The Grace Painter (The Grace Series Book 1)

by Mark Romang

  Rafter pulled to a stop in the middle of the road and shifted the truck into park. He left the engine running and grabbed a flashlight from under the seat and jumped out into the tempest. He kept his head bowed to the wind as he trudged forward; feeling a bit foolish for leaving the Ford to investigate what might be just a figment of his imagination. But it didn’t matter. An invisible force impossible to resist tugged him toward the spot in the road.

  Like a ghost hunter alerted to a possible poltergeist, he could sense evil recently traveled this very road. His heart hammered faster and faster as he advanced to the spot in the road. Behind him he could hear Samson barking, warning him to be careful. The dog’s uneasiness bothered him. Sam knew something he didn’t.

  Rafter’s left foot hit something solid, and he nearly stumbled over the mystery object. He prepared to look down, fearful his assumptions were correct but hopeful he was only being overly jumpy on a stormy night. Please, Lord, don’t let it be what I think it is.

  He grimaced at what his flashlight revealed. A person lay face down in the road. Rafter fought to remain calm as he swept his flashlight over the body, mentally noting the small frame, blond hair, and curvaceous hips.

  Determining right away the body belonged to a female; he squatted down on his haunches and supported the woman’s head and neck as he gently turned her over.

  He gasped when her ugly wounds came into view. Someone had beaten her to a bloody pulp. Her eyes were swollen shut and contusions discolored her face.

  Wiping mud away from her mouth, Rafter tilted her head and lifted her chin slightly to assure the woman’s airway remained open. He then moved his cheek down to hover a half-inch above her swollen mouth. He thought he felt a warm vapor tickle his cheek. Placing his index and middle finger onto her neck, he tested for a pulse. He detected one, albeit very weak.

  The young woman needed immediate medical attention. Unfortunately, fifty miles separated her from the nearest hospital, a nearly impossible distance to travel in weather this severe.

  He would have to transport the woman back to his house and doctor the wounds himself. Then when the weather abated, probably tomorrow, he’d drive her to the firehouse in town and let experienced paramedics examine her.

  From what he could determine, the woman’s injuries were mostly cosmetic in nature. Besides shock, the greatest health threat facing her might just be hypothermia. Only a guess on his part, and hypothermia always depended upon time exposed to the elements.

  Placing his arms underneath the woman’s armpits, Rafter lifted her up to her knees. He then stooped down and hoisted her limp body over his right shoulder. He carried the injured woman back to the Ford and opened the passenger door. “You’ll have to ride in back, Sam. We have a damsel in distress. There isn’t room for the both of you.”

  The Newfoundland jumped out in chivalrous fashion, allowing Rafter to ease the woman into the cab. He positioned her on her side with her head resting on the seat. Then, after tucking her feet inside and shutting the door, he hustled around to the other side and hopped in the truck. “You’re going to be fine, Miss. I’m not a doctor, but I think I can patch you up.” Rafter said, trying his best to sound cheery. He hated making promises he couldn’t keep.

  As it turned out, the spot where he found her was only a hundred yards or so from his driveway. During the short drive the woman moaned and displayed brief signs of consciousness, buoying Rafter’s hopes she would indeed pull through. When he pulled to a stop by the front steps, Samson waited for them.

  The wind, holding steady at a gale all evening, suddenly gusted to double that. The magnolia trees surrounding the brick-fronted house bowed their tops in submission to the harassing wind. Sheets of rain battered Rafter as he carried the woman into the declining mansion. He laid her down on a sofa in the parlor, and then gathered firewood from the kitchen to start a fire in the parlor fireplace.

  Despite its age, the 1890 Glenwood Grand wood-burning kitchen range performed admirably. A good thing. He didn’t have enough money to purchase a modern appliance. At least he owned a quasi-modern refrigerator--a 1932 Westinghouse that worked like a dream.

  He started a fire in the fireplace, then collected his first aid supplies and some clothes and went to work on the battered woman. He stripped off her wet clothing and toweled her dry, working fast to keep her temperature from dropping. He then examined her athletic body, specifically her limbs.

  Rafter shook his head. As a beat cop he’d answered countless domestic abuse calls. He’d seen spousal abuse before, but nothing this extreme. This woman undoubtedly had a host of angels watching over her. Bruises discolored her body from top to bottom. But he couldn’t feel any fractures, and each of her limbs somehow retained their full range of motion. He moved on to her hands and discovered several dislocated fingers, which he popped back into place while she slept.

  Next, he ran an appraising finger along her scalp. He discovered tiny glass bits hiding among the goose eggs. He took great care in removing the glass. He didn’t want to add to the cuts already marking her face.

  Rafter felt certain the woman suffered from some degree of head trauma. She had too many lumps not to have sustained a concussion. He couldn’t predict, though, if she had any internal organ damage or hemorrhaging. Those assessments could only be determined by a competent physician and a MRI or CT scan.

  Wringing out a washcloth, Rafter gently washed the caked mud from her face. He applied antibiotic ointment to her cuts and bandaged the deepest ones. He then dressed the woman in a pair of his sweatpants and a NY Rangers hockey jersey. He covered her with a light afghan, and then scooted the sofa up close to the fireplace.

  When he’d first examined her, her skin had been slightly cool to the touch. He wanted to use the fire to bring up her core temperature. And if the hot flames lapping from the seasoned oak and hedge couldn’t do the trick, nothing would. A normal person would have long ago called for an ambulance to take the woman to a hospital. But I’m not your average guy, Rafter thought. Not by a long shot. He didn’t have a phone service of any kind. Besides all the fees and taxes, he didn’t want the paper trail that went along with it.

  He worked hard at remaining anonymous, and figured he’d become quite adept at it. But even if he had a phone, his call for help probably wouldn’t go through. The approaching hurricane had already taken a heavy toll on electrical and phone lines. And he doubted if an ambulance could navigate the flooded roads out to the plantation house. His weather radio had been broadcasting flash-flood warnings for his parish for the last several minutes. At least she’s safe here. This old house has survived countless hurricanes, Rafter told himself.

  He grabbed a straight-backed chair from the kitchen and moved it up near the sofa. He sat down in the chair and closely monitored his patient’s breathing. He wanted to make sure she didn’t slip into an apneic state. While he watched the woman he applied an ice pack to her swollen face. Every so often she would mutter unintelligible words and thrash about, holding her hands out in a defensive position as if she were still trying to ward off blows from her assailant.

  Rafter couldn’t begin to fathom why someone would want to bludgeon the woman to death’s door. Just trying to come up with a rational answer made his head throb. Ultimately, there were no logical reasons to explain such savagery.

  “Who are you?” he asked her. He didn’t find a purse at the crime scene, and found no identification in her clothing. But apparently she had a good reason for braving the harsh conditions. He found an ammunition clip in her pants pocket. Unfortunately, he would have to wait until she regained consciousness to hear an explanation. And that might take a long time.

  Chapter 7

  Atchafalaya Basin

  The waterlogged johnboat arrived at the fishing shack battered and bruised. During its tumultuous trip the small vessel took on water at an alarming rate. Hurricane winds, blinding rain, heavy cargo, and four adult men proved too much for its 25 horsepower Evinrude motor. They row
ed the final, painstaking mile.

  Sebastian Boudreaux looped a rope around a cypress stump, lashing the boat securely with a pile hitch knot. The boat pitched wildly at its natural mooring but held fast. Balancing himself on shaky legs, he timed the next swell and leaped at its crest onto a rickety dock, where he unfurled a rope ladder for the others to ascend.

  As he clambered up creaky dock steps, he felt glares perforate his back. Contending with a hellish thunderstorm and a capsizing boat soured his companion’s moods. And because he pushed them to come here, they directed their hostility toward him.

  Sebastian pushed open the front door. Cypress stilts supported the shack and kept it eight feet above the water. The house offered three rooms: a kitchenette, living room, and bedroom.

  For nearly fifty years his family had used the dwelling as temporary shelter during the crawfish season. Sebastian stepped inside the dank property. Mold assailed his nostrils. Holding his breath, he brushed aside cobwebs with his free arm, and then hung his propane lantern from a low-hanging rafter.

  He took a quick look around, not caring much for what he saw. Rats ran from his lantern light, scurrying for cover behind a tattered divan, while rain dripped from the ceiling, forming puddles on the sagging floor. Vagrants had sprayed graffiti on every flat surface, and drug paraphernalia littered the small dining table. It’s only for a little while, Sebastian assured himself. Just until the weather improves.

  His uncle entered behind him. The plywood floor groaned under Henri Boudreaux’s 6-foot-7 inch frame. After his brother’s execution, Henri anointed himself the family patriarch, and no one dared challenge his alpha male status. Henri carried Gabby Witherspoon effortlessly under one arm like a sack of potatoes.

  Henri’s twenty-eight-year-old son, Blaine, followed close behind. Blaine lugged his ubiquitous computer equipment into the shack. Jean-Paul brought up the rear--his arms loaded down with whiskey bottles and non-perishable foodstuffs.

  “I’m putting the little wench in the bedroom,” Henri growled over his shoulder as he strode into what could only be loosely described as a bedroom. Contrary to Sebastian’s fears, the little girl had been no trouble at all. The Pepsi spiked with sleeping pills he’d given her ensured compliance.

  “I’ve never been so wet in all my life,” Jean-Paul said as he wearily set their supplies down on the sofa.

  Unlike his chatty cousin, Blaine Boudreaux rarely talked. He preferred to socialize with hard drives and monitors over humans. He could hack into most anything, and had brought along his Toshiba laptop and an odd-looking antenna he called a Wi-Fi yagi antenna to monitor news stories on the internet.

  Henri appeared from the bedroom and stomped into the main living area. He deposited his immense bulk onto a stool and removed his hip waders and raincoat, discarding them in the corner. As usual, the fifty-eight-year-old burned with anger.

  The world simply couldn’t cater to his needs fast enough. “I need a drink. Where’s the whiskey?” he roared.

  “Here you go, uncle,” Jean-Paul said pleasantly, handing Henri a Jack Daniels bottle. “You can have the honor of christening the first bottle.”

  Henri swiped at the bottle and took a long swig. A cruel smile twisted his whiskey-moistened lips. “See if you can top that boy,” he said, shoving the bottle at his son sitting next to him.

  Blaine acquiesced to his father’s wishes and tried admirably, but didn’t come close to matching Henri’s incredible swig. Blaine sputtered and coughed as the powerful drink burned his throat. His pale face turned scarlet. He quickly handed the bottle to Jean-Paul so the whiskey relay could continue. Sebastian watched with disgust as his brother nearly matched Henri, guzzle for guzzle.

  “Your turn, Sebastian,” Jean-Paul said, offering him the rapidly diminishing bottle.

  Sebastian lifted a water bottle. “I’ll stick with H2O.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with drinking a quality libation to chase the devil from you, Sebastian,” Henri said. “What did they do to you at, Angola, dry you out?”

  Sebastian didn’t answer right away. Instead he busied himself loading ammunition clips for his Browning 10 millimeter--a quality side arm he borrowed from Henri’s extensive collection. “Yes, they did. But right now I think it’s prudent we stay sober. We have a lot of planning to do. Since you and Blaine thought it necessary to kill the federal agents reconnoitering your property, a manhunt like Louisiana has never known is now being coordinated.”

  Sebastian hadn’t counted on the FBI locating them so quickly. He’d underestimated their efficiency and naively assumed the sheer isolation of Henri’s property would buy them time. A near fatal mistake.

  He also hadn’t counted on Henri and Blaine’s willingness to use deadly force. Apparently they feared their drug enterprise would be discovered. Henri Boudreaux ran his own excavation company for the past twenty years. But during the last ten years the business had only been a token one that thinly veiled his drug smuggling operation.

  After the gun battle subsided at Henri’s property, they removed all identification, weapons, and search and arrest warrants from the two dead FBI agents. They then dumped their bodies in separate locations and destroyed the agent’s cell phones.

  “Well, since you’re the only one sober, what do you propose we do?” Henri asked.

  Sebastian looked his big uncle in the eyes. “This may sound crazy, but please hear me out, Henri. It’s our only chance in my opinion.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Sebastian nodded. “We contact your Mexican drug suppliers and ask them to smuggle us out on their boats. If they agree, we work our way south through the Basin until we’re on the coast and ready for extraction. But before we do anything, we drop the girl off in a nearby town. She’ll only slow us down, and not having a hostage might reduce the intensity of the manhunt.”

  Henri took another swig from the rapidly diminishing Jack Daniels, and then hurled the empty bottle against a wall with such force that it knocked a hole in the moldy sheetrock. “That the best you got, Sebastian?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose it can be done,” Henri said, backhanding the whiskey residue from his lips. “But how can we contact them in a storm like this?”

  “Can’t Blaine e-mail them?”

  Henri’s slush-colored eyes brightened. “Sure he can. He does it all the time.”

  “Then that’s how we’ll do it.” Sebastian looked over at Blaine. “Be careful how you word it. You’ll have to be imaginative. We’ll be discovered if you’re too specific. And when you’re done e-mailing Zaplata, e-mail our cousin Luc in Copeland. Ask him if we can borrow his Wave Runners. We’ll use them to make our way to the Gulf.”

  Without hesitation, Blaine opened his laptop and logged on. He then cracked a window and spent several minutes positioning the bulky yagi antenna on the window sill until he found a Wi-Fi hotspot with enough signal strength. While Blaine typed, Sebastian took a few deep breaths. He rolled his muscular shoulders and quietly mulled over his short-term objectives. His threefold goal was straightforward for the most part, yet subject to Murphy’s Law and Mother Nature’s lubricious whims.

  First, he had to survive the hurricane and avoid the FBI dragnet choking off every exit point in the state. Second, he had to discreetly find and retrieve the McAllister ransom money. Lastly, he had to somehow dislodge himself from the trio of drunken hooligans he reluctantly called family.

  His second objective appeared the most difficult. He still had no idea where the money hid. He tried to think back to the fateful night when Claude stashed the money just before being apprehended. But forcing his memory to rewind twenty years took longer than he thought. Too many cobwebs covered his distant past to be able to reconstruct an accurate remembrance.

  It has to be somewhere close by, he reasoned. His father managed to hide the money in a very brief window of time, conceivably soon after receiving it. How he did it remained a mystery. With the elevated shack surrounded by law enf
orcement, Claude escaped through a trap door in the bedroom floor and slipped into the alligator-infested water below.

  Regrettably, a sharp-eyed deputy spotted his father slinking around that morning. A bloody gun battle ensued. Claude managed to kill the deputy and wound a hostage negotiator before being wounded himself. Not long after the firefight concluded, and when Sebastian and Jean-Paul realized that their father had been apprehended, they surrendered peacefully.

  To this day, Sebastian wondered if his father ever intended to return once he’d left the shack. During the months the trial dragged on, they couldn’t correspond to each other. So his suspicions hung in limbo.

  Floating down a hidden stream…my gravestone is a rusty wheel…my Cajun bones enrich the field. Where could these land features be? Could his father have described literal places and things, or cleverly used symbolism to throw would-be treasure hunters off-track?

  Determined to find the answer, Sebastian walked over to the grimy kitchen cabinets. He opened a cupboard door and studied a yellowed, topographical map of the Atchafalaya Basin taped to the inside of the door. Red thumbtacks highlighted bona fide crawfish hotspots.

  A rare smile creased his face almost immediately. Several possibilities emerged from the squiggly lines.

  Sebastian’s heart sped up. Somehow he had to break away and investigate the sites without stirring the curiosity of his uncle, cousin, and brother. In all likelihood he would have to wait until they fell asleep, which shouldn’t be too long given the late hour and their ever-increasing drunkenness. How deep Claude buried the money, and if it remained intact would be another secret he would have to unravel.

  Blaine looked up from his laptop. “I just sent an e-mail to Carlos Zaplata’s hacienda in Veracruz,” he announced. “And I used a prearranged cryptograph that only Zaplata representatives can decipher. Now I’ll e-mail Luc about the personal watercrafts using a code he’s familiar with.”