Sins of the Storm by Jenna Mills Page B

the word, but it echoed through the silence. He’d left her earlier. He’d left her, and Lambert had gotten to her.
    Now he lifted her into his arms and continued toward the front of the house. Without letting her get dressed. Without even waiting for her to put on shoes.
    With a gun.
    “Follow me,” he called back to the young deputy. “Hank should already be there.”
    Camille reached for his arm, held on tight. “Where?”
    He pushed open the front door and ran. “Gran’s.”
     
    Russ stood at the window. Hank stood at the front door. Another deputy stood just inside the kitchen. The cozy little parlor, with its chintz drapery and chintz sofa, the thick Aubusson rug, the antique buffet crowded by picture frames, was completely surrounded. No one was getting in without going through Jack’s men first.
    Outside on the porch, Detective D’Ambrosia waited. Through the thick sheers he appeared more shadow than man, but Camille watched him, watched the stillness. The intensity. The way he stood with his gun in his hand, without even seeming to breathe. Saura’s fiancé had arrived within minutes of Jack. The two had conferred, then Jack had taken off.
    Now silence breathed through the old-fashioned room. Camille sat on the edge of the sofa, couldn’t stop looking at the pictures. They were all there, all the photographs that were not at Jack’s house. Of his mother and father, his grandparents. Of her and Gabe and Saura…of Jack in high school football pads. Him in a flight suit standing next to an F-16.
    Of Jack in his dress blues…standing next to a dark-haired woman in a wispy white dress.
    The urge to stand and step closer tugged at Camille, but she remained on the sofa, didn’t let herself move.
    “Are y’all sure I can’t get y’all something?”
    Camille glanced from the haunting photo toward the hot pink, velveteen wingback chair where Ruby Rose sat. With her parchment-thin hands clasped and her almost-shocking-blue eyes bright, Grandma Ruby looked from Russ to Hank, back to Russ. “Maybe some tea or coffee?”
    “No, ma’am,” Russ said.
    Then Hank spoke up: “You just stay right where you are…that’s what Jack said.”
    She frowned. “It was just that ole ’coon. I let my imagination git the better of me is all.”
    “Maybe,” Russ said. “But until the sheriff gives the all clear, we need to be careful.”
    “I’m sure he’ll be back in a few minutes,” Camille said. She slipped from the camelback sofa and went to Jack’s grandmother. “You know Jack. He’s being careful.”
    Ruby Rose sighed. “Just look at you,” she said, reaching for Camille. “All grown-up and still as pretty as can be.”
    She went down on her knees and took Grandma Ruby’s hand, felt something soft and gentle shift through her. Jack’s grandmother had to be pushing eighty, but she could easily pass for a woman ten years younger. Her skin was buttery soft, her coiffed hair still the color of cola…now no doubt courtesy of her sister Rita, who ran the local beauty shop. Her pajamas were silky—and straight from the pages of a well-known lingerie catalog. And the fuzzy fuchsia slippers on her feet…well, Camille was pretty sure they were intended for coeds in a dormitory.
    “This is just such a surprise,” she said. “I had no idea you were back.”
    “No one did.”
    The deceptively quiet voice swirled through Camille like the leading gust of a late-night storm. She twisted and saw Jack, instinctively reached for the edge of the chair. There was a stillness to him that chilled, the way he dominated the elegant foyer, his feet shoulder-width apart, his eyes unreadable. “Seems she’s still not a big fan of radar.”
    The innuendo stung. Camille pushed to her feet and started toward him, acutely aware of the hardwood beneath her bare feet and the swirl of air-conditioning against her legs—Jack hadn’t even given her time to dress.
    No way was she going to give him advance warning—or Marcel