Sins of the Storm by Jenna Mills Page A

where Saura had been waiting, she’d kept driving. She could have turned back. She could have called. But she’d never planned to stay gone.
    She’d never planned a lot of things.
    “What first?” Saura asked. “Pictures or sleuthing?”
    And despite the thickness in her throat, Camille smiled. Looking at Saura Robichaud-soon-to-be-D’Ambrosia, no one would ever suspect she was one of the most successful, covert private detectives in New Orleans.
    “Sleuthing,” Camille said, sliding a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes. She had a few bars to hit, a whole list of questions to ask. Starting with the actions of Jack’s father the night he disappeared and ending with the drifter who’d come close to wiping out an entire family in his rush to avoid the authorities. If someone had seen him…maybe they’d seen who he was with. Or heard who he was talking to.
    Then, later, in the privacy of Saura’s car, where the all-seeing Sheriff Jacques Savoie would have no way of knowing, they could print the pictures Camille had taken of the map.
    “I’ve got someone,” Saura said, and Camille twisted around to see the beat-up pickup from the hotel ambling toward them.
    Glancing at her cousin, she reached for the radio and cranked up the volume. “Then let’s lose them.”
     
    “Find her.”
    “She’s with her cousin—”
    Standing in the waiting room, Jack swore quietly, but the nurses gathered around the station glanced up anyway. The younger grinned. The older…did not. “They could be halfway to New Orleans by now.” If he was lucky. More likely, Camille and Saura were well on their way to trouble. He didn’t for one second believe Russ lost them by accident. That had been Saura, adept at vanishing into shadows…even when there weren’t any. “Keep looking.”
    “Roger that,” Russ said. “That car sticks out around these parts. Finding them shouldn’t be hard.”
    Jack bit back the hard sound that wanted to break from his throat. Russ meant well, but he didn’t know the Robichauds. “Try Boudreau’s.” With the name of the bar came the memory. Both scraped. For years Jack had avoided the hole-in-the-wall, even as a teenager when sneaking into Boudreau’s had been a coveted rite of passage. Except the once…
    What the hell are you doing here?
    She’d looked up at him with heavy-lidded bloodshot eyes, and smiled. The better question is what are you doing here?
    Now, as sheriff, he routinely pushed through the doors of the last place his father had been seen alive. But never for the whiskey Gator had adored….
    “I’ll let you know,” Russ was saying.
    Jack ended the call and punched another series of numbers, frowned when he got Detective John D’Ambrosia’s voice mail. “It’s Jack,” he said. “Seems your fiancée is playing Thelma and Louise again….”
    Minutes passed. Russ didn’t call. Jack crossed the small waiting room to the floral sofas, where Margot sat with Annie asleep in her lap. Little Greg stared at the cartoon on the television, while his father stared out the window.
    “Mrs. Landry, can I get you something?” Jack asked. “Some water maybe?”
    She smiled tightly and shook her head. “Only one thing I want right now, Sheriff, and only Dr. Graham can give me that.”
    Jack nodded. “I understand.”
    “Well I don’t.” This from Greg. Normally neat and tidy in a starched shirt, now his collar hung open and his tie lay draped around his neck like a broken noose. He strode toward them, prompting Jack to step back, out of the children’s hearing.
    He knew the look in the other man’s eyes too damned well. “Greg—”
    “A high-speed chase?” Janelle’s husband bit the words out. “Here in Bayou d’Espere? What were your boys thinkin’, Jack?” Not sheriff. “This isn’t N’awlins. Janie and the kids could have been—” He broke off and paled, the unspoken word hanging there between them.
    Killed. Janelle and the kids could have been killed. Just