Hall, Jessica (35 page)

"Caine, please," Sable said. "It's not too late—you
can leave right now before anything else happens."

"I do have business here,
chère."
He took a knife
from his belt and turned it, letting the light dance over the deadly silver
edge.

Moriah couldn't take her eyes off the blade, even when he used it
to slash a length of velvet cord from one of the drape tiebacks. She pushed
Laure behind her as he approached them, and held out her fists. "I won't
let you touch her."

"I don't want her. I want you." He held the knife tip to
her throat.

His eyes were so black that she couldn't see the pupils. "I
will fight you," she whispered.

"Would you?" He stared at her trembling lips for a
moment. "Hold out your arms."

She glanced down at the knife and then lifted her arms. Quickly he
looped the cord around them, putting the knife away only once her wrists were
bound like Sable's. He left enough cord to pull her toward him with it.
"Let's go."

"My parents are rich; they'll pay you whatever you
want," Moriah told him. "So you only need me. Let Sable and Laure
go."

Caine tied the two younger women together and locked them in one
of the second-floor bedrooms. He had lied to Laure about having the house
surrounded—his men had no idea where he was—but she was still waiting in the
library for him when he returned.

"Who are you?" Though she looked ashen, she presented a
calm and dignified demeanor, as if he were just a troublesome door-to-door
salesman. "What do you want?"

"I want the truth, lady." The fragility of her bones
made him careful with his grip on her arm. "Show me where your husband's
personal papers are."

She led him out of the library, down the hall, and into a large
and beautifully furnished study. "Perhaps if you tell me specifically what
you're looking for, I can find it for you."

He released her. "Bank records and personal
correspondence."

She went to the desk and opened a drawer. "Marc kept his
business accounts at his office." She removed a large clasped envelope.
"These are the statements from the last six months."

Caine locked the door to the study and pushed a chair against the
knob for good measure. "Open it."

Laure removed the financial statements and set them out on the
desk.

"Sit down over there." Caine waited until she lowered
herself onto an armchair in front of the desk; then he turned on the lamp and
sat down in LeClare's comfortable executive leather chair.

He kept his expression blank, but inside he was still
reeling
from finding blood splattered all over the inside of Billy's trailer. Either
Billy was dead, or he'd killed Cecilia—or maybe both of them were dead. There
had been a lot of blood.

Maybe the wife knows who else was involved.
"You
saw your husband the day he was murdered, didn't you?"

She lifted her chin. "I'm not going to discuss my husband
with you."

"Yes, you are." He began skimming through the documents.
"Twenty-nine years ago he paid my father ten thousand dollars to burn down
a house. I imagine he had to pay Billy fifty thousand or better to burn his
marina and his processing plant. Was there someone else on his payroll?"

She sniffed. "Why in heaven's name would my husband burn his
own properties?"

"To blame Cajun fishermen like me for doing it, and get more
goddamn laws made against us. Maybe he wanted the insurance money, too."
He flipped through to the end of the statements. "I don't see it. Where's
the rest of the year?"

"The other records for last year are at our accountant's
office. He's preparing our tax return." She half rose from the chair when
he jerked open a drawer and began tearing through it. "I'm sorry you're
angry, but this will solve nothing. My husband is dead."

Moriah listened. "He must have gone back downstairs. I don't
hear anything."

"We've got to get loose." Sable tugged experimentally on
the short length of cord binding them. They
were both sitting side by
side on the floor next to the wall, where Caine had left them tied together by
their wrists and ankles. "If you can reach over with me, I think I can
untie the one on our legs."

"Okay." The blond girl stretched over with her, and
remained still as Sable plucked at the knot. "How did you get involved
with that man?"

"He kidnapped me." Sable bit her lip as the stubborn
knot eluded her numb fingers. "He hasn't done anything but drag me around
the city. I don't think he'll hurt Mrs. LeClare."

"If he does, I'll kill him."

"I'll help you." Finally the knot loosened and she
groaned. "Almost there, just another minute." She worked her foot
until she was able to tug free of the cord. "Can you stand up?"

"Uh-huh." Moriah tucked her feet under her and braced
her back against the wall as she rose. "What'll we do about our
hands?"

Sable looked around the room and saw a hand mirror on the dresser.
"Over here." She led the younger girl to the dresser and picked up
the mirror. It was a beautiful antique, with a heavily ornate, solid silver
back. "Seven years' bad luck, you know."

"Do it." Moriah turned her head away as Sable smashed
the mirror, then examined the pieces. "That one looks long enough."

Sable gingerly picked up the mirror shard and carefully inserted
one jagged end between their wrists. "Hold still. I don't want to cut
you." Carefully she began working it against the cord.

Moriah watched with a frown. "I can't believe you're helping
me, after what we did to you."

Sable stopped cutting. "What did you do?"

"You don't remember me? I was a member of the
sorority
at Tulane," the blond girl said. "I was there that night, outside the
dorm."

"I thought your voice sounded familiar." Sable studied
her face for a moment. "I remember. You were the one who told them to stop
and leave me alone."

"For what good it did." Moriah hunched her shoulders.
"I've been carrying around the memory of that night for a long time. If I
could take back what we did—"

"What
they
did. You didn't do anything." Sable
went back to cutting, then stopped and put down the mirror shard. "Try pulling
away from me now."

They strained and twisted, and the cord suddenly broke, freeing
their wrists. From there it was just a matter of unpicking each other's knots,
which they finished a minute later.

Moriah rubbed her wrists. "We should split up. Do you think
you can get past his men outside and get to one of the neighbors' houses?"

"I think he was lying about the men. Wait." Sable
sniffed the air. "Do you smell that?"

The other girl breathed in deeply, and her eyes widened.
"Dear God, it can't be."

Sable went to the locked door and looked down to see white curls
of smoke seeping through the small gap at the bottom. She touched the doorknob
and found it cool. "We have to get out of here."

"Watch out." Moriah picked up a heavy floor lamp and
used it like a battering ram on the door. Sable grabbed the elongated lamp base
from the other side and helped her shove it against the door.

When they broke the lock and the door swung out, clouds of smoke
billowed into the room. Pulling up her T-shirt to cover her mouth and nose,
Sable moved out into the hall and looked over the landing rail.

J. D. met Terri outside the station when she got off work.
"You look like you've been rode hard and put away wet."

"You have no idea." She rolled her shoulders. "Any
word on Gantry or Sable?"

"No, nothing. You have any luck with the records?"

"Marc LeClare kept his books spotless." She walked with
him to the parking lot. "He had to, with the campaign contribution
auditors looking over his shoulder and so forth. I don't really think I'm going
to find anything."

"I don't think you will, either."

She stopped and threw out her arms.
"Now
you tell
me?"

"I talked to Marc's attorney this afternoon. Jacob said that
Marc had called him the night before he died, to make an appointment to change
his will." J. D. stopped beside her car. "Up until then, Laure
LeClare was the sole beneficiary. You want to know how much his estate is
worth?"

"More zeros than I can count, I imagine. We should talk to
her." Terri made a face. "I mean, I should go and type, you should go
file for unemployment, and
Garcia
should talk to her."

"I'm still a friend of the family." J. D. eyed her.
"You wanted vacation time, right?"

"Yeah." His partner sighed and pulled open her door.
"I hate breaking in new partners anyway."

On the way to the LeClare mansion, she pulled out her pack of
cigarettes. "J. D., just remember, she's an important lady. You can't just
accuse someone like her of bumping off her husband without hard evidence."

"She could have paid someone to do it for her." He
took
Terri's lighter and lit the cigarette for her. "Figure it this way: Laure
and Marc are engaged; then Marc falls in love with Ginny, gets her pregnant,
breaks up with Laure. Ginny disappears, comes back with a kid. She must have
tried to contact him, and Laure got wind of it. So she hires someone to kill
Ginny and the baby. Marc thinks they're dead, she consoles him, and they get
married."

Terri took a deep drag and sighed out the smoke. "Okay, I buy
that. So Sable's mom dies, and she finds out Marc's her father, and meets him.
Marc is overjoyed; Laure isn't. I don't know, J. D. She came across to me and
Cort like she would have welcomed Sable with open arms."

"After all those miscarriages she had, Laure finds out that
Ginny gave him the one thing she couldn't— a child. How would you feel in her
place?"

Terri thought for a minute. "Pretty pissed."

He nodded. "So then Laure finds out Marc plans to publicly
acknowledge his illegitimate daughter. Which will wreck his campaign and ruin
her public standing and dignity. They argue. Maybe he tells her he's going to
change his will, too, leave half of everything to Sable—a poor Cajun girl with
no background and no breeding." His phone rang, and he answered it.

"You'd better get over to the Garden District," Cort
said without preamble. "We've got in a call at the LeClare mansion.
Someone reported seeing Caine Gantry and Isabel going in just before the fire
broke out. My trucks are rolling now."

J. D. checked their location. "We're two blocks away."
He switched off the phone. "Laure LeClare's house is on fire and Sable and
Caine are still inside." He looked and saw the faint outline of black
smoke billowing up ahead.

"Shit." Terri slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

The fire at the old mansion was burning out of control by the time
they reached the property, flames lighting up the night sky. J. D. parked as
close as he dared and jumped out of the car. He and Terri ran to the first
neighbor they saw.

"Did everyone get out?" he shouted over the noise of the
approaching sirens.

The frightened woman shook her head. "No one's come out at
all."

The house was burning too fast, J. D. realized. By the time the
fire crews arrived with the trucks it would be completely engulfed in flames.

As he and Terri ran up the drive, she pointed to a set of French
doors on one side leading into a small garden. "We could break those in,
use the garden hose."

As she unwound the coil of green hose from the wall clip, J. D.
peered inside. The interior was too smoky for him to see much, but he thought
he could make out two figures struggling with something. "Spray me
down," he told Terri.

She gave the house a wild look. "J. D.—"

"She's in there—do it."

Terri turned on the hose and sprayed him from head to toe. When he
was wringing-wet, he picked up a large decorative stone and smashed one of the
glass panes of the doors, then reached inside to unlock them.

He crouched over as he hurried into the smoke-filled room, which
was like walking into hell. "Sable!"

Someone nearby coughed and cried out, "Here!"

He followed the sound and found Sable and Moriah on their hands
and knees, struggling to drag an unconscious Caine Gantry between them.