Cry Wolf Read Free

“What, you lookin' for Jack, sugar?”
    “Yes, I guess I am.” She was looking for justice. If she had to find this Jack Boudreaux to get it, then so be it.
    “Dat Jack, he's like a damn magnet, him!” one of the others said.
    Taureau snorted.
“Son pine!”
    They all shared a good male belly laugh over that.
    Laurel gave them her best Cool Professional Woman look, hoping it wasn't completely ruined by her baggy dress and lack of makeup. “I didn't come here to see his penis,” she said flatly. “I need to discuss a business matter with him.”
    The men exchanged the kind of sheepish looks boys learn in kindergarten and spend the next thirty years honing to perfection, their faces flushing under their tans. Taureau ducked his big head down between his shoulders.
    “Am I likely to find him in there?” Laurel nodded toward the bar's front door as it screeched back on its hinges to let out an elderly couple and a wave of noise.
    “Yeah, you'll find him here,” Taureau said. “Center stage.”
    “Thank you.”
    The smoking reform movement had yet to make in-roads in south Louisiana. The instant Laurel stepped into the bar, she had to blink to keep her eyes from stinging. A blue haze hung over the crowd. The scent of burning tobacco mingled with sweat and cheap perfume, barley and boiled crawfish. The lighting was dim, and the place was crowded. Waitresses wound their way through the mob with trays of beers and platters of food. Patrons sat shoulder to shoulder at round tables and overflowing booths, laughing, talking, stuffing themselves.
    Laurel instantly felt alone, isolated, as if she were surrounded by an invisible force field. She had been brought up in a socially sterile environment, with proper teas and soirees and cotillions. The Leightons didn't lower themselves to having good common fun, and after her father had died and Vivian had remarried, Laurel and Savannah had become Leightons—never mind that Ross Leighton had never bothered to formally adopt them.
    Caught off guard for an instant, she felt the old bitterness hit her by surprise and dig its teeth in deep. But it was shoved aside by newer unpleasant feelings as her strongest misgivings about coming here surfaced and threatened to swamp her—not the fear of no one's knowing her, but the fear of
everyone's
knowing her. The fear of everyone's recognizing her and knowing why she had come back to Bayou Breaux, knowing she had failed horribly and utterly . . . Her breath froze in her lungs as she waited for heads to start turning.
    A waitress on her way back to the bar bumped into her, flashing a smile of apology and reaching a hand out to pat her arm. “Sorry, miss.”
    “I'm looking for Jack Boudreaux,” Laurel shouted, lifting her eyebrows in question.
    The waitress, a curvy young thing with a mop of dark curls and an infectious grin, swung her empty serving tray toward the stage and the man who sat at the keyboard of an old upright piano that looked as though someone had gone after it with a length of chain.
    “There he is, in the flesh, honey. The devil himself,” she said, her voice rising and falling in a distinctly Cajun rhythm. “You wanna join the fan club or somethin'?”
    “No, I want restitution,” Laurel said, but the waitress was already gone, answering a call of “Hey, Annie” from Taureau and his cohorts, who had commandeered a table across the room.
    Homing in on the man she had come to confront, Laurel moved toward the small stage. The band had slowed things down with a waltz that was being sung by a small, wiry man with a Vandyke and a Panama hat. A vicious scar slashed across his face, from his right eyebrow across his cheek, misshaping the end of his hooked nose and disappearing into the cover of his mustache. But if his face wasn't beautiful, his voice certainly was. He clutched his hands to his heart and wailed out the lyrics in Cajun French as dancers young and old moved gracefully around the small dance floor.
    To his