Masked by Moonlight by Nancy Gideon

Author:Nancy Gideon [Gideon, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Women detectives, Paranormal romance stories, Mystery & Detective, Gangsters - Louisiana - New Orleans, Political, Paranormal, General, Romance, Gangsters, New Orleans, Suspense, Women Sleuths, Shapeshifting, Crime, Romantic suspense novels, Fiction, Louisiana, Women detectives - Louisiana - New Orleans
ISBN: 9781439149638
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-05-24T23:00:00+00:00

A PHONE RINGING in the middle of the night was never good.

Alain Babineau gave her the details like a surgeon making one quick cut to minimize the trauma. She told him in a level voice that she’d be ready when he swung by in fifteen minutes. Then she hung up and sat motionlessly.

“Charlotte? What is it?”

The tremors started small in her hands. She made fists. They moved up her arms until she hugged them against her broken heart. Her shoulders began to quake, and then Max’s hands were on them, turning her, scooping an arm beneath her knees to pull her up into his lap to cradle her like a child.

In the tenderness of his embrace, she wept. She sobbed her soul dry for all the times she’d denied herself tears. For the days and nights of terror when she’d had to be strong for Mary Kate. When she’d washed her father’s blood out of her favorite sweater so she could wear it to his funeral. For the times she’d stood straight and tough when confronted with the brutality of her job and the loneliness of her life. And for an irreplaceable loss still too great for her to comprehend.

And while she drenched his shoulder with sorrows, Max did all the right things. He stayed silent. He held her close but not too tightly. His touch was unobtrusive on her hair, along her arm and shoulder. His mouth moved across her brow in light, gentle sweeps to express his understanding of her pain.

When her grief had worn down to soft sniffles, he asked, “What can I do?”

Her wet cheek rubbed against him. “You’re doing it.” Her breathing rasped like a saw across the tethers of his emotions. “It hurts so bad, Max. I don’t know how I’m going to stand it.”

“I’m sorry.” And because that was so inadequate in expressing the panic and regret ripping through him, he desperately sought something else that might bring her some comfort. “Her thoughts were of you.”

Cee Cee went still. Her breathing stopped. She hadn’t told him what was wrong. Slowly, she lifted her head from the damp haven of his shoulder to look at him. She stared, expression curiously calm.

Her first blow was a surprising shock of pain, mashing his nose, momentarily blanking his mind. He instinctively held on to her, reeling while she pounded him with her fists until he no longer felt their impact. She struggled to escape him, cursing wildly, her elbows, then her heels coming into play to finally break his grip. While he floundered, hanging on to consciousness by a primal need to survive, she scrambled away.

Then the barrel of her gun cracked against his teeth. “You killed her!” she raged at him. “You came here to me after you killed her.”

“No!”

“Liar.” One vicious swing of the gun butt dropped him to the sheets they’d shared.

“I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

She straddled him, breathing hard into the madness of pain and betrayal. She jammed the barrel against his temple, pressing his head into the mattress.

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