Hall, Jessica (9 page)

"Non, non."
The man approached, shaking
his head. He wore sun-faded work clothes, and his hands were heavily callused.
"Comment
est-ce que ceci s'est produit? Qui a fait ceci a vous?"

"Je suis tr
è
s bien
—I'm fine. The
police are still checking into things, Uncle." Sable ignored Terri, who
was trying to steer her away from the lobby. "Did you speak to Remy?"

"Oui."
Hilaire shot an ugly look at
J. D. "Your Papa, he had to take some of his pills, but he is well,
chère."

"Ms. Duchesne, we need to leave," Terri said, her voice
low. She caught J. D.'s gaze, and nodded toward the reporters on the other side
of the lobby, who were watching them with intense interest.

"This is my cousin Hilaire Martin and her father, my uncle
August," Sable said. "I'm going home with them."

"You can't." J. D. put a hand on her cheek and made her
look at him. "It isn't safe."

A reporter approached them, followed by a cameraman. "Excuse
me, is this the lady they rescued from the warehouse fire?"

"Get lost," J. D. said.

Terri stepped between them. "Nothing happening here, friend.
Move along."

The reporter ignored both of them and craned his neck to look at
Sable. "Ma'am? May I have your name? Were you friends with Marc
LeClare?"

Hilaire snorted. "She was more than friends."

Another reporter focused his attention on Sable's cousin.
"What sort of relationship did they have?"

Sable stared at her cousin. "Hilaire, shut up."

The other girl winced. "Right, uh, no comment."

"
J
.
D.?"

Terri swore softly under her breath.

J. D. swiveled around to see Moriah Navarre walking toward them.
Beside her was Laure LeClare, ashen-faced and leaning heavily against Moriah
while staring at Sable with wide, disbelieving eyes. Moriah also regarded Sable
as if she were some kind of ax murderess.

They'd obviously heard every word. As awkward situations went, it
didn't get worse—and then it did.

More cameras encircled them as reporters converged around them,
calling out questions to J. D., Sable, and the widow.

"Mrs. LeClare, can you confirm that your husband was the
victim found burned to death this morning in the French Quarter?"

"Was he murdered? Could the murder be politically
motivated?"

Sable cringed as the media pressed in. Terri Vincent started
calling out loudly for everyone to step back, but they weren't listening to
her. The same way it had been that night before the dance.

She was covered in filth, her dress ruined, everything she'd done
for nothing. She was on her hands and knees in the mud, where they said she
belonged.

But she didn't belong there. She'd done nothing wrong.

The biggest boy pulled her up and shoved a huge handful of gray
Spanish moss down the front of her ruined dress. "Don't forget your
corsage!" He kept his hand in long enough to squeeze her breast.

That was when all the feelings she had been holding back for
months erupted, and she snapped.

She wrenched out the boy's hand and the moss, and flung it in his
face. Then she bent down, filled her hands with mud, and started throwing it at
anything that moved.

"Don't you like my perfume?" She pelted the girls' fine
white dresses and the boys' immaculate tuxes. "Come on, try some on!"

The girls ran away screaming, and their boyfriends followed. Like
the cowards they were.

Other girls came out of the dorm and shrieked at Sable to stop.
She threw mud at them, too. She threw mud at anyone who came near her. It felt
wonderful. She stopped only when she heard someone shouting to call the police.
Then she walked away from the dorm and out to the highway, never stopping or
looking back. She paused to get most of the filth off her face, using her
pretty new gloves to wipe it away. As she waved down the truck, she dropped her
gloves by the roadside before climbing up and asking for a ride out to the
Atchafalaya.

She'd go home, and she'd stay there, where she belonged. And God
help anyone who came after her.

A
heavyset man grabbed Sable from the side. "What is your name?
Are you Marc LeClare's mistress?" He shoved a microphone in her face.

"Get away from me." Sable slapped the microphone away,
but the reporter pushed back. "Leave me alone!"

Terri shouted for assistance while J. D. made the grab to catch
Sable, but her head struck the corner of the elevator door frame with a loud
rap. He got his arms between her and the floor before she could hit it, but she
went limp. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

J. D. knelt and supported her head. "Sable?"

"Is that a first name, or last?" One of the reporters
pushed forward eagerly.

Terri elbowed him aside, crouched down next to J. D., and leaned
in. "Get her out of here; take her to the hospital."

J. D. gathered her up in his arms, stood, and used his shoulder to
ram his way through the throng of reporters. He strode past the gaping Moriah
and Laure, proceeded behind the reception desk, and pulled the keys for an
unmarked car from the vehicle board.

"I'm taking her over to Mercy," he told the desk
sergeant in a low, furious voice. "Tell these fucking piranhas she'll be
at Charity."

When Caine got back from the city, his men were already out on the
water. Only John had stayed behind,
and after one look at
Caine's face he got busy repairing some traps.

Caine called Billy's wife, Cecilia, who began crying as soon as he
told her that he'd fired Billy. He offered to have someone take her in until
her husband got over his latest binge, but she only hung up on him.

Someone would look after Cecilia anyway. Bayou people took care of
their own.

Caine kept the radio on while he worked on patching a hull, and
stopped only to listen to the latest update on the warehouse fire. It hadn't
been confirmed, but a source was quoted as identifying the body found at the
scene as gubernatorial candidate Marc LeClare. The reporters didn't have the
name of the young, redheaded woman who had survived the fire, or why she'd been
in the warehouse with LeClare.

Caine knew. He'd always known everything about her. But Isabel had
made her choices ten years ago, and so had he.

"Gantry."

Remy Duchesne's rasping voice echoed in the boathouse, but Caine
didn't look up from the hole he was patching on the port side of his fishing
boat. He'd been expecting a visit from his old boss all morning.
"Here."

The old man walked across to join him, and studied the work in
progress. "You run into something with that?" He nodded not at the
boat but at Caine's right hand, which was swollen and gashed across three
knuckles.

Caine thought about telling Remy about Billy, then looked up into
his ruined face and felt the old rage and shame crushing down on him, just as
heavy and immovable as ever. "Trap got wedged." He dropped the
brush
back into the can of liquid sealant he was using to waterproof the patch and
stood up.

Caine was bigger than anyone on the Atchafalaya, thanks to his bad
blood, and he had at least a foot and a half on Remy, who was short and
wire-thin. Still, when Caine looked at the twisted, raddled skin of his old
boss's face, he felt about six inches tall.

Caine's father, Bud Gantry, had been the one who put those scars
on Remy Duchesne's face.

"I need to talk to you," Remy said. "Just a
minute." Caine went down into the cabin and stepped into the tiny head,
then shut the door and leaned back against the wall.

After Bud went to prison, Caine's mother, Dodie, had been free to
devote herself fully to the two things she had loved more than Bud—drinking and
screwing whoever bought her a drink. Dodie had died of liver failure a few
years later, leaving sixteen-year-old Caine an orphan.

Even back then, everyone tried to look out for each other, but the
belligerent son of a bragging brute and a drunken whore didn't rate much
attention.

It had been Remy Duchesne who had helped Caine bury his mother,
and then had offered him a job checking traps and taking tourists out. Maybe it
was because Caine had always lived like a wild thing, or that Remy had noticed
him hanging around the bait shop. Caine had been proud, and wanted to refuse,
but the opportunity to be closer to Sable had been irresistible.

That had been all Caine had lived for—being close to Isabel
Duchesne. From the time she was a baby, he'd been spellbound by her. She was,
quite simply, the loveliest thing he'd ever seen.

Caine had stayed with Remy and watched the old man's little girl
grow into a beautiful woman. He'd
watched her win her
scholarship and head off to college, and had never said a word to her about how
he felt. Caine knew he'd never be good enough for her, but there was always a
little hope in his heart that someday she'd notice him. If he worked hard, and
lived right, maybe one day he could earn the right to take her out dancing
under the stars. It wasn't until the night that Sable ran away from Tulane that
he discovered how she truly felt about him.

He saw Isabel run across the old weathered boards of the pier,
stopping only to grab a small empty crate. When she got to the boathouse, she
stood on the crate, opened the window, and hoisted herself through, then closed
it behind her.

"Sable!" an angry voice called. "Where the hell are
you?"

Caine watched from the shadows as Sable pressed back against the
wall. She was shaking, tears streaming down her face, and her hair and skin and
delicate lace dress—her mother's dress—were dripping with filth.

He came up behind her, and put his big, bony hand over her mouth,
stifling the cry he knew she would make. "Shhh." He moved around her
until he stepped into the light from the window. "Just me."

Sable closed her eyes and slumped against him.

Caine had never held her in his arms before. It didn't matter that
she was covered from head to toe with muck. He was holding her, the girl he'd
loved for so long that he couldn't breathe without thinking of her. He held on
as long as he dared, then gently set her back to arm's length. "He do this
to you, chère?"

"No." She glanced at the window. "I slipped and
fell."

His black eyes narrowed. "You never fell in your life."

As the voice calling her name grew closer, a wrenching sob
exploded from her throat. "I can't face him, not like this." She
clutched at him, her small hands frantic. "Help me, please, Caine."

He wanted to go and rearrange Jean-Delano Gamble's pretty face,
but he settled for pulling her back into the shadows with him. He kept an arm
around her waist as he watched the window. As long as Jean-Del stayed away from
Sable, Caine wouldn't interfere. If Gamble came in after her, well, then all
bets were off.

Outside, footsteps pounded along the pier and then stopped just
outside of the shack. "Goddamn it, Sable! Have you lost your mind? How
could you do that to my friends?"

Caine pulled her closer, wanting the college boy to come in the
boathouse, willing him to go away for her sake.

"Last chance, Sable," Gamble shouted on the other side
of the shack's wall. "Do you hear me? You come on out here now and talk to
me, or we're finished."

Caine felt the change in her, how her shaking stopped, the way she
tensed her shoulders. She carefully eased away from his arm and stepped toward
the window.

He couldn't let her do it. He'd heard stories from her cousin on
what Gamble and his friends had done to her at that fancy college. She might
love him, but he didn't deserve her. No one did.

Before she could answer him, Caine grabbed her, clamped his hand
over her mouth, and hauled her back. She struggled, but he held her easily.
"No more of this, Isabel," he murmured next to her ear. "You let
him go now."

Outside Gamble kicked something, and wood cracked. "Look at
this pissant place. This is what you want? The swamp and the gators and
chopping fish bait all day? Is that why you threw mud at my friends? Because we
don't have to live like this?"

She stopped struggling.

"Fine." Another kick, and something hit the water with a
splash. "I'll go back and clean up your mess. You just stay the hell away
from me."