Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) (19 page)

CHAPTER 22

“Ceelie! Damn it, I lost the connection.” Gentry’s heart beat erratically. He tried to find his professional calm, but it was gone. He’d jerked the truck into a parking lot, done a gravel-spewing U-turn, and headed south as soon as Jena’s call for help came over the radio. His grip on the phone tightened as he punched in Ceelie’s number. Meizel was already on his own radio, sharing what little he knew.

Ceelie’s phone went straight to voice mail.

If he hadn’t been stopped at a red light, he’d have crashed the truck. As it was, Meizel still put his hand on the steering wheel. “Pull over, Broussard.”

Gentry ignored him, flipping on his lights and running through the intersection as soon as he was sure cars had stopped to clear the way.

He speed-dialed Sinclair. Straight to voice mail.

“Pull over now, Broussard!” Meizel yelled, and finally broke through the fog taking over Gentry’s brain.

He shook his head. “I’m OK. Let your guys know that Ceelie identified Langston Broussard just before the shots.”

“Damn.” Meizel got on his radio again, and Gentry calmed now that the cavalry had been called. He still didn’t plan on wasting time. He was going with lights and sirens on.

He punched speed-dial one on his phone.

Warren didn’t bother with a greeting. “All we know is Sinclair called in an ‘officer needs help’ approximately two minutes ago.” Tires squealed in the background; the lieutenant was already on the road. “I don’t know the situation and we haven’t been able to get her on the radio.”

“It was Lang.” A welcome numbness settled over Gentry. “Ceelie Savoie called me and got that much out before I lost her. Sounded like a gun blast through the windshield or window. TPSO’s en route.”

“Everybody in the parish is en route,” Warren said, and Gentry struggled to hear between his own sirens and Warren’s. “Billiot and Griffin were patrolling near Chauvin, so they’ll probably be first on scene. EMS is on the way as well.”

Gentry ended the call and almost lost the truck on a tight curve.

“Slow down.” Meizel’s voice was quiet. “Slow down or pull over. If you kill us both on the way we aren’t going to help anybody.”

Pride fought with common sense, and he slowed down to a reasonable sixty-five.

“Look, I get it,” Meizel said. “Sinclair is your partner and I don’t think I’m wrong in saying you and Ceelie Savoie are way more than just acquaintances. Am I right or am I right?”

Gentry let out a long, ragged breath. “Yeah.”

“Plus that’s your brother out there doing this shit, so cut yourself some slack and just drive. For now, tell yourself it’s just another case.”

Gentry nodded. If he’d learned anything in the long months after he’d
killed
Lang—what a joke that all seemed now—it was to let himself feel what he felt. Right now he was so angry he’d eviscerate Lang if given half a chance. For three years, he’d wallowed in guilt over his brother’s death. Now, he wished like hell he’d killed him for real. And if Jena or Ceelie were hurt . . .

Gentry obsessively called Ceelie’s and Jena’s phones every few minutes for a while, praying someone would pick up. Every time, voice mail. Finally, he stopped trying.

An ambulance sped up behind them, and Gentry slowed down and waved them around.

They saw the crime scene long before they reached it. A chaotic swarm of blue and red flashing lights could be seen far ahead, and a dozen or so cars were backed up in the southbound lane in front of them at a dead stop.

“Screw this.” Gentry swerved into the northbound lane, driving south past the stopped cars. When he came upon a state police car blocking the right lane and a trooper managing traffic, the trooper waved him through.

“Jesus.” Ahead, Gentry saw Jena’s truck turned almost at a full ninety degrees, blocking the road. A mile farther south and she would have gone in the water making that turn. Sunlight glinted off broken glass, but not as much as Gentry would’ve hoped—it probably meant either the windshield or one or more windows had been shot
into
and not out of. He could only hope Jena had gotten a better shot at Lang than he got at the truck.

He pulled in behind a TPSO van and lurched to a stop. Gentry didn’t wait for Meizel; he jumped out and raced toward the pickup, slowing at the sight of a familiar shock of dark-red hair on the ground a few feet from the front wheel on the passenger’s side. Jena.

He scanned the people standing around—a growing crowd of sheriff’s deputies and state police and LDWF agents. Sirens everywhere. A chopper swooped past overhead, adding to the deafening sound of a fast-forming manhunt. They were a brotherhood and sisterhood that came together when the place and people they loved were threatened. The color of the badge didn’t matter.

Paul Billiot stood near where the EMTs were working on Jena, talking on his phone. Gentry skirted around him, edging as close to his partner as he could without getting in the way.

There was no sign of Ceelie. Where the hell was she?

Jena’s face had bleached to the color of parchment, at least what he could see of it. Blood coated her from hairline to waist, and Gentry did a quick assessment: facial lacerations—a lot of them, some deeper than others. The EMTs had already covered chest wounds to keep the lungs from collapsing, so the damage must be significant. She’d lost a lot of blood, but the EMTs seemed to have it under control. No sign of consciousness.

“There were at least a dozen rounds fired,” Paul said to Gentry, shouting to be heard over sirens and officers barking orders. “Sinclair took two rounds to the chest; the facial wounds are all from glass pellets. A lot of cuts on her hands where she shielded her eyes; otherwise, she’d have lost one or both. She got off a lot of shots, but no sign of Lang.”

“Where’s Ceelie—did they already take her in?”

Paul nudged him away from Jena and toward the truck. Gentry recognized a stall.

His voice came out in a hoarse shout. “Damn it, where’s Ceelie?”

How could an ambulance already have taken her in without passing him? The nearest hospital was back in Houma. Fear slithered up his backbone like a snake.

“Sinclair’s alive, but barely,” Paul said. “EMTs are trying to get her stable enough to transport; chopper’s on the way from the hospital in Houma. There’s no sign of Ms. Savoie. We found her cell phone, broken, on the back floorboard. Her purse was in the front passenger’s seat.” He paused. “No easy way to say this, Broussard, but we think your brother took her.”

Gentry stared at him, not seeing anything for the first shocked seconds except the vision his mind conjured of the bloody, butchered body of Eva Savoie.

Lang had Ceelie, and there were a million places in this wild bottomland for him to hide. And so much worse he could do to her.

He closed his eyes and tried to draw on his training. This was an abduction case now and a state agent had been shot. They’d have all the people and resources they needed. Everyone had mobilized fast, so Lang didn’t have much of a head start.

He would make sure they survived, both of them. Jena was stubborn. She would fight to live. Ceelie was tough, and she was smart. She’d find a way to hang on until they found her. He had to help, not fall apart. Losing either one of them was not an option. Especially not like this.

“What else do we know?” The calm in his voice masked the despair in his heart. And the fear; he ached from it.

“With Tommy Mason out of the picture, Lang’s gotta need money,” Paul said. “Both women’s wallets were cleaned out, so if he’s stupid enough to use a credit card we’ll know it. An APB has already been issued, and the troopers are setting up roadblocks at every access point off the highway—it’s not like there are many side roads for him to take. If he tries to get anywhere by car, we’ll get him. Troop C’s already got a chopper in the air.”

“Are Jena’s weapons accounted for?” Gentry hated to think of all that firepower in Lang’s hands.

“We’re still digging through glass—or the TPSO team is. Looks like he took all the weapons except the knife. She still had it on her belt. When she made the distress call, she identified a silver sedan but not the driver.”

Gentry nodded. “Ceelie called me as soon as she realized it was Lang.” He waited until another cluster of sirens edged around Jena’s truck and sped south, and he still had to shout. “So he has a car and plenty of weapons but probably not a lot of ammunition. Is Tommy Mason’s silver Honda still impounded?”

“Don’t know.” Paul pulled out his cell phone and made a note. Then he turned and surveyed the broad, flat landscape. “Where would he take her?” He turned back to Gentry. “You know the two of them better than anybody here. Where would he take her, and why?”

“The where could be anywhere, but I don’t think he’ll get too far from the Savoie cabin if that’s where he thinks he’s going to find his payday. I think I know the why.” Gentry waited for Warren and the sheriff to join them, pulling them as far from the noise as he could.

He filled them in on his and Meizel’s trip to the pawnshop in Houma. “If we assume Lang was trying to torture Eva Savoie into telling him where, or if, she had more of those gold coins, he might also assume Ceelie knows something about them.”

She didn’t, though. He hadn’t even had a chance to tell her the coins existed. All this for money. He’d give his brother every goddamned penny he had just to get Ceelie back safe.

“We’re gonna tear through that cabin again, looking for coins,” Sheriff Knight said. “And we have to figure Broussard has access to a boat since that’s how he reached the Savoie cabin the first time. We can’t assume he’s gonna travel by car.”

“What can I do?” Gentry asked. He needed to contribute. If he went home and saw reminders of Ceelie all over the place he’d go crazy.

“We want people working in teams,” Warren said. “You and Billiot take a patrol boat and see what you can find between here and Chauvin, east side to Montegut. I’ll send Griffin with the TPSO water patrol for the west side and over to Dulac. Go in every branch and bayou. Check any abandoned buildings. There are a lot of houses along the highway. See if anybody saw anything. Look for the vehicle but also the boat you saw earlier—silver aluminum and shallow, right?”

Gentry nodded, relieved that he’d get to stay busy. And Billiot was a silent, serious SOB but he was a good agent and he wouldn’t make Gentry talk. Warren probably knew that. If he’d put Gentry in a boat with the gregarious Mac Griffin, Mac might not live to enjoy his twenty-fifth birthday.

“If you see anything, you know the protocol,” the sheriff said. Roscoe Knight was a tall, gruff man in his fifties who oozed power, probably because he had a lot of it in a huge parish with only one metro police department. He was a straight arrow, and from what Gentry had heard, his officers respected him. “Enter the scene only if it’s life and death. Otherwise, radio it in and let my team do its job.”

While Paul went to move the patrol boat to the designated launch, Gentry walked around the truck. None of the windows remained; the windshield was still in place but a gust of wind would finish shattering it. He looked in the backseat, careful not to touch anything . . . until he saw Ceelie’s guitar. The instrument was covered in glass and blood—Jena’s blood, or Ceelie’s? Part of the body had been crushed.

He stopped one of the sheriff’s crime-scene people who was taking photos nearby. “Any way I could take the guitar that’s in the backseat? It’s my friend’s and I’d like to be able to fix it and give it back to her when we find her.”

“Sorry, but we need to keep the evidence togeth—”

“Take it, Broussard.” Sheriff Knight clapped a hand on his shoulder. “And we
are
going to find her.”

Gentry thanked the sheriff, reached inside the SUV, and gently brought out the Gibson. It was Ceelie’s most valued possession, and he hoped the fact that it had survived with what looked like repairable damage was a good sign for its owner.

For the next six hours, Gentry and Paul went door to door along Highway 56, the stretch known as Little Caillou Road. They searched abandoned buildings, talked to residents, left business cards until they ran out, and then started writing their phone numbers on scraps of paper.

They made it back to Montegut and went by Ceelie’s cabin, where Gentry could find no sign anyone had been there since his visit that morning.

“You ready for a night on the water?” Paul asked when they got back in the truck.

“You’re off duty.” Gentry didn’t plan to go home tonight, but he didn’t expect Paul to stay on the water indefinitely. Night marine duty was the worst, and the last few nights had been foggy.

“I’m on duty until we find this homicidal nutcase.” Paul glanced at him. “Sorry.”

“That’s a lot better than anything I’ve been calling him.” Gentry turned his truck back to the south, toward the boat launch Warren had set up for them, and said what had been running like a tape loop through his head all day. “If I’d just fingered him that first morning . . .”

“Chances are nothing would be different.” Paul looked out the window. “And I should’ve offered Celestine Savoie a place to stay besides that cabin.”

Gentry glanced at him in surprise. “Why would you do that? Not that she’d have taken you up on it—I tried. You don’t even know her.”

“She’s part Chitimacha and we should take care of our own. We don’t always do it.”

Gentry pondered that. “Look, we can blame ourselves or say we should’ve done this or that all day, but the fact is, the person responsible is my brother and no one else.”

“Can’t argue.”

They fell silent for a while, then Paul used his phone to rouse Stella, and he put it on speaker. “Got a status on Agent Sinclair?”

Gentry noticed Stella was a lot more businesslike with Paul than with him or Jena. Or maybe she was as shocked as the rest of them. “They got her to Terrebonne General, and they’re trying to get her stable enough for surgery. They almost lost her in the chopper.” Stella sounded as if she’d been crying. “She hasn’t regained consciousness.”

Gentry focused on the road, but if he clenched his jaw any harder, he’d crack a molar.