Don't Say a Word

The lieutenant exchanged a querulous look with the female cop, and Antwaun knew he was cooked. Trouble was, he wasn’t sure how. What did they have on him? On Kendra?

Sure, maybe he’d been an idiot. Gotten tangled up with a suspect. A woman who had slept with a man he’d been investigating for illegal activities.

And when she’d gone missing, he’d been curious, even suspicious at first. But reporting her missing would have blown his cover. And he’d wanted to put the guy away. Especially if he’d killed Kendra…

“Then what happened?” the lieutenant ordered in a brittle tone.

Antwaun chewed the inside of his cheek, then explained his reasoning. “She admitted that Swafford didn’t want to end things with her.” A river of tears had fallen afterward that had wrenched his heart. She’d claimed he’d blackmailed her into sex, trapped her into being with him, and that she wanted out. Shaking with rage toward Swafford, and tenderness toward her, Antwaun had drawn her into his arms. He’d have promised her anything to alleviate her pain and stop her cries. “Then she disappeared. I figured she’d left town to escape the bastard.”

“You reported her missing?”

Antwaun shifted. “Not exactly. I couldn’t let anyone know our connection. I asked around, but didn’t find anything.”

“You know I want to believe you.” The lieutenant tilted his head sideways, his deep-set gray eyes narrowed to slits. “Kendra Yates didn’t connect with Swafford by accident.”

Antwaun frowned. The ax was about to drop.

“Neither did she meet you by coincidence either.”

Anger burned a path down his belly as reality interceded. “She made me for a cop?”

The lieutenant offered a mirthless laugh. “Dammit, Antwaun. She didn’t just make you for a cop. She was a reporter working undercover. She came onto you for information.”

Antwaun gritted his teeth. “The jolie fille was a reporter?”

“Yes, the pretty lady was a reporter.” The lieutenant leaned forward, accusations brimming in his condemning eyes. “And guess what her story was about?”

Antwaun shrugged, but his mind was spinning. Now he understood why the press had pounced so quickly. “Swafford’s casinos, I suppose. It was common knowledge that he donated millions of dollars to rebuild them. She probably figured the same as we did, that he was crooked.” He moved to the edge of his seat. “Don’t you see? He probably found out who she was and killed her.”

Lieutenant Phelps grunted. “What do you know about Swafford’s operations?”

That he was linked to illegal activities. “I hadn’t found anything definitive yet. The man is a master at hiding his actions and his money.” He cleared his throat. “Then he disappeared. I figured it was to cover his ass, that he’d eventually resurface again.”

“You didn’t think that he might be dead?”

“Sure, the thought occurred to me. In fact, I was looking into the angle that one of his minions might have gotten selfish, wanted a bigger piece of the Swafford pie and offed him.”

Another possibility needled him. The fact that Swafford and Kendra might have run off together. That still could have happened, then the man discovered who she was and killed her. Swafford could have also faked his death and disappeared so he wouldn’t get caught. “Did Kendra have proof of his corruption?”

The lieutenant watched him with hooded eyes. “Not that we know of. But she had a theory.”

Antwaun ground his teeth, tiring of the game. “Which was?”

One black eyebrow rose a fraction. “You don’t know?”

Antwaun rolled his fingers into fists to rein in the anger churning in his gut. He’d been interrogated in the military behind enemy lines before and had handled it with aplomb. He had to get through this the same way. “No.”

The lieutenant’s eyes stabbed through him like lasers trying to cut out the truth he thought hidden behind Antwaun’s steel mask. “Kendra Yates was not only investigating Swafford, but also dirty cops.”

In spite of his control, the air whooshed from his chest in a painful rush. Fuck.

Their rendezvous took on an entirely new light. The seduction. The mind-blowing sex. The pillow talk.

Hell, he had thought he was in control, but he was a fool. She’d been using him all along, hadn’t fallen for him at all. Had she believed that he was on Swafford’s payroll? That he worked for the mob? That he might have killed Swafford? That he was dirty?

His gaze swung back to his superior as he mentally replayed their conversations. Kendra must have had notes on him. Notes that pertained to her story. Notes on things he’d said that might have been misinterpreted.

Holy hell.

They obviously thought he’d killed her because of something in her notes. Something that made it look as if he were on the take.

ESMERALDA PORTER, aka the Cat Lady, felt the tremble of the earth and the stench of death in the air. The whisper of danger rustled in the air as the winds rattled dry leaves from the weeping willow trees and sent them raining down onto the parched earth. In another place, it would have been a musical sound, but here the eerie, grating threads sounded like the devil’s voice, announcing his presence.

She searched the backwoods from her porch. The rumors of the devil in the bayou taunted her—legends of faceless monsters that roamed the land. Some wore smiles to masquerade their evil souls. Damned into the darkness, kissed by the devil’s breath, they licked quietly at the blood on their fingertips as they ate away at the vestiges of man’s humanity. Those had clawed their way through the dirt and debris of their own graves to rise again as if the devil had pushed them upward through the ground with spiny fingers. They preyed on the weak, leaving tattered bodies and hearts in their vicious wake like the swamp gators after a nightly feeding, jagged teeth crunching on bone.

Evil cannot be destroyed. Its black unbending heart beats on, old with rage, its tendrils of anger as choking as the twisted hands of lust that consumes man’s soul.

But the battle wasn’t over. She summoned the magic to help fight off the evil. After all, she was a traiteur, a healer, a soldier for good, though not a warrior herself.

Satan must have found a victim. A new soul to possess and carry out his vile will. Another source to spread pain and anger. She smelled his victory, a coppery scent like blood.

Her black cat, Midnight, slithered onto the stone hearth and yowled to the heavens, and her tabby, Persimmon, bellowed in a long-winded refrain of terror.

“Come here, ’tite chatte,” she murmured, scooping up the little cat in her lap. The wind chimes hanging from the porch of her wood-frame house trembled, though, tinkling and clattering so hard one of the glass angels shattered.

She pulled her black shawl around her shoulders, urging her arthritic body and mental will not to fail her. Though she’d been blind for years now, she saw things through the darkness. Living in a world without sight had honed her other senses, especially her sense of smell.

She knew each feline by its odor, as well as the unique tone of its meow, the texture as she ran a fingertip across its nose. Gorgon, an orange-striped male, climbed on top of the organ and peered out the window as if planting himself as guard against the danger waiting in the bayou.

A danger that marched closer with every passing minute.

She mentally flipped through the recipes from her book of spells, searching for one to fend off the bad coming. Not that she had power, for the magic lay in the cats.

Once upon a time, she had been a nonbeliever. But her life had taken a drastic turn into misery, and she had learned to listen to the spirits.

Her dead husband spoke to her sometimes, crying out his rage at being taken so early. Yet his demise had come from his own wrongdoings. And he had taken more secrets to his grave. Secrets that might have offered comfort and closure to some while tormenting others with the twisted viciousness of his crimes.

His transgressions were plenty. Not only to her but to humanity. And he was burning in eternity for them now.

She’d feared her grandson had fallen to the same demon. And now in death, he lingered, caught between realms. Begging for a chance to redeem his soul and go to heaven.

Titan, a fat gray cat who’d come to her during the latest storm of violence in the bayou, pawed the floor and snarled. Suddenly the earth trembled again, more violently this time, and the scent of graveyard dust filled her nostrils.

The cats slithered from their posts, tails swishing, ears perked, listening as they formed a circle. In unison, they began to scratch at the wooden floor, hissing to the heavens as they united to protect her.

But another woman needed protecting. Lex had told her so. The image of a mangled face and body materialized in her blind mind. The woman was nearby. In danger.

Someone had tried to kill her before. They’d stolen her life already. Her memory. Her face.