"In the end, you brought them down."
One dark brow curving, he pinned her with a look. "And you think that makes me a hero? If I set houses on fire, then put the fires out after the people inside had all burned, would I be a hero?"
"That would depend on your motives and intent."
"My motives were selfish," he said harshly, pacing back and forth along the worn ruby rug. "I wanted to be punished. I wanted everyone associated with me to be punished. For what I did."
"To the people in Sweetwater?" she asked cautiously, studying him from beneath the shield of her lashes.
He halted, watching her intently out of the corner of his eye, old instincts scenting a trap. "Where are you trying to lead me, counselor?" he asked, his voice a low, dangerous purr. Slowly, he moved toward her, his gait deceptively lazy, his gaze as hard as granite behind a devil's smile, one hand raised to wag a finger in warning. "What kind of game are you playin', 'tite chatte?"
Laurel curled her fingers into the fabric of her skirt and faced him squarely, her face carefully blank. "I don't play games."
Jack barked a laugh. "You're a lawyer. You're trained to play games. Don't try to fool me, sugar. You're swimmin' with a big shark now. I know every trick there is."
He stopped within inches of her, leaning down, meeting her at her level, his nose almost touching hers. In the soft lamplight his eyes sparkled like onyx, hard and fathomless.
"Why don' you just ask me?" he whispered, his whiskey-hoarse voice cutting across her nerve endings like a rasp. "Did you kill her, Jack? Did you kill your wife?"
She swallowed hard and called his bluff, betting her heart on his answer. "Did you?"
"Yes."
He watched her blink quickly, as if she were afraid to take her eyes off him for even a fraction of a second. But she held her ground, brave and foolhardy to the last. And his heart squeezed painfully at the thought. She was waiting for a qualification, something that would dilute the truth into a more palatable mix.
"I told you I was bad, angel," he said, stepping back from her. "You know what they say, blood will tell. Ol' Blackie, he always told me I'd be no good. I shoulda listened. I coulda saved a whole lotta people a whole lotta grief."
He drifted away from her in body and mind, losing himself in a past that was as murky as the bayou. Wandering across the room, past the heavy four-poster with its sensuous drape of white netting and its tangle of bedclothes, he found his way to another set of French doors and stood looking out into the dark. The wind had come up again and chattered in the branches of the trees, a natural teletype of the next storm boiling up from the Gulf. Lightning flashed in the distance, casting his hard, hawkish profile in silver.
Laurel moved toward him, skirting the foot of the bed. She should have left him. Regardless of the details she was waiting to hear, he was trouble. She may even have had cause to be frightened of him-Jack, with his dual personality and his dark secrets, a temper as volatile as the weather in the Atchafalaya. But she took another step and another, her heart drumming behind her breastbone. And the question slipped past her defenses and out of her mouth.
"What was her name?"
"Evangeline," he whispered. Thunder rattled the glass in the windows, and rain began to fall, the scent of it cool and green and sweet. "Evie. As pretty as a lily, as fragile as spun glass," he said softly. "She was another of my trophies. Like the house, like the Porsche, like crocodile shoes and suits from Italy. It never penetrated the fog that she loved me." He ducked his head, as if he still couldn't believe it.
"She was the perfect corporate wife for a while. Dinner parties and cocktail hours. Iron my shirts and brew my coffee."
Amazed by the sting of his words, Laurel wrapped an arm around an elegantly carved bedpost and anchored herself to it. This woman had shared his life, his bed, had known all his habits and quirks. But she was gone now, forever. "What happened?"
"She wanted a life with me. I loved my work. I loved the game, the challenge, the rush. I was in the office by seven-thirty. Didn't go home most nights until eleven, or one, or two. The job was everything.
"Evie started telling me she wasn't happy, that she couldn't live that way. I thought she was temperamental, cloying, selfish, punishing me for working hard so I could give her fine things."
Regret burned like acid in his throat, behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw against it, whipped himself mentally to get past it. "The first Sweetwater story had broken, and I was working like mad to cover the company's ass in triplicate. I barely took time to shave or eat."
Tension rattled through him like the thunder shaking the windowpanes as the scenes played out in his memory. His emotions rushed ahead frantically, knowing the ending, torn between the need to protect himself and the need to punish. He drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils and curled a fist into the fragile old lace of the curtain.
"One night I came home in a bitch of a mood. Two o'clock. Hadn't had a meal all day. There wasn't anything in the kitchen. I went looking for Evie, spoiling for a fight. Found her in the bathroom. In the tub. She'd slit her wrists."
"Oh, God, Jack." Laurel 's arm tightened around the pillar. She brought a hand to her mouth to hold back the cry that tore through her, but the tears still flooded and fell. Through them she watched Jack struggle with the burden of his guilt. His broad shoulders were braced against it, trembling visibly. In the lightning glow she could see his face, his mouth twisting as he fought, chin quivering.
"The note she left was full of apologies," he said, his voice thickening, cracking. He cleared his throat and managed a bitter smile. "'I'm sorry I couldn't make you need me, Jack. I'm sorry I couldn't make you love me, Jack.' Sorry for the inconvenience. I think she did it in the bathtub so she wouldn't leave a mess."
This time when the urge came, Laurel let go of the post and let herself go to him. "She made her own choice, Jack," she murmured. "It wasn't your fault."
When she started to lay her hand against the taut muscles of his back, he twisted away and swung around to face her. His eyes were burning with anger and shame, swimming with tears he refused to let fall.
"The hell it wasn't!" he roared. "She was my responsibility! I was supposed to take care of her. I was supposed to look out for her. I was supposed to be there when she needed me. Bon Dieu, I might as well have taken the blade to her myself!"
He whirled and cleared a marble-topped table with a violent sweep of his arm, sending antique porcelain figurines crashing to their doom on the cypress floor. Laurel flinched at the sound of shattering china, but didn't back away.
"You couldn't have known-"
"That's right, I couldn't have," he snapped. "I was never there. I was too busy manipulating the illegal disposal of toxic waste." He threw back his head and laughed in sardonic amazement. "Jesus, I'm a helluva guy, aren't I? Huh? A helluva match for you, Lady Justice."
She pressed her lips together and said nothing. She couldn't condone what he'd done at Tristar-it was both illegal and immoral-but neither could she find it in her to condemn him. She knew what it was to get caught up in the job, to be driven to it by demons from the past. And she knew what guilt could do to a person, the changes it could wreak, the pain of it eating inside.
"You didn't kill her, Jack. She had other choices."
"Yeah?" he asked, his voice thin and trembling, his face a mask of torment. "And what about the baby she was carrying? Did he have a choice?"
The pain was as sharp as ever. As sharp as the razor blade that had ended his dream of a wife and a family. It sliced at his heart, severed what was left of his strength. He turned back to the French doors and leaned into the one that stood closed, pressing his face against the cool glass, crying silently while rain washed across the other side, soft and cleansing, never touching him. He could still see the pathologist's face, could still hear the disbelief in his voice. "You mean she hadn't told you? She was nearly three months along…"