Bound by Moonlight Page 20

  He was silent, then asked quietly, “How am I going to keep Oscar safe if they come for him again?”

  “What if it’s not about Oscar, Max?”

  His brows puckered. “What?”

  “What if it’s about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “LaRoche thinks it’s what you inherited from your mother and father that makes you so different—that makes you their promised one.”

  He laughed. “LaRoche believes in fairy tales. But the danger is real, no matter who’s the target. If I could have my way, you’d be locked behind these walls with nothing to keep you busy except attending to the two of us. Our own family.”

  Puppies.

  She stepped away. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” she said in a tight voice. “I don’t have Tina’s domestic talents. I was raised stripping handguns, not separating eggs for soufflés. Our Home Sweet Home was so awful that it sent my mother into a bottle until she finally ran away. And though my father stayed, he found his own way to escape me. So you see, I’m a bad bet.”

  “Charlotte, you’re my one sure thing. I’m not wrong about that.”

  “Just something for you to think about, Max. Because there’s no guarantee I won’t let us both down.”

  She bolted. Running from a pain and panic she couldn’t understand or suppress.

  MAX STOOD IN the parlor, staring out at her dust cloud in the driveway.

  A soft sound made him turn to see Tina Babineau in the doorway. She looked as miserable as he was trying not to feel.

  “Alain was so very polite—like we were strangers to him. Oh, Max, what are we going to do if he doesn’t want us back?”

  His answer came without conscious decision. “You’ll stay here, of course.”

  Nineteen

  CEE CEE STARED down at the packet of pills in her hand and listened to Dr. Judy explain the use and risks of birth control. Something she’d never had to consider before.

  “What if there’s a chance I might be pregnant?”

  “Your labs all came back clear.” Farraday’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been stupid and had unprotected sex since you were tested?”

  If she only knew. Not only stupidly unprotected, but outside her own species. “Let’s say I had.”

  “Taking birth control could irreparably harm the fetus or cause spontaneous abortion. If there’s a possibility, I’d suggest you wait a few weeks then get tested again. Or I could prescribe a morning-after pill, then there would be no worries.”

  Killing anything she and Max might have created between them.

  “I’ll wait,” she whispered.

  “And try practicing a little self-control. You’re not a ragingly hormonal fifteen-year-old, you know.”

  But as Cee Cee walked toward the front door instead of the back, where she usually entered, she felt like one—as confused, scared, and alone as the young girls seated in the lobby. She could hear LaRoche’s voice telling her the only way to pass on the pure genetic Shifter code was for a male to mate in his natural form. Had Max given her DNA that would make whatever they might have created into some kind of hybrid oddity?

  She could see again the poignant longing in Max’s face when he’d told her he wanted what Alain Babineau had. The pain in his eyes when she’d revealed she could never give him a child.

  What if she could now give him those things? A child to bind their love into a permanent commitment? A quiver of longing tightened low in her belly. The possibility thrilled and terrified her. Because she knew that wanting and having the dream of family were worlds apart.

  She was so steeped in her dismal brooding, she almost walked right through the crowded waiting area without noticing. The reflection of the pale neon glow in the barred front windows caught her attention, and she turned to stare.

  Half the wall was covered by a huge saltwater aquarium.

  “HOW ARE THINGS going tonight, Al?”

  Alain Babineau smiled amiably at his pseudo-employer. “Good, Mr. Blutafino. No trouble. Good door take, nice crowd.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Walk with me.”

  Babineau fell in step with him as he made his nightly pass through the club. “Mr. Blutafino, there is one thing.”

  “Manny. Call me Manny.”

  “Manny. Some of the girls are skittish about this ‘Tides That Bind’ crazy. They’re saying he has something to do with the club, and it’s stirring up a lot of nervousness. A couple of our headliners are even talking about quitting.”

  “Who’s spreading that horseshit around? I want them canned. Now. That’s all I need—some hysterical stripper taking out a good customer who just happens to like bondage.”

  “Maybe they’d feel better if they thought we were taking it seriously. You know, looking out for their best interests.”

  “Stupid whores.” He stopped and sighed heavily. “Oh, hell. Any ideas?”

  “I could make a show of checking out some of our more . . . peculiar customers. That ought to quiet them down some.”

  “Good idea. Quick thinking. I like that.”

  “Do you keep any kind of list of particular requests by client name?”

  “It’s all about knowing your clientele, Al, my boy.” He gave a sly wink.

  Blackmail. Big surprise. “Yes, sir.”

  “Ask Nick. He’ll get it for you. Just be discreet. Let the girls know, but don’t scare off the customers. We don’t want them to think we discourage naughty fantasies here.”

  Manny opened the door to his office, and Babineau almost walked right into the last person he expected to see.

  From the blank expression on the other man’s face, the feeling was mutual.

  “Right on time, I see. Simon, meet my new man, Al Babbit. He’s the kind of fast thinker who gets things done.”

  “Mr. Babbit, nice to meet you.”

  The detective shook Simon Cummings’s hand and murmured, “Likewise.”

  Manny slapped him on the back. “Go on and get started on that project, Al. Keep me posted. Simon, how ’bout a drink?”

  The door closed, and Babineau wondered if mayoral candidate Cummings was now blowing the whistle on him.

  “CAISSIE.”

  “Heya.”

  Cee Cee’s heart fluttered. “I can’t talk right now. I’m at work.”

  “I’m looking at the stage. She’s a nimble little thing, but she’s not you.”

  “At. Work.”

  “Ahh. News?”

  “Big-time.”

  “Shall I make reservations?”

  “Not just yet—but soon. Our clock’s running down on Kelly Schoenbaum.”

  “As in Detective Schoenbaum?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you ever mention that to me?” His gritty tone reflected his shared animosity with Stan Schoenbaum.

  “Because this is about her, not him. Or you.”

  “I’ll let you get back to it. Let me know when I should make that phone call. Until then, I won’t bother you.”

  She sighed. “Max? It’s no bother.”

  A pause, then a low, warm, “Good night, Charlotte.”

  “And I found the aquarium. I owe you big-time.”

  “I intend to collect.”

  She smiled for a moment after hanging up, then dug into her research for the rest of the evening hours. She was so involved that she gave a startled jump when Babineau and Schoenbaum cast a shadow across her desk.

  “I hope you brought coffee and something greasy,” she said.

  Babineau set a jumbo cup of java and a bag of burgers and fries on the desk in front of her. She inhaled the scents rapturously.

  “Good man. Sit down. I’ll fill you in while I feed the brain cells.”

  Between bites, she told them what she’d discovered while they’d finished out their shifts.

  Judith Farraday, physician to the millionaire set, had established an exclusive practice with her husband, Dean, and her sister, Carol Lamb, alon
g Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. A tour with Doctors Without Borders opened her eyes to true suffering and she donated more and more time to clinics serving the poor. She signed up for visits to underdeveloped countries where medical care was nonexistent. On her last trip with her husband and sister, disaster struck in the form of rebel uprising.

  The fact that they were doctors and Americans kept them alive after the initial slaughter. Their three months of captivity in steaming jungles, in the hands of crazed men, was an unimaginable horror—especially for the women.

  As negotiations for ransom broke down and government reprisal grew closer, the three American doctors became a liability rather than a bartering tool. Dean Farraday, a respected plastic surgeon and rehabilitation specialist, was found dismembered. A grainy film of the carnage performed in front of the traumatized sisters was sent to various international concerns with demands for money and guns. When they got no response, Carol Lamb’s grisly murder was the next film sent out. That sparked an even greater uproar in medical and humanitarian circles.

  A battered, nearly catatonic Judith Farraday was rescued by a team of Special Forces and rushed to an exclusive hospital in the States. After seven months, she returned to the public eye giving interviews and speeches about human rights, and began founding clinics in the name of her slain loved ones.

  During that missing seven months, Cee Cee discovered after laborious digging, Judith Farraday had a son. A child born of the rape and horror she’d suffered. A son who would be about twenty-six years old now.

  Donald Lamb was a secret hidden away by Farraday money. In foster homes for the first eight years of his life, then institutionalized for the next ten, Donny Lamb was a dangerous mix of uncontrollable psychosis and mild retardation. His fondness for setting fires and hurting playmates as a child pushed him into a roller coaster of rapidly revolving care and intensive therapy.

  Judith Farraday paid the bills and stayed away until Donny was eighteen. When he was ejected from his group home for the attempted rape of his therapist, Dr. Judy stepped in to assume responsibility. And there the trail ended as she moved from state to state establishing her clinics.

  Until eight months ago, when Dr. Farraday opened the doors of her facility in New Orleans and Donald Lamb showed up as an employee at a Cajun Life reenactment park doing simple jobs.

  “He has Kelly,” Schoenbaum said.

  Cee Cee pressed a staying hand over his clenched fist. “I’d put money on it.” She looked up at her partner. “Match the cities where she set up clinics to any similar unsolved murders. I think our boy has a bad habit Mom’s been trying to outrun. Stan, you set up surveillance on the doctor. Let’s see where she takes us.”

  Stan looked past her, eyes narrowing. “Speaking of bad habits.”

  Cee Cee glanced around, surprised to see Max striding down the aisle of desks toward them. His stare knifed between the two detectives before settling on her, heating her with an unmistakable fire.

  “Detective, I thought I’d stop in with sustenance and news.” He glanced at the crumpled wrappers and empty cup. “I see I’m too late for the first.”

  She snatched the paper bag from his hands. “What did you bring me?” She buried her nose in the bag and sniffed. “Chickory and chocolate. Oh, baby. The way to my heart.” Her hand reached out to curl around his. “Thanks. And the news?”

  “Ahh, the second half of what makes me useful. Information.” His hand eased out of hers. “That scent. It’s not from a man. It belongs to—”

  “Doctor Judith Farraday.”

  He gave her an admiring smile. “Yes. She came into the club to check a girl’s twisted knee. I looked for your partner, but he’d already gone.”

  Cee Cee smiled. “She has an aquarium in her clinic.”

  “Nice work, Detective.”

  “Good information, Savoie.”

  Schoenbaum snarled, “Kissy face later. I want my little girl back.”

  “Let’s get to it then.” Cee Cee became all business. “We want to move fast but carefully. We don’t want to spook them.” She looked up at Max again. “Do you know where LaFont’s Living Cajun Life Museum is?”

  His posture tensed. “Over by Rayne. Why you want to know?”

  “Because we’re going to pay a little after-hours visit.”

  CEE CEE CALLED the caretaker for the museum so he could meet them when they got there. It was already after two A.M. and he wasn’t pleased about being dragged from his bed for reasons she wouldn’t discuss over the phone.

  The Camaro’s headlights cut through ribbons of fog as the drive grew more and more desolate. With every mile, Max withdrew into an even deeper silence. He nearly cleared seat leather when she touched his knee.

  “You didn’t have to come with me,” she said.

  “Worried I can’t cover your back as well as your partner?”

  “No. No one covers my back the way you do.” After she earned a faint smile with that naughty insinuation, she added, “What’s wrong, baby?” She could feel his tension as she rubbed his thigh.

  “I don’t know.” Then he added quietly, “I don’t like being out here after dark.”

  “Because of your mama?”

  “I guess.” He stared out the side window at the gnarled shadows of the bayou.

  “The dream you had, the one about the pearls.” At his surprise she soothed, “I shared it with you at the motel. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  He inhaled slowly, then his breath shivered out. “Nothing to tell. I don’t remember much of what actually happened.”

  “Just what Jimmy told you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Did he tell you about your mama’s pearls?”

  “I don’t recall that he did.”

  “That must have been something you saw, then.”

  “Must have been.” His tone was as taut as his posture. His fingers started picking at the piping around the edge of the seat. After listening to the repetitive sound for one minute too many, she put her hand over his and held it tight. His skin was clammy and damp.

  “You don’t have to talk. It’s okay.”

  “She used to wear them all the time. They were the only nice thing she had. I remember reaching for them when she’d rock me to sleep, remember the feel of them between my fingers. My father gave them to her.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No. She never told me anything about him. He gave Tina Babineau a string just like them.”

  A cold knot balled up inside her. “Family tradition?”

  He followed her uneasy logic and explained softly, “I didn’t know about what he’d done when I gave them to you. I wanted you to have them because they reminded me of someone else I loved.”

  The knot loosened. “She was wearing them when she died?”

  “I caught them as she was falling. The string broke and they fell into the water. I remember standing there, just watching them drop.”

  His eyes squeezed shut.

  Mama! Mama, please don’t leave me!

  “Did they hurt you, baby?” Her voice was rough with care.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t want to remember.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

  He turned to her. “That girl on Dovion’s table. That same smell was on her—the one I remember from those days and nights alone. And when I looked into her eyes, I could feel her last thoughts. She was so hungry and scared and hurt. It threw me back there again, Charlotte. It threw me hard and shook me up something awful. Made me start to remember things that I wanted to believe were just bad dreams.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Max?” She held his hand tight. “You said, ‘Don’t open the door.’”

  He kneaded her hand, his breathing unsteady. “It was something Jimmy taught me. He told me to push all the bad things into my closet and shut the door. As long as the door was closed, they couldn’t get out. They couldn’t hurt me.”

  “No wonder
you have such a big-ass closet.”

  A hoarse laugh. He’d been so terrified, he’d slept under the bed at night, peering out from under the drape of the spread to keep a watchful eye in case that door came open and all the horrors he’d hidden away came spilling out. He still couldn’t rest easy if it was ajar.

  She was silent for a time, eyes on the road, warming his hand with her own. “Maybe some doors need to be opened.”

  He went still as she continued to muse.

  “Maybe that’s our problem, Max. Both of us spend so much energy trying to hold back the past, we can’t enjoy the present and we can’t consider the future. I didn’t make that up—I’m not that profound. Dr. Forstrom, my shrinkologist, told me that. What in our musty old closets can hurt us if we open them together?”

  “You have no idea what’s stored away in there.”

  And he had no idea what she’d been hiding.

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” She hoped her light, teasing tone would coax him into considering it, even though the very idea scared her spitless as well.

  “Right.”

  “You bet your sexy ass, I’m right.”

  “No, I mean turn right.”

  “Shit.” She cranked the wheel, sending the muscle car into a two-wheeled hop as she whipped around the corner.

  “It should be coming up here on the left.”

  She steered into the big parking lot that would fill with tour buses in a few more hours. At three A.M., just one small pickup was sitting close to the entrance gate. She pulled in beside it and stopped.

  “I like having sexy shoes in there,” Max said.

  “What?” She turned to him in question.