Prologue
He’d pinned her to the soft earth. Caught her unawares. She squirmed, turning her head inch by inch. Her hair, wedged beneath his hand, pulled at the roots. She bit into his fat wrist like a snapping turtle, tearing and holding until he rolled off.
“Filthy whore.”

She sat up and sucked in a breath. Ah, sweet summer air. “You two bricks shy or what? That ain’t no way to treat a lady. Now, get me up.”

Baring his teeth, he turned away. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

The blow came fast, knocking the breath from her lungs. Something deep inside cracked. She gasped. Gulped. Searing pain shot across her chest. Tears bubbled up. His other fist caught her upside the head. A flash of white lightning behind her eyelids and then everything went dark.

* * *

Her eyes burned. That was the first thing she noticed. They wouldn’t open. For a second or two, she struggled to figure out where she was. Then, she remembered.

Panic squirmed like mud worms in her chest, but she lay still, listening, and taking in every noise. She must have passed out. Now, she felt like she was floating on a lily pad. The moon was gone or maybe it wasn’t. With her eyes stuck shut, she couldn’t much tell.

The night’s cooling breeze raked her raw skin. The air was thick with the scent of night-blooming flowers.
The Cadillac’s door slammed, its heavy sound carrying across the empty field. She stiffened. Bit her lip to keep from crying. The motor roared to life. She listened as it faded with the distance. She listened until the hum sounded as if it was coming from inside her head.

She’d liked the car. Flashy. She liked flashy. Before tonight, she’d liked him, too. Hell, everyone did. Was high in the cotton, but could hold his own. Always left decent tips.

Damn, she knew how to pick ‘em.

Weeping sounds pulsed up from her throat, but she couldn’t feel the tears. Her face was wet, sticky wet. But where were the tears? Why weren’t there tears?

She caught her breath. No time to panic. She had to hightail it out of there. But her chest really, really hurt. He had fists like cinderblocks. Just lifting her arm felt like someone shoving a knife down between her ribs.

She lay still again, smelling the night gladiolus. Drifting.

* * *

“What was that?” Her twitch sent a ripple of hurt through her chest. A bullfrog croaked. Not close, but close enough. She must have fallen asleep again.

He was gone. He’d driven away. Hadn’t he? Her thoughts were jumbled tighter than a ball of yarn.

She was cold. Too cold for this time of year. And her stomach felt queasy. She just wanted to lie a spell, but she’d best get over to the road. Her eyelids felt swollen to the touch, the left worse than the right.

“Ouch!” She couldn’t find her left cheekbone. Was like it wasn’t there. Weird. Maybe her face was just too swollen.
That jerk. Wait till she told Clyde what he’d done. He’d go after Mr. Fancy Pants with a stick.

Was that another car? She listened, her limbs tensing.

Her dress was bunched up around her breasts. Thank God she wasn’t naked. Probably couldn’t make it all the way home, but if she wanted to get help, she’d have to get over to the road. No one would find her back here.

Let’s go back in the field, away from the road. It’s more romantic.

And she’d followed like a giggling school girl. When would she learn? Why the hell did men always have to hit! Was she wearing a sign that said “punch here”?

And this guy was the champ. Hit harder than her ex on a good day.

More tears that had no place to go welled beneath the lids. Was that footsteps? Was it her imagination? She was breathing too fast. She needed to calm down and get out of here. Fast. She pushed up with her hands, but lightning bolts of pain shot through her chest. Oh, hell.

That wasn’t going to work. Hurt too bad. She’d have to roll over and crawl. It was the only way.

“God, I’m done with men. Done, I said.” Her voice sounded strange, garbled. She rolled over and pushed up to her hands and knees. “I know I said that just a few weeks ago, but this time I mean it. Lord, if you can see fit to get me home, I will never so much as look at another man.”

“I can help you with that,” said a familiar voice.

She swung her head toward the sound, her eyelids still glued shut. Her trembling arms risked giving out. She hunched back, rested on her knees.

“Thought you could help me relax, but you let me down, Sweetheart.”

Her lower body still throbbed. He’d torn her up down there. “I done what I could. Please, don’t hit me again.”
“No, you didn’t. You kept passing out. And I’m still in need.”

“Okay, okay, well…” It’d hurt worse, but she couldn’t take another fist. “I can do it better. Let’s try again. Just don’t hit me.”

“Heard you’re through with men.”

“Not you.” She gulped in a breath, the words frozen on her lips.

“That’s good, Sugar, but I can’t have you telling tales, can I?”

“I won’t tell nobody. Promise, please Mr.—”

The kick caught her between her ribs and her stomach. She was flying, weightless. And for an instant, pain free. Then, thunk. She crashed.

Facedown. Arms splayed.

She spit away the grass. Coughed. She coughed again, but couldn’t clear her throat. Couldn’t catch a breath. She struggled to her knees, fighting for air.

There was none.

First Chapter

Wednesday June 15, 2005
Baton Rouge, LA

Claire Rivet sat straight-backed, eyes downcast, and hands clasped on the mahogany table before her. Anyone who didn’t know her might think she was praying. She never prayed.

The judge, his robe open against the heat, flipped through his notes. Shoes scraped the tongue-and-groove flooring, newspapers rippled open and shut, voices passed in guarded whispers. It looked to Claire as if all of Baton Rouge had turned out to hear the verdict.

When the rear door flew open, a hush fell over the courtroom and heads turned to watch the jurors file in behind the bailiff. Claire watched too. Each face, each tense muscle held a clue and a good prosecutor’s job was to decipher those clues into victory or defeat. She saw what she was looking for on the face of jury number four, a fifty-year-old school teacher from the East side of town.

The jury foreman read the verdict: guilty, on all four charges. A collective sigh rose and faded into the mechanical clank of an air-conditioner built for an earlier era.

The courtroom began to empty. Claire watched as Leroy Milson was cuffed and led out the back. She stood and gathered her notes into three separate file folders already thinking about her next case: a burglary, one latent fingerprint, one eyewitness.
Erwin Tyson, the investigator who’d worked the Milson case with her, reached over the rail and patted her back with his rough hand. She felt other congratulatory taps as she loaded her briefcase. She smiled and nodded as another “Congratulations” flew her way. Why were they congratulating her? It always made her wonder. She’d been hired to prosecute criminals, to get the likes of Leroy Milson off the streets. There was no right way, wrong way, good way, or bad way of doing this. She was doing her job.

LaVerne reached a hand out. “Thank you, Mz Rivay.”

Claire shook the dark hand with a sure grip. The bruise under LaVerne’s left eye had faded to a shadow. “Thank you, LaVerne. Your testimony put him away. Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

Claire glanced at her other client, Wendy, seated in the third row. Wendy’s husband nodded and forced his lips into an unsure smile, but kept his arm locked around his wife’s shoulders. Wendy, head bowed, was focused on a secret world, a world where she was in control, a world that no longer existed outside her mind. If she didn’t slit her wrist within a year, she might have a chance, but Claire had seen women like Wendy before and she recognized destruction when she saw it. Leroy had made a mess there.

LaVerne would make it. Claire knew that much. LaVerne was a fighter. She’d grown up fighting and she’d keep on fighting until she had her life back, or whatever could pass for a normal life after Leroy’s violation.
Claire shoved open the heavy oak door. Hot humidity as thick as coal dust gagged her as she stepped onto the granite courthouse steps. Before she could move, cameras and microphones surrounded her, dwarfing her beneath the taller reporters vying for her attention.

“Back up, I can’t breathe.”

She knocked a long microphone away from her mouth. She hated this part of the job. She would just as soon leave these vultures to her colleagues, but she’d been warned to be nicer. Her boss, the DA, had told her to make the press her friend. Felt like befriending an alligator; never knew when you’d be eaten alive.

“How do you feel about today’s verdict?” someone asked.

Sweat beaded on her upper lip and brow, under the sparse bangs, and the long dark strands cascading past her shoulders

“It’s correct.”

She tucked her head and pushed forward, the crowd of reporters parting and regrouping around her.

A man shoved a fat black microphone toward her nose. “You have a one-hundred-percent conviction record on rape cases, what’s your secret?”

Was that true about her conviction rate? “Let me through, please.”

She flashed through her last few cases, most of which were plea bargained down to a lesser offense in order to find and charge accomplices, or to collect evidence on someone higher up the food chain. A necessary tactic, and one she deplored. But a rapist? Never. She refused to bargain. If he was caught, she wanted him off the streets, forever. A stand that almost saw her fired last winter when a rapist she was trying was tied in with drug smuggling down in the Gulf. His lawyer wanted to deal, said the man had the goods on two South American players.

“Do you expect an appeal?” a reporter asked.

“What do you think about the rape in Raceland?” asked another.

“Are you handling the Clifford case?” asked another.

She focused on the blonde with the high voice and urgency pasted on her face. An icon. The sort favored by the networks

“What rape?”

The blond who’d asked about the Raceland case stepped forward. “The young woman found beaten to death. Will you prosecute?”

Claire’s step faltered. A wave of vertigo overwhelmed her. What a stupid question. Always stupid questions. “Raceland’s out of my jurisdiction. Please, let me through.”

She broke out of the crowd and headed for Erwin’s gray Taurus, waiting at the curb. Another one, she thought, sliding into the passenger seat. “What woman in Raceland?” she asked Erwin as she slammed the door.

Erwin removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with the bottom of his shirt. “Oh, that’s a bad one. A twenty-two-year-old, raped and beaten to death. Young waitress, poor thing. Actually, she was found in a field between Raceland Junction and Bowie. I heard the body was taken to New Orleans for the autopsy.”

“Why not here?”

“Orleans’s closer.”

Claire closed her eyes and massaged her throbbing temples. Sweat glued her dark strands to her face and neck. “Drop me at home. I’m finished for the day.”

Erwin pulled into traffic. “That’s one for the books.”

“Can’t I take an afternoon once in awhile?”

“Sure you can, but you never do.”

She glanced out the window. Dark bulbous storm clouds marred the horizon. A bad one blowing in. She pictured the young woman, lying in the field. A field. Another image popped into her mind, but after years of practice, she was able to shove
it away before it could take hold.

She imagined the waitress. Had she died quickly, or had her life ebbed away as she fought off the pain?

Again the image tried to force its way in.

A field.

She reached for the air-conditioning vent and focused the stream of cool air on her face. Jurisdiction or no, she had to learn more about the rape. For too long, she’d put off what must be done.

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