The Perfect Stranger by Jenna Mills

agreed, wiping the smear of blood on his fingertip against his jeans.
    “The sheets are wrinkled.” She took his hand and turned on the water, moving his finger under the stream. “Even though the bed has never been slept in.”
    He pulled his hand back, knew he had to get the hell out of there. “If you want to stay alive, you’ll keep it that way.” Frowning, he turned and headed toward the door.
    “John—”
    Not étranger. Not Detective.
    From the threshold he turned back and forced himself to ignore the way she looked standing by the antique secretary, with those liquid eyes trained on him. The porch light brightened the area, illuminating an old black-and-white photo—one featuring younger versions of Cain and Gabe and an unknown girl—through the glass doors. Its position—prominent yet protected—in her home made him wonder.
    He bit back the thought, knew better than to wonder. Not about the woman who pretended to be a daredevil, not about the flicker of vulnerability she didn’t want anyone to see.
    “There’s something you should know,” he said. “Nathan Lambert isn’t the only man who knows how to get what he wants.”
    Then he walked into the night.
     
    She gave him fifteen minutes. During that time she slipped into jeans and a turtleneck, braided her hair and pulled on a knit cap. With a check of the clock above the stove, she flipped out the light and double-checked the locks, then returned to her bedroom. There, Saura fired up her laptop and checked e-mail.
    After deleting a fresh batch of spam, she powered down and went into her closet, checked the closed-circuit monitor that maintained a vigil on the perimeter. No one, not Nathan Lambert nor Detective D’Ambrosia, was going to catch her by surprise.
    Once she was sure no one lurked outside, she grabbed her purse and let herself into the alley, walked the length of four houses before exiting on the street behind her.
    In thirty minutes she would arrive at the house adjacent to Lambert’s St. Charles Avenue mansion. There, tucked securely in his neighbor’s overgrown bougainvillea, she had a tape to retrieve, and one very important question to answer.
     
    “This her?”
    John glanced at the fuzzy pictures he’d taken with his cell phone camera, of Saura with the wrong color hair—and the wrong man. “Normally she’s a brunette,” he said, sliding a second series of pictures onto the sticky table at the back of The Easy Note. He’d been surprised how few hits he’d encountered when he’d done an Internet search on Saura Robichaud. With her family, he’d expected her picture to be splashed across any number of Web sites.
    It wasn’t.
    “These are a few years old,” he said, lining up the shots of Saura with a succession of men—her uncle the senator at a campaign event, her brother and cousin at what looked to be a graduation celebration, and finally, a third picture with a fourth man. Adrian Doucet. Her fiancé, according to the news story. Who’d been murdered in cold blood two years ago.
    There’d been no pictures, no mentions, of Saura Robichaud since then.
    T’Paul Lareau stubbed out his cigarette and picked up the picture of Saura with Cain and Gabe. Narrowing his eyes, he put it back on the table, and used his fingers to block out everything but the oval of Saura’s face. “She ever go blond?”
    “Probably.” Watching his trusted, but very-under-the-radar informant, John saw something in the other man’s eyes he categorically did not like. “You know her?”
    T’Paul reached for the picture of Saura and her fiancé. “Thought so,” he drawled, reaching for a new cigarette. “But maybe not. The woman I’m thinking of is supposed to be dead.”
    “How long?” John asked.
    “Two, maybe three years.”
    The time frame fit. “What was her name? How’d you know her?”
    “Didn’t really know her,” the informant said. “Just saw her around the Quarter and at the track. At Jazz Fest one year.” He slid