"You okay, sugar?" Jack whispered. He didn't even try to stop himself from slipping his arms around her and pulling her back against him. She had gone pale too suddenly, her eyes were too wide. He bent his head and pressed a kiss to her temple. "Come on. We'll take a look and get the hell outta here."
Like every other room they had seen, this one was immaculate, impeccably decorated, strangely cold-feeling, as if no one lived here-or the one who did was not human. Not a thing was out of place. Every piece of furniture looked to be worth a fortune. Nothing appeared to have sentimental value. There were no photos of family, no small mementos of his youth. A barrister's bookcase between the windows held another collection of antique books-first editions of erotica that dated back to Renaissance Europe. But there was nothing else, no jewelry, no weapons, no photographs.
Disappointment pressed down on Laurel. She should have known better than to think Danjermond would make it easy on her, but she had hoped just the same. Now that hope slipped through her grasp like sand. If the evidence she needed wasn't here, then it could be anywhere in the Atchafalaya.
And with the disappointment came self-doubt. What if she was wrong? What if the killer was Baldwin or Leonce? Or Cooper. Or some nameless, faceless stranger.
No. She closed the last drawer on the dresser and straightened, rubbing her fingers against her temples. She wasn't wrong. She hadn't been wrong in Scott County; she wasn't wrong now. Stephen Danjermond was a killer. She knew it, could feel it, had always felt something like wariness around him. He was a killer, and he thought he was going to get away with murder.
If she couldn't find one way to implicate him, Laurel knew she would have to find another. And the longer it took her, the more women would die, and the more time Danjermond would have to build a case to frame Jack. The longer he would play his game with her, destroying her credibility, her confidence, her belief in a higher law than survival of the fittest.
"Let's go," she whispered, hooking a finger through a belt loop on Jack's Levi's and pulling him away from the bookcase. "I doubt he'll be back from the dinner for another hour, but we can't take chances."
"Wait."
It hit Jack like an epiphany as the flashlight beam swept across the collection of books. A trio bound in faded red leather sitting side by side by side on the upper left-hand shelf. L-Petite Mort, volumes one, two, and three. The Little Death. His eyes had scanned past them when he'd first realized that this collection was erotica. Erotica-the little death-orgasm. The title hadn't seemed out of place, but as he guided the beam of the light across the bindings, a sixth sense tensed in his gut like a fist.
Gently, he lifted the glass panel on the front of the case and slid it back out of the way. The three volumes came off the shelf as one.
Emotion lodged like a rock in Laurel's throat as she shone the light across a tangle of earrings and necklaces. More than six pieces. Many more. Tears swimming in her eyes, she reached in with a tweezers she'd pulled from her pocket and lifted out a heavy gold earring. A large circle of hammered gold hanging from a smaller loop of finely braided strands of antiqued gold.
"This is-" The present tense stuck to the roof of her mouth. She swallowed it back and tried again. "This was Savannah's. She had a pair made in New Orleans. A present to herself for her birthday. She was wearing the other one when they found her."
Jack kept his silence as they watched the gold hoop turn and catch the light. There were no words adequate to assuage the kind of pain he heard in Laurel's voice. Gently he closed the box and returned it to its spot in the bookcase. Laurel just stood there, her gaze locked on the earring, her eyes bleak. Jack slid an arm around her shoulders and bent his head down close to hers.
"You got him, sugar," he whispered. "That's the best you can do."
"I wish it were enough," Laurel murmured. She handed him the flashlight and dropped the earring into a Ziploc bag.
They took a final, quick glance around the room to make certain they had left everything as they had found it, then Laurel led the way into the hall, flashlight scanning the floor ahead of them-until the beam fell on a pair of polished black dress shoes.
Her first instinct was to run, but there was nowhere to run to. He stood between them and the head of the stairs. Behind her, Jack swore under his breath.
Slowly, she raised the flashlight, up the sharp, flawless crease of his black tuxedo trousers and higher, until the beam spotlighted the barrel of a silencer on the nine-millimeter gun he held in one hand and the pair of small canvas sneakers he held in the other.
"I believe these are yours, Laurel," he said in that same even tone of voice he used for all occasions. "How considerate of you to take them off."
"What happened with the League of Women Voters?" she asked, a small, detached part of her mind wondering how she could be so calm. Her pulse rate had gone off the chart. Her blood pounded so in her ears, it was a wonder she could hear herself think. And she asked him about his dinner as if this were the most normal of circumstances.
Danjermond frowned in the pale wash of light that reached his face. "In view of all the recent tragedies, I thought it inappropriate to allow the festivities to go on as they would have ordinarily."
"A selfless gesture."
A small, feline smile tucked up the corners of his mouth. "I can be a very generous man, when I so choose."
"Did you 'so choose' with my sister?" Laurel asked bitterly, her voice trembling with rage, her left hand trembling badly enough to rattle the small plastic bag holding Savannah's earring.
He tipped his head in reproach, but his gaze went directly to the evidence, and anger rolled off him like steam. "Now, Laurel, you don't really expect me to answer that, do you?"
"You might as well," Jack said, easing out from behind Laurel. He took a step and then another to Danjermond's left, forcing him to split his attention between them. "You're gonna kill us now, too-right?"
Danjermond contemplated the question for a moment, finally deciding to be magnanimous and gift them with an answer. "C'est vrai, Jack, as you might say yourself. It isn't quite according to my plan, but adjustments must sometimes be made."
"Sorry to inconvenience you," Jack drawled sarcastically, moving a little forward, enough to draw Danjermond's full concern. The barrel of the gun swung even with his chest.
"That's near enough, Jack. Don't come any closer."
"Or what?" Jack taunted. "You'll shoot? You're gonna shoot anyway. Dead is dead."
"No, no, mon ami," Danjermond purred. "There is most definitely a difference between instant death and being made to beg for death. Your cooperation could make all the difference for Miss Chandler."
Jack weighed the odds, not liking them. Danjermond was going to kill them. Heaven only knew what kind of hell he planned to put them through. He had murdered at least six women, brutally, horribly. Jack had long ago ceased to care what happened to himself, but the idea of anything like that happening to Laurel was intolerable. He couldn't just stand helpless and let it happen. Damned if he was going to play into the hands of a madman.
Never looking away from Danjermond, he grabbed Laurel's arm and jerked it up, shining the beam of the flashlight in Danjermond's face, at the same time, twisting his body to shield Laurel and push her off to the side.
Danjermond swore and flung an arm up to block the blinding light. The gun bucked once in his hand, the explosion reduced to a soft thump by the silencer. A fat Chinese vase on a stand along the wall shattered, sending shards of porcelain flying in all directions. Water cascaded to the floor, and delphinium stems fell like pickup sticks.
Propelled by Jack's weight, Laurel stumbled sideways and fell to her knees. The flashlight sailed out of her grip and crashed to the floor, rolling out of her reach, sending bands of bright amber light tumbling across the wall. She tried to scramble after it, but Jack was in front of her and Danjermond beyond him, and it was clear the battle between them was far from over.