Bayou Blue

by Raquel Byrnes

  “Did you ask her?”

  Citrine put her hand on Jake’s arm. “She is unreasonable. Her brooding…c'est dans son sang.”

  “It’s in her blood,” Jake muttered and a shadow crossed his features. “I’ll talk to her.”

  Something in their tones made me back up, pretending to look for something in my purse. I felt like I was intruding in a family discussion.

  “She’s going through a rough patch, Citrine.”

  “Yes,” Citrine murmured. “We all are.”

  I studied the pens in the cracked mug, uncomfortable with hearing so personal an exchange. I cleared my throat and the two of them turned.

  “Sorry, Riley,” Jake muttered. “We’ll get you set up here.”

  Citrine checked me in under a false name.

  Jake and I took the carpeted stairs to the second floor of the bed and breakfast. I flicked the hall light on as we walked.

  The little room, decorated in an eclectic mix of antiques and modern sleek furniture, looked both cozy and roomy.

  He carried my suitcase and messenger bag to my bed. Setting them down, he checked his watch.

  I walked to the tiny bathroom, poked my head in, and flicked the switch up. Turning to face him, I spotted a little lamp on the far side of the room, strode over, and pulled the little brass chain.

  Jake watched me silently.

  I turned to him, not knowing where to start with the whole mess. “So…do you want to talk in here, or what? What are we doing?”

  Still leaning on the doorway, Jake shook his head. “It’s almost ten-thirty, Riley. We better call it a night and start fresh tomorrow. I’ll drive back up here in the morning and we can meet then.”

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t we talk now?” Hands on my hips, I tilted my chin, frustrated with the thought of delaying my investigation even longer. “Why tomorrow?”

  I knew I shouldn’t be irritated, but between the flight and the drive from Thibodaux I felt exhausted. This seemed like another roadblock and I felt the tension and worry in my stomach hike up.

  “I have to go check on Dennis. Make sure Toughie found him over at the bridge. Besides, whatever you have to say will keep until morning. Nothing we can do about anything at this time of night.”

  “But—” I started to argue.

  I wanted to explain about Randy, to convince Jake to take action, but he shook his head.

  “No, Riley,” he said evenly. “I’ve been up going on twenty hours. Tomorrow.”

  I noticed shadows under his eyes and let it go. Reluctantly, I decided a few more hours wouldn’t change all that much.

  “Thanks for this,” I said quietly. I rested my hand on his forearm. His skin felt hot. “I don’t—”

  He glanced at my hand and froze.

  “Riley,” Jake interrupted, his brow furrowed. “This isn’t for you. This is about a case, your brother’s case.”

  I snapped my jaw shut on the rest of my gratitude. I only meant to be nice. Embarrassment swirled and my temper flared. I snapped at him. “What is your problem?”

  “I said I would hear you out, that’s it. We’re not allies.” Jake stepped back and shoved hands in his pockets. The look on his face didn’t match what he’d just said. His expression seemed taken aback, like he lost his train-of-thought midstream.

  “I didn’t ask to do the Super Friends fist-bump, Jake. I just said thank you.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m not interested in vindicating your brother. I’m after the truth.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea.” Jake took another step back. “That’s all.”

  Did I stink or something?

  I tried to read his face, but he had that infuriating calm stare again.

  Jake made my head spin just trying to figure him out. He seemed like he wanted to help, but made a point of being distant. At times, it seemed like he alternately wanted to kiss me, or run from me. With all the worry and hurt, I just didn’t have the wherewithal to reel in my emotions.

  Frustrated and exhausted, I blew my top. “Fine.” I threw my jacket down on the bed. “I take it back.”

  His scowl returned and he nodded curtly. “You just do that, then.”

  “I will,” I shot back.

  He rolled his eyes and crossed to the door. He started to pull it closed, but stopped. “Bonne nuit, Riley,” he growled.

  “In English, Jake,” I snapped. “This is America.”

  “Goodnight.” He pulled the door closed with a slam.

  I stood glaring at the polished wood, my stomach flopping.

  “Goodnight,” I whispered.

  He was right, he wasn’t my friend. Jake and I were forced together in this, unwilling partners.

  I pulled Randy’s MP3 player from my pocket and bit my lip, thinking. I sat on the bed, rustled around for my own music player in the bag, and found the ear buds. Pulling them off and attaching them to Randy’s player, I took a breath and turned it on. I navigated the music files looking for why he’d hide it.

  I hoped with every fiber of my being that I wouldn’t find anything. I wanted nothing to link Randy to the plant. I wanted proof he didn’t do it.

  Right before I gave up, I found a file named GCE.

  My breath caught and I licked my lips.

  Grossman Chemical Engineering owned the plant that my brother blew up. A chemical plant on the outskirts of Bayou La Foudre, GCE represented jobs and a future for many of the residents here. I remember my brother’s drawings and shuddered. Had he lost his mind in pursuit of this company? With shaking fingers, I pressed the play button and listened to my brother’s last message.

  I need to do something. I have to stop them…

  Ten minutes later, with my heart ramming in my chest, I curled up in a ball and sobbed.

  It was so much worse than I imagined.

  6

  Jake

  Jake stood outside Riley’s room, his hand still on the doorknob. He had half a mind to go back in and fight some more.

  Riley Drake meant trouble and discord. That was truth, right there.

  She was volatile. She didn’t back down. She took his breath away.

  Jake leaned his head on her door, staring at his arm. She’d set off a wave of heat that tore right through him.

  Muttering, he ticked off all the reasons to drive her straight to the airport as soon as the first shard of sun poked over the hill.

  “Her being here spurs people to arm themselves. She plans to stir up more pain with her investigation. She’s hiding something.”

  She needs help. He’d heard her in the car, her prayer.

  “Are you talking to yourself again, Jacob?”

  Jake yanked his hand from the doorknob at the sound of Citrine’s voice behind him. Citrine stood on the landing, her smile a bit sad.

  “Oh, but she is trouble for you, Jacob.”

  Sighing, Jake shoved his hands in his pockets. “No, I won’t let her cause trouble.”

  Citrine laughed softly. “No Jake, I meant for you personally.”

  “Don’t,” he warned and turned to go down the back stairs.

  “Her eyes are quite unusual, don’t you think, Jacob?” She called out.

  Jake recognized the edge of jealousy in her voice and kept walking. He hoped Riley couldn’t hear their voices through her door.

  “I’m not listening,” he said over his shoulder.

  Behind him, he heard Citrine’s steps. She stepped in front of the door to the stairs with a grin and bobbed her eyebrows at him. “They are the color of honey…and that dark red hair…she is fiery, yes?”

  “She’s probably as crazy as her brother,” Jake murmured. “And what is it to you, Citrine? You made your choice.”

  Her lips pulled into a pout, but it didn’t extend to her eyes. She was playing with him and Jake didn’t appreciate it.

  “Oh, but I had help with that decision, didn’t I?” Citrine countered.
r />   Jake let the comment go. He didn’t want a fight with her.

  “Don’t make this more than it is, Citrine. Riley is here because she’s got some idea in her head that her brother is innocent. I promised to hear her out tomorrow, that’s it.”

  Citrine waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not interested in why she is here, Jacob. I’m curious why you let her stay? Certainly it is in your interest as an elected Sheriff to chase her out of town and yet, here she is.” She shrugged with feigned confusion.

  Jake felt the twitch under his eye spring to life. He used the hat in his hand to brush Citrine to the side.

  “I’m not doing this with you,” he said, and reached for the door.

  “A woman in peril, especially a beautiful one like this, Riley…” Citrine’s wicked smile sent a wave of irritation through him. “…would be very hard for you to resist.”

  “Well, she isn’t in peril, Citrine,” Jake grumbled.

  He opened the door and tried to close it, but Citrine leaned her hip on the door jamb, blocking it.

  “I see how you look at her, Jacob,” Citrine murmured. “She’s in peril where you’re concerned.”

  Jake looked at Citrine.

  Her eyes, that had at one time arrested his heart, looked back at him with concern.

  “Am I that bad?” He asked.

  Her smile faltered. “Not bad, but I know you, Jacob. You still have that…how do you say? Complexe du héros?”

  “A hero complex,” Jake translated. “And getting shipped off to a war doesn’t make you a hero, Citrine. It makes you a soldier. I was following orders, you know that.”

  Citrine shrugged away his explanation. “You want to rescue her from this horror that her brother made? And then what?”

  Jake leaned into Citrine’s space and she stepped back. “There is no ‘then what’, Citrine. She’s only here for a day.”

  “Pas vrai, Jacob,” Citrine said quietly. “Not true. If she is anything like you’ve said, she is very determined.”

  “I only gave her twenty-four hours here in Bayou La Foudre. After that, she can go and be determined elsewhere.”

  Bewilderment was on her face. “You’ve known her for only a few weeks and already you put your job in danger for her. There is more there, I think.”

  “No, I met her three weeks ago…there’s a difference.”

  “Apparently not,” Citrine shot back, the pain in her eyes apparent.

  Jake took a breath, stopping himself from countering.

  Arguments with Citrine would last hours back when they were together.

  “Citrine…Trina,” Jake said evenly. “I appreciate you letting her stay here. I am in your debt for that, but aside from the bill…I am not talking about Riley with you any longer. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Citrine rolled her eyes. “How is it you are such a capable man in battle, but on the field of emotions you flail about like a blind man?”

  Insulted, Jake frowned. “Are you about done?”

  Her face softened, but did little to negate the irritation burning in his gut.

  “Jacob, I know that once you fall, it’s completely.” Citrine murmured.

  “Well that was a long time ago, Citrine. We both know how it turned out, and I won’t be making that mistake again.”

  Citrine’s leaned away from the steel in his voice, but her face remained concerned.

  “Just be careful, Jacob,” she whispered. “She’s already quite fragile.”

  Shocked, he looked in the direction of Riley’s room. “That woman in there is anything but fragile. She’s been nothing but trouble from the moment she set foot in my parish.”

  Citrine put her hand over her own heart. “You see fire on the outside, but she’s shaking to her soul.”

  The feel of Riley’s small frame in his arms flashed across his memory. Freezing from the water used to quell the fire and exhausted, she’d clung to him as he carried her to the ambulance. He remembered how she quaked against his chest. Trying to wrap her in blankets, she fought against him. She wouldn’t let the rescue medic treat her until she’d said her piece.

  Riley told the truth that night despite the consequences. She took the world on her small shoulders because it was the right thing to do.

  Citrine had it backwards.

  Jake didn’t know anyone in the world stronger than Riley Drake.

  “You’re wrong,” Jake said finally.

  Citrine sighed heavily and then turned and strode down the hallway. She stopped and looked back at him. “You can’t save everyone, Jacob; especially from themselves. Keep that in mind before you let things get too far.”

  He just stood in the doorway, hat in hand, looking back at Citrine with a blank stare.

  She walked away.

  Stealing one more glance at Riley’s closed door, Jake walked down the back stairs to his squad car.

  He sat in his driver’s seat listening to the occasional clipped conversation between Sheila, in dispatch, and his three deputies. He was about to call in about Dennis, when he heard Toughie tell Sheila he’d found him and took him home. Dennis’s dad was already picked up, and now slept at the station. Jake decided he didn’t need to add anything.

  Checking his watch, he yawned and stretched as best he could in the confines of the car. With bleary eyes, he eyed the front door of The Lightning Bug. He lived a good forty-five minutes from here. Jake debated, and then got out of the patrol car and headed up the front steps.

  Citrine opened the door before he could knock and greeted him with a smirk. “I wondered how long you would sit out there.”

  Jake tried to grin. “Do I look that tired?”

  “You look like they cut you out of a gator’s belly,” she teased. “Besides, what will our guest do without her hero close by?”

  “Citrine…” Jake began, but decided to ignore her comment. Instead, he tipped his hat, climbed the stairs, and shuffled to a room. Once inside, a wave of annoyance flared. If he didn’t think he’d fall asleep while driving and end up in a ditch, he’d chance going home just to have some peace.

  He tossed his hat in a nearby chair and rubbed his face with both hands.

  Jake paced the room trying to push Riley out of his mind. When that didn’t work, he tried the TV. Flipping through the channels, he didn’t find anything but local news coverage of the chemical plant disaster and reports on the storm building in the gulf. Tropical storm Erin, they called it. Jake eyed the weather report’s images of the swirling mass and decided Erin looked like trouble.

  He viewed a segment highlighting the efforts of Eco-Warriors, an environmental group helping with the relief effort to the flood victims of his parish. Those tree-huggers caused more bar fights than the oil workers on leave. Jake and his deputies hauled more than one of them in to sleep it off over the past three weeks.

  He watched the news report with their leader, Everest Jones, who stood with a female reporter near the plant’s charred remains holding a child in his arms.

  Jake kept the sound off, studying Everest’s compassionate expression.

  Everest didn’t seem to mind the muddy child sullying his two-hundred dollar jeans.

  The reporter kept glancing up at Everest with obvious respect and awe.

  This must be the tenth time this guy showed up on the news.

  Scowling, Jake switched to another station.

  Finding nothing interesting, he paced, finally settling on a corner chair facing the French doors leading out to the veranda that overlooked the swamp. The wingback did nothing but cramp his shoulders and he ended up leaning against the wall to peer out at the night. A full moon, obscured by dark swaths, cast the bayou in deep shadows.

  As a boy, he used to wait for his parents to fall asleep and then crawl out his window to hunt for lightning bugs near the reeds. He’d capture them in a mayonnaise jar, lie on his back, and hold the jar against the sky watching their blinking dance as if they were his very own twinkling stars.

 
A silent wind sent the Spanish moss rustling and Jake decided that his room felt far too small. Opening the door, a gust pushed it the rest of the way back as he stepped out onto the veranda. He leaned on the black wrought-iron railing, resting his foot on bottom bar, and closed his eyes as the wind tousled his hair. Sounds of the swamp fluttered to him on the breeze; cicadas and frogs with the underlying whisper of the cypress leaves. Night jasmine, sweet and light, floated on the wind. The fragrance was so familiar it brought a smile to his face.

  Movement in the darkness to his right caught his attention and he squinted at the sound of swishing material.

  Riley stepped from the shadows of her room’s veranda and into a sliver of moonlight that slashed out from behind the storm clouds. Her thick white robe, knotted at the waist, highlighted her tiny frame.

  Jake watched her smoothing long red waves with her fingers and realized she’d been watching him. She didn’t speak.

  Jake half smiled. “Truce?”

  Her light eyes rested on his and she nodded out at the bayou. “You grew up here?”

  He cleared his throat, nodding. “Yes. Born and raised here in little Bayou La Foudre.”

  Rumbling overhead pulled her gaze to the belt of clouds hanging under the moon. White flashes roiled in their centers, electrifying the air.

  “You know, I heard somewhere that La Foudre means lightning in French. Is that right?” She tucked a lock behind her ear.

  “Uh, yes, that’s right,” Jake said and motioned towards the storm clouds. “The lightning here, during certain storms, we get what’s called ball lightning. And it’s a strange color blue.”

  “Blue?” She looked back up at the sky.

  Jake found it hard to take his eyes off of her face. “They say the only place on earth you can find that shade of blue is right here over these swamp waters. They call it Bayou Blue.”

  She watched the clouds with a look of wonder.

  Jake ran his gaze along the soft curve of her neck and something tumbled in his chest. He wondered what her laugh sounded like. Jake blew his breath out slowly.