Black Diamond (Wilds of the Bayou Book 2)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Add the alligators into the mix and it made no sense. Big Bull could’ve gotten the stuff by accident, but Cole’s gut said there was nothing accidental about it. It would be easy enough to bypass the boat searches the newspaper had talked about. Southern Terrebonne was full of places to hide or do secretive things. Cole knew, because he’d visited a lot of them.

  Once a month or so, if the weather promised to be cooperative, Cole would load up a heavy pack of survival rations and set out in the pirogue with no plan beyond whether he’d turn north or south when his outlet reached Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes. For a week or two, he’d practice runs in the bays and bayous, streams and swamps and wetlands. He’d repeat each route until it felt comfortable, make a note of which ones drew fishermen and which ones seemed pristine or deserted. Then he’d return home, give the route a name, and mark it on his big wall map of the parish.

  A man needed a hobby, and navigating the swamps was his. That, and survival training. He wasn’t one of those loony tunes doomsday preppers. He just figured that eventually, living in isolation as he did, a hurricane would catch up with him and he’d be on his own for a while, without even the meager comforts he’d devised for himself.

  Chances were good that her partner would be there with handcuffs. Or the sheriff, more likely. Even the DEA, who’d set up a big presence in the parish.

  Chances were good that Cole would be walking into a trap, and that his trust in Jena Sinclair would prove unfounded. Everyone would know his story, assume he’d come unhinged, and he’d be arrested. If he had any sense of self-preservation, he’d pack up his stuff and move on. Except, damn it, he didn’t want to leave.

  He didn’t think he had it in him to start over again.

  A heavy vehicle sounded from behind him, so he swung his legs back around to the porch and watched as Doris and her husband trekked in and out of their shack on stilts, carrying boxes and furnishings. It looked like the only other remaining residents of Sugarcane Lane were moving out.

  He considered offering to help them on their way, not because he was antisocial and wanted them gone, but, well, actually, it was because he was antisocial and wanted them gone.

  Instead, Cole watched a while longer and, about three thirty, went inside for a shower. He wandered around in a towel for a while because, really, what did one wear that conveyed sanity and also—being honest again here—might make him attractive to Jena Sinclair?

  There. He’d finally let himself think it. He never believed he’d want another woman after Rachel, but he wanted Jena, and not just physically, although he thought she was beautiful. He thought about her at night. He thought about being with her, kissing her, touching her until he erased the sadness that seemed to settle around her, even in their brief conversation.

  Yes, he wanted her. Which was simply pathetic, considering he’d given her every reason to think of him as a psychopath and she might very well have him in jail on suspicion of drug trafficking before nightfall.

  He deserved whatever he got.

  Still, he dug in the back of his bedroom closet for a box that hadn’t been opened in five years. The sight of the few clothes he’d kept from his old life sent a shiver across his scalp, and he thought how stupid they’d look with his Swamp Man hair. He wasn’t that guy anymore and didn’t want to be.

  Be who you are now, jackass. Who you were then is just a bunch of words on a page or a photo in a newspaper. Who are you now?

  He had no answers.

  Cole shoved the box back into the closet and instead chose a clean pair of jeans and a long-sleeved blue Henley. He laced up his boots. Considered whether to wear his hair down or tied into a long ponytail with the braids, and finally settled on the tail.

  He was an idiot, treating this like a date when it was going to end up being an inquisition.

  At four thirty, after pacing and fidgeting until he couldn’t stand it any longer, Cole got in his truck and drove to Chauvin. The sight of two black LDWF pickups in front of Jena’s house, perched there like two big predators, confirmed his worst fear: she’d brought in other agents. No, not his absolute worst fear. So far there wasn’t a squad car from the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office in sight.

  Still, he kept driving a mile or two past her house.

  Finally, he pulled into the lot of an abandoned gas station, the rust marks that ran halfway up its pumps telling him the place had flooded at some point. But what part of Terrebonne couldn’t say the same? It was one thing that kept him here, on this land sliding slowly into the Gulf of Mexico but hanging on to everything it had with a fierceness that defied logic.

  He wanted to hang on to it with the rest of the people who loved this land. And unless he planned to pack up and keep running, the time to claim his place had finally come.

  He had to face his past in order to help the future of a land that had become important to him, despite his efforts to avoid it. And he had to do it with the only person who’d managed, somehow, to get through the thick wall he’d built up around himself.

  He had to talk to Jena Sinclair, no matter who had arrived in that other black truck.

  CHAPTER 19

  Jena had asked Mac to move his truck behind her house so it wouldn’t look like they were throwing their lack of trust right in Cole’s face. When Mac refused, she ordered him to move it. The problem was, she had no real authority to order him to do anything and they both knew it.

  They had argued all the way from the drive into the foyer. “You want to fill Lieutenant Doucet in on this whole thing?” Mac got in her face. “You want to let him know you’re planning to have a chat with some off-the-grid hermit about the Black Diamond case without letting anybody know about it? I don’t care what the guy’s been through. People change.”

  She gave it right back to him. “Are we talking about Cole Ryan here, or someone from your past? Who changed, Mac?”

  Jena would never have believed she’d see true anger on Mac Griffin’s face, but he was angry, and she’d been right—he flinched when she asked the question. “This is not about me,” Mac said, his voice low and furious. “So you want me to tell the lieutenant that if your partner insists on backing you up in a potentially dangerous situation, you want him to park out of sight and hide in the bushes? Well, then, put it on speaker because I want to hear Warren’s reaction.”

  Then he’d sat his happy ass down on one of her white chairs, crossed his arms across his chest, and waited. He’d even refused to untuck his uniform shirt or hide the SIG Sauer. Mac Griffin was on duty and he intended for Cole Ryan to know it.

  Damn it. If only he weren’t right. Warren would jerk her back to desk duty before she could say “big white rhino.”

  This week, after talking to Ceelie and thinking about what had happened last fall, she’d finally let herself off the hook. She had reacted the way she’d been trained, whether she worked for NOPD or Wildlife and Fisheries. She had come to accept that sometimes, even when you did everything right, situations still went straight to hell.

  So she had confidence in her gut instinct to trust Cole Ryan. At the same time, her training told her to not let her gut get in the way of common sense, even if it meant giving in to Mac Griffin, sitting there surrounded by his aura of smugness.

  Her law enforcement training would not condone her talking to Cole alone, no matter who he was or what her gut told her.

  “I take it all back—every word.” She sat on the twin chair facing Mac’s. “I am not your friend. I am the woman who’s going to make your life a living hell by telling the rest of the guys that you have the hots for Paul Billiot. And you don’t know this yet, but he’s going to be your partner again as soon as the DEA case is wrapped up. Ceelie told me.”

  A fleeting look of alarm crossed Mac’s face, replaced by the mulish expression she’d seen most of the afternoon. She hated that expression.

  “Go for it.” He gave her a Cheshire cat smirk because they both knew she would do no such thing, and so what if he did? Paul was
handsome in a stern, silent kind of way.

  “Fine.” She rubbed her temples, the result of stress and too much time with Mac Griffin. “Will you at least go out and sit by the pool while I talk to him?”

  “Maybe.”

  Who was this annoying man? He was the department playboy, the joker, the baby-faced smart-mouth who’d driven the lieutenant so crazy his first month that he ended up spending his off day washing all of their trucks. He’d turned into a . . .

  Jena sighed. He’d turned into what he was supposed to be—an enforcement agent.

  She walked to the front window, gazing down the long drive at the traffic zipping up and down the highway, then checked her watch. Cole was five minutes late. Had he seen the second LDWF truck and kept going?

  Less than a minute passed before Jena had her answer. Her heart surged at the sight of the old faded-red Ford pickup she’d seen sitting behind his house when she met him. It turned into the drive and came to a stop alongside the two black trucks. She said a prayer for herself, for patience; for Mac, that he’d give them space; and for Cole, that he’d still trust her.

  She opened the door as Cole exited his truck. He stopped when he saw her, and his eyes captivated her, as they had the first time, by their clear, rich blue—maybe even more so because of his blue shirt. His hair glinted golden arcs of light from the late-afternoon sun, and he wore it pulled back instead of down, tied back with his braids. She’d thought him striking before but she’d been wrong. He was beautiful.

  Beautiful and so, so broken. Her emotions must have shown on her face, which meant she was letting this get way too personal.

  “You know who I am.” His voice wasn’t accusatory, just resigned.

  She nodded. “I felt I had to look you up, and when I did . . .”

  When she’d done a simple Google search, she’d seen that photo before anything else. The image had run everywhere, from the local Houma newspaper to NBC Nightly News. Looking at it, even five years later, felt invasive. For several weeks, until a bigger story took its place, it had become the iconic photo of gun violence in America.

  A young uniformed paramedic had been photographed at the scene of a deadly mass shooting at a mall in Mississippi, where more than a dozen people shopping in a department store had been shot and three dozen injured before law enforcement caught the shooter and arrested him.

  “Massacre at the Mall,” the news reports had called it.

  In that iconic photo, the paramedic cradled a tiny, blood-covered girl against his chest, a cascade of blond curls trailing off his arm, a pink-and-white outfit and white sandals soaked crimson. Naked grief mingled with the tears and blood on his face as paramedic Coleman Ryan carried the body of his four-year-old daughter, Alexandra, whose life he’d been unable to save. His wife and mother also had died—all at the hands of a young man strung out on meth, trying to gun down his ex-girlfriend. Ironically, the ex hadn’t even been injured.

  An older version of that same face looked back at her now, only, instead of sorrow, his expression held defiance. Jaws clenched. Eyes unflinching. Waiting for meaningless words like I’m sorry or How are you doing? or Why did you run away?

  Jena swallowed those words down. “I tried to get my partner to leave but he refused,” she finally said. “I’m sorry about that. You never frightened me.” Not quite true, but close.

  He gave her a small smile, and she knew she’d been right to change the subject. It wasn’t the murder of his family that had brought him here to talk. He’d probably talked it to death. Talked about it until the only way he could cope was to leave and reinvent himself. Leave everything and everybody behind.

  If you didn’t get attached to anyone, it didn’t hurt to lose them, right?

  “I understand about the partner thing.” He glanced at the two mud-spattered black pickups. “I drove on past when I saw the second truck here. But I couldn’t let . . . I have to tell you what I know and hope you’ll believe me.”

  “Come on in.” Jena moved aside, letting Cole pass close enough that she became even more aware of him physically. Of his height, maybe a few inches above hers, of the heat emanating from his muscled body, of some kind of electricity between them. She’d felt it when he was simply The Hermit of Sugarcane Lane, and it was as inappropriate to think about now as then. Inappropriate on so many levels.

  Mac stood in the wide doorway between the entry hall and the living room. His uniform looked forbidding in the stark-white surroundings, and there was no missing the SIG Sauer in his hip holster.

  Cole walked straight toward him without pausing and held out his hand. “I’m Coleman Ryan. I’m sorry to have asked Agent Sinclair to not . . . to break procedure and talk to me alone. It’s okay . . . You did the right thing by staying.”

  The words didn’t come out smoothly, but they sounded sincere. Apparently, Mac thought so as well, as he shook Cole’s hand and introduced himself. Even handed him a business card.

  They all walked into the living room together, Cole observing his surroundings in all their blandness. “This is . . . not what I expected, although I don’t guess I know you well enough to have expected anything.” Cole’s mouth twitched as if caught between a laugh and a frown. “The inside looks like the outside.”

  “Plain as a pikestaff,” Mac said. “Jena’s mother decorated while my partner was on leave. The woman doesn’t believe in color.”

  “And I haven’t had time to do anything with it since I got back a month ago.” Jena had to do something about this awful place; she’d trade it for Cole’s comfortable little house in a second, which would serve her parents right even though they’d probably meant well. And what the hell was a pikestaff? “You want something to drink?”

  Cole looked at her, and another spark arced between them. This was getting ridiculous. Then he doused it with just a few words.

  “No, I reckon we better talk first.”

  Yeah, she reckoned he was right.

  Mac seemed to have had a change of heart. “While you two talk, I’m going to sit out by the empty pool and enjoy the big white brick wall. Let me know if you need anything.”

  She gave him a small smile. “Thanks, Mac.”

  Pointing Cole toward one of the armchairs, she took a seat on the end of the sofa nearest him. “I just want you to know that, before I hear you out, I’m not going to take notes and I’m not taping anything. I want to hear what you have to tell me first. Then I will probably need to hear it again, and I will probably take notes, and I might tape it.”

  Cole fidgeted in the chair, crossed and uncrossed his legs, seemed unsure where to rest his hands. Jena figured this was probably going to be the longest conversation he’d had in five years if he’d been as isolated as she suspected.

  He let out a deep breath and kept his eyes on the white carpet. “I go fishing in the morning most days.” He glanced up at her. “I have a license.”

  Jena smiled and shrugged. “Not worried about it, at least not right now.”

  “The day you and your partner came out about my neighbor’s gator, something had happened earlier in the day that . . .” He stalled out and Jena waited. He needed to tell the story in his own way and in his own time.

  “I was going out early that morning because I’d wanted to do some work on my back porch that afternoon, reinforcing some flooring.”

  “Sounds like you’re quite a handyman.”

  He shrugged. “You know my story. When I decided to . . . change my life, I wanted to be as self-reliant as possible. That meant what I didn’t know how to do, I had to learn.”

  “So what happened when you went out early to go fishing?”

  He took another deep breath, and Jena found herself watching his hands clench and unclench and clench again. “I found a dead alligator.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Once he got started, Cole found the concept of stringing one sentence after another came easier than he would’ve expected. Jena’s prompting helped.

  “You foun
d a dead alligator where?” she’d asked, and that had gotten him started. “I should have called you guys, but at the time, I didn’t think there was any harm in keeping it—using the meat for food and selling the parts and the hide.”

  Jena’s hazel eyes, with more than a touch of green, never left his face. Cole would bet she was good at her job; he could feel her gaze like a weight on him even while looking back down at the floor, at his hands, anywhere except at her.

  “Cole, I don’t imagine you set up this meeting to confess to a little unauthorized gator usage, especially if it’s one you found already dead.”

  Cole shook his head. “No. I was really careful dressing it, because I wanted to make sure I understood what killed it before I risked eating it.” He looked up at her again, struck by the irony of the whole mess. “Guess it sounds silly, but even though I went off the grid, I never had a death wish.”

  Some expression crossed her face he couldn’t interpret. Pain, maybe. Regret. For the first time he was aware of, she looked away from him. What was that about?

  “So you found something unusual?”

  Here’s where it got tricky. He scrubbed his hands across his cheeks and huffed out a deep breath. “I found something, all right. Too much. First thing was an arm.”

  Jena jerked her attention back to his face. “A human arm?”

  He nodded. “I later found out there’d been a fisherman go missing a few days earlier and his body had been found. I figured it was his, but it was too late to do him any good. I buried it with the organs and the contents of the stomach.”

  Jena might have stared a hole through him if she didn’t at least blink. She seemed to have no words in response to what he was saying. So he kept talking.

  “There was something else in the stomach I didn’t think much about at the time. Just figured it was something the gator found and swallowed whole—you know they’ll eat just about anything. Figured it probably had fallen off a boat or had been thrown out by a litterbug.”

  Jena still didn’t respond, so he plowed on. “It was one of those plastic sandwich bags—you know, the kind with a zipper.”