She’d lived all her life on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, and even as a kid, she’d always been highly attuned to a sudden shift in weather patterns and wind direction, the slightest drop of barometric pressure. The atmospheric changes seemed to creep along her skin, giving her aches and pains in her joints and chilling her all the way down to her core.
A storm was brewing, all right. She could smell the rain already.
The wind shifted ever so slightly, and she thought to herself that it was time for her and J.D. to make tracks. She’d taken him out for a stroll along the shady side of the sidewalk, and as she turned back toward the house, it seemed to Lynette that the edges of the low-hanging cumulus clouds had already begun to darken.
She stopped for a moment to adjust the top on the stroller. J.D. had fallen asleep, and as Lynette fiddled with the canopy, she paused to graze her finger along his soft cheek.
But there was something of Evangeline in the beguiling curve of his lips, in the way his brow puckered when he got upset.
And those eyes.
So dark a blue, they were almost violet, and so deep, a body could easily drown in them.
Lynette had never seen a baby with such intense, knowing eyes.
He had quite the temper at times, too, but in sleep, he looked so vulnerable and innocent.
A precious little angel.
A shadow passed across the baby’s face, and Lynette looked up, expecting to find that the sky had darkened even more. But instead, a man stood just behind her, gazing down at her sleeping grandchild.
His sudden appearance caught Lynette by surprise, and for a moment, she didn’t even notice the terrible scar on the side of his face.
What she did notice, though, were his eyes.
Black as coal and focused on the baby.
Abruptly, she stood, putting herself between the man and the stroller. “Can I help you?”
His smile was oddly charming, considering his grotesque appearance, but with the black hair and dark clothes, he seemed too much like a manifestation of the coming storm.
He held up a pale hand, and Lynette couldn’t help but notice how long and bony his fingers were. The gesture was graceful, but those skeletal fingers were creepy.
“Sorry. So sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m trying to find a friend’s house, and I’ve been driving in circles for the better part of an hour. I saw you out here with the baby and I thought…
“What’s the address?” Lynette said with a frown, although his deep voice was surprisingly pleasant. But she didn’t like how silently he’d come up behind her. She also didn’t like the way he kept glancing down at her sleeping grandson.
“Twelve-fourteen Sabine Way.”
“I’ve never heard of that street. I think you must have the wrong neighborhood.”
“Cypress Valley?”
“No, this is Cypress Grove.”
“Ah. That explains why I can’t find his house, then.”
He moved to the side of the walkway so that he had a better view of J.D. Lynette fought the urge to once again step in front of the stroller.
He smiled then, as if he’d picked up on her trepidation, and that was when Lynette began to truly fear him.
There was something diabolical in that smile. Something evil lurking in those dark, dark eyes.
He inclined his head toward the stroller. “Yours?”
“My grandbaby. Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said coldly, “I have to get home. It’s about to rain.”
“So it is.” His eyes trapped her again, and it was as if one of those skeletal fingers had traced an icy trail up her spine. “You can feel it, can’t you? Something bad is coming this way.”
Without answering, Lynette moved behind the stroller and gripped the handle tightly so that he wouldn’t see the sudden tremble of her hands.
She wondered what she would do if he stepped in front of the stroller and barred her way. Her cell phone was in the diaper bag stowed on the rack beneath the seat. If he made a move toward her or the baby, she’d never be able to reach it in time.
But the only way he’d ever touch her grandchild was over her dead body. Somehow Lynette didn’t think that obstacle would unduly concern him.
Two houses up, Peggy Ann Grainger came out her front door and headed down the walkway to check her mailbox. Lynette lifted a hand and called out to her. “Hey, there! Yoo-hoo! Peggy Ann!”
The woman looked up and around, and then waved back when she spotted Lynette. “Hey, Lynette! Long time no see.”
“You enjoy your trip to Florida?” Lynette shot a wary glance at the stranger. He was staring down at her in amusement. It was all she could do to suppress a shudder.
“Sure did. Ate too much, though. What else is new?” To Lynette’s relief, Peggy Ann started toward them. “That your grandbaby you got there with you?”
“Come see how much he’s grown!”
The man continued to smile down at Lynette, but something shifted in his eyes. When he turned to glance at Peggy Ann, Lynette could have sworn she saw a flash of red near his pupils.
“Excuse me,” she said again as she wheeled the stroller around him. “Good luck finding your friend’s house.”
She didn’t look back until she met up with Peggy Ann on the sidewalk, and then she glanced over her shoulder as the other woman bent to admire the sleeping baby.
The man strode across the street where he climbed into an old black Cadillac Eldorado. After a moment, he started the engine and pulled away from the curb, and it was only then that Lynette glimpsed the passenger in the front seat.
A beautiful blond woman stared out the window as they drove by. Her gaze was fixed, not on Lynette or Peggy Ann, but on the stroller that carried the sleeping baby.
Nash was having a late breakfast in his favorite dive when he saw Evangeline Theroux walk in. He wanted to believe it was just one of those odd occurrences, but he knew better than to discount her investigative skills.
He dropped his gaze to the newspaper in front of him and didn’t look up again until she stopped beside his booth.
Today she had on a gray suit with black shoes, and her badge was clipped to a leather messenger bag strapped across her slim torso. Her blond hair looked windblown, as if she’d been riding in a convertible, but he suspected she’d been running her fingers through it in agitation.
“Special Agent Nash?” She plopped down on the red vinyl bench without waiting for an invitation. “I’m Evangeline Theroux. But then…you already know who I am, don’t you?”
His gaze moved over her in a curious sweep. The lashes that rimmed her blue eyes were coated with mascara, but she wore no other makeup, and beneath her tan, he could see a shower of freckles on her nose and across her cheekbones.
From a distance, the ill-fitting drab suit coupled with the blond ponytail and the plain shoes had given her the appearance of a kid playing dress-up, but now Nash noticed the tiny lines around her eyes. He knew from her file that she was thirty-three, and up close, she looked every year of her age and then some.
“What can I do for you, Detective Theroux?”
She smiled at the use of her title. “So you do know who I am.”
He held up the
