by Jana DeLeon
Copyright 2013 by Jana DeLeon
Published by Jana DeLeon
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Chapter One
Maryse Robicheaux LeJeune polished off a truly excellent cinnamon roll and lifted her coffee to wash it down. She had just filled her mouth with the hot liquid when Helena Henry walked through the wall of the Mudbug Café and sat in the booth across from her. Before her mind could even process what she saw, her body reacted and she spit the coffee across the table, where it passed right through the smiling ghost.
“Are you all right?” the waitress asked.
Maryse nodded, attempting to look normal. “It just went down wrong.”
“Looks to me,” Helena said, “like it came out wrong.”
Maryse waited until the waitress walked away and glanced around the café to ensure that no one was within hearing distance. Then she leaned across the table.
“This is not possible,” she whispered. “You ascended a year ago. I saw you. We all saw you.”
“I know what you saw. I was the one doing the ascending.”
Maryse’s mind raced with possibilities that might explain the ghost in front of her, but all of them were horrible.
“Is someone going to die?” Maryse asked.
“How should I know?”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you weren’t at home. I stopped there first hoping to get a glance of the sexy Luc in some state of undress, but you were both already gone. So given the morning hour and knowing your lack of domestic abilities, I came here.”
Maryse clenched her hands and willed herself not to jump across the table and attempt to strangle the ghost, who was deliberately misunderstanding her. “Why are you back on earth, Helena? Why aren’t you in heaven?”
Helena shrugged. “It was boring, okay? And I might have done some things to make it more interesting.”
Maryse sucked in a breath. “What things?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Really? Because it sounds like that’s exactly the point.”
Helena rolled her eyes. “Is it my fault that God doesn’t have near the sense of humor you’d expect? I mean, he did put testicles on the outside.”
Maryse closed her eyes and started counting. Maybe if she counted long enough, she’d open her eyes and Helena would be gone. Maybe if she wished it hard enough, this entire episode could be classified as a temporary mental break that she’d learn to live with.
Please God, don’t do this to me.
“If you’re asking God for help,” Helena broke into her prayer, “I don’t think he’s going to comply if it means taking me back.”
Then something Helena said clicked with Maryse and she opened her eyes, a trickle of fear running through her. “How do you know where I live? We built that house after you left.”
Helena brightened. “Sometimes God let me watch you guys—you know, how parents plop their kids down in front of a movie to keep them out of their hair? Same concept.”
Maryse sighed. If God couldn’t handle Helena, she had no idea what he expected mere mortals to do. “I don’t want you back, Helena, nor the trouble you bring with you. Everything has finally settled down here in Mudbug. People are happy and there hasn’t been a single attempted murder since you left.”
Helena took on her indignant pout. “I did not murder anyone.”
“No, but everything seemed to center around you.”
Helena threw her hands up in the air. “Well, I don’t know what you expect me to do about it. I’m here and I have no choice in the matter.”
Maryse downed the last of her coffee, wishing it were a shot of whiskey.
The peaceful existence she’d enjoyed for the last year was officially over.
Chapter Two
Jadyn St. James pressed the accelerator harder on her Jeep, causing her to bounce a good inch off the seat on the bumpy dirt road. It was her first official day as game warden and only her second day ever in the tiny town of Mudbug, Louisiana, but apparently, she had a crisis to handle before she’d even unpacked her bags. At least, that’s how the sheriff’s dispatcher referred to the situation when she’d made a frantic call to Jadyn for help earlier.
Jadyn attempted to find out exactly what she was driving into, but the distressed woman said she had to call the hospital and get a copter down there. Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, Jadyn looked at the rough map of the swamp that her cousin Maryse had drawn her the night before, and hoped she was headed in the right direction.
Tiny dirt roads snaked off in as many directions as the channels and inlets off the main bayou. One wrong turn and whatever crisis called for a helicopter might be over before she ever found the location. She took a hard right turn at a cypress tree split by lightning and hoped that she didn’t have to deal with a fatality her first day on the job.
She’d only ever dealt with one fatality, and that one wasn’t work-related. In the back of her mind, she’d always known that death would be part of the job someday, but she hadn’t planned on facing her demons so quickly.
The dirt trail curved to the left and she rounded the corner, then slammed on her brakes, sliding to a halt right behind a truck with the sheriff department’s logo on the side. A collection of people lined the bank of the bayou, all of them shouting in panic. Still unsure what she was facing, Jadyn grabbed her pistol from the glove compartment and hurried to the bank to see what was up.
It only took a glance to know this situation was way outside of her skill set.
The channel she’d been following ended in what could charitably be called a large pond. In the middle of the pond, half of a shrimp boat peeked up out of the murky water, but that wasn’t the cause for alarm.
Around the shrimp boat bobbed floating plastic bags. From her spot on the bank, Jadyn couldn’t see what was in the bags, but it must be something worth risking your life for. All around the edge of the pond, men jumped into the alligator-infested water, trying to grab a floating bag before one of the prehistoric monsters grabbed them.
Certain that Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries had no protocol for this, Jadyn did the only thing she could think of and rushed up to the edge of the bank and yelled at the men closest to her to exit the water. She might as well have been yelling into a vacuum. The men didn’t even acknowledge she was there, much less climb out. Instead, two men who’d grabbed the same bag started a fistfight.
She yelled, a tug-of-war ensued, and the bag split in two, sending money scattering into the air. She grabbed at one of the bills as it fluttered near her and almost passed out—a hundred-dollar bill! What in God’s name was going on in this town?
She pulled out her pistol, prepared to take control, when a man’s voice sounded behind her.
“Sweethe
art, I need you to step back from the pond. I’ve got enough to deal with. I don’t need you getting hurt trying to save your boyfriend or something equally as stupid.”
Sweetheart?
She spun around to face the source of the voice and was momentarily silenced. The man before her was quite possibly the hottest guy she’d ever seen short of a movie screen. Even in jeans and T-shirt, she could see the size and flex of his muscles. His dark wavy hair was weeks past needing a cut, but somehow he made it look sexy instead of unkempt. He wore polarized sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but something deep inside of her hoped they were green.
He called you sweetheart.
She frowned as she crashed back to reality. “I’m not your sweetheart. I’m the game warden. As this is the game preserve, this is my business, not yours, so I’m going to go ahead and ask you to step back from the water.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She felt her back tighten. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
He sighed. “Then you take one side of the bank and I’ll take the other. Those gators are napping right now, but if we don’t get these fools out of the water before lunchtime, it’s not going to be pretty.”
It wasn’t that she thought his idea lacked merit. It was that she had no idea why he thought he could bark orders at her like she was some lackey.
“And why should I listen to you?”
“Because I’m right and I’m the sheriff—Sheriff Colt Bertrand. I’m the one who called you for help. Well, not you specifically, because if I’d known…anyway, take the side to the left and do something—hell, flash them if you have to, but get them out of the damned water!”
He stalked off down the right side of the bank and she stared at him for a moment, before whirling around and heading the other direction. That was some condescending attitude. Clearly, the emergency in front of her rated her attention now, but as soon as this mess was handled, she would have a word with the sexist sheriff.
She walked up to the edge of the pond and yelled at some of the men to get out, even shouting her credentials, but they all pretended not to hear. Then she fired her weapon in the air, which got them to pause for a second, but as soon as she told them to get out of the water, they went right back to fighting and ignoring her.
Another man came running down the bank and she leveled her gun at him, threatening to shoot if he didn’t stop. He ran right past her and bailed into the pond as if she were invisible. One glance at the back of the pond and her pulse spiked. The alligators were starting to stir. All of the thrashing about had gotten their attention and alerted them that an easy meal may be close by.
A rush of panic ran through her. If a significant portion of the Mudbug population were maimed or killed on her first day of work, it probably wouldn’t reflect well on her. Even if they were all idiots who’d asked for it.
They weren’t going to listen to reason. That much was obvious. And clearly, she wasn’t about to resort to a flashing debacle, as suggested by the no-account Sheriff Bertrand, so she took the only other reasonable option and started shooting.
An introverted personality and a significant lack of trust for people in general had left her a lot of free time, and she’d spent much of it at the gun range. Not a single shot out of her first ten went awry. Every single floating bag she targeted popped, then rapidly sank beneath the slowly swirling water. She never stopped once to consider what Sheriff Bertrand would say. Quite frankly, she didn’t care.
The men howled in horror and the fighting got more violent for the remaining bags, as she took out everything that wasn’t already in someone’s hand. The gators, who’d been contemplating an early snack, held their positions, either experience or some built-in defense letting them know that the sound of gunshots meant the possibility of a bad ending.
When she sank the last of the bags, she stuck her nine millimeter in her waistband and watched as the men started wading out of the water, not willing to risk diving into the murky depths after the money.
“Nice shooting,” Sheriff Bertrand’s voice sounded beside her.
She looked over to see him grinning, thumbs hooked over his jeans pockets.
“Are you going to arrest me now?” she asked.
“Why? You didn’t shoot any residents.”
“If they didn’t get out of that pond, I was going to start.”
The grin widened.
She stared at him and shook her head. How could someone appear so cocky and so relaxed at the same time? She’d expected him to be pissed at her choice; instead, he appeared amused. And that made her even madder.
“You could have helped,” she pointed out.
“Why waste my own bullets? You had it under control, and I have a touch of a hangover from my day off. I figured it was okay to sit back and watch the show.”
“I’m so glad I could provide you with some entertainment.”
“You stupid bitch!” A man’s voice sounded behind her.
She turned in time to see one of the swimmers running toward her, fist already cocked. Twenty years of martial arts training kicked in and she ducked before the hand could connect with her jaw, fully expecting the “moron” to tag Sheriff Bertrand.
But instead of hearing the sound of a fist connecting with a face, she heard a dull thud and rose up to see the sheriff holding the moron’s fist in his hand, just an inch from his jaw.
Despite the instant disliking she’d taken to the sheriff, Jadyn was impressed.
In one fluid move, the sheriff twisted the man’s arm behind his back and cuffed him. “That one buys you a night in jail, Junior.”
“What for?” Junior protested. “I didn’t even hit anyone.”
“That’s because you suck at fighting,” the sheriff said. “Besides, you insulted our new game warden and if that’s not against the law, it probably will be when the mayor lays eyes on her.”
He pushed Junior up the bank. “The rest of you, get the hell out of here and leave everything you grabbed on the hood of my truck on the way out. If I see you here again or suspect you didn’t turn over the money, I’m going to arrest you all and search your houses and boats. Anyone who buys a new toy will have it impounded because I know you’re all broke. Are we clear?”
The men grumbled, but surprised Jadyn when they piled crumpled wet bills on the sheriff’s truck. Clearly, they took Bertrand at his word, even Junior, who babbled about the cash in his overalls pocket.
“I’ll get that when you strip at the jail,” Sheriff Bertrand said as he pushed Junior down to sit on the bank. “The last thing in the world I’m going to do is dig in your pockets.”
Jadyn hesitated on the bank, unsure what was expected of her in this situation. The men were already pulling away from the pond in boats, trucks, and ATVs, and surely her job description didn’t include jumping into the pond and retrieving the remaining cash.
“So how do you want to handle this?” Sheriff Bertrand asked.
She turned around to look at him, not understanding the question, so unable to formulate a decent answer. “What do you mean? Looks like you’ve got it all under control.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “Exactly how long have you been on the job?”
Her back tightened again. “If you mean here in Mudbug, today’s my first day, but I’ve been the assistant game warden in Caddo Parish for the last five years.”
“North Louisiana. That explains it.”
Jadyn was certain she’d just been insulted, but couldn’t figure out exactly what the insult was. “It explains what?”
“Why you don’t see the bigger problem than those fools trying to kill themselves over a couple hundred dollars each.”
Dumbass!
She’d been so focused on getting the men out of the pond before the alligators lined up for a buffet that she hadn’t stopped to consider the ramifications of why they were willing to risk life and limb. She sucked in a breath.
“That’s a shrimp boat, r
ight?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I’m not overly familiar with the shrimping industry, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume shrimpers don’t usually carry around Baggies full of hundred-dollar bills.”
“No, they do not.”
“Shit.”
He looked at the pond and sighed. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Chapter Three
Colt thanked the tow truck driver and sent him down the narrow road, pulling what remained of the sunken shrimp boat on a flatbed trailer. With no other option but waiting on the state to send the proper equipment, Colt had called on the Mudbug residents for help extracting the boat.
By now, everyone in Mudbug knew what was in the pond, and he couldn’t risk a drunken midnight parade from Pete’s Bar, attempting to recover anything left in the boat. The new game warden agreed immediately to his plan, apparently having no trouble believing the men might come back drunk and attempt to resurrect the boat.
The whole event was a sketchy proposition but within a mere twelve hours, the one tow truck, six dualies, fourteen ATVs, and a horse finally managed to drag the boat out of the pond and onto the trailer.
“Marty Breaux owns the mechanic shop in town,” Colt said to Jadyn as she walked up the bank, looking as exhausted as he felt. “He works on everything, so he’s got stalls big enough for boats. I’ll have him lock it up tonight, and you can decide what to do about it tomorrow.”
Jadyn looked confused. “You’re going to investigate, right? I assume that was drug money.”
“Drug money is a good guess, but I’m not the one who should be guessing. See, that pond is in the game preserve, and I know how you game wardens are about your jurisdiction. This baby is all yours.”
Her dismay was so apparent, it was almost cute. He clapped her on the back before walking toward his truck. “Welcome to Mudbug.”
She was still standing on the bank, looking shell-shocked, when he climbed into his truck, but as he started to pull away, she came alive and stomped up the bank to her Jeep. Convinced she was safely leaving the scene of the crime, he took off down the dirt road back to town. He needed an hour-long shower and a six-pack of beer to erase the stench of the day.