“You won’t do it.” Lang turned and tossed the shotgun off the porch, and it clattered into what Gentry had to assume was his boat. Lang held up his arms. “I’m not armed. It wouldn’t be a case of self-defense this time, bro. Just you, being a murderer.”
He took another step back and was a foot from the edge of the porch. Gentry didn’t want to shoot him, but one more step and he would. He adjusted his pistol for a kill shot, trying to remember not his brother but Eva Savoie. Tommy Mason’s wife and son. Jena. Ceelie. Especially Ceelie. “Damn it, Lang, last chance to walk away from this. Don’t make me shoot you.”
“Nobody’s makin’ you do nothing, Brother.” Lang took another step back, but before Gentry could squeeze the trigger, a blast from behind him sent Gentry rolling to the porch in a defensive move.
Lang disappeared with a midair pinwheel, a spray of blood from the center of his chest, and a splash.
“Law enforcement! Drop your weapon!” Gentry quickly pivoted and aimed. In the center of the porch, illuminated by the light coming from the cabin door, stood a woman with short, uneven hair, half a muddy, bloody blouse, and wild blue eyes. Silver duct tape covered her mouth; the face behind the tape was barely recognizable. But Gentry knew her. God, how well he knew her.
In her hands, despite wrists bound with more tape, she held out a .45, still ready to fire, on the edge of breaking. She didn’t seem to see Gentry, or anything else. What had that SOB done to her?
“Ceelie.” Gentry kept his voice even, but only because he’d been trained to do so. He wanted to cry. Hell, he was crying, unless hot rain had started falling just on his face. “Baby, it’s me. It’s Gentry. You can drop the gun now. It’s over. You’re safe.” He laid his weapon on the porch and got up slowly, with his hands at his sides and open so she could see them.
For a second she stared at him without a spark of recognition, the gun pointed at him. Then her arms began to shake, and she dropped the pistol. It landed on the wooden porch with a solid thud.
Gentry closed the space between them in two long strides, scooping Ceelie up and taking her back inside the cabin. She shook violently. He laid her on the bed, pulled out his knife, and cut the tape on her wrists. “I’m going to the kitchen to get something to take the tape off your face, okay?”
She blinked at him and turned her head. He followed her gaze to a deputy lying on the floor. He blinked a couple of times, so he was conscious, but he’d lost a lot of blood. Gentry went over and freed the man’s arms and legs. “Are you Sergeant Baker?” The officer nodded.
“Gentry Broussard, LDWF. Your guys are already on the way. I’ll call an ambulance.” For both of them.
Paul, with a shoulder wound, arrived just ahead of three teams of TPSO deputies—probably the first three of many. Gentry filled him in quickly and let Paul do the rest of the communicating. Gentry rummaged in the kitchen until he found a bottle of olive oil and took it to the back corner, where Paul had been keeping everyone away from Ceelie while they awaited the EMTs.
Gentry sat on the bed next to her; she flinched and turned her head away slightly, as if steeling herself to be hit. She’d been hit a lot, and by closed fists. There were a few glass cuts on her face similar to Jena’s, but the worst of Ceelie’s injuries had come at the fists of his brother. He hoped the SOB drowned, and that Ceelie didn’t ever feel a moment of guilt for shooting him. He’d make sure of it.
“It’s okay, baby. I’m going to get the tape off your face, okay? It’s over, Ceelie. Lang’s gone. You outsmarted him.”
She turned back to him with the first sign of tears in her beautiful eyes. She was finally starting to understand, although she was still shaking. The work to remove the tape was slow; he soothed her skin with the oil and eased it off a fraction at a time. He was afraid she’d go into shock before the EMTs arrived. From the rawness of her lips, it looked like Lang had been engaging in a lot of the rip-off-the-duct-tape-fast method. The pain she must have endured was beyond his imagination.
By the time he gently tugged off the last of the tape, she was crying and whispering his name, over and over, like a mantra.
“I’m here, Ceelie.” He picked her up and sat back on the bed with both arms wrapped around her, rubbing her back until the shakes grew less violent, the tears more sniffles than sobs.
Outside, he heard motors and the sound of drag chains being dropped from boats. Most of the LDWF vessels were equipped with them—long chains with sharp treble hooks on the ends—used to drag the waterways in search-and-rescue missions.
Only in this case, it was search and recovery for his brother, he guessed. It had happened so fast that he’d registered Lang falling with a chest wound, but not whether it looked like a kill shot.
The EMTs arrived, but Ceelie clung to Gentry when he tried to let her go. Finally, one EMT agreed to examine her while she sat in his lap; the other medic attended to Sergeant Baker.
“We need to take her in.” The EMT, a young woman with a head of long, beautiful braids that reminded Gentry of yet another thing Ceelie had lost, sat on the bed next to them. “Ms. Savoie is suffering from dehydration and exposure. She has a lot of bruising on her face and body, but nothing seems to be broken.”
The EMT, whose name tag read “S. THOMPSON,” looked across the room, where her partner was moving Sergeant Baker to a stretcher with the help of a couple of the deputies. “We have room for two patients in the ambulance, so—”
“You have three patients.” Paul had removed his shirt and bandaged his own shoulder with one of Ceelie’s towels, from the look of it. He still looked neat and competent. “Langston Broussard is seriously injured, but when the deputies found him, he’d managed to pull himself to the bank.”
“Il est le diable.” Ceelie whispered against Gentry’s chest. He is the devil.
“I will take Ms. Savoie to the hospital myself.” Gentry spoke forcefully. He would not let Ceelie within sight of Lang again. If his brother survived, she might have to meet up with him in court, but that was way in the future. She did not have to see him tonight. She sure as hell didn’t have to share an ambulance with him. “Otherwise, you’ll have to call another ambulance.”
Ms. Thompson consulted with her partner and returned quickly. “Since you’re with the state, if you’ll sign a release, you can take her to the ER at Terrebonne General.”
“The sooner the better.” He’d spotted Warren and Sheriff Knight at the cabin door, and he wanted to get her out before she had to face a barrage of questions she wasn’t capable of answering yet.
As soon as the papers were signed, he got Paul to retrieve his pistol from the porch and let the agent—and now his friend—clear a path to the door so he could get Ceelie out of the chaos.
“Can it wait?” he asked Warren before the man could open his mouth. The lieutenant looked at Ceelie, who’d closed her eyes but kept her arms in a chokehold around Gentry’s neck.
He nodded. “Yeah, we’ll get both of your statements later. Get her out of here. Good work tonight.”
Ceelie was the one they needed to thank. She’d been incredible, and now that it was over, everything was catching up with her.
Paul followed them to the truck, which was going to take some maneuvering to back out. At least a dozen law enforcement vehicles and the ambulance, with blue and red lights flashing, were parked haphazardly all the way along the drive.
When Paul opened the passenger’s door and put Gentry’s guns in the back, Gentry carefully lifted Ceelie into the seat. She let go of him and let him strap her in, but didn’t take her eyes off him. She still had a wild look, and he wasn’t sure her safety had fully sunk in.
“Listen.” Paul followed Gentry around the truck and put a hand on his arm before he climbed in. He kept his voice low. “When the guys had the drag chains out, they pulled up the ribcage of a human skeleton. There’s something else big down there, but they say the divers will have to recover it.”
Jesus, what now? Gentry shook his head. �
�Heard there’s a tropical system moving in within the next couple of days. It’s going to be a while before a dive team will be able to see shit in that bayou after it stirs up the mud.”
“Yeah, just letting you know.” Paul stuck his head in the cab of the truck. “I’m glad you’re okay, Ms. Savoie. You showed a lot of courage and quick wit out there. You made your ancestors proud—Cajun, Creole, Chitimacha.”
For the first time, Ceelie took her eyes off Gentry and looked at Paul with a faint smile. And for the first time, Gentry knew she was going to be okay. It might take a while, physically and emotionally, but she’d come back to him. The Ceelie he’d come to know was inside that shocked, battered body.
“Okay, let’s take a ride and get you all well again, okay?” Gentry cranked the truck, but leaned over and kissed Ceelie on the cheek. Those lips had to heal before anyone came near them. He whispered, “I was so afraid I’d lose you, and I couldn’t have stood that.”
Then he backed out of the drive before he could cry again.
CHAPTER 31
“Need anything else?” Gentry set a glass of iced tea on the portable wooden table he’d picked up at Walmart and set up on Ceelie’s porch.
From her Tante Eva’s rocking chair, she’d been watching the goings-on in the water in front of the cabin. Now she looked up at Gentry and smiled. Physically, it still hurt to smile. Emotionally, after six days of being free, it felt damned good.
“You make a pretty good butler, Broussard. I might have to keep you around.”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead before flopping on the porch. With his LDWF T-shirt, jeans, and bare feet, he looked younger. Of course, he was also better rested for a change. “Just try getting rid of me. I’m unemployed for the next thirty days.”
He’d been hovering for the past forty-eight hours, since she’d been released from the hospital, the same day Jena had been dragged back to New Orleans by her family to finish her recovery. Jena was on medical leave but swore she’d be back.
In other words, Gentry had nothing but Ceelie to keep him busy while he underwent mandatory counseling and testing to determine when he was emotionally ready to return to the field. He thought he was ready; Ceelie knew otherwise.
His nightmares had been bad, and Ceelie knew she played into those things that haunted him in the dark. He blamed himself for everything. That was his nature, she’d learned, and if they were going to have a shot at a relationship, she’d have to accept that and help him work around it.
She’d also have to work on his tendency to be overprotective—understandable given what they’d been through, but she’d had a lot of time in the hospital to talk with Jena. Male law-enforcement officers, Jena had told her, were alpha males by nature. They had a wide dominant streak that made them good at their jobs but hard on relationships. They kept things to themselves. Once they’d accepted you into their circle of protection, often unconsciously, they would hover. They would be overprotective.
“You won’t be able to break him of that,” Jena had told her. “Don’t think the wildlife agents are any better than regular city cops—they aren’t. It’s in the genes. They’re good men; you just have to learn how to work around those tendencies.”
Ceelie didn’t know if she and Gentry would make it as a couple, but she wanted it—desperately. When they’d finally made love last night for the first time since Lang had taken her, they’d both ended up laughing and crying at the same time. It was the most intimate, beautiful experience she’d ever had, both bitter and sweet.
She could no longer imagine her life without Gentry Broussard in it. And to give him credit, while he’d been hovering this week, he’d also let her be silent and spend some quality time in her own head. She had learned a lot about herself in the past month.
She was stronger than she thought. Smarter than she thought. And this was home. If she were meant to have a career in music, she’d have one. This wasn’t the Stone Age. She could be at a recording studio in under an hour, at a club within twenty minutes, at an airport in thirty.
Thanks, ironically, to Lang, she could live here quite a while, even repair the cabin, without worrying about income. She’d been more surprised than anyone when one of the deputies, collecting evidence in the cabin while she was still in the hospital, had examined parts of Lang’s excavation of the cabin floor and found, just beyond where he’d reached, a small plastic bag holding a dozen gold coins—rare Confederate coins, according to Gentry, that could be worth as much as half a million dollars. Once the case was closed, they’d be hers to sell at auction. If her great-great-grandfather Julien Savoie had committed murder in order to get them, there was no proof.
She’d use the money for good things, if she got it. If she didn’t, that was okay too. She wanted those coins gone—either sold, or returned to someone else if they rightfully belonged elsewhere. It was time the Savoie curse was put to rest.
A big splash jolted her out of her ruminations.
“Looks like they got something,” Gentry said. They watched as a sheriff’s-office dive team brought up handfuls of something and turned it all over to the officers waiting in their patrol boat. Then the two divers upended and went back under.
Gentry walked to the edge of the porch nearest the boat. “What is it?”
“They found the rest of the human skeleton.” Adam Meizel held up a long thighbone, from the looks of it. “It’s tied with chains onto an old fishing boat anchored to the bottom of the bayou. Looks like the boat was sunk on purpose—big holes in it.”
Ceelie had no doubts as to who the boat and the bones belonged to. “It’s LeRoy Breaux. Or at least that’s what Lang told me.”
She ran her fingers through the short haircut she was still trying to get used to. It was so much easier to take care of, she wasn’t sure she’d grow it long again. Gentry claimed to like it, but then he would, regardless.
“You think Eva chained him to the boat and sank it?” Gentry came back to sit beside her.
“Absolutely. She had his freaking skull in the pie safe when I was a teenager. That much of Lang’s wild tales, I believed.” If Lang Broussard hadn’t spotted Eva at the Houma pawnshop, her great-aunt would’ve gotten away with murder and the coins might or might not have ever been found. The only mystery left was where in Isle de Jean Charles Ceelie’s great-great-grandfather Julien Savoie had found the coins in the first place, and who he supposedly murdered. Of course, she only had Lang’s word for that story too.
After talking to a coin expert, Gentry had learned that most of the coins from the last Confederate minting were believed to have been buried by plantation owners or other wealthy Southerners to keep them out of Yankee hands.
Terrebonne had been a land of sugarcane plantations, and, as soon as she was able, Ceelie would research the history of who’d owned the land around the isolated Chitimacha community. Maybe she’d find those answers; maybe she wouldn’t.
It took several hours for the divers to find all the bones they could and examine the boat for any other evidence or clues. They didn’t expect much after almost twenty years of the things being submerged in the brackish water of Whiskey Bayou.
Ceelie leaned back in the rocker and stroked her fingers through Gentry’s thick, curly hair, which had started getting long. She began to hum an old song from her childhood, and he turned to grin up at her.
“I’ve been waiting for that.” He got to his feet.
“Waiting for what?” Ceelie started to get up, but he motioned for her to stay. Which was good. The bruises on her face were fading, but her body was still sore.
He walked toward the far end of the porch. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”
She traced the sound of his footfalls around the house and off the porch, then heard his truck door open and close.
He rounded the corner with both hands behind his back, and Ceelie had to suppress a shudder at the image it conjured of herself, bound. She still had some work to do on her mental state.
“What? You’re trash-diving now?”
What he pulled from behind his back took her breath away. A Gibson. No, her Gibson, back in pristine condition. Just before Lang had taken her, she’d seen it, partially crushed and covered in blood and glass.
She got up and pulled him into a long hug, crying again. She’d sworn she wouldn’t shed another tear, but this was different. These came from a good place, not a bad one.
“Hey, you okay?” Gentry’s eyebrows were bunched in worry as he pulled back and wiped her tears away with gentle fingers.
“I need some more tea, butler.” She laughed for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. “I have a song to finish writing now that I have my guitar.”
A song about Whiskey Bayou.
A song about home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks, as always, to my fabulous agent, Marlene Stringer; editors Chris Werner and Melody Guy, who made my story so much better, and editor JoVon Sotak, who shared my initial vision; my alpha reader Dianne Ludlam, who always spots the plot holes; longtime law-enforcement officer, author, and consultant Wesley Harris at Write Crime Right, for steering me through the world of law-enforcement procedure, weapons, and terminology (any errors are purely the result of my willful nature); and my Auburn Writing Circle compatriots Larry Williamson, Shawn Jacobsen, Robin Governo, Matt Kearley, Julia Thompson, and, in absentia, Peter Wolf and Mike Wines. You guys are all awesome!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 Studio 16
Susannah Sandlin is the author of the award-winning Penton Legacy paranormal romance series and The Collectors romantic suspense series. Writing as Suzanne Johnson, she is the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series and several urban fantasy novellas. Susannah was a finalist for the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards in both 2014 and 2015, and she is the 2015 winner of the Holt Medallion for romantic suspense, the 2015 Booksellers’ Best Award for romantic suspense, and the 2013 winner of the Holt Medallion for paranormal romance. A longtime New Orleanian, she currently lives in Auburn, Alabama, which explains her penchant for SEC football, gators, and cheap Mardi Gras trinkets.
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