Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) (15 page)

Oh boy,
Gentry thought,
this should be interesting.
Warren was a Baptist, a religious minority in South Louisiana. Baptists weren’t known for their tolerance of voodoo and Native American mysticism.

“I wanted to visit with a mystic who learned the practice alongside my Tante Eva.” Ceelie had set up a rhythmic stroke along Hoss’s silky ears, and the dog sighed with contentment. How sad was it that Gentry envied his dog?

Warren stared at her. “Practice of what?” Then it registered. “Oh.” He blinked a couple of times but recovered quickly. “What did you remember?”

Ceelie turned to look at Gentry. “You remember the first day I met you, I thought you looked familiar?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “But I would’ve remembered you.”

She returned his smile, and damn if that now-familiar heat didn’t settle somewhere in his nether regions again. “Well, I remembered who it was that you reminded me of. It was a boy who came to the cabin one summer for a couple of weeks with Nonc LeRoy’s nephew—or the man I called Nonc LeRoy. It would’ve been about 1996.”

Gentry and Warren exchanged looks. “That was the year my dad died.” Still, he saw no connection. “What does it have to do with me or my brother?”

Ceelie shrugged. “Probably doesn’t have any connection at all. It’s just that he looked a lot like you, or like you might’ve looked back then. He was a friend of LeRoy’s nephew and was fifteen or sixteen. I kind of had a crush on him.”

“Do you remember this boy’s name?” Warren lowered the footrest of the recliner and leaned forward.

“I think the nephew’s name was Tommy. But the other boy . . . I can’t remember for sure, but it was a funny name you didn’t hear very often. I think it was Lane or something like that. What’s your brother’s name?”

Chill bumps had set up along Gentry’s arms and shoulders and he looked at Warren again.

“His name is Lang.”

CHAPTER 17

Ceelie closed her eyes and coaxed her muscles to relax under the hot water from the shower in Gentry’s guest bathroom. It was the first real hot shower she’d had since her return to Terrebonne Parish. The cabin’s jerry-rigged shower spit water in uneven spurts and was more tepid than warm.

Gentry’s house wasn’t large, but it felt palatial after the confines of the cabin on Whiskey Bayou.

From its dark-blue siding and white trim to its interior that looked like it had been put together by a furniture-store decorator told to create a “bachelor-pad ambience,” the house had been exactly what Ceelie would’ve expected from a single man who worked long hours and hadn’t given two thoughts to home decor. The only things that told her anything about the owner were a flat-screen TV the size of a spaceship, an unmade king-sized bed, a spare room full of workout equipment, a desk, a docking station, and speakers for a digital music player. Plus, of course, the spoiled-rotten French bulldog.

Hoss was Gentry Broussard’s biggest tell. He was all macho talk covering a soft-hearted, good man who wanted to save the world and all the puppies in it. She wouldn’t be voicing that opinion, however. She wasn’t sure he was even aware of it, and might find it insulting.

The more Ceelie learned of Gentry Broussard, the more she liked him. A few days ago, she’d sworn a man didn’t figure into her future plans. She’d also sworn Terrebonne Parish didn’t fit into those plans. Now? She wouldn’t swear to anything.

As exhausted as she was from spending the entire night listening to the three agents spinning theories about the possible link between Lang Broussard and LeRoy Breaux, Ceelie couldn’t stop her brain from continuing to hash and rehash it.

Tante Eva hadn’t liked LeRoy’s nephew much, or at least she hadn’t wanted Ceelie spending time alone with him. She’d thought it was because he was an older boy and her aunt thought it wasn’t proper. Now, however, she wondered if it wasn’t their age and gender Tante Eva didn’t trust, but something about Tommy himself.

Gentry had finally told her that Lang Broussard’s best friend was Tommy Mason, and it was Tommy’s tongue that had ended up on her porch.

Gentry had been twelve when his dad died, and although he didn’t say so, Ceelie could tell he’d idolized his father. Lang, at sixteen, was already rebellious, and while Gentry remembered his brother going away for two weeks that summer, he’d thought Lang was at Tommy’s house. There had been no reason to tie his visit with Tommy to LeRoy Breaux.

It all kept coming back to LeRoy.

Ceelie finished her shower, pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a red tank top she’d brought in from Jena’s truck, and wandered into the kitchen. Gentry was pouring a scoop of coffee into a fresh filter for a new pot. They’d started one just before her shower, so he must have been mainlining caffeine.

She watched him for a moment; he was rubbing his temples as he watched the water drip through the filter with a gurgle. He looked sexy, in an exhausted kind of way.

“How’re you doing?” She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee as soon as the drip slowed and took a sip. Strong, with chicory. Not her favorite, but probably a taste he’d picked up in New Orleans.

“I can’t stop thinking about Lang. It had to be him that visited LeRoy Breaux at Whiskey Bayou. But how does that relate to what he’s doing now?”

She leaned against the counter. “If anybody can fill in that blank, it’ll be your mom. When are you going to call her?” Ceelie and Gentry himself had both wanted him to make the call early this morning, about three a.m., as soon as they’d connected the dots between LeRoy Breaux and Lang Broussard. This was a murder investigation, after all, and if Gentry’s mom had to be awakened from a sound sleep, too bad. Langston Broussard needed to pay for what he’d done to Tante Eva. What he’d done to the guy who was supposed to be his best friend. And yeah, for forcing Ceelie out of her own home.

But Lieutenant Doucet had ordered him to wait until morning. “There’s no reason to upset her in the middle of the night,” he’d told Gentry. “Wherever Lang is hiding out, he’s probably going to lay low until the Tommy Mason murder dies down. And I need to bring the sheriff up to date. The man’s getting a little prickly that we’re all up in his business.”

Gentry added enough cream and sugar to his coffee to turn it the color of a lightly toasted marshmallow. “Warren said he’d be back here by seven, and Jena too. I’ll call as soon as they get here. I want my mom to hear about this from me, not the morning news show, but I want Warren here as well.”

Ceelie didn’t blame him. The media had quickly picked up the story of the newest murder in the rural parish. Every headline they’d seen or heard this morning was worse than the one before: “Murder in Bayou Country.” “Serial Killer Stalks Swamps.” “Tongue-Tied in Terrebonne.”

At least Lang’s name hadn’t been released in connection with the murder—not yet—nor had Tommy Mason’s murder been formally connected with that of Eva Savoie. The sheriff’s department was in charge, however, and the sheriff would decide what did and didn’t go to the media. Warren had expected that a combined task force with the sheriff’s office, the Louisiana State Police, and Wildlife and Fisheries would be formed in short order. A photo of Langston Broussard would be on every TV station in Louisiana by midday and an all-out manhunt would be officially under way.

Ceelie looked out the window as the sun rose over the stretch of Bayou Terrebonne that ran behind Gentry’s house. When Jena and Warren had gone home to shower and change, Ceelie had asked to stay. She didn’t think Gentry needed to be alone.

She looked at his profile, strong and serious, beautiful in the soft light creating reddish-gold glints on his dark hair. He’d showered and changed into a simple white polo and jeans, not an ounce of vanity or guile about him this morning, the uniform swagger absent. When he finished his coffee and turned toward her to set it in the sink, his expression was that of a man with a heavy heart.

“It’s going to be okay.” Before she could talk herself out of it, Ceelie wrapped her arms around him. Gentry froze at first, and she could practically hear the thoughts racing through his head—not wanting pity, not wanting to step over the line with someone whose family member his brother had murdered, not wanting to cross any lines, period.

Ceelie didn’t give a crap about lines. She’d come to care about this man, even if her feelings had been born out of fear and loneliness, and at the worst time in the world. She wanted to give him comfort if he needed it. She’d learned many things from Tante Eva, and one of them was to own her feelings.

Ceelie pulled back, but kept her hands resting on his waist. “I know you’re torn in a million different directions right now, but can you do one thing for me?” He wouldn’t do anything to help himself, but he’d help her. She knew him that well already.

He blinked. “Okay.”

“Hold me.” She wrapped her arms around him again. “Just hold me.”

Some dam inside him seemed to give way, and he pulled her close, resting his cheek against her hair. He smelled of soap and something citrusy.

Ceelie raised on tiptoe and it seemed to be all the direction Gentry needed. He leaned into her, seeking out her mouth, kissing her like she hadn’t been kissed in . . . maybe ever. It wasn’t like their first kiss back at the cabin, tentative and sweet. It was hot, hungry, and when Ceelie molded her body against his, she felt the hard press of his arousal.

Which was fine, because she wanted him. Now. Here. If the last couple of weeks had taught her anything, it was that life was short and you never knew when it would be taken away.

He lifted her onto the counter, but then wrenched his lips from hers. “Are you sure about this? I mean, we—”

Good grief. This man, with his overinflated sense of responsibility, was going to force her to be the aggressor. Well, so be it. She hooked her legs around his hips and hauled him toward her, creating heat and friction that made her breath catch. She grinned at his wide eyes and northward-hiking eyebrows.

Ceelie leaned in and tugged his earlobe between her teeth, just hard enough that it should sting. Her breath puffed against his ear. “Do I seem like I’m not sure? I think you’re scared of me.”

He wrapped his hands around the curve of her hips and jerked her tightly against him so she could feel exactly how scared he wasn’t.

CHAPTER 18

Moving against her, Gentry let himself get lost in her heat and the salty-sweet taste of her skin. The world shrank to the two of them, the doubts and worries that had been plaguing him pushed away by the soft moan of this amazing woman. The doubts would come back soon enough, but for now, she took away his ability to think of anything but having her.

She reached down to untuck his shirt.

“Too slow.” He took the fabric from her and ripped the shirt over his head, tossing it on the floor. He wanted to feel her against his bare skin.

There was still a tank top between them, and that damn thing needed to go. He slipped his hands underneath the red fabric and pushed it up, revealing a glimpse of full breasts in a simple white bra. That needed to go too, because his mouth wanted to be there. Now.

He was halfway there when a blaring horn sounded outside the window, freezing him in place.

That would be the window they were well on the way to having sex in front of.

That would be the window through which he could see his partner getting out of her truck and pointing at them, at her eyes, and back at them again. Shit. “It’s Sinclair.”

“Think she saw us?” Ceelie was breathing as hard as he was, and he wanted to cry when she tugged the tank top back in place. Damn it.

“Oh yeah, she saw us.” He helped Ceelie down from the kitchen counter—now his favorite spot in the house—and snatched his shirt off the floor. “I’m putting her on desk duty.”

Ceelie laughed. “Five minutes later, and she would’ve had blackmail material. Make that more blackmail material; she already has Hoss.”

“I’m completely confident in my masculinity. I own a pink shirt and a French bulldog.” Gentry kissed the tip of her nose before pulling his shirt back on.

He made Sinclair wait a few seconds before he answered the door. At least he’d locked it this time so she hadn’t let herself in, which had spared her from getting the shirtless, breathless partner-with-a-hard-on view.

Just to be safe, since that last problem hadn’t quite gone away, he left the shirt untucked and thanked God for tight jeans.

Jena wore jeans and a green button-front shirt and had her hair tucked into her LDWF baseball cap. Today was supposed to be their first of three days off.

“Can’t leave you kids alone for a minute.” Her voice was lively, but she had dark circles under her eyes that Gentry suspected matched his own and Ceelie’s. Warren had looked ready for the glue factory when he left.

“You better hope that bag you’re holding helps make up for your bad timing.” He would never, ever hear the end of this. He snagged the white paper bag from her hand and looked inside at an assortment of doughnuts. “You could’ve given us a few more minutes, though.”

“Only takes you a few minutes, huh? Bet that’s great for her. Not.” She grabbed the pastry bag back. “Don’t finger the doughnuts. I don’t know where those hands have been.”

“Nowhere, unfortunately.” Ceelie stuck her head out the kitchen door, and she didn’t look nearly as embarrassed as he felt. Women had no shame these days. “You want coffee?”

While the shameless women puttered in the kitchen, Gentry went back to the combination living room–dining room, stacked up the pizza boxes to take to the trash later, and moved the landline phone to the dining-room table, where it sat like a ticking bomb. He didn’t like calling his mom on normal days because he never quite knew what to say to her. Things had been awkward after she’d remarried and downright strained after Lang’s death, when she’d kept asking him why he hadn’t aimed for an arm or leg.

Gentry had asked himself the same question, but the truth was, in the heat of the moment, he’d fallen back on his training. People saw LDWF agents as “possum cops,” but they had paramilitary-style training on top of regular law-enforcement training. That stormy night on the boat, he hadn’t seen Lang as his brother, but as an armed drug dealer about to shoot Gentry’s partner. He hadn’t been trained to take out an active shooter with a hit to the leg.

Today’s call about Lang’s sudden return to the living and his resurrection as a murderer was not going to be a good conversation.

Ceelie set a fresh cup of coffee on the table beside the phone, cream and sugar already added. He took a sip and smiled. “Perfect. You’re a quick study.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to being waited on. That’s pity coffee over having to call your mom. Nobody can do guilt like single parents.”

“My mom remarried.” She’d only made it two years as a single parent.

“Yeah, but you’re playing semantics,” Ceelie said. “Did you ever think of your stepfather as a father? If not, she might as well have been a single parent.”

It hadn’t been fair to his mom or to Louis, her husband, but Gentry hadn’t wanted another father. He’d been a typically self-absorbed fifteen-year-old when they married, and he saw his mom’s new husband as an insult to his dad’s memory. By the time he realized what a tool he’d been, there had been too much to overcome.

He sighed and stared into the pale-brown liquid swirling around in his coffee cup. “I never gave the poor guy a chance. We haven’t ever been unfriendly, exactly, but we have nothing in common.”

He sat at the table nearest the phone; Ceelie and Jena took the chairs on either side of him and set the plate of doughnuts in the middle. They ate in near-silence, waiting for Warren.

Gentry wanted his lieutenant to hear every bit of his conversation with Marie Broussard Jackson. Even the painful parts, and there would be many. As he’d told Warren last night—or in the wee hours of this morning—he needed to be transparent as cellophane from here on out. Warren hadn’t disagreed.

At the sound of a truck door slamming outside, Jena went to the foyer and, a few seconds later, returned with a freshly pressed and laundered—if not exactly rested—Warren Doucet. His dark hair might have been turning silver at the temples, but he still wore it in the buzz cut Gentry had always known.

Warren had been wrong about Gentry being too young to remember him from when he and Hank Broussard used to patrol the parish. They’d become almost like a single person to him in his memories, not sure where Hank ended and Warren began.

“You ready to do this?” Warren clapped him on the shoulder after retrieving a cup of coffee for himself. “It’s not going to be an easy call.”

“No, it isn’t.” He hadn’t dreaded anything more since Lang’s funeral.

“I’m gonna take Hoss for a walk,” Ceelie said. “I think it’ll be easier if I’m not here.”

Gentry gave her a sharp look, then exchanged glances with his partner.

Jena nodded. “I think I’ll go with you. Gentry, is it okay for us to take Hoss up on the levee to walk?”

“Yeah, I take him up there a lot when I go running.” At Jena’s snort, he clarified. Hoss wasn’t the speediest dog on the block. “I take him up there a lot when I go walking.”

“Do we have to worry about him getting off-leash and going in the water?” Ceelie asked, taking the leash from the hook beside the door and clipping it onto the dancing Frenchie’s collar.

“Hoss wouldn’t go near the water if you threw him in there—he’d find a way to levitate over it. He doesn’t like to get his feet wet.”

The women were laughing when they left with his happy dog, and once again, Gentry was thankful for one smart partner. Ceelie wanted to give him privacy for the phone call, which he appreciated. Jena was going to make sure Ceelie was safe, which he appreciated even more.

Jena had picked up a backpack and taken it with her, and he’d bet next month’s salary that her service pistol was inside.

The clock on the phone handset read seven a.m. His mom would be up, and Louis would still be home. He wanted her to have some support there, and both of his stepsisters were grown and living their own lives. So the time was now.

He took a deep breath, punched in her number, and put the phone on speaker.

Louis answered and had the good grace to sound pleased when he heard Gentry’s voice. More guilt. He really needed to do a better job of staying in touch with his mom and trying to be a part of her family. Maybe even find a way to think of it as
his
family, if it wasn’t too late.

“I need to talk to Mom, and I think you need to stay with her if you can,” he told Louis. “It’s going to be a tough conversation. It’s about Langston.”

“Ah . . . right. I’ll get her.”

Marie Broussard had been a real steel magnolia, a force to be reckoned with, when Gentry and Lang were little. Gentry remembered his parents arguing more than once—way more than once—about Hank Broussard’s job and the hours he kept. Of course, Gentry was “Hank made over,” according to just about everyone who’d met the family, so he’d never taken the time to see his mom’s side of things.

Now he got it. He worked long hours. He worked holidays and weekends and in the middle of the night, because that’s when most criminals were out being criminals, whether they were drug dealers or poachers or hunters trying to bring in an illegal deer. The job was more dangerous than anyone outside the agency imagined. Most of his fellow agents, especially in enforcement, were single or divorced, or were married to other law-enforcement officers. It wasn’t an easy life, especially for a spouse who hadn’t bought into the culture.

“Gentry?” Mom’s voice sounded . . . like Mom. God, he hated to do this to her. They might not be close, but he didn’t want to hurt her.

Warren pointed to himself, brows raised. Offering to break the news.

Gentry shook his head. “Hi, Mom, sorry to call so early, but I needed to talk to you as soon as I could.”

“Louis said it was something about your brother?” Her voice sounded older.

Gentry look a deep breath. He’d thought and thought about how to do this gently but hadn’t come up with a better way than just telling her. “Mom, first of all, I don’t know how he survived, but Lang’s alive.”

Gentry and Warren exchanged grim looks as the silence on the phone told them the depth of Marie’s shock.

“Where has he been?” Louis spoke this time, maybe giving his wife a moment to absorb the bombshell. “Have you seen him?”

“I don’t know where he’s been the past three years, but at least for the last couple of weeks, he’s been here in Terrebonne Parish, probably in Dulac.”

That shocked his mother out of silence. “Did he call you? Have you seen him? Why hasn’t he called me? I know he . . .”

She stopped without finishing that sentence. As far as Gentry knew, Lang hadn’t given her the time of day since she’d married Louis.

“Mom, Warren Doucet—Dad’s former partner and my lieutenant here—is with me. I haven’t seen Lang yet, but I did talk to him on the phone. The reason I know he’s here in the parish is that he’s, well, he’s in legal trouble. A lot of trouble.”

Which was sort of like referring to a T. rex as an oversized gecko.

“Oh my God.” Louis again. “What has he done now?”

“Louis, don’t.” Marie’s voice was muffled, but her sharp tone came through loud and clear. Then she put on her Southern matron persona. “Warren, it has been a long time. I hope you’re doing well.”

“It has been a long time, Marie. I’m sorry we’re calling you with this kind of news.”

“The fact that my son is alive is good news, I’d think.”

Only because they hadn’t told her anything else. Gentry waited for her to ask about Lang’s legal troubles. It took less than a minute, so he had to give her credit for a quick recovery.

“Gentry, what has he done?”

Here came the fun part. “Mom, we have every reason to believe he killed a woman, an elderly woman who lived just south of Montegut. And then he killed Tommy Mason in Dulac—don’t know if you remember him. We think Lang might have been hiding out with him.”

“Tommy Mason was his best friend. He wouldn’t kill him.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Gentry considered admitting his role in what happened to Tommy and couldn’t handle it. Not yet.

Another long pause and Gentry thought he heard his mother crying. He looked at Warren and gave him a
what-now
look.

“Marie, I need to ask you a couple of questions. I know it’s all a shock,” Warren said. “But you’re going to be hearing from the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office soon with the same questions, and you’re going to be seeing Langston’s photo on the news. I want you to be prepared for that.” He paused. “Can I ask you some questions?”

“Does it have to be now?” Louis’s voice was shaky too. “Can we process this and let Marie call you back?”

“I’m sorry, Louis.” Gentry picked up the baton in the interrogate-Mom relay. “It really has to be now. There are people still in danger, including me.” Not that he was his own main concern, but he figured it would snap his mother to attention.

He was right. “You think Lang’s going to try to get back at you?” Her voice had risen an octave, and he closed his eyes as if the surge of guilt washing over him were physical.

He decided to evade that question and get to the real things they needed to know. “Mom, do you know a man named LeRoy Breaux?”

Dead silence. Then, “Why in the world would you ask about LeRoy Breaux? I haven’t heard that name in years.”

Gentry and Warren exchanged glances. “So you know who he is?”

She let out a short laugh. “Or who he was. Far as I know, that man left Terrebonne Parish twenty years ago and never looked back. He’s probably dead by now. He’d have to be going on close to eighty-five or ninety.”

“Who is he to you, Marie?” Warren asked. “Is he related to you in some way?”

“Oh my goodness, no.” She made a few more noises to let them know this was not a subject she considered worthy of her time. “He was related to Tommy Mason, actually. His uncle by marriage or something like that. You know, half the parish is related if you go back far enough.”

Damn. “Mom, did Lang ever go to visit LeRoy Breaux? Specifically, did he spend a couple of weeks with him the summer Dad died?”

“Yes, although I didn’t know about it until after the fact. And it was a mistake, let me tell you.”

Holy mother of God. There was the connection, confirmed. “Why was it a mistake? We need to know everything you remember about that visit and about LeRoy.”