Kiss of Temptation: A Deadly Angels Book Read Online Free

“assets,” such as they were. Next, she removed her thigh-high hose and replaced her short suit skirt with a pair of loose jeans. Ratty athletic shoes completed the outfit.
    She was about to leave the ladies’ room when the door opened and she almost ran into Dolly Landeaux, the owner of a wholesale Creole foods business out of Lafayette and a parole board member for the past dozen years. Scanning Gabrielle’s appearance, the big woman blocked her exit with her wide hips— Dolly obviously taste-tests all her products , Gabrielle noted snidely—and said, “Don’t be disheartened, sweetie.”
    You two-faced bitch! “Disheartened? How about crushed?”
    “You can always try again.”
    “Like I have for the past six years?” Gabrielle couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Like Leroy did for six years before that, on his own?”
    “It was close this time.”
    That’s what you said last time, Dolly. Have you been playing me? Is this all a game for you? That’s what she thought, but making an enemy of people in power wouldn’t help Leroy’s cause, Gabrielle decided, almost gagging as she said, “Well, thanks for all your help.”
    Dolly stepped aside to let Gabrielle pass, but then she said, “Tell that brother of yours that he needs to keep his mouth shut if he ever wants to be free.”
    Gabrielle bristled, but she knew what Dolly referred to. Her brother was ruthless, and highly effective, in his criticism of prison officials and politicians in Louisiana. The news media loved him and were always willing to give him an outlet for his diatribes. She kept telling him to save his bombs for after he was released, but Leroy was a rage-filled man whose passion for justice was rarely tempered with diplomacy.
    Odd that she referred to him as a man. For so long she’d thought of him as the sixteen-year-old boy who’d been tried and convicted as an adult for murdering their abusive bastard of a father fifteen years ago. He would have been out by now, but a boy that age was considered fair game in the prison system and he’d fought against two particularly vicious convicts who wanted him for a “love slave.” One of them ended up dead, and the other claimed that Leroy had been the perp with a makeshift shiv or shank. As a result, Leroy was now serving a life sentence. Didn’t matter that the convict in question had been a worthless, evil man, or that there was a question as to whether the other convict had been the one who did the crime in a fight over Leroy. In a prison like Angola, where ninety percent of the five thousand inmates would die there, they had nothing to lose.
    Leroy was the reason Gabrielle became a lawyer who worked for Second Chances, a Southern version of the Innocence Project. She’d been only thirteen when Leroy had stabbed their father with a kitchen knife, repeatedly, after his usual Friday night beating of their mother and any of the kids, meaning her or Leroy, when they weren’t quick enough to run and hide.
    Dolly stood in the open doorway watching Gabrielle walk away. The middle-aged lady was no dummy. She knew how Gabrielle felt about her. So it was a surprise when she called out to Gabrielle, “There’s someone who might be able to help you.”
    Gabrielle wanted to keep walking, but she owed Leroy every chance he could get. She paused and glanced back over her shoulder.
    “Have you ever heard of Louise Rivard? Tante Lulu, they call her down on the bayou.”
    “The traiteur?” Gabrielle frowned, having no clue how a folk healer would be able to help her, and a wacky one at that, if rumors were true.
    Dolly nodded, the compassionate expression on her face appearing to be genuine. “Tante Lulu knows people. She accomplishes things no one else can.” She laughed and added, “Mostly due to her devotion to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases.”
    She and Leroy had long ago lost any belief in a Higher Power. But hopeless, they were. With a nod of thanks, the most she was