Sins of the Storm by Jenna Mills Page B

like—
    “It has to do with her, doesn’t it?” Greg asked, and the sheen in his eyes turned to accusation. “The Fontenot girl. I saw her there with you.”
    Jack held himself very still. “There was a break-in at Live Oak. A safe-deposit box was stolen.”
    “I know all that.”
    “The driver of the car that hit Janelle—”
    “Was the man who broke into the savings and loan. I know that. But don’t you just find it a little odd? The second Camille Fontenot shows her face in this town again, we have our first bank robbery in twenty-five years—and our first high-speed chase?”
    Not odd.
    It was exactly what Jack had feared. All his life there’d only been one thing, one person, he’d never been able to rein in.
    And like the hurricane that had decimated the Gulf Coast almost fifty years before, her name was Camille.
     
    Not much light remained. The sun dipped low against the western horizon, leaving blood-red streaks and swirls in its wake. The trees darkened into hulking shadows. The breeze, still warm, kept right on whispering.
    “Maybe we should come back in the morning.”
    “No.” With her hand to the car door, Camille turned toward her cousin. “I need to do this.”
    “Then let me go with you.”
    “No.” The word came out harsher than Camille intended, so she softened it with a smile. “This is something I need to do.”
    Saura wasn’t one to sigh or acquiesce, but she leaned back against the driver’s seat and did just that. “I know,” she said. And she did. More than most, Saura Robichaud knew about exorcising demons. “But I’m going to be right here,” she said. “If you need me—”
    “I will,” Camille assured her. They’d spent the better part of the afternoon talking to locals about the conspiracy theories surrounding her father’s death. Some folks had recognized Camille, welcomed her back. Others had recognized her, and shut down completely. Some hadn’t made any connection at all.
    After leaving the country grocery, Camille had climbed into the backseat and printed the pictures she’d taken of her father’s map, while Saura had once again given the deputy the slip.
    “You have everything?” she asked.
    Their eyes met. Silently Camille flipped open her purse and revealed the handgun tucked inside. A Beretta. She’d picked it up several years before, when her research had made a killer a little too uncomfortable.
    He’d been arrested two months later, but the gun had stayed.
    With a slow smile, Camille ignored the pounding of her heart and pushed open the door. “Give me fifteen,” she said, turning, and for the first time since the car had emerged from the heavily treed road leading to the house, Camille allowed herself to look.
    It still stood. Surrounded by beautiful oaks and set back from the drive, the rustic two-story home that had been in her father’s family for generations still stood. No one had lived there for years, but her mother had been unable to sell it—and Katrina had been unable to destroy it.
    Both had tried.
    Around Camille the familiar hymn of her childhood whispered on the breeze, the cicadas and the crickets, the toads. But the house was still, quiet. No dog bounded to greet her—and no laughter rang through the trees.
    Her throat tightened, but she moved forward anyway, slipped her hand into her pocket and closed her fingers around the key her mother had given her.
    Closure, she remembered saying. She wanted all those doors closed and locked…even if she had to walk through them first.
    Three steps brought her to the veranda. Where petunias had once crowded clay pots, now shadows slipped and fell.
    Slowly she turned. But there was nothing slow about all those little fissures inside her, the ones she’d damned up and walled away. They shattered the second she saw the old swing on the far side of the porch swaying with the breeze.
    And the man sprawled against the seat.

Chapter 5
    “W elcome home, ’tite chat. ”
    Her heart