Stop Me (Last Stand #2)(84)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Man?” Now Romain was interested. Jasmine noticed the immediate change in him. “What’re you talking about? Who came out here?”

“De stranger with de blood on his hands, d’at’s who.”

Romain scaled the porch steps in one leap and brushed past Mem. Jasmine hovered on the ground in front of the porch because the old lady had lifted her cane to bar her entrance. “Not you!” she warned. Then she genuflected. “You bring death.”

“Jasmine!” he called.

Jasmine was about to wrench the cane away from the old lady, if necessary, but Mem lowered it just as Jasmine drew close enough, and inched to one side so she could get through.

“What is it?” It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior, but once they did, she could see what Romain was staring at—a necklace featuring the Disney character Belle. It was taped to a wall smeared with blood.

“That’s it, isn’t it?”

Jasmine’s voice came to Romain as if through a tunnel. The sight of Adele’s necklace had taken him back to the days when his little girl would rush home from school so she could spend a few hours with him at the bike shop. Even at such a young age, she knew a lot about engines and used to share that knowledge with all his clients. They’d loved her almost as much as he had. She’d been such a feminine thing, despite the engine grease on her hands and clothes and her insistence on doing everything he did. So sweet, even after she lost her mother.

Missing her powerfully enough to make his chest ache, Romain dropped his head in his hands. What he wouldn’t give to feel her arms slip around his neck just one more time….

When he didn’t answer, Jasmine didn’t press him. She kept her distance and let him grieve, but what he really wanted was to have her hold him, to bury his face in her neck and howl his pain to the world. And that surprised him as much as anything.

“You said you saw the man who came here?” he heard her ask Mem.

Mem remained stubbornly mute.

“Why do you hate me?” Jasmine demanded. “I don’t even know you.”

“You’re de one who’s bringing it all back.”

“I’m not the one,” Jasmine whispered fiercely. “I didn’t start this, but I plan to finish it. Do you understand? The man with the blood on his hands has to be caught.

Before he hurts someone else. Another innocent child like Adele. Another woman like the one he’d killed Christmas night in New Orleans.”

Before he hurts someone else… Romain squeezed his eyes shut. Regardless of the evidence Huff found in Moreau’s cellar, Moreau wasn’t the one who’d killed Adele. If so, he would’ve had her necklace and Romain’s parents wouldn’t have received that note.

After believing Francis guilty for so long, it was almost too much to comprehend. He’d hated Francis Moreau, cursed him to hell, killed him….

“God,” he muttered as Mem began to chant.

“You didn’t fire that gun.” It was Jasmine. He could feel her presence at his elbow.

“You don’t know that,” he said.

She slipped her hand in his. “Yes, I do.”

He gazed down at her delicate fingers, the simple ring she wore. She seemed so small and fragile, and yet she was tough. He knew that. Just like Adele, in many ways.

“You’ll see,” she said. “And we’ll catch the man who killed Adele. I promise.”

Mem’s chanting suddenly stopped. “The man with de blood on his hands is de devil,” she cried. “He can’t be caught.”

Jasmine rounded on her. “He can be caught, and I won’t let you, your superstitions or anything else get in the way!”

“Tell her to leave, T-Bone,” Mem insisted. “She bring bad luck, like I tole you she would.”

Romain turned away from his daughter’s necklace. “Go home, Mem,” he said.

The knuckles of the old lady’s hands grew white as she gripped her cane.

“She’s de problem. Send her home!”

“Jasmine stays.”

“She’s bewitched you!”

That wasn’t a term Romain heard very often, but he couldn’t argue. He was bewitched and, God help him, at least halfway in love. “Go home.”

At the resolution in his voice, Mem pounded her cane on the floor like a judge’s gavel. “You’ll be sorry, T-Bone. You’ll be sorry,” she promised and, taking another herbal sachet from the folds of her skirt, threw it on the ground.

Romain stared at it while he listened to her shuffle away.

“What is it?” Jasmine asked once she was gone.

With a sigh, Romain picked it up and smelled the poignant aroma. “A herbal sachet.”

“What’s it for?”

“I’m pretty sure this one’s a curse,” he said and tossed it in the garbage.

Gruber stood back in the laurel oak trees, watching the old lady hobble away from Romain’s house, muttering to herself as she went. Last night at the bar in town, he’d insisted on giving two twins who were stumbling drunk a ride home, and they’d thanked him for the favor by pointing out Romain’s place. But the old crone had ruined it. Once she came upon him, he was afraid to do anything for fear Romain would return while he was at it, so he’d pushed past her and run.

As the woman disappeared from view, he tried to stop the bleeding from the cut he’d made on his own arm and eyed the house. It was one thing to be waiting when Romain and Jasmine got back, to catch them unawares. It was quite another to attack them when they were on the defensive….

So what was he going to do?

Wait, he decided. He’d have his opportunity.

His cell phone, which he’d silenced before parking his car in the undergrowth of the swamp about a mile away, vibrated in his pocket. But he didn’t answer it. His phone indicated he didn’t have good reception. And his screen read No ID, which meant it was probably Peccavi.

He didn’t want to talk to Peccavi. This wasn’t business as usual; this was personal. He wanted to concentrate exclusively on Jasmine and Fornier, to hover in the background until that perfect moment arrived.

A few minutes later, Peccavi sent him a text message.

Where are u? Forget her 4 now. Time to deliver Billy.

Gruber tried to send a reply: First things first. But he smeared blood all over the keys for nothing—it wouldn’t go through.

He thought of Valerie sitting on his couch at home. He had to get rid of her before the police came to ask about her. But he figured he might as well dispose of three bodies as one. If not for Romain, Adele wouldn’t have disappointed him and Gruber wouldn’t have been forced to turn on Francis, who was the only friend he’d ever had. Because of Romain, he’d planted that tape and the other evidence. He and Peccavi had promised Francis they’d get him off if he’d keep his mouth shut, and Francis had fulfilled his end of the bargain admirably. More admirably than Gruber had expected.