Don't Say a Word. Rita Herron

own agenda.”

      “What do you mean?” He had been everything to her these last few months: doctor, friend, savior.

      “Don’t trust anyone, Crystal. Even Dr. Pace.”

      Crystal shivered and turned to face Lex, but he was gone, and, once again, the room was empty.

      THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON was a virtual nightmare. Damon and Jean-Paul met briefly with Antwaun and Dryer, but Antwaun was so volatile that they spent their short time together attempting to calm him. Jean-Paul gave him a good dressing-down about behaving inside, keeping a low profile and putting his ear to the wall. Sometimes, insiders talked, and Antwaun might possibly learn something helpful from one of the inmates.

      Such as who had set him up. Which cops the prisoners liked to work with.

      Antwaun finally agreed, and adopted his game face. The Chameleon—if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was to play a part. Lie.

      Surely he wasn’t lying to them about his innocence.

      Jean-Paul went to the station to look into the offshore account and see if he could find out who had planted the bribe money, while Damon drove to his parents’ to give them the bad news.

      His heart wrenched at the pain on their faces. Even as he assured them he and Jean-Paul would clear Antwaun, the anguish of his family made him feel raw inside. Antwaun was innocent.

      But he was not. If they knew what he had done, about the E-team and the missions they’d pulled off, about the woman who’d gotten caught in the middle and lost her life, it would kill them.

      So many secrets…Tell and you die.

      He wasn’t worried about dying himself, but he knew repercussions would spread to his family. Not just the pain of the truth about his last mission—their lives would also be endangered.

      When he left, he drove straight to Kendra Yates’s apartment to meet Jean-Paul’s partner, Detective Carson Graves. Kendra lived in a modest older unit on the fringes of Bourbon Street. The place had already been thoroughly searched and, as the police had reported, they found no computer or files. Damn. He wanted her research on the dirty cops. The furniture was a hodgepodge of antiques and crafty items that she had obviously picked up in the market. A few photos adorned the built-in bookshelf; one of her receiving some kind of journalism award drew Damon’s eye. He stared at the face in the photo, trying to reconcile the beautiful brunette with a heart-shaped face and deep-set eyes with the mutilated hand they had found, and his stomach revolted.

      “I can see why Antwaun was enthralled,” Jean-Paul commented.

      Damon nodded. He took a newspaper photo from the desk to have a reference when he asked around. Carson searched her bedroom, and Jean-Paul the den, finding a book planner the police and the people who’d ransacked the place had missed.

      “There are a couple of names of contacts in here that I want to check out,” Jean-Paul said. “They may be informants, may have talked to her before she disappeared.”

      “The police confiscated a toothbrush and hairbrush for DNA,” Damon said. “Jean-Paul, can you access the results of the trace evidence the police found?”

      Jean-Paul agreed and Damon thumbed through past issues of the papers stacked in the corner, searching for Kendra’s byline, hoping to find another story she’d written that might have landed her in trouble. But nothing jumped out at him. “I’m going to the newspaper office and pushing the publisher to tell us what he knows.”

      They agreed to check in and left Carson to finish searching her apartment.

      At the newspaper office where Kendra Yates had worked, Damon asked to speak with the head of the paper. Warren Allan, a middle-aged man with a bad comb-over, yellowed teeth from smoking and a jacket two sizes too small, gestured toward an orange vinyl chair. His desk overflowed with newspapers, clippings of various articles, bulging file folders, coffee cups, chewing-gum wrappers and an ashtray that looked as if it hadn’t been emptied in days.

      “I’ve been expecting you, Special Agent Dubois.” A small smile stretched his thick lips into a rubbery line. “In fact, I expected an entire fort of you by now.”

      Damon narrowed his eyes to slits. “Then I’ll cut to the chase, Mr. Allan. My brother is innocent. Someone is setting him up and I’m going to find out who it is.”

      Allan’s chair squeaked as he leaned back and steepled his hands. “Are you sure about that? Maybe you don’t know your brother as well as you thought.”

      “And you don’t know him at all.” Damon gritted his teeth. “Tell me what Kendra Yates had on Karl Swafford, and any tips she had on the possibility of corruption in the NOPD.”

      “You really think I’m going to divulge that information?” His cheeks swelled with his chuckle. “I’m sitting on the hottest story to hit New Orleans since the Swamp Devil murders last Mardi Gras. And the murdered victim happened to be one of my own reporters.” He leaned forward, a menacing glint to his eyes. “I want the bastard who killed her to pay.”

      “So do I,” Damon stated matter-of-factly. “And I can assure you that your cooperation will help us find the person responsible for her death.”

      A long, tension-filled pause stretched between the two men.

      “Just give me something,” Damon finally conceded. “Some hint as to where she was on the investigation. And I’ll be certain that you get the exclusive on anything I find out, when the time is right, of course.”

      Allan hesitated, then nodded. He didn’t believe that Kendra had run off with Swafford and thought the man had faked his own death and might have killed her. “She traced him to a plastic surgeon who works for the government.”

      Damon’s blood heated. “His name?”

      “Dr. Reginald Pace.”

      Damon gripped the edge of the chair with white knuckles. Reginald Pace…had assisted the E-team in secretive projects. He’d been known to alter appearances for the witness protection program. And he would also do the same for any criminal for the right price.

      Unfortunately, extracting information from him was going to be nearly impossible.

      LEX VAN WORMER RUBBED A HAND across his scaly skin, watching the dry particles float to the floor like dust. His skin grew drier, flakier every day as if death was slowly rusting away his flesh, tearing it from his brittle bones with jagged fingers. His body felt cold, too, chilled to the bone, as if ice had settled into his veins, or perhaps his blood had ceased to flow and had turned to stone. Sometimes darkness robbed him of precious seconds, minutes, hours, and the time he was able to drag himself from the depths grew shorter and less frequent as each day passed.

      Only the thought of seeing Crystal spurred him to fight his way through the muck of quicksand trying to consume him.

      He had waited all his life to find a woman like her. A woman to love. A woman who needed him. A woman to guide him into redemption.

      For the devil had owned his soul most of his life.

      Like an off-key song you couldn’t get out of your mind, his father’s vile descriptions of the devil’s wrath burned in his head. He would pay for his transgressions. Burn for his sins. Spend eternity being punished.

      Despair made his chest ache, and he dropped to his knees beside the bed, lowered his head against the mattress and prayed to the heavens to help him last another day. To help him find his way into the light. To allow him to atone for his sins by watching over Crystal.

      For she was in grave danger.

      Dr. Pace pretended to care, but Lex knew his lies. Lex had seen the man’s other side. He, too, had been possessed by the devil.