by Sandra Hill
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the victims of human trafficking around the world, especially to the children who are sold into the slave trade. The statistics are shocking. Even here in the United States, the land of the free, there are literally hundreds of thousands of victims. God be with them, and with those who attempt to rescue them.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Reader Letter
Aunt Mel’s Alaskan Fried Green Tomatoes
An Excerpt from The Love Potion Chapter One
About the Author
By Sandra Hill
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
(One year ago)
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do . . .
Fleur Gaudet, whose name tag read Doris Jones, stood in the dressing room of the Silver Stud Club in New Orleans, using a long-handled dust pan and broom to sweep along the edges of the tiled floor, all the while keeping an alert eye on her surroundings. Although she wore a blonde wig to hide her identity and a rather demure black nylon uniform with a white apron, as befitted her new job on the club’s cleaning staff, unlike the scantily clad women around her, she was still outside her comfort zone. Way outside!
She decided to offer up the discomfort as a penance for past—and future—sins. Mortifying the flesh, so to speak. Like that self-flagellating albino monk in The Da Vinci Code. You had to be Catholic to understand the logic of suffering in silence and offering it up as a heavenly gift.
But then, Fleur was a nun!
An honest-to-God, hope-and-pray nun.
Like Mother Teresa.
Well, not really like that holier-than-holy nun, bless her heart, who had lived, by choice, in abject poverty in Calcutta. In the old days, Mother Teresa would probably have worked in a leper colony.
On the other hand, a strip club was somewhat like a leper colony, wasn’t it?
Truth to tell, Fleur wasn’t really a nun yet. More like a nun-in-training, with the Sisters of Magdalene religious order. The Magdas had originated in Spain, but expanded into satellite convents throughout the world. Like the one in Mexico, with which she was affiliated, that had in recent years joined forces with the rogue order, St. Jude’s Street Apostles, in Dallas. Their mission: to rescue girls kidnapped into the sex trade. Which was why she and some of her partners were in this sleazy club tonight.
There were other females in the dressing room, but mostly they kept to themselves as they lounged or touched up make-up. None of them were the young, frightened teens they hoped to rescue, though. Not that they were old, exactly. In fact, Peaches Galore, the girl in front of her, was no more than twenty-two years old, wearing a sheer black bustier and a G-string and heels high enough to give a person a nosebleed.
Peaches was on her cell phone, presumably talking to one of her three children, all under the age of eight, that she’d told Fleur about a short time ago. “No, you cannot make a frozen pizza, Henry. You know the stove is off-limits. The microwave, too. Did Jimmy say his prayers before you put him to bed? He skipped Auntie Priss?” Peaches laughed, and murmured something under her breath about how she would skip the old bat, too. “Did you change Elisa Mae’s diaper? I don’t care if it stinks, do as you’re told. I know, sweetie. I’m sorry I yelled. Be a good boy, and tomorrow we’ll go to the park with your remote control airplane.”
It was sad, really. But the Magdas couldn’t rescue everyone. And not everyone working in this club wanted or needed rescuing.
Just then, the door flew open as a group of strippers, waitresses, lap dancers, and bar maids trooped in, laughing, cursing, talking, many of them pulling five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills from their G-strings or thigh-high fishnet stockings. The pounding beat of that old Mötley Crüe song “Girls, Girls, Girls” could be heard through the open door, coming from the DJ station.
Also, through the open doorway, she could see the raised circular stage with its spokes leading out into the crowd, up close and personal. At any one time, a dozen girls were dancing. Another dozen would be doing lap dances in semi-private alcoves.
A regular meat factory! Ironically, that’s just what this former warehouse had been . . . a huge meat packing plant.
And none of these activities included those upstairs, which was why Fleur and her “posse” of nuns were here tonight with the Rogues.
“Gentlemen, let’s give a warm—no, hot—welcome to the next round of ladies,” the DJ yelled out. The door hadn’t closed tightly. “Chocolate Cream. Bubble Icious. Fanny Bigguns. Ms. Demeanor. Moana Bigona.”
Yep, this was a high-class place, all right.
Fleur rolled her eyes as the air compressor door finally swooshed shut, muting the club noise. Just then, she noticed one of her religious cohorts, Sister Carlotta, leaning her forehead against the wall, muttering something. Lottie was working as a waitress, not a topless one in the bar, but a regularly dressed one in the coffee shop. Her uniform was similar to Fleur’s, except shorter, and she wore the proverbial high heels. She wore a wig, too, but hers was black and cut into a straight bob. Attractive, actually.
Fleur went up to her and whispered, “Lottie, are you all right?”
Lottie nodded, then turned to face her. “I was praying. This place just gets to me. How disgusting! And sad!”
“I know what you mean.”
Carlotta waved the ten-dollar bill in front of Fleur and said, “A man stuck this in my blouse, then had the nerve to ask if I had five dollars in change. This place feels like hell.”
Or a leper colony. Fleur barely stifled a laugh. Carlotta wasn’t that old—about twenty-five—but she’d been in a conventional Spanish convent since she was thirteen. The philosopher John Milton’s “cloistered virtue” personified.
Carlotta, like many other humble nuns who cherished the insular life of prayer and meditation inside the walls of an abbey, was a victim of the upheaval in all the flagging religious orders, male and female, throughout the world. The old ways no longer worked. Nunneries and monasteries were now forced to open their doors to deal with modern issues. Prayer was fine, prayer with action was better.
A strip joint wasn’t what the papal decree on reformation of religious vocations intended, of course, but in this instance “needs must,” the Magdas were told by their Mother Superior when outlining this mission. Mother Jacinta, who was noted for her dry sense of humor, had said, “Some nuns go to jungles to convert the natives. You will be going to another kind of jungle, to bring just retribution to the natives who harm these young girls.”
And so there were five nuns here at the Silver Stud jungle this week, including herself, working undercover. To say they were all outside their comfort zone would be the understatement of the century, but some more so than others. Like Carlotta.
Now, if they could only make their connection with Brian Malone, the former Air Force pilot who was now a priest with the St. Jude’s Street Apostles, this show could get on the road. Literally. Well, the skies, not the road. Brother Brian had a plane waiting for their getaway.
Speaking—rather, thinking—of Brother Brian . . . she took Carlotta by the arm and led her toward the back of the room. “This isn’t your us
ual time for a break. Has Brother Brian made his connection with you yet, or anyone else?”
“That’s why I came to get you,” Carlotta said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “No one has seen him since early this evening, and there was some kind of ruckus out in the alley a little while ago. I saw several bouncers rush toward the back exit doors.”
“Oh no!” Fleur bit her bottom lip with dismay. “Well, perhaps Plan B needs to kick in now. You go back to the coffee shop and wait for the signal. I’ll make my way upstairs.”
Carlotta exchanged a worried glance with Fleur, then left.
Fleur inhaled sharply, straightened her shoulders, and picked up her long-handled dust pan and broom, preparing to go out into the jungle . . . uh, leper colony. Like Daniel going into the lion’s den, or the Christians entering the coliseum to be food for the lions and tigers and such. If worst came to worst, she could always use these tools of her cleaning trade as weapons, she joked to herself.
But then, she reminded herself, nuns eschewed violence.
On the other hand, she shrugged, she wasn’t yet a nun.
Was it irony, or celestial humor, that the loud song assaulting her eardrums when she entered the arena was “Eye of the Tiger”?
Snakes are alive and well in Louisiana . . .
Aaron LeDeux was in his garçonniére, or separate bachelor quarters, on Bayou Rose Plantation outside Houma, Louisiana, when he got the phone call that changed his life. Not that there hadn’t been a lot of changes in Aaron’s life already.
He and his twin brother, Daniel, had been born and raised in Alaska by their Cajun-born mother, Claire Doucet. After her death a few years ago, they’d come to Louisiana to discover their roots. Hah! Those roots were more like tentacles. It was supposed to have been a temporary visit, but with one thing and another, including Tante Lulu, that outrageous busybody aunt (or whatever she was of theirs), they were still here.
Dan, a pediatric oncologist (Try saying that three times real fast!), had gotten married last year to the former Samantha Starr of the Starr Supermarket chain. Although Aaron and Dan owned the plantation jointly (Don’t ask!), the married couple lived in the main house, an arrangement perfectly agreeable to Aaron, who’d gotten tired of all the love sounds the newlyweds were making, in every frickin’ room of the mansion, at every frickin’ time of the night, or day, and, yeah, he was probably a little jealous.
Dan was finally settled, to everyone’s relief, most especially his twin brother (that would be me) who’d been worried about him for so long. Aaron, on the other hand, a pilot, was still trying to find himself, or his place, in this crazy world. Maybe it was time to move on.
He’d just emerged from the shower and hadn’t yet decided what to do on this Saturday night when his cell phone rang in his bedroom. He caught it on the fourth ring, just before it went to voice mail.
Maybe it was Babette, the new nurse at Dan’s medical center. She’d told him that she might be able to trade shifts with another nurse.
Or maybe it was Remy LeDeux, his half brother. Even though Aaron had been part owner of his own air shipping company in Alaska, he worked for Remy’s company here in Louisiana, running copters back and forth to the oil rigs. Eventually (praise God and pass the grits, as Tante Lulu would say), he would form his own business here. Or not. Decisions, decisions.
If it was Tante Lulu wanting him to do her yet another “teeny tiny” favor, he was not going to answer. Not on a Saturday night. Since he was the only one of her “nephews” who was unmarried, she figured he was free all the time.
To come kill the raft of fire ants in her toilet, for example.
“Why not just flush them away?” he’d told her at the time.
“Because they’ll swim back up, fool!”
Turned out the fire ants had just been rust flecks that had loosened and backed up from her ancient septic pipes.
Or the time she wanted him to row her pirogue out to a gator nest in the swamps to gather gator eggs.
As if!
But, no, it was a caller he’d never expected to hear from. Brian Malone, an old Air Force friend, better known by his nickname “Snake,” for obvious reasons when he went commando. “Is this Aaron LeDeux I’m speakin’ with?” He pronounced LeDeux like Lay-dough, rather than La-doo.
“Snake! I’d recognize that blarney voice of yours anywhere.”
“How are you, lad?” he asked Aaron in a deep Irish brogue that sounded more like “Ha ware ya, laddie?”
Even though he’d been living in Michigan for twenty-some years, Brian still retained the musical dialect of the “old country” he’d emigrated from as a teenager with his parents. When drunk off his ass, the Irish proverbs that spewed from his mouth with an elongated Irish burr had amused all of the flight squadron. “As ye slide down the bannister of life, may the splinters be goin’ the wrong way.” Or Aaron’s favorite, “May all your ups and downs be under the sheets.”
“Still doin’ somersaults above the clouds, are ye, Ace?” Snake asked now.
“Snake? Where the hell you been, dude? I haven’t heard from you in ten years. Yes, I’m still flying. Copters at the moment. What’s up?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I had the time to tell you.”
“How’d you know my number?”
“Ways and means, me boy. Ways and means. Actually, I’ve had it for a while now. Got it from your aunt up in Alaska. Been meanin’ to call.”
“You married? Any kids? Weren’t you engaged or something to that girl from your hometown . . . Jillian, no, Julie?”
“No engagement. No marriage. No children,” Snake said. “I’m a priest.”
Aaron dropped his phone and had to scurry to pick it up off the floor, from under the bed, where it had slid. He could hear Snake laughing when he put the device to his ear again.
“You’re shittin’ me.”
“No. I really am a priest. I work with St. Jude’s Street Apostles in Dallas.”
“Huh? I never heard of . . . wait. Aren’t those the yahoos that rode motorcycles into a cult campground last year and rescued a bunch of teenagers? And I saw something on CNN recently about them liberating some American girls who joined ISIS?”
“Um,” Snake said. “I’m not so sure about the yahoo part, but, yeah, we’re sort of a rogue gang . . . uh, brotherhood.”
“What do I call you? Father Brian?”
“You can call me whatever you want, buddy. But most folks call us Brothers . . . Brother Brian, Brother Samuel, Brother Chuck. No, I’m not kidding. There is a priest named Chuck. Used to be a member of Hell’s Angels. Some of us in the Street Apostles are ordained priests, some are monks who haven’t taken vows. Just easier for all of us to go by the Brother tag.”
All this was more than Aaron could take in. “Let’s get together and catch up. Are Brothers allowed to drink a beer or two?”
“Bite your tongue, me lad. An Irishman always has room for a beer,” Snake—rather, Brother Brian—declared. “But that’s not why I called, my friend.”
Uh-oh. That “my friend” sounded ominous.
“I need a favor. A big favor.”
“Sure.”
“Can you come to the Silver Stud in New Orleans?”
“A strip club?” Aaron laughed. “I don’t know, Snake. I’m not really into the club scene anymore. How ’bout tomorrow? You can come out here to—”
Suddenly, Aaron could hear shouting over the phone, and then some popping noises that might be gunfire.
“Holy shit, Snake, what kind of trouble are you in?”
“Big trouble. The deadly kind.”
Snake had saved Aaron’s ass on more than one occasion when they’d served in Afghanistan. Aaron owed him. “It will probably take me an hour to get there.”
“Thanks. Gotta go.”
“Wait. Where should we meet?”
“The alley out back. I really appreciate this, good buddy.”
“Maybe you should call the police.”
> “No police. And no weapons.”
“Are you sure? I have a small pistol that I can hide—”
“No. Nonviolence is essential for our order. We rely on unconventional warfare of a different sort. Disguise and creativity are our tools.”
“How’s that working for you?”
Snake laughed. “Sometimes we get the bear, sometimes the bear gets us.”
“That’s just great. We have a lot of grizzlies in Louisiana. Not!”
“Hold on a minute,” Snake said. He appeared to be speaking to someone in a whisper. When he came back on the line, he told Aaron, “If I’m not here . . . or I’m . . . uh, incapacitated . . . go inside and find Fleur. The password is ‘lug nut’ tonight.”
“Floor? What floor?”
“Not that kind of floor. Fleur, like a flower. F-L-E-U-R.”
“Okaay,” Aaron said dumbly, chilled at Snake’s mention of being incapacitated. “Is this Fleur a stripper?”
Snake laughed. “She’s a nun.”
“You mean she’s dressed like a nun? Remember the time we went to that German nightclub, and the nun came out on stage—”
“No. Fleur is a nun.”
Oh boy!
Then the line went dead.
Who can explain the things that turn a guy on? . . .
Aaron wended his way gingerly through the crowd, asking occasionally if anyone knew where he could find a woman named Fleur. He’d already cased the alley behind the private club with no luck. No Snake. In fact, no people at all. However, there had been an ominous pool of fluid that might have been blood. But then, the lighting had been dim, and, besides, the back alley of a strip club . . . ? It could have been anything.
Once inside, after having slipped the doorman a twenty, he glanced right and left, scanning the joint. Even though he was no stranger to male entertainment establishments, at this stage in his life—the wrong side of thirty-five—it was not an appealing sight. Too much noise. Too much booze. Too much smoke. Too much fleshy exposure.