"Don't bother telling anyone, Savannah. No one will ever believe you… They'll see you for what you are-little slut, little prick teaser… You're a bad girl, Savannah, and everyone knows it… There's no use telling. We both know you seduced me…"

She closed her eyes as the voice played in her head. She raised her hips as Jimmy Lee thrust into her… and hated herself.

The midnight moon cast a silvery sheen down on the trees, and the mist crept, soft and white, across the surface of the black water.

A lot of women were afraid of the swamp. A lot of men were afraid of the swamp. It didn't frighten Savannah. She felt something other than fear out here. Something ancient. Something that called to her and stirred her blood.

This place had always been her escape. This was where she and Baby had run to get away from home and the unhappiness there. Out here she felt free. She felt like a part of the swamp, like an animal-a deer or a bobcat or a copperhead snake. She wanted to take her clothes off and be naked here, be a part of it, a creature of the Atchafalaya.

Giving in to that primal desire, she slipped off the dress the Revver had ruined for her, tossed it on the hood of the car, and slicked her hands down over the curves of her naked body.

For a moment she closed her eyes and imagined what it would be like to lie down here on the mat of dead leaves and welcome her lover into her body beneath the light of the bayou moon. They would mate as all animals mated, without guilt, without inhibition, glorying in the pure excitement of it. She would scream out in ecstasy, her cries mingling with the eerie cacophony that carried across the swamp at night.

The mental image wrung a low moan from her, made her ache with need, a need Jimmy Lee hadn't been able to assuage no matter how many ways he used her-and he had used her in every way a man could use a woman. This was a need no man could quench, a need that was rooted deep in the core of her.

She threw her head back, lifting her face to the moon, tumbling her wild hair down her back. The restlessness stirred harder, hotter. The wildness pulled at her, drew on something deep within. She needed… needed… needed…

Need drives the predator. Not the need for food, but for sustenance of another kind. A need for blood, a taste for death. A need to punish, a desire to inflict pain. To watch pain grow like a cancer, from a simple response into something all-consuming. A need to control. To play God.

To play. A game. The thought brings a smile. The smile brings a chill to the prey. For every game there is a loser. The one bound and held captive knows the outcome before the game begins. For the victim there is no game, only anticipation, pain, terror, and, she prays, death. Please, death. Soon…

No one hears her screams. No one comes to her aid. There are no saviors in the swamp. Cruelty here is a way of life. Death as commonplace as snakes. Danger hidden in beauty. No salvation. No justice. Life. Death. The hunter and the hunted.

The knife gleams silver in the moonlight. The blade cuts delicately, with skill, slicing like a bow across the strings of a violin. The song it plays high-pitched and eerie. Human. A prelude to death.

And in the end, the instrument will fall silent, the prey will succumb. She will die as the predator believes she deserves to die-naked and defiled. Another dead whore left to rot in the swamp. A fitting end, a fitting place. And the predator will glide away in the bâteau, silent, safe, the secret shared with only the trees and the creatures of the night…

Laurel sat up suddenly, shaking, cold, her skin slick with sweat, her heart pounding. The nightmare faded as she grounded herself in reality, but the sounds of the children's cries still echoed in her mind, driving her from bed. She crossed to the highboy and pulled out another oversize T-shirt, trying to crowd the last of the dream from her brain. She was trembling violently, her stomach knotting with residual anxiety, and she cursed a blue streak under her breath, battling the weakness.

Her hand brushed across the bottle of tranquilizers tucked in among her underwear, left over from her stay at Ashland Heights. Dr. Pritchard had told her to take them when she needed help sleeping, but she wouldn't. No matter how badly she wanted to, she wouldn't take any. They were a crutch, another weakness, and she was so damn tired of being weak.

She changed quickly and went out onto the balcony, hoping to rejuvenate herself with fresh night air, but the air was heavy and warm, without a breath of a breeze. Folding her arms against herself to keep from shaking, she padded down to the French doors of Savannah 's room and peeked in. The bed was unmade, the rich gold-and-ruby spread a tangled drift across the mattress, lace-edged satin pillows mounded along the ornate French headboard and tossed carelessly onto the floor. The rest of the room had Savannah's stamp of housekeeping draped everywhere in the form of discarded lingerie and articles of clothing that had been dragged out of the closet and abandoned in favor of something brighter, skimpier, sexier, trashier.

Fear cracked through the other emotions that were thick in Laurel 's throat as a medley of lines played through her head. "Murders?"… "Four now in the last eighteen months… Young women of questionable reputa-tion"… "She gonna come to grief, dat one."…

She chewed hard on her thumbnail as she wrestled with the urge to call the police. She was being silly, jumping to conclusions. There was nothing unusual in Savannah 's staying out past two-or all night, for that matter. She could have been anywhere, with anyone.

With a killer?

"Stop it," she ordered, her voice a harsh whisper as she reined in the irrational urge to panic. Dammit, she wasn't an irrational person. She was logical and sensible and practical. Wasn't that what had saved her when she was growing up in the poisonous atmosphere of Beauvoir?

That and Savannah.

Her gaze fell again on the bed, and she jerked herself away and headed for the stairs that led down to the courtyard, her stride brisk and purposeful.

She was feeling unsettled, skittish. The evening at Frenchie's had rattled her, from her encounter with Baldwin to Savannah 's fight to Jack's tirade to the role she had agreed to play for the Delahoussayes. Truth to tell, that probably had her the most on edge. Tomorrow she would have to go down to the courthouse and see about solving the problem of Jimmy Lee Baldwin. She would have to go to work as if she had never stopped, as if she hadn't left her last job in disgrace. She would go into the halls of justice and face the secretaries, the clerk of court, the judge, other attorneys, Stephen Danjermond.

She had been mulling over that prospect as she walked home from Frenchie's. With Jack nowhere to be found, and the last rays of day still seeping through the gloom of evening, she had set off for Belle Rivière on foot, hoping to walk off some of the anxiety and self-doubt. But after only two blocks, a bottle green Jaguar pulled alongside the curb, its passenger window sliding down with a hiss.

"Might I offer you a ride, Laurel?" Stephen Danjermond leaned across the soft gray leather seats of the car and stared up at her, his green eyes glowing like jewels in the waning light. He smiled, that handsome, perfectly symmetrical smile, tinting it with apology. "As much as I enjoy bragging about our diminished crime rate in Partout Parish, I hate to see a lady take chances."

"I could be taking a chance with you, for all I know," Laurel said evenly, keeping her fists tucked in the deep pockets of her baggy shorts.

Danjermond regarded her with a touch of disappointment, a touch of amusement. "I think you know me better than that, Laurel."

She looked at him blankly, trying to cover her confusion. They had only just met, but somehow she knew if she pointed that out to him, he would only be more amused. She felt as if he were a step ahead of her in time, that she was coming into a play already in progress and missing her cue. If he could rattle her this much with a simple conversation, he had to be hell on wheels in a cross-examination. A man destined for great things, Stephen Danjermond.

She pulled open the door of the Jag and sank down into the butter-soft seat. "I don't know you at all, Mr. Danjermond," she murmured, her tone as cryptic as his expression.

"I intend to remedy that situation."

He let the car ease along the deserted street, silent for a moment, the Jag as quiet as a soundproof booth. He had shed his tailored suit for a knit shirt the color of jade and a pair of tan chinos, but he still looked immaculate, perfectly pressed.

"Dinner with your parents was an interesting occasion," he said.

"They're not my parents," Laurel blurted automatically, a hot flush stinging her cheeks as he looked at her with one dark brow raised in question. "What I mean to say is, Ross Leighton isn't my father. My father passed away when I was small."

"Yes, I know. Killed, wasn't he?"

"An accident in the cane fields."

"You were close to him." He stated it as a fact, not a question. Laurel said nothing, wondering how he knew, wondering what Vivian might have told him. Wondering if he was privy to Vivian's plans for the two of them.

He shot her another steady look. "Your aversion to Ross," he explained. "I suspect you never accepted his taking your father's place. A child loses a beloved parent, resentment toward the usurper is natural. Though I should think you would have gotten over it by now. Perhaps there's something more to it?"

The answer was none of his business, but Laurel refrained from saying so. Her skills were rusty, but the instincts were still there. Danjermond's were honed to perfection. He didn't have conversations, he had verbal chess matches. He was never off duty. Every exchange was an opportunity to exercise his mind, sharpen his battle skills. She knew; she had been there. She had been that sharp, that focused. She knew an answer to this question would put her in check.

"I'm sorry about the scene my sister caused," she said casually. " Savannah does love to be dramatic."

"Why are you sorry?" He stopped the Jag for the red light at Jackson and pinned her with a look. "You aren't the one who caused the commotion. You have no control over your sister's actions, do you, Laurel?"

No. But she wanted to have. She wanted control. She wanted the components of her world to fit neatly into place. No messes, no unpleasant surprises.