A Thin Dark Line by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online

back away. But she didn’t.
    “I came here to ask you about the case,” she said. “Or did Noblier pull you off?”
    “No.”
    “I’d like to help if I can.” She blurted the words, forced the idea out before she could swallow it back. She held up one hand to stave off his reply and gestured nervously with the other. “I mean, I know I’m just a deputy, and technically it isn’t my case, and you’re the detective, and Stokes won’t want me involved, but—”
    “You’re a helluva salesman, ’Toinette,” Fourcade remarked. “You telling me every reason to say no.”
    “I found her,” Annie said simply. The image of Pam Bichon’s body throbbed in her memory, a dead thing that was too alive, that would give her no rest. “I saw what he did to her. I still see it. I feel . . . an obligation.”
    “You feel it,” Fourcade whispered. “Shadow of the dead.”
    He raised his left hand, fingers spread, and reached out, not quite touching her. Slowly he passed his hand before her eyes, skimmed around the side of her head, just brushing his fingertips against her hair. A shiver rippled down her body.
    “It’s cold there, no?” he whispered.
    “Where?” Annie murmured.
    “In Shadowland.”
    She started to draw a breath, to tell him he was full of shit, to defuse the prickly sensation that had come to life inside her and between them, but her lungs didn’t seem to function. She was aware of a phone ringing somewhere, of the canned laughter coming from the television. But mostly she was aware of Fourcade and the pain that shone in his eyes and came from somewhere deep in his soul.
    “You Fourcade?” the bartender called, holding up the telephone receiver. “You got a call.”
    He slid off his stool and moved down the bar. Air rushed into Annie’s lungs as he walked away, as if his aura had been pressing down on her chest like an anvil. With an unsteady hand, she raised his glass to her lips and took a drink. She stared at Fourcade as he hunched over the bar and listened to the telephone receiver. He had to be drunk. Everyone knew he wasn’t quite right at his most sober.
    He hung up the phone and turned toward her.
    “I gotta go.” He pulled a twenty out of his wallet and tossed it on the bar.
    “Stay away from those shadows, ’Toinette,” he warned her softly, the voice of too much experience. With one hand he reached up and cradled her face, the pad of his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. “They’ll suck the life outta you.”

4
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    N ick walked along the boulevard between the road and the bayou. Gloved hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Shoulders hunched against the damp chill of the night. Fog skimmed off the water and floated past like clouds of perfume, redolent with the scents of rotting vegetation, dead fish, and spider lilies. Something broke the surface with a pop and a splash. A bass snatching a late dinner. Or someone with a heavy case of boredom, tossing rocks.
    Pausing by the trunk of a live oak, he stared out past the branches hung with tattered scraps of Spanish moss and looked up and down the bank. There was no one, no foot traffic, no cars crossing the little drawbridge that spanned the bayou to the north. House lights glowed amber in windows beyond the east bank. The night air had gone heavy with a thick mist that was threatening to become rain. A rainy night did nothing to entice folks outdoors without a purpose.
    And my purpose?
    That remained unclear.
    He was close to drunk. He had given himself the excuse of dulling the pain, but instead had only fueled it. The frustration, the injustice—they were like fire under his skin. They would consume him if he didn’t do something to burn them out.
    He closed his eyes, took a breath, and released it, attempting to find his center—that core of deep calm within that he had spent so much time and effort building. He had worked so hard to control the rage, and it was slipping through his grasp. He had worked so