The knife gleams silver in the moonlight. The blade cuts delicately, with skill, slicing like a bow across the strings of a violin. The song it plays high-pitched and eerie. Human. A prelude to death.
And in the end, the instrument will fall silent, the prey will succumb. She will die as the predator believes she deserves to die-naked and defiled. Another dead whore left to rot in the swamp. A fitting end, a fitting place. And the predator will glide away in the bâteau, silent, safe, the secret shared with only the trees and the creatures of the night…
Laurel sat up suddenly, shaking, cold, her skin slick with sweat, her heart pounding. The nightmare faded as she grounded herself in reality, but the sounds of the children's cries still echoed in her mind, driving her from bed. She crossed to the highboy and pulled out another oversize T-shirt, trying to crowd the last of the dream from her brain. She was trembling violently, her stomach knotting with residual anxiety, and she cursed a blue streak under her breath, battling the weakness.
Her hand brushed across the bottle of tranquilizers tucked in among her underwear, left over from her stay at Ashland Heights. Dr. Pritchard had told her to take them when she needed help sleeping, but she wouldn't. No matter how badly she wanted to, she wouldn't take any. They were a crutch, another weakness, and she was so damn tired of being weak.
She changed quickly and went out onto the balcony, hoping to rejuvenate herself with fresh night air, but the air was heavy and warm, without a breath of a breeze. Folding her arms against herself to keep from shaking, she padded down to the French doors of Savannah 's room and peeked in. The bed was unmade, the rich gold-and-ruby spread a tangled drift across the mattress, lace-edged satin pillows mounded along the ornate French headboard and tossed carelessly onto the floor. The rest of the room had Savannah's stamp of housekeeping draped everywhere in the form of discarded lingerie and articles of clothing that had been dragged out of the closet and abandoned in favor of something brighter, skimpier, sexier, trashier.
Fear cracked through the other emotions that were thick in Laurel 's throat as a medley of lines played through her head. "Murders?"… "Four now in the last eighteen months… Young women of questionable reputa-tion"… "She gonna come to grief, dat one."…
She chewed hard on her thumbnail as she wrestled with the urge to call the police. She was being silly, jumping to conclusions. There was nothing unusual in Savannah 's staying out past two-or all night, for that matter. She could have been anywhere, with anyone.
With a killer?
"Stop it," she ordered, her voice a harsh whisper as she reined in the irrational urge to panic. Dammit, she wasn't an irrational person. She was logical and sensible and practical. Wasn't that what had saved her when she was growing up in the poisonous atmosphere of Beauvoir?
That and Savannah.
Her gaze fell again on the bed, and she jerked herself away and headed for the stairs that led down to the courtyard, her stride brisk and purposeful.
She was feeling unsettled, skittish. The evening at Frenchie's had rattled her, from her encounter with Baldwin to Savannah 's fight to Jack's tirade to the role she had agreed to play for the Delahoussayes. Truth to tell, that probably had her the most on edge. Tomorrow she would have to go down to the courthouse and see about solving the problem of Jimmy Lee Baldwin. She would have to go to work as if she had never stopped, as if she hadn't left her last job in disgrace. She would go into the halls of justice and face the secretaries, the clerk of court, the judge, other attorneys, Stephen Danjermond.
She had been mulling over that prospect as she walked home from Frenchie's. With Jack nowhere to be found, and the last rays of day still seeping through the gloom of evening, she had set off for Belle Rivière on foot, hoping to walk off some of the anxiety and self-doubt. But after only two blocks, a bottle green Jaguar pulled alongside the curb, its passenger window sliding down with a hiss.
"Might I offer you a ride, Laurel?" Stephen Danjermond leaned across the soft gray leather seats of the car and stared up at her, his green eyes glowing like jewels in the waning light. He smiled, that handsome, perfectly symmetrical smile, tinting it with apology. "As much as I enjoy bragging about our diminished crime rate in Partout Parish, I hate to see a lady take chances."
"I could be taking a chance with you, for all I know," Laurel said evenly, keeping her fists tucked in the deep pockets of her baggy shorts.
Danjermond regarded her with a touch of disappointment, a touch of amusement. "I think you know me better than that, Laurel."
She looked at him blankly, trying to cover her confusion. They had only just met, but somehow she knew if she pointed that out to him, he would only be more amused. She felt as if he were a step ahead of her in time, that she was coming into a play already in progress and missing her cue. If he could rattle her this much with a simple conversation, he had to be hell on wheels in a cross-examination. A man destined for great things, Stephen Danjermond.
She pulled open the door of the Jag and sank down into the butter-soft seat. "I don't know you at all, Mr. Danjermond," she murmured, her tone as cryptic as his expression.
"I intend to remedy that situation."
He let the car ease along the deserted street, silent for a moment, the Jag as quiet as a soundproof booth. He had shed his tailored suit for a knit shirt the color of jade and a pair of tan chinos, but he still looked immaculate, perfectly pressed.
"Dinner with your parents was an interesting occasion," he said.
"They're not my parents," Laurel blurted automatically, a hot flush stinging her cheeks as he looked at her with one dark brow raised in question. "What I mean to say is, Ross Leighton isn't my father. My father passed away when I was small."
"Yes, I know. Killed, wasn't he?"
"An accident in the cane fields."
"You were close to him." He stated it as a fact, not a question. Laurel said nothing, wondering how he knew, wondering what Vivian might have told him. Wondering if he was privy to Vivian's plans for the two of them.
He shot her another steady look. "Your aversion to Ross," he explained. "I suspect you never accepted his taking your father's place. A child loses a beloved parent, resentment toward the usurper is natural. Though I should think you would have gotten over it by now. Perhaps there's something more to it?"
The answer was none of his business, but Laurel refrained from saying so. Her skills were rusty, but the instincts were still there. Danjermond's were honed to perfection. He didn't have conversations, he had verbal chess matches. He was never off duty. Every exchange was an opportunity to exercise his mind, sharpen his battle skills. She knew; she had been there. She had been that sharp, that focused. She knew an answer to this question would put her in check.
"I'm sorry about the scene my sister caused," she said casually. " Savannah does love to be dramatic."
"Why are you sorry?" He stopped the Jag for the red light at Jackson and pinned her with a look. "You aren't the one who caused the commotion. You have no control over your sister's actions, do you, Laurel?"
No. But she wanted to have. She wanted control. She wanted the components of her world to fit neatly into place. No messes, no unpleasant surprises.
Danjermond's gaze held fast on her. "Are you your sister's keeper?"
She shook off the thoughts and kicked herself mentally for not seeing the potential hazards of this subject she had diverted them onto. "Of course not. Savannah does as she pleases. I know she won't apologize for disrupting Vivian's gathering, so I will. I was merely taking up the gauntlet for etiquette."
"Ah," he smiled, looking out over the hood of the car, "the gauntlet. You might have been a knight of the Round Table in a past life, Laurel. Galahad the Good, adhering to your strict code of honor."
He seemed amused, and it irritated her. Did he think he was too urbane, too sophisticated for the quaint, provincial ways of Bayou Breaux-he the privileged son of old New Orleans money?
"Hospitality is the Southern way. I'm sure you were raised to have better manners than to, say, interrogate a guest," she said sweetly, shifting to the offensive.