Christ, he knew that, didn't he? He wasn't responsible; it was someone else's fault.
His writer's mind too easily conjured up an image of Savannah lying dead along the bayou, sightless eyes staring up at an unmerciful heaven. Swearing viciously, he swept an arm across his desk, sending debris flying-manuscript pages, scribbled notes, a royalty statement, pens, paper clips. He snatched up a stack of copies of Evil Illusions and hurled them one by one across the room as hard as he could throw them, knocking a water glass off his dresser and sending an etched glass lamp crashing to the cypress floor.
He didn't want Savannah Chandler in his head. He didn't want Laurel Chandler in his heart. He didn't want responsibility, couldn't handle it. He'd proven himself time and again. He was his father's son, the product of his mother's weakness and his old man's hate.
And he had another corpse on his conscience.
Clutching his hands over his head, he howled his rage and his pain up at the plaster medallion on the ceiling.
Why? When he wanted nothing from anyone, when he had given up all hope of having the kind of life he had always dreamed of-why did he still get pulled in? He'd done his best to avoid emotional entanglements. He'd made it clear to everyone that he shouldn't be relied upon. Yet here he was, in it up to his ears. The frustration of it hardened and trembled inside him. Eyes wild, chest heaving, he swung around in search of something else to vent it on.
Laurel stood in the doorway.
Everything inside Jack went instantly still and soft at the sight of her. The anger that had cloaked him vaporized, leaving him feeling naked and vulnerable, his heart pumping too hard in his chest. She looked like a waif in her baggy jeans and rumpled T-shirt. Her eyes, so warm and blue, dominated her small, pale face.
"Savannah is dead," she whispered.
"I heard."
She crossed her arms and kicked herself for wishing he would come to her and wrap her up in his embrace. That was what she had come here for: comfort and to escape the sound of sobbing and the incessant ringing of the telephone. Reporters calling in search of a story, friends calling to express genuine sympathy, towns-people calling on the pretense of compassion to appease their morbid curiosity. She had come to escape the ghoulish bustle of cops searching her sister's room and hauling her car away and asking redundant questions until she wanted to scream. She had come in search of a moment's peace, but as her gaze scanned over the wreckage from Jack's rage, she had the sinking feeling she wasn't going to find any.
"I'm going down to Prejean's to see her."
"Jesus, Laurel…"
"I have to. She's-" She blinked hard and swallowed back the present tense, grimacing at the bitter taste. "She was my sister. I can't just let her go… alone…"
Tears glossed across her vision, blurring her image of Jack. She didn't want to let them fall, not yet. Not in front of anyone. Later, when night had come and she'd seen to all the duties she needed to, when she was alone. All alone… She had to be strong now, just like when Daddy had died. Only when Daddy had died, she had had Savannah to lean on.
Don't cry, Baby. Daddy's gone, but we'll always have each other.
She gulped a breath of air and tried to distract herself from the memory by making a mental list of the things she needed to do. See Savannah, see that the arrangements were being made, and that Mr. Prejean had the right clothes to put her in, and that pink roses were ordered. Pink roses were Savannah's favorite. She would want lots of them, with baby's breath and white satin ribbons.
The grief hit her broadside, like a battering ram, and staggered her, shattering the strength that had somehow managed to hold her up during the endless interview with Kenner and Danjermond. She fell to her knees amid the debris from Jack's desk and put her face in her hands, sobbing as it tore through her with talons like daggers.
"Oh, God, she's dead!"
Jack didn't give himself time to think about his own pain, his own needs, the distance he had meant to put between himself and Laurel. He couldn't stand by and watch her fall apart. He didn't have it in him to walk away. The love he never should have allowed to take root bound him there, drew him to her.
He knelt beside her and gathered her close, squeezing his eyes shut at the sound of her weeping. The sobs racked her body, making him acutely aware of how small she was, how fragile. He cradled her against him as if she were made of crystal, and stroked her hair and kissed her temple, and rocked her, crooning to her softly in a language he wasn't even sure she understood.
"I miss her so much!" Laurel choked the words out, a fist of regret and remorse lodged in her throat.
The feelings filled her, ached in her bones, in her muscles, like a virus. Loss. Such a terrible sense of loss, an emptiness as hard as steel inside her. It had been only a matter of hours, and yet the sense of loneliness was crushing.
Why? That one question arose again and again. Savannah's death seemed so senseless, so sadistic. What kind of God could allow such cruelty? Why? It was the same question she had asked twenty years ago, when her father had been taken away from her. No one had had an answer for it then, either.
That was perhaps the worst of it. She was a person with a logical, practical mind. If a thing made sense, had a reason behind it, she could understand at least. But things that struck from out of the blue defied logic. There was no reason, no explanation she might find some comfort in. That left her with nothing, nothing to cling to, not even hope, because in a world where anything might happen at any time, unpredictability shoved hope aside and left fear in its place.
"I hate this!" she whispered, her face pressed into Jack's shoulder. "I hate these feelings. God, I wish I'd never come back here!"
Jack rocked her, tightening his arms around her. "It wouldn't have mattered, angel. It wouldn't have changed anything."
Laurel thought of the trinkets the killer had left for her and wondered. Would he have sent them to someone else? Would he have killed some other woman's only sister?
Regardless of the answer, she was caught with the burden of guilt; someone died either way. Responsibility pressed down on her, just as it had in Scott County. She thought she would have given anything for the chance to get out, but she knew she wouldn't take the chance if it were offered. She was trapped by her own sense of duty and honor, stuck here in yet another nightmare.
"I'd undo it for you if I could," Jack said softly.
Jack, who claimed to be nobody's hero, would have gone back and changed history for her. Laurel slipped her arms around him and held on, knowing he wasn't the man to anchor her life to. But the need and the knowledge clashed inside her, and need won out for the moment.
"We can go away for a few days," he whispered. "Get away from it. I know a cabin over on Bayou Noir-"
"I can't." Laurel sat back a little, blinking up at him through her tears. She swiped a hand under her eyes and combed her hair back with her fingers. "I-I can't go anywhere. There are things to do-arrangements-" She swallowed hard and let the real reason come to the fore. "I have to find out who did this. Someone has to pay."
"And you have to be the one to catch him?" Jack said sharply, her sense of responsibility rubbing against the grain of his selfishness. He wanted her safe and all to himself, if not forever, then for a little while. "We've got a sheriff for that."
"The killer isn't sending the sheriff trophies from his conquests," she said bleakly. "He's sent me three."
The news hit Jack with the force of a baseball bat, leaving him incredulous, a little dizzy, a little sick. A murderer had singled her out. He sat back on his heels, his jaw slack, his fingers tight as he held her at arm's length. "He's sent you what?"
"An earring. I don't know whose. And Annie Gerrard's necklace. This morning I found a necklace of Savannah's in my pocketbook."
"Jesus Christ, Laurel! That's all the more reason to get the hell out!"
"That's what you'd do, Jack?" She arched a brow, studying him hard enough that he dropped his hands and glanced away. "Cut and run? I don't think so. For all you like to play it that way, I don't think you would. I know I can't."
"You'd rather end up with a silk scarf knotted around your throat?" he said brutally, his hands shaking at the idea of anyone's hurting her. The concern set everything inside him shaking. He never should have gotten involved with her. Of all the women he could have had, he'd fallen for the one who carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.