingling at the base of her neck.

In his office in the Partout Parish courthouse, Duwayne Kenner leaned over his desk, hammers pounding inside his temples, acid churning in his gut. He leaned over the fax copies of crime reports from four other parishes. His eyes scanned the photographs the sheriff from St. Martin had brought along with him of Jennifer Verret, who had been found dead Saturday morning, strangled with a silk scarf and mutilated. On the other side of the desk, Danjermond stood looking pensive, twisting his signet ring around on his finger.

"There's no doubt in my mind," Kenner growled, his voice turned to gravel by two packs of Camels. "We're dealing with the same killer."

"Everything matches?"

"So far. We'll have more details when the lab reports on Annie Gerrard come in, but it's all there-the silk scarf, the same pattern of knife wounds. Most importantly, details that were kept away from the press match, eliminating the possibility of a copycat."

"Such as?"

"Such as the markings on the wrists and ankles, and the fact that each woman had items of jewelry taken off her body. Sick bastard likely keeps them as souvenirs," he mumbled, his eyes narrowing to slits as he took in the savagery one human being could commit against another. "Well, by God, I'll find out when I catch him. I swear I will."

One of Vivian's more annoying traits was her sporadic attempts at spontaneity. Laurel recalled the times during her childhood when her mother would snap out of her day-in-day-out routine of clubs and civic responsibilities and life as mistress of Beauvoir, and scramble frantically to do something spontaneous, something she thought terribly clever or fun, which the events seldom proved to be. There was always an air of desperation about them and a set of expectations that were never achieved. Not at all like the spur-of-the-moment notions of Laurel 's father, which had always been unfailingly wonderful in one way or another, never planned, never entered into with a set of criteria or goals.

"Seize the moment and take what it gives you," Daddy had always said with a simple joy for life glowing in his handsome face.

Vivian had always seized her moments with grasping, greedy hands and tried to wring out of them the things she wanted. Laurel had always felt sorry for her mother because of it. It wasn't in Vivian's makeup to be spontaneous. That she felt compelled to try, and tried too hard, had always left Laurel feeling sad, particularly when one of Vivian's failed attempts led her into yet another spell of depression.

Perhaps that was why, when Vivian had called to invite her to have dinner out with her-dinner and "girl talk," God forbid-Laurel hadn't managed to find an excuse during that slim five-second window of opportunity when lies can go undetected over the phone lines. Or perhaps her reasons had more to do with the day and the thoughts she had had of family and the fickleness of life.

Savannah would have no doubt had a scathing commentary on the subject. But as Savannah had yet to return from wherever she had spent the day, Laurel didn't have to listen to it. She accepted the invitation with an air of resignation and did her best to turn off the internal mechanism of self-examination.

They sat in one of the small, elegant dining rooms of the Wisteria Golf and Country Club, chatting over equally elegant meals of stuffed quail and fresh sea bass. The club was housed in a Greek revival mansion on what had once been the largest indigo plantation in the parish. The house and grounds had been meticulously restored and maintained, right down to the slave cabins that sat some two hundred yards behind the mansion and now served as storage sheds for garden equipment and between-round hangouts for the caddies-who were quite often black youths. No one at Wisteria worried about offending them with the comparison between caddies and slaves, and there were no other people of color to be offended other than hired help, because Wisteria was, always had been, and always would be an all-white establishment.