Savage Nature (44 page)

Remy bowed his head and his brothers followed suit. “I was not challengin’ leadership,” he qualified, “only takin’ offense at you makin’ it all personal. My sister is years younger than me. Maybe you’re right and we should have looked out for her better. Those years were difficult on all of us and lways seemed as if she was happy. Maybe it’s guilt and the need to make it all up to her that makes me edgy. Bottom line is, she’s my sister and I don’t like anyone threatenin’ her or puttin’ her in danger.”

“Then let’s find this bastard and put him in the ground,” Drake said.

Saria slipped her fingers into the back pocket of his jeans. He felt the connection between them immediately. Felt his leopard calm instantly and hers rise to the surface to stroke along his cat. The knots of tension in his belly unraveled.

“I’ve got a couple of men that need interrogating. Care to join me?” Drake asked Remy.

“They won’t like seein’ me with you,” Remy warned. “I have a reputation. Undeserved, but there it is.” He offered up a small smile, just a flash of his white teeth, but it was a conciliatory gesture.

Drake reached behind him for Saria’s hand. It was strange to think he hadn’t known her just a week or so earlier. She’d fast become his world. There was something soothing about her presence even when his entire body was aware of her at all times. Her fingers threaded through his and instant satisfaction flooded him. Relief. She was always there. Steady. Constant. No matter what happened. No matter how bad.

“Maybe you should go with your brothers back to your house, shower and get clean clothes. I’ll send Elijah and Joshua with you. They’re both tough as nails and between them and your family, you’ll be safe.”

“You want to get rid of me.”

“There’s that too.” He smiled down at her. She wasn’t a woman he had to soft-soap the truth for. “I’d rather you weren’t here when we question these men.” His gaze flicked to Joshua. Hers followed and she barely nodded her head, understanding his silent plea. He didn’t want Joshua there either. If his uncles were every bit as sick as his grandfather had been, Joshua might take it pretty hard. It was always a difficult thing to face knowing one’s bloodline could carry insanity. Drake had been with Jake Bannaconni for some time and had seen firsthand when leopards went wrong. Jake’s parents had been two of the cruelest, sickest individuals Drake had ever come across.

Saria nodded. “A shower sounds good.”

Drake retained possession of her hand. “You won’t take off on your own, right?”

“Are you sayin’ you think I can slip away right out from under the noses of your men and my brothers?” she teased.

“Probably. I sure wouldn’t bet against it. But you won’t.”

“I won’t. I know someone really dangerous is runnin’ around out there and . . .”

“They’re looking right at you,” he finished for her.

She nodded, her expression serious. “I’ll be safe.”

Satisfied, Drake looked to his men—not her brothers. Joshua and Elijah were men he would trust with his life—with Saria’s life. They both nodded their understanding.

Remy looked at his brothers. “Take them home. Don’t let her out of your sight. In fact, when she takes a shower, one of you guard outside that window. If these two aren’t doin’ the killin’, he might make another try for Saria.”

Mahieu nodded and stepped back to allow his sister to precede him to the car.

“Give us a minute,” Elijah said. They needed weapons and the weapons were in their rooms. “I’ll get your things, Joshua.”

Joshua didn’t protest, but remained stretched out in the grass. He regarded Drake with open suspicion. “You getting rid of me, Drake?”

Drake scowled at him. “I’m entrusting you with the life of my mate, Joshua. Tell me who’s better for the job and I’ll send them.”

Joshua grinned at him. “Just wanted to make you say it, boss.”

Drake flipped him off, ignoring the laughter of the Boudreaux brothers. Elijah came out with a bag filled with weapons. Remy rolled his eyes.

“You goin’ to war?”

“Damn straight,” Elijah answered.

Drake extended his hand and pulled Joshua from the ground. “I’m counting on the two of you. Don’t let anything happen to my woman.”

Elijah nodded and he and Joshua followed the Boudreaux brothers and Saria to the car. Drake and Remy went around the house to find the two prisoners.

Drake crossed his arms over his chest and regarded the Tregre brothers as they sat on the ground beneath the trees, a small distance from the inn. Jerico had left them untied, but Remy immediately snapped cuffs on both of them, and he wasn’t gentle about it.

“I’m going to give you a chance to tell me the truth,” Drake said and held up his hand to forestall either of the brothers from speaking. “Before you decide to be stupid, you might consider that some leopards can smell a lie. Remy has quite the reputation in the police department and moved up the ladder fast. He’s actually a detective now. A homicide detective. Now why do you suppose that is?”

“You notice there’s been a lot of dead bodies’ turnin’ up around here?” Remy added. “Cuz I’ve been noticin’ that.”

“Would have been a few more, Remy,” Drake said, “if Saria hadn’t woken up when she did. Seems to me that your sister’s been in harm’s way quite a bit lately, like maybe someone’s targeting her.”

“You think someone’s targeting my sister, Drake? Your fiancée?” Remy asked, beginning to pace. He was a big man and he seemed to flow, all muscle and sinew as he paced back and forth in front of the Tregre brothers.

“That’s what I think,” Drake said.

“You find someone stupid enough to be tryin’ to kill my sister and your fiancée, what do you suppose we should do about it?”

“I guess we’d have no choice, Remy. They’d have to disappear.” Drake stared at the two brothers with no expression. “So which one of you is Beau and which is Gilbert?”

“I’m Beau,” the man on the left identified himself.

“So you’re the mastermind behind all of this,” Drake said. “The drugs, the killings, the attempt to kill off my team—and my woman.” He made it a statement. His voice was pitched very low, d very lsoft, and his stare was all leopard—all predator.

Remy shot him a quick look, no doubt wondering about the drugs, but Drake never broke eye contact with Beau. Either he was the greatest actor in the world, or something Drake had said shocked him. His mouth fell open, his face turned red and he shook his head violently, his gaze shifting to his brother, who looked equally as shocked.

“Killin’s? I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I never killed anyone.
Never.
And I wouldn’t. If I was gonna kill someone, it would have been the old man,” Beau denied. “I don’t know anything about any killin’.”

Gilbert shook his head. “Remy, you know us. We never killed anyone.”

“What the hell were you doing here if you didn’t intend to kill us?” Drake demanded. “You think intending to kill but not finishing the job is going to get you off the hook?”

“You got it all wrong,” Beau said. “I knew this was goin’ to happen. I told you, Gilbert. I knew we should have just laid low.”

“You knew what was going to happen?” Remy asked.

Gilbert sighed. “We were set up to take the fall. We were set up, Remy.”

Drake toed the man’s boot. “How many times have you heard that, Remy?”

Remy smirked. “Oh, that one’s new to me, cuz I’m wet behind the ears.” He glared at the Tregre brothers. “Is that what you think? I’m wet behind the ears? You think you’re smarter than me?” He bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “You hear that, Drake. Gilbert thinks he’s smarter than I am.”

“You’re twistin’ my meanin’, Remy,” Gilbert said. “We came to talk to the boy—Renard’s boy. We figured he was blood kin and might help us.”

“Help you kill off his team? His friends? The only family he’s ever known?” Drake scoffed. “If you think that, you don’t know the meaning of loyalty and you sure don’t know Joshua.”

Both men shook their heads. “We didn’t come here to kill anyone,” Gilbert insisted. “We knew you’d been out in the swamp last night. You were at the Merciers and also our property, lookin’ around. The scent was everywhere.”

Beau looked at Drake with something close to respect. “You cut through the swamps followin’ our boat, didn’t you? I didn’t think anyone could do somethin’ like that and I’ve lived in the swamp my whole life.”

Remy held up one finger. “You cut through the swamp followin’ a boat?”

“All of them,” Beau said. “All his men, and Saria led the way. They must have run.”

“And waded through the reeds in a couple of spots,” Gilbert contributed. “There was no other way.”

“My
sister
was runnin’ the swamp at night? Wadin’ through the reeds with gators?”

Remy’s voice had gone very quiet. Drake had hoped he wouldn’t go all commando on him, but now that he knew how insane he’d been to even try it, let alone have Saria with him, he couldn’t really blame the man.

“We knew they were running do, Remy,” he said. “Although we’re familiar with the rain forests and the danger in them, we had no idea how truly dangerous what we asked Saria to do last night really was. She was amazing and we were damned stupid to risk it.”

That was as much as he was conceding to Remy. The man could take it or leave it.

“So you were runnin’ dope, Beau? Right under my nose?”

“There’s a big difference between takin’ a boat out to deliver soap to a buyer and killin’ someone, Remy,” Beau pointed out. “We didn’t kill anyone.”

“So how did you get into the drug business, Beau?” Drake asked.

“Delivery,”
Gilbert emphasized. “That’s what we were comin’ to talk to the boy about.”

“First of all, let’s get something straight,” Drake said in disgust. “Joshua is a man. He does a man’s work and he takes a man’s responsibility.”

Beau sighed and looked at his brother, shaking his head. He looked down at the ground, defeated. Gilbert scowled. “You don’t want to hear the truth.”

“Sure we do, Gil,” Remy said. “Spit it out and don’t try sugarcoatin’ it, because I think our leader has an itchy trigger finger right about now.”

“You may have heard the rumors about our father,” Gilbert muttered. “Every one of them was true. He raped women and beat them. He beat our mother, beat us. He killed Renard. We couldn’t prove it, but he did. And he gambled. Mostly he lost.”

Drake raised his eyebrow.

Gilbert flushed. “I’m not whinin’ about my life. I’m tellin’ you the truth. He began workin’ for the Merciers, runnin’ their gardens for them. Mostly, he told everyone what to do. And he made deliveries to special customers. Eventually we took over makin’ the deliveries. The money was good and we didn’t think much about it until we started makin’ those deliveries in the middle of the night to boats comin’ in from all over.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t know about the opium when you first started working for the Merciers?”

Gilbert shook his head. “When the old man got sick, he told us to take over the night deliveries. That was when we knew. So about three years ago, we get a call and we go. We should have stopped as soon as we figured it out, but the money was good and we didn’t want to keep huntin’ gators.”

“And there was Evangeline,” Beau added. “We both felt we had to protect her.”

“Did someone threaten her?” Remy asked.

Beau looked at his brother. “Not outright. One night we came home and Evangeline’s room was wrecked. There was a knife stuck in the middle of her mattress. We’d hesitated about makin’ the delivery, hedgin’ a little when the call came in. We didn’t do that anymore. We figured whoever made those calls was tellin’ us we play ball with them or Evangeline dies.”

“Who made the calls?”

The two men looked at one another. Gilbert shrugged. “I don’t know. They used something, a device, to change their voice to a mechanical sound.”

“So after all this time working for the Merciers, you want us to believe you don’t have a clue who gives the orders?” Drake demanded.

Beau shook his head. “We didn’t want to know. We thought it was safer that way. They have a master gardener and crew tending the flowers. We just make the deliveries. To the dock, to the local shops and the special ones.”

“So what were you coming here to tell Joshua?” Drake asked. They were telling the truth. They’d closed their eyes to everything but the money for a lot of reasons, but their voices resonated with the truth.

“We thought if we told him what was goin’ on he’d think of a way to get us out without puttin’ Evangeline in danger,” Gilbert admitted. “We argued about it. Beau didn’t think you’d believe us. In the end we didn’t really have a choice. We knew you had to have seen us. That girl—Saria—she’s good in the swamp. She got you to the point in time to see the boat dockin’. She just doesn’t know how to quit.”

“She got us there,” Drake said. “In plenty of time to identify both of you.”

“Well, we finally quit arguin’ and came up through the canal and swamp in our boat. It’s docked down there at the lake. When we got close to the inn, we could see smoke. We tried the doors downstairs, but they were all locked,” Gilbert explained.

“Gilbert was goin’ to break in, but then we heard glass shatter on the second-story balcony. We ran, afraid if you saw us, you’d think we started the fire. But when we got down to the lake, both of us couldn’t just leave, knowin’ there were people maybe burnin’ in the inn, so we ran back.”

Again, there was that ring of truth in Beau’s voice that Drake couldn’t ignore. He glanced at Remy, who nodded. He thought they were telling the truth as well. They were guilty of taking drug money, but neither man was a killer—certainly not a serial killer. And Drake doubted if either possessed the brains to mastermind placing opiates in perfumed soaps.

“Your old man never told you who came up with the idea to put opium bricks in the soaps?” Drake asked, already knowing the answer.

“I didn’t even know that was what was in the boxes,” Beau said. “I didn’t want to know.”

“Where do they manufacture the soaps, lotions and perfumes?” Drake asked.

Beau frowned and looked at his brother. “The factory is in town, not out in the swamp. The laboratory where Charisse works is on their property, but everything is made in town. We pick up our deliveries there.”