None had fought him the way this one had though. He had to give her that much credit. And at her young age. In the end, her struggles had done her no good. She had followed his instructions to the letter. And the child would be born before this night was over.
Not a moment too soon. His body had become as weak as a songbird, just leaving the nest.
This unborn babe held the power he needed to last for the next forty or fifty years. And he’d already made his arrangements. Time to leave Louisiana for a while. There was an island in the Caribbean where no one asked any questions as long as you had the money to pave the way, and the locals were so backward they would worship him before his smooth, young skin had time to tan.
Even a sharp policeman couldn’t follow him there, and according to the sheriff—his more than willing, greedy partner—Steinberg was anything but sharp. No one said it out straight, but they all hinted he was a drunk. So how had he fathered such a strong-willed child?
The skiff hit another wave, jolting Sebastian’s body until he thought he might break apart. The boy was right to hurry. His time dwindled fast once the process was set in motion.
He only needed to keep his wits for those few moments of danger, after the babe was born, but before he completed the sacrifice and sucked out the child’s life force for himself.
Then he’d be rid of this aging body and strong enough to dispose of the mother, Yvonne, and even his idiot great-great-great-grandson if need be.
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop,” Remy hissed. “Don’t even slow down.”
Gabby gripped the steering wheel so hard her nails dug into her palm. She eased her foot off the brake, her heart firmly lodged in her throat. The road curved to the right after a few yards and she came to a stop out of sight of Dan Cryer’s house. “Who was that in the driveway?”
“I didn’t recognize the uniform, but I’m betting on the Louisiana State Police. Three cars were parked in his drive. Ruben said they were coordinating raids with the Texas Rangers and the Louisiana Staties.”
“Is that why he hasn’t called? Are they just now starting?”
“Maybe.”
He was hiding something from her. She knew it. “What? Tell me.”
“If they were delayed, Ruben would have called while they were sitting around, waiting. A warrant for Dan Cryer’s house would be one of the last things, after they took down the De Lyon sheriff and the Comeaux sheriff.”
She’d forced a seven pound human from her body with less effort than it took to get information out of Remy. “Then why are you worried?”
“All that stuff takes time. He’d be writing reports, interviewing suspects, filling out forms for hours.”
“But?”
“But he would have taken time to call me. While he was driving back to the station, or while the suspects were being processed, or waiting for their lawyers, or waiting to be interviewed himself. He’d have found a minute, if only to say he wasn’t able to find any more information.”
If her heart had lodged in her throat before, it now burned like a chunk of ice sitting in her gut. “What do you think happened?”
“I’m hoping they sequestered everyone and confiscated their phones until after they were debriefed. But I’m scared the whole coordinated raid thing was a cluster fuck.”
“Will that make things more dangerous for Adrienne?”
“Not yet. Yvonne and the two men are in the middle of the swamp. Out of cell phone reach. They don’t know what’s happening here. But I’d just as soon get her someplace safe before they find out.”
Gabby forced herself to appear calm. Losing her cool now wouldn’t help Remy. Or Adrienne. “What’s the plan now if you can’t get to Dan’s skiff? T-Norvill Beaudroux has an airboat. That’s faster than a skiff and he lives just a few blocks from here.” She knew old T-Norville. He wouldn’t lend his boat out with a smile, but they hadn’t planned to ask Dan either.
“Airboats are too loud. I need to slip in unnoticed. And while they’re great for wide cannels, like here, once you get into the narrow, twisting channels of the back bayou, they can hang you up. If an airboat was what they needed, they wouldn’t be using a skiff. I’m going to work my way through the woods here and close to the water till I reach Dan’s dock.”
This late in the afternoon, the shadows were long. The sky, which had been gray all day, had now taken on a sickly green hue. The rain held off, but the breeze had picked up. The noise of the trees swaying and leaves rustling should mask any sound he made.
Remy’s plan might work. Maybe.
He reached for the door handle, but twisted back toward her. “Switch the walkie-talkie on and have it in your hand at all times. Be ready. Keep your shoes on and don’t waste a second if I call.”
The fact that he knew her well enough to remind her to keep her shoes on warmed a spot in her chest, but she could feel him wanting to add, Don’t leave me by the side of the road with my dick in my hand and a frightened girl on my arm. Thankfully, he had enough sense not to say the words out loud.
He sighed and glanced down. What bad thing was he about to tell her?
“When we find Adrienne, she’s going to need help. I’m taking her straight to the hospital, the fastest way I can. If that means not waiting for you, that’s the way it has to be.”
“I’d be angry if you did it any other way. J’ai confiance en toi.” Why couldn’t she have said that to him when he was struggling to find a way to make a life for them as a family?
His hard expression softened with a smile. “I trust you, too, mon chère,” he said, stroking her face with the back of his hand.
He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then a longer one on the lips before he slipped out the door and into the trees.
The woods swallowed him up before she had time to form the words she longed to say. “I love you, Remy,” she whispered to the spot she’d last seen him.
Forcing her heartbeat to slow, she eased down the road to a wide spot where she could turn around, then sat perfectly still and watched the dashboard clock until five full minutes had passed before heading toward Dan’s house again.
She turned the radio’s volume to high and cracked the driver’s side window, smiling at the deputy as she drove past. She watched as his eyes followed her until she was out of sight, but not before she caught a glimpse of a pink backpack scooting down Dan Cryer’s dock.
Chapter 30
Remy smiled to himself when he heard the beat of the rock music. Cops in the vicinity, and Gabby had figured out a way to distract them. She should have been the detective. She had the right instincts.
He untied the skiff and shoved away from the dock. The boat drifted with the current for ten or twelve yards before he risked starting the motor.
He’d never owned a boat, but he’d been fishing with Ruben plenty of times. Ruben made handling the boat and motor look simple. Remy bit back a frustrated groan. It wasn’t.
Each time he tried to avoid a limb or stump, he overcorrected and went too far the other direction. He was zigzagging down the bayou like a drunken sailor. The speed wasn’t that easy to master, either. He alternated between shooting ahead until he was almost airborne or going so slow he was in danger of stalling out.
Fuck. He hadn’t even thought about gas. How much did he have and how long would it last?
He’d heard stories of car thieves getting caught because they went for a joy ride and ran out of gas. Would that happen to him in the middle of the swamp? And in Dan Cryer’s boat?
Too late to worry about that now.
By the time Remy felt comfortable handling the skiff, several tributaries had broken off the main channel and the bayou had narrowed considerably. In spots, trees met overhead.
The wind seemed to be coming from every direction at once, and the water was
choppy, causing the boat raise up, then slap down on the waves. For the time being, he had enough light to see where he was going, but that wouldn’t last long.
Each time the boat bounced on the water, pain shot up his back and down his leg. Why hadn’t he taken the time to work the kinks out before leaving? He stretched his legs out, one at a time, and flexed them, hoping to relieve the stiffness.
Talking over the walkie-talkie was risky with so many law enforcement agencies around, so he gave the talk button three clicks and waited. Gabby’s answering three clicks sounded over the instrument.
He unpacked the pink backpack and made sure his flashlight and compass were close at hand. The speed of the boat kept the mosquitoes away, but he doused himself in bug spray anyway.
From the bottom of the backpack, he withdrew Yvonne Dupre’s pill press and baggies of ingredients. He dropped each into the inky water and watched as they sank to the bottom. Whatever happened next, that bitch was out of the drug business.
When he looked ahead, the sky was dark. The water narrowed into a black ribbon and trees seemed to reach out in an effort to grab him. Spanish moss draped on overhanging limbs, providing hiding places for snakes and other varmints.
The heavy swamp air closed in around him.
No manmade light or sound penetrated the thick growth. He was on his own.
His heart thumped like it was trying to escape from his body. Something unseen tightened around his chest and his breath came in tiny sips.
In that moment, he was fourteen years old again.
Remy had been small for his age. How could he not be, with a mother the size of Tinkerbell? This fact had never bothered him in middle school, but one week into high school and he recognized it as a looming problem.
Some of the senior boys could pass for adults and they had turned freshman hazing into an art form. He stayed late to go over his class schedule with his counselor, and in those ten minutes, the school had emptied.
He turned down an empty corridor, his backpack so full of textbooks it nearly toppled him over, when three seniors stepped in front of him.
“Where do ya’ think you’re going?” Dan Cryer hooked his thumbs in his jeans and chewed on a toothpick.
“Home,” Remy croaked. What a time for his voice to break.
“Not yet, you’re not. You have to earn the right to walk these halls.”
“Yeah,” one of the other boys chimed in. “You can pay the price, or pay the price. A little ultimatum.”
Dam loomed over him. “You know that fat freshman girl who keeps bragging about the diet she’s on?”
Delores Hopper. Every day at lunch she ate the carrots and celery her mother had packed. She stayed after school to swim laps. If she lost forty pounds in time for her family’s Christmas reunion, her mother would buy her tickets to see Madonna in Baton Rouge.
Remy managed a shaky nod.
Dan poked a thick finger in his chest and Remy stumbled backward. “You take a picture of her in her swimsuit and we’ll leave you alone all year. Refuse, and this will be the year from hell for you.”
Before he could answer, one of the kids from the photography club slapped a camera into his hand and the three boys marched him to the back door of the girl’s gym.
Remy tried to pull away, but Dan kept a tight grip on his arm. The third kid eased the door open, took a quick peek inside, and motioned them forward.
Chlorine fumes filled the dressing room and laughter from the pool area echoed through the connecting door. The boys’ tennis shoes squeaked on the tile floor.
“One photo. And make it good.” Dan positioned him in front of a curtained dressing area.
Photoshop Boy yanked the cloth back and the metal rings scraped against the curtain rod.
Remy felt his mouth drop open and his heartbeat pick up.
Delores stood there, completely naked. Her boobs rested on her fat stomach and her thighs were so thick she had to stand spay-legged. In one hand she held a bag of Oreos and her mouth sported a mustache of black crumbs.
She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she just stood there.
If he snapped that photo, copies of that image would paper the school by morning.
He threw the camera onto the ground and stomped on the lens. Then he ran like hell.
He didn’t get far before they caught him.
He spent the ride to the swamp facedown on the back floorboard of Dan’s car with someone’s foot on his neck.
The sun was already setting when they left him there, deep in the bayou, as naked as Delores had been.
“We’ll come get you in the morning. If you’re still alive,” Photoshop Boy said.
Dan chuckled, sending a chill down Remy’s spine. “Don’t let the gators get you. We have plans for you for the rest of the year.”
Kids that had grown up in the area knew the swamp. Remy didn’t. He was afraid to move his foot. What if he stepped on a snake?
He stood in one spot and shivered until his legs grew tired. He tried sitting, but stickers and twigs poked his unprotected sensitive parts. The last of the light had faded and darkness surrounded him.
Something—an alligator?—made a crashing sound in the water, and his heart preformed flip-flops in his chest. He couldn’t stay where he was. He shuffled his feet and held out his hands toward a dark shape in front of him. When he bumped into a tree, he held on to the trunk, as if that could save him.
He needed several tries, but he found a tree with a branch low enough that he could shimmy up onto it and hold on for dear life. The night lasted forever and each sound grew more frightening than the last. Bugs swarmed around him. Tree bark bit into him in the front and insects stung him on the back.
Even the dank air felt foreign as it filled his lungs.
He had no idea what animals might be sizing him up for a meal or if they could reach him so close to the ground.
Dawn was slow to come deep in the woods. He waited for full light, unsure if Dan Cryer would come rescue him or leave him to find his own way out.
Did he even want Dan to come for him? What would the guy do to him next?
Remy eased out of the tree and tried to figure out which direction he’d come from, but the boys had blindfolded him so he had no idea.
Weak rays of sunshine drifted through the Spanish moss and sweetgum, giving the area a rosy glow and creating a dappled effect of light and shadow on the forest floor, making it hard to distinguish where to place his feet. He stumbled around for half an hour before he found his clothes, folded in a neat pile, and heard a truck blowing past on the highway.
When he got home, he had thorns on the bottom his feet, mosquito bites on his pecker, and poison ivy on his ass. His mother begged him to tell her what had happened, but he never said a word about where he’d been or who’d put him there. Surprisingly the senior boys had left him alone for the rest of the year.
That night he swore two things. He’d never set foot in the swamp again and he’d get out of Louisiana at the first opportunity.
Gabby sat between Helen Perkins and Willow in front of the TV. Her eyes glazed over and she had no idea what they were watching.
At the first ring, she sat up straight and tried to find the Talk button on the walkie-talkie.
“Yes, yes. I’m here,” she said, but the ringing continued.
Her home phone. No one ever called her on that. She jumped off the sofa and sprinted to the kitchen, her bare feet slapping on the hardwood floor. Hadn’t Remy warned her to keep her shoes on? “Yes. Hello?”
“This is Barry Hollins with the Houston Police Department. I’m trying to reach Detective Remy Steinberg.” The man sounded young, definitely under thirty. “I’ve tried his cell phone several times with no luck. Do you have any idea how I could reach him?”
“He’s out of cell phone range at the moment, but he should be back later tonight. Would you like me to have him call you, Detective Hollins?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. I’m not a detective. I’m a civilian employee. Do you think you could take a message for me? Detective Chaffee dropped off the information he requested on her way out the door.”
Detective Chaffee? Was she the one Remy called Tenequa the Terrible? “Sure, I’ll be happy to.”
“That guy he was interested in, Sebastian Guidry? Detective Chaffee found an address on him.”
Hollins rattled off the information while she scribbled the address on a pad of notepaper. She thought she knew all the streets in Comeaux, but that one was unfamiliar. “I’ll give this to Remy as soon as he gets home.”
“That would be a big help. Things are so crazy around here I didn’t want to take a chance on forgetting to call.”
A chill raced down her spine. “What do you mean, crazy? What’s going on?”
“It’s all over the news here in Houston. Narcotics is in the middle of a big shootout with a bunch of drug runners. Everyone from the chief on down is headed over there.”
Chapter 31
The first drops of rain fell cold on Remy’s face. What the fuck had he been doing? Daydreaming? He spotted a log ahead and whipped the motor to the side with only seconds to spare.
The skiff spun in a full circle, then died. He drifted with the current while his heart rate returned to normal. The wind pushed the boat toward the bank where cypress knees waited to cave in the aluminum side.
He better get his head in the game or the swamp was going to end up killing him.
Then where would Adrienne be?
No, the swamp wasn’t going to get him. This time he’d come prepared. He brought a gun.
The motor didn’t start with his first pull. He held his breath and yanked on the rope a second time.
Voodoo on Bayou Lafonte Page 22