Free KILLING ME SOFTLY by Jenna Mills Page A

before.
    Opening her eyes, she looked into the mirror and lifted a hand to her face, traced the line of her reconstructed cheekbone.
    He didn't recognize her. The realization should not have stung. Anonymity was what she wanted, after all, what she'd planned. What she needed. But nothing had prepared her for the gleam of raw desire in Cain's eyes … a gleam that had haunted her during the months spent recovering from a brutal attack.
    A gleam now directed at a woman he'd just met.
    The twist of jealousy was ridiculous, but the want in Cain's eyes felt like a betrayal of everything they'd once shared.
    But then, if the arrest reports were accurate, they'd never shared anything more than mind-blowing sex.
    It galled her that she no longer knew. It wasn't that she didn't remember. She did. In excruciating detail. But everything she'd once believed, everything she'd valued, died that steamy night eighteen months before. The doctors may have restored her physical body, but no one could touch the damage inside.
    No one.
    That's why she was here, despite her grandmother's pleadings to leave well enough alone. She couldn't do that. Couldn't waltz forward with her life while so many loose ends dangled. The only way to get on with the business of living was to return to the town, the night, where everything had ended.
    Answers. That's what she needed, once and for all.
    Justice.
    Sometimes she felt like a ghost, walking anonymously among the living, knowing their secrets while they knew nothing of her. To the people of Bayou de Foi, she was a stranger. But she knew them intimately. She knew their wants, hopes and dreams. Their desires. She knew Millie had gotten married when she was sixteen and that Lem and Travis fancied themselves amateur detectives. She knew the reason for the sadness in Lena Mae's eyes.
    And she knew why Cain didn't want her asking questions.
    It shouldn't scrape that no one, in turn, recognized her.
    The people of Bayou de Foi thought she was dead. Their lives had gone on. During the year and a half she'd spent recovering, her friends had lived and laughed and loved. Seasons had come and gone. Babies had been born. Couples married. Dreams pursued.
    And all the while, a murderer walked among them.
    The reality, the memory, turned everything inside Renee stone cold. She glanced at a picture from her research file, a snapshot taken days before her investigation blew up in her face. Cain stared up at her, his eyes secretive, his mouth an uncompromising line. He had his arm around her, holding her close. Val had always said they made a stunning couple, her fair, Germanic complexion the perfect complement to Cain's dark Cajun features. Her brightness the perfect balm to offset his shadows.
    Val.
    What had happened to her in the ensuing months? Renee didn't think Val and Gabe had married, but she didn't know why. The night before Savannah went missing, Gabe had asked her opinion about engagement rings. He'd wanted something special…
    Savannah had brought him to a small jeweler in the Quarter and straight to a stunning emerald-cut diamond flanked by two tapered baguettes in an exquisite platinum setting.
    Frowning at the memory, she lifted her eyes to the mirror. It still jarred her to find a stranger looking back at her, but she recognized the rare opportunity she'd been given. She'd worked hard to create her alibi, had sold True Crime on the proposed segment and constructed an elaborate, albeit phony, professional Web site. Now, courtesy of a new face and a new voice, a borrowed name, she was poised to undertake the ultimate undercover assignment—solve her own murder.
     
    "Heard you got some trouble down your way, Ed."
    The late-afternoon sun glinted through the dense canopy of oaks, falling in little slivers along the highway much the way it had cut against the jungle floor back in 'Nam. Edouard squinted against it, wondered if there'd ever come a time when the slightest thing didn't throw him back.
    Of course, a