Stop Me (Last Stand #2)(75)
Author: Brenda Novak

The house looked just like his grandmother’s used to look. It had cheap knickknacks in every corner, a flour-sack dish towel hanging from a hook near the kitchen sink, doilies on every table and gilt-edged picture frames with photographs from years earlier.

Francis’s mother had lied for him in court. Didn’t she care that he’d be put back into society, that he might molest, if not kill, another child? What had she been thinking when she saw those images of Adele’s body shown in court? How could she not feel the poignant loss that’d made even the crustiest juror break down in tears?

He’d never understand, never fully grasp such a lack of human decency, he decided.

As he moved from the kitchen and the moonlight streaming in through the large window beside the door, the house became too dark to see. The blinds on the other windows were drawn, giving the place the feel of an underground burrow.

Refusing to fumble around, Romain found a switch and snapped on the light.

A black cat that’d been sleeping on a tattered recliner got up and stretched, regarded him indifferently, then jumped to the ground. Two others, almost identical to each other with short, gray fur, roused themselves from the sagging sofa, and a fourth, this one with a Persian-like coat, brushed past his leg. All four were adults and considerably overweight. One approached its bowl as he watched.

He could see why they’d chosen the living room instead of upstairs. The noise emanating from one of the bedrooms was deafening—so deafening Romain didn’t know how anyone could stand it. But, loud as it was, a voice suddenly rose above it.

“Mom? Where are you? Mom?”

At first Romain thought Dustin had heard him break the window and believed his mother was home. Or that he’d spotted the light from the living room. But a second later, he realized that whoever was calling for Mrs. Moreau didn’t expect a response. The words were more a wail, a lament.

The stairs creaked as Romain climbed them, but he doubted anyone could hear above that blaring TV. Whoever was in the back room was suffering. He’d heard the pain, the misery in that voice….

He walked down the hall, stopping in front of the last of three doors. “Dustin?”

The volume went off and silence reigned for several seconds. Then a voice called out, “Is someone there? Phillip, is it you?”

“It’s me.” Romain opened the door to find a shriveled man lying in a hospital bed. There was no light other than that coming from the muted TV, but Romain could see an IV trailing from the man’s arm and a tray across his lap, which held a bottle of water and two remote controls. A radio sat on a small table against the wall; the television was affixed to the wall above the bed, close to the ceiling.

The man’s sunken eyes widened as they latched onto Romain. “I know you!

You’re the man who shot Francis. I saw it on TV!”

Grabbing the metal rails of his bed, he tried to sit up but couldn’t. He pressed a button on one of his remotes, and the gears of the bed began to grind as they brought him up to a sitting position. “How’d you get in?”

“I broke the door.”

They stared at each other. Then Moreau’s brother, whom Romain wanted to hate simply because of who he was, said, “Are you here to kill me?”

Romain could’ve hated him had there been the slightest hint of fear in his voice. But there was no fear—only hope.

Jasmine had the truck running so she could get the heater to work, but she couldn’t stop shaking. She kept thinking about how quickly and easily she’d lost the most important people in her life—her sister, her mother, her father. Maybe her sister was the only one actually gone, but her parents had been absent since that same day, their absence even more painful because it involved rejection.

She couldn’t stand the thought of losing anyone else, of losing Romain.

Grouping him in the same category as her family didn’t make sense. She’d known him for less than a week. But he stirred something in her she’d never felt before, something powerful and all-consuming. Something that wouldn’t allow them to be friends once she left.

She finally understood what he’d been trying to tell her about passion. About intensity. About loving.

“No, not loving,” she muttered aloud. She couldn’t be in love. Not that fast.

She’d never even had a schoolgirl crush. She was too defensive, too cautious, too practical. She was concerned about Romain, that was all—as she’d be concerned about any man who’d broken into the home of a known murderer. She’d be worried about Harvey, or Bob, her last boyfriend, or Steve, the one before that…

But not with the same level of desperation. She couldn’t sit out here anymore, wondering what was happening. Romain had just been gone a few minutes—not long enough to call the police and risk getting him sent back to prison for breaking and entering, but long enough for her to realize she’d made a mistake not going in with him. She had to make sure he was okay.

She cut the engine and started to get out when her cell phone rang. Caller ID

indicated it was the police.

Surprised, she shut herself back in the truck so the sound of her voice wouldn’t bring out any of the neighbors and punched the talk button. “Hello?”

“Ms. Stratford?”

“Yes?”

“This is Sergeant Kozlowski.”

The desk sergeant who’d told her about Pearson Black. The one who’d also helped with the initial search. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“What kind of bad news?” she said, terrified that he was talking about Romain.

“A woman was murdered last night.”

Visions of that stranger coming through the window crowded Jasmine’s thoughts. She’d been expecting this, hadn’t she? And yet, the more hours that passed without confirmation, the more she’d managed to convince herself that it might’ve been a dream, after all.

“Who found the body?”

“The woman’s boyfriend. He kept calling, she didn’t answer. He went over to see what the hell was going on, and…”

“He found her body.” The news upset Jasmine, made her apprehensive, but not as apprehensive as the fact that Kozlowski had called her.

“That’s right.”

With a quick check of her watch, she decided to drive down Moreau’s street.

Anxious as she was about this call, she was even more terrified for Romain. She started the engine again. “What made you think to tell me, Sergeant?”