The tag lines that accompanied each name swarmed in Laurel 's mind like gnats. She was trained to add up facts as an accountant does a row of figures. She was trained to put puzzle pieces together in her sleep. Tonight she wanted to do neither. The subtotal of the column, the picture that began to take shape-both gave an answer she didn't want to know.
Standing beside the bed, she leaned over and gathered up Savannah 's champagne silk robe, bringing the elegant fabric to her cheek. Cool, soft as a whisper, smelling of Obsession. She didn't want to think that Savannah was ill. She didn't want to face the truth that the sister who had mothered her and shielded her had declined to this point without her doing anything but judging. How many times had she wished Savannah would block out the past, rise above it, get beyond what Ross Leighton had done to her? While Laurel herself had lived to atone for that same past, ignoring her martyrdom, calling it a career.
Tears spilled across the silk, and she wished with all her heart her sister would walk through the door so she could go into Savannah 's arms and beg her forgiveness. But no one came through the door. Only the empty room heard her cry.
Drained, she tossed the robe back on the rumpled bed and wandered back out onto the balcony. The latest fit of rain had passed, leaving everything dripping. Moonlight caught on droplets, turning them to diamonds. The wind rustled restlessly in the trees. Laurel curled an arm around the pillar outside her own room and leaned against it, her gaze traveling the distance to L'Amour.
Some people said it was haunted. She wondered if the ghosts that haunted Jack had anything to do with the history of the house, or if they were his own, brought here with him from Texas.
He'd been at the heart of the Sweetwater incident, Vivian had said. Sweetwater was a Houston subdivision built by developers that touted the good life, a place to raise families. A little piece of heaven that backed onto a little piece of hell. Illegally buried in the field beyond, drums of chemical waste poisoned the ground. Laurel hadn't followed the case except in snatches caught on the nightly news. She had been wrapped up in legal battles of her own. She remembered the barrels had been almost impossible to trace. The trail had led from dummy company to dummy company.
Jack had unraveled the snare for the feds. He was the best man for the job, she supposed, because, if Vivian's information was correct, he had been the one to lay the paper trail away from Tristar. If she hadn't known him, she would have called him a dozen names. Ruthless, godless, greedy bastard would have been one of the nicer ones. But she did know him. She knew he had clawed his way up through the ranks because he thought he needed to prove himself. What must it have done to him to reach the peak only to find out he was on the wrong mountain? He said he had crashed and burned and taken the company down with him.
And his wife?
The word lay bitter on Laurel 's tongue. She might have said she didn't want him, didn't want any kind of a lasting relationship, but the bald truth was she didn't want to think of his loving someone else.
But had he loved her, or had he killed her?
A light winked on in one of the second-story windows of L'Amour, faint, as if it came from a room within the depths of the house. Faint, yet it pulled at her like a beacon. She needed to know who he really was. Which Jack stood behind the final facade? The shark, the rogue, the man who claimed he didn't care about anyone but himself, or the man who had held her and offered her comfort, who had come to her rescue, who had distracted her from problems and fears?
She couldn't see him as a killer. Killers didn't warn potential victims away or walk them home to keep them safe. No, "homicidal" wasn't a word she could apply to Jack. Troubled. Angry. Wounded.
Wounded. The word struck a chord inside her. The light in the old house beckoned.
Jack climbed the stairs to the second floor, bone tired, his body aching, begging for sleep. But he knew his mind would never grant the wish. Not tonight. Ignoring the rustlings of mice in a pile of fallen wallpaper down the hall, he shuffled into his bedroom and flicked on the lamp that perched on his desk a level above the old black Underwood typewriter. A white page glared up at him, reminding him not of deadlines or plot twists, but of Jimmy Lee Baldwin. Jimmy Lee standing above his devoted followers, asking them where demented minds get the inspiration to kill.
Their eyes meet in the dim light of the woods. Predator and prey. Recognition sparks. Realization dawns. Awareness arcs between them. Strange needs commingle. Dark desires intertwine. It is understood that the game will end in death. She opens her arms to welcome it, to end the torment that has haunted her life.
A slim silver blade gleams in the dark…
What followed was death, presented in a way that was disturbingly seductive, poetically artistic, gruesome and graphic, and frightening as hell.
That was his job-to frighten people, to keep them awake nights and tighten their nerves until every sound heard in a lonely house held the potential for unspeakable terror. People called it entertainment, not inspiration. He wouldn't think otherwise. To believe it inspired meant to take responsibility, and everybody knew Jack Boudreaux didn't take responsibility for anyone or anything.
"They say she never met him here."
Jack's head came up, and he looked toward the door, not entirely certain what he was seeing was real. Laurel stood just outside the chipped white door frame, against a background of black. A pale portrait of a woman in a flowing skirt painted with old cabbage roses, a blue cotton blouse with the tails hanging down. She was a vision, an angel, something he should never have touched. Better to have longed from a distance and had her only in his imagination. No one could take that away.
"Madame Deveraux," she said and took a step nearer. "Her wealthy, married lover, August Chapin, built this place for her. Everyone in the parish knew. He flaunted his obsession for her, much to the shame of his poor wife."
Jack found his voice with an effort. "She never met him here?"
"Mr. Chapin, yes. The man she truly loved, no." She walked into the room slowly, lingering by the tall French doors, out of the glow of the desk light. "She loved a man named Antoine Gallant. A no-account Cajun trapper. He refused to set foot in the house Chapin built to house her as a whore. They met in secret in a cabin in the swamp.
"Of course, they were found out. His pride smarting sorely, Chapin challenged Gallant to a duel, which he meant to win by tampering with the pistols. Madame Deveraux learned of the plot just minutes before the duel was to take place. She rushed to warn her love, but the men had already stepped off the distance and had turned to take aim. In order to save Antoine, she hurled herself in front of him and took Chapin's shot herself. She died in Antoine's arms."
She wandered to the old rolltop desk and stood behind it with her hands resting on the high back. Her expression was somber, searching as she slowly scanned the room with her eyes. "I grew up hearing her spirit still haunted this house."
Jack shrugged, avoiding the penetrating stare she turned on him. "I haven't seen her."
"Well," she murmured, "you have ghosts of your own."
Oui. More than you know, angel.
"Someone mentioned Sweetwater today," Laurel said, treading carefully. "You were Tristar's man, weren't you?"
He smiled bitterly and took a bow, backing away from the desk. "C'est vrai, you got it in one, sugar. Jack Boudreaux, star shyster. Wanna bury some poison and get away with it? I'm your man. I can tie the trail in a Gordian knot that loops around and around, and twists and doubles back and dead-ends. Holding companies, dummy corporations, the works." He jammed his hands at the waist of his jeans and stared up at the intricate plasterwork medallion on the ceiling, marveling not at it but at his own past life. "I was so clever, so bright. Working my way up and up, never caring who I stepped on as I climbed that ladder. The end always justified the means, you know."