Free Stop Me by Brenda Novak Page B

muttered, struggling against a familiar tightening in his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
    As usual, there was no answer. Only the generator running in the background as Adele stared back, always with him and yet gone forever.
    What did Jasmine Stratford really know about her and the man who’d killed her? If this woman could describe the necklace, she had to possess other information.
    But he wasn’t sure that information would be as comforting as the tidbit she’d given him. It was equally possible that her answers would only lead to more questions. Or tempt him to doubt what he already knew to be true.
    Leave it alone, he told himself, and went back to his movie. But he didn’t comprehend a single word and, after an hour, he finally gave up. By telling him he couldn’t have saved his little girl even if he’d been more vigilant, Ms. Stratford had offered him absolution. And absolution was irresistible.
    Striding across the living room, he retrieved the keys to the motorcycle he’d built for himself and hurried outside. She’d said she was staying at the hotel in Portsville, but he had no idea for how long.
    If he waited until the sun came up, she could be gone.
    The engine of the motorcycle rattled the walls of Jasmine’s hotel room. She’d just put on the chemise and shorts set she liked to sleep in, but the moment she heard the racket, she wondered if it was Fornier. At eleven o’clock, the rest of the town was asleep; there was virtually no traffic.
    She waited. If it was Fornier, and he wanted to see her, she’d receive a call from the front desk.
    Instead, a heavy knock made her jump.
    “Tell me the old guy didn’t send him up,” she muttered and grabbed the silky robe that matched her sleepwear. “Yes?” she said through the panel as she shrugged it on.
    “It’s me.”
    Fornier. Just as she’d guessed. The lies she’d told the old Cajun had come back to haunt her. He’d assumed she’d want him to send Fornier up and hadn’t bothered to call first.
    Taking a deep breath, she cracked the door open. There wasn’t a chain or she might’ve used it because this man was so unsettled—and unsettling.
    “What can I do for you?” she asked, unable to resist turning the tables on him.
    “For starters, you can let me in.”
    She hesitated briefly. “Why don’t we meet for breakfast in the morning?”
    “Because I’m here now.”
    She didn’t usually allow strange men into her hotel room, especially out in the middle of nowhere. But she didn’t sense any danger from Fornier. If he wanted to 52

    harm her, he could’ve done it out in the swamp where he had a convenient place to toss her body and plenty of alligators to eat it.
    Stepping back, she permitted him to open the door the rest of the way.
    “You’ve had a change of heart?” she asked as he came in.
    He closed the door behind him. “Maybe you could call it that if I had a heart to begin with.”
    He did have a heart. That was the problem. His emotions ran so deep, he couldn’t cope with the pain they caused him so he tried to shut them off.
    Uncomfortably aware of her skimpy attire, she tightened the belt on her robe.
    “So you’re here because…”
    A subtle shift in his body language told her Romain hadn’t missed the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. But he wasn’t obvious enough to let his eyes dip. “You know why. I want to hear how you knew about the necklace.”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “It does to me.”
    “What matters is that you understand this—even if Moreau hadn’t taken that particular opportunity, he would’ve kidnapped your daughter some other time.
    There’s no way you could’ve stood guard over her every minute of every day, not when you couldn’t possibly recognize the danger.”
    “I should’ve recognized it.”
    The passion in his voice confirmed the depth of his remorse. “Not if you were busy living a normal life. Not when there was nothing to alert you.”
    “There was the nightly