Cry Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought he had lost his taste for it, but the old skills were still there.
    Sharks don't lose their instincts, he reminded himself, bitterness creeping in to taint his enjoyment of the fight.
    “It—it's common knowledge that's your dog, Mr. Boudreaux,” Laurel stammered, fighting to talk around the knot hardening in her throat. She didn't hold eye contact with him, but tried to focus instead on the hound, which was tilting his head and staring at her quizzically with his mismatched eyes. “Y-You should be man enough to t-take responsibility for it.”
    “Ah, me,” Jack said, chuckling cynically. “I don' take responsibility, angel. Ask anyone.”
    Laurel barely heard him, her attention focusing almost completely inward, everything else becoming vague and peripheral. A shudder of tension rattled through her, stronger than its precursor. She tried to steel herself against it and failed.
    Failed.
    “You didn't do your job, Ms. Chandler . . . Charges will be dismissed. . . .”
    She hadn't proven her case. Couldn't make the charges stick on something so simple and stupid as a case of canine vandalism. Failed. Again.
Worthless, weak. . . .
She spat the words at herself as a wave of helplessness surged through her.
    Her lungs seemed suddenly incapable of taking in air. She tried to swallow a mouthful of oxygen and then another as her legs began to shake. Panic clawed its way up the back of her throat. She pressed a hand to her mouth and blinked furiously at the tears that pooled and swirled in her eyes, blurring her view of the hound.
    Jack started to say something, but cut himself off, beer bottle halfway to his lips. He stared at Laurel as she transformed before his eyes. The bright-eyed tigress on a mission was gone as abruptly as if she had never existed, leaving instead a woman on the verge of tears, on the brink of some horrible inner precipice.
    “Hey, sugar,” he said gently, straightening away from the Jeep. “Hey, don' cry,” he murmured, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, casting anxious glances around the parking lot.
    Rumor had it she'd been in some posh clinic in North Carolina. The word “breakdown” had been bandied all over town. Jesus, he didn't need this, didn't want this. He'd already proven once in his life that he couldn't handle it, was the last person anyone should count on to handle it.
I don' take responsibility
. . . . That truth hung on him like chain mail. He leaned toward Frenchie's, wanting to bolt, but his feet stayed rooted to the spot, nailed down by guilt.
    The side door slammed, and Leonce's voice came across the dark expanse of parking lot in staccato French. “Hey, Jack,
viens ici
!
Dépêche-toi! Allons jouer la musique, pas les femmes!
”
    Jack cast a longing glance at his friend up on the gallery, then back at Laurel Chandler. “In a minute!” he called, his gaze lingering on the woman, turmoil twisting in his belly like a snake. He didn't credit himself with having much of a conscience, but what there was made him take a step toward Laurel. “Look, sugar—”
    Laurel twisted back and away from the hand he held out to her, mortified that this man she knew little and respected less was witnessing this—this weakness. God, she wanted to have at least some small scrap of pride to cling to, but that, too, was tearing out of her grasp.
    “I never should have come here,” she mumbled, not entirely sure whether she meant Frenchie's specifically or Bayou Breaux in general. She stumbled back another step as Jack Boudreaux reached for her arm again, his face set in lines of concern and apprehension, then she whirled and ran out of the parking lot and into the night.
    Jack stood flat-footed, watching in astonishment as she disappeared in the heavy shadows beneath a stand of moss-draped live oak at the bayou's edge. Panic, he thought. That was what he had seen in her eyes. Panic and despair and a strong aversion to having him see either. What a little bundle of