Sins of the Storm Read Online Free PDF

if that girl was alive, she’d have come home by now….
    But that had been before a prostitute had been murdered and before Lambert emerged as the prime suspect. Before he’d been so certain that his plan to destroy Camille’s brother would succeed that he’d confessed everything.
    Before the judge had granted bail anyway.
    That Camille would resurface now, with Marcel Lambert, the man she maintained murdered her father, facing trial—no way was that a coincidence.
    Frowning, Jack turned into his driveway just as his cell phone started to ring.
     
    Dark blanketed the small central business district. After midnight, no pedestrians walked the sidewalks. The streets were still, quiet. Even the diner sat empty, its doors having closed over an hour before.
    Jack scanned the turn-of-the-century storefronts, looking for any sign of activity, a shadow, motion…anything.
    Farther down, the blur of red and blue flashed like a tacky neon sign. The traffic light turned red, but Jack kept right on going, completing the twenty-minute drive to the savings and loan in just over ten.
    The crowd didn’t surprise him. Word traveled fast in a small town—and late-night calls had become far too common.
    Hank DuPree, a twenty-four year veteran of the sheriff’s office, greeted Jack as he walked inside. A tall man with the haunted eyes of a Vietnam vet, Hank breathed and bled law enforcement. But he’d never wanted to be the one in charge.
    Beyond him, the door to the vault hung open. The bank manager stood in a wrinkled suit, watching deputies sift through the mess on the floor. And the bad feeling Jack had been fighting from the moment he’d found Camille standing in the shadows wound deeper. “What do we have?”
    “In and out in less than five. Looks like the perp knew exactly what he was after.”
    The M.O. matched the break-ins at the library and the historical society; late night, targeted. “What this time?”
    With an odd little smile, Hank lifted his hands, revealing a stack of old documents and photographs. “Now that’s where it gets interesting, Sheriff…”
    The marshmallows are melting.
    Resisting the urge to take a sip of the hot cocoa, Troy Fontenot’s daughter hurries down the hall. Earlier, when she’d found her father in her room, returning a book to the shelf, he’d been upset. That’s why she made the hot cocoa. It’s his favorite. It’ll help him be happy again.
    “You son of a bitch!”
    Two decades later, Camille could still hear the snarled words, could still feel the way her heart had pounded. Kneeling on the bed, she clenched the pencil and kept writing, let the words flow….
    She stops a few feet from the door and listens. She’d thought he was alone.
    “Easy there—you’re overreacting.”
    “The hell I am.”
    It’s nighttime. Outside the rain comes down hard. It’s a summer storm, with wind and lightning and thunder. Once she’d loved storms—but that had been before her great-grandmother’s house burned. Now she just wants it to stop—
    “What the hell—”
    Her heart slams hard against her chest. Alarmed, confused, because her father never raises his voice, she steps toward the cracked door and pushes inside.
    The gunshot stops her cold—and the mug of cocoa shatters.
    Camille came awake hard, her body drenched with memory and perspiration. Sucking in a sharp breath, she rolled toward the clock and realized she’d fallen asleep. The notebook still lay beside her, the pencil in her hand. But the first strains of sunlight slipped through the curtains.
    “Camille, answer me, damn it!”
    She swung toward the door, realized what had awoken her. Not a gunshot. The slam of a fist.
    Jack’s fist.
    At six-twelve in the morning.
    “Damn it, ’tite chat. ” He growled the words with another urgent knock. “Open the door!”
    ’Tite chat. The nickname he’d given her as a child—Cajun for little cat—did cruel, cruel things to her heart.
    Forcing the calm she’d never