Chaos in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series)

by Jana DeLeon

  “Thorns!” Helena screamed somewhere outside the shack. “I fell in thorns. Oh my God, it’s a snake!”

  Jadyn shook her head. “It’s like she had a spasm of some sort.”

  A second shot tore through the wall of the shack, grazing Samuel’s shoulder. His hand flew up to cover the injury and Jadyn pushed him off the cot and onto the floor before she dropped down beside him. “Stay low,” she whispered. “How many shots is that?”

  “Two that we know of,” Colt replied. “That magazine holds fifteen rounds but she could have backup.”

  “Someone shoot that crazy bitch!” Helena yelled. “I accidentally touched a snake. I need therapy.”

  “We have to do something,” Jadyn said.

  Samuel pointed to the corner where his makeshift kitchen was located. “Under that shelf, there’s a section of the wall that comes off. I won’t stay somewhere with only one way out. I have this…thing.”

  “Small wonder,” Colt said and reached under the shelf to remove the wall panel. “I’m going to circle around her. Stay low.” He locked his gaze on hers. “If you get her in your sights, take her out.”

  Jadyn nodded. The time for talking things through was over. All of them weren’t leaving the swamp on their own accord. She just hoped Sophia was the only casualty. She crouched on the floor next to Samuel, giving her a clear view of the doorway.

  Footsteps sounded outside and her hand tightened on the trigger. A second later, Helena came to a sliding halt in front of the door. The outfit that she’d been wearing when she tackled Sophia was gone. In its place were jeans, a checked shirt, and boots. A pink fluorescent cowboy hat completed the outfit.

  “I’m going to round her up,” Helena said. “I’ve got rope.”

  Jadyn’s eyes widened when she saw that Helena was clutching a snake in her right hand and not the rope she thought she had, but before she could say a word, the ghost dashed off.

  “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” Helena yelled and bounded off into the swamp.

  Jadyn inched closer to the door, straining to hear what was going on outside. It seemed as if every second that ticked by took an hour as she waited for any indication that Colt had found Sophia, or Helena had discovered she was holding a snake, but the swamp had gone oddly silent.

  She looked over at Samuel, who stared back at her, his fear apparent. “Hand me that pillow.” She pointed to a travel pillow on the back of the cot.

  Samuel passed Jadyn the pillow and she leaned as close to the door as possible, then tossed the pillow out the door. A second later, a shot rang out and foam from the pillow scattered on the ground outside of the cabin.

  “She shot me!” Helena yelled. “I’m going to lasso her. Holy shit, I’m holding a snake! I hit her with the snake.”

  Sophia let out a bloodcurdling scream and Jadyn knew Helena’s ghostly snake had transformed into the live version when she’d tossed it at the insane heiress. A second later a shot rang out, then another.

  “Help!” Helena yelled. “They’re shooting everybody out here!”

  Jadyn stressed over her options. Did she risk leaving the cabin by the front door? Or maybe she should head out through the wall panel and follow Colt’s path. But that left Samuel alone, and that wasn’t the best idea either. The man had a way of disappearing and he still had a lot to answer for.

  “All clear!” Colt yelled and Jadyn jumped up from the floor and dashed out of the shack, pulling Samuel along behind her.

  She spotted Colt in the swamp about twenty yards from the shack and hurried over. He stood above Sophia, who was prone with a single hole through the center of her head. The back half of a water moccasin was trapped beneath her and struggled to get loose. Colt holstered his gun and motioned to Jadyn, who grabbed Sophia’s hip and pulled her up as Colt pulled from the shoulders. The snake shot off into the swamp, apparently having no desire to mix with crazy humans.

  “Is she dead?” Samuel asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Colt said.

  “Thank God,” Samuel said and collapsed down on a log.

  Jadyn looked over at Colt and realized blood was seeping through his shirt on his right side. “You’re shot.” She leaned over as he lifted his shirt. Relief washed over her when she saw it was a surface wound. It would sting like heck for a while, but he would live.

  “It only grazed you,” she said.

  “Only? Says you.” Colt grimaced as he dropped his shirt back into place. “That smarts.”

  “We need to get back to Mudbug,” Jadyn said.

  “We won’t all be going back to Mudbug.” Peter Vincent’s voice sounded behind them and they whirled around to find him standing about twenty feet away, holding a shotgun.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Before Jadyn could even register the danger, the words “not again” ran through her mind. Then she processed their huge disadvantage and her heart fell. Everything they’d endured today had been for nothing. They would all die in the swamp and no one would have any idea what happened.

  “Throw that pistol on the ground, honey,” Vincent said.

  Jadyn clenched the pistol, not wanting to part with it, but also knowing there was no way she could get a clean shot before Vincent did. As she started to lift her arm to throw the gun, a shot rang out.

  A wave of dizziness passed over her and she waited for the pain to come. A split second later, she realized she hadn’t been shot at all. Vincent’s eyes widened and the blood rushed out of his face, and a second later, he dropped like a stone to the ground. In a flash, Jadyn lifted her pistol, ready to take out whoever had shot Vincent.

  “Don’t shoot, Ms. St. James!” Deputy Nelson stood about twenty feet behind Vincent, holding his arms in the air.

  Relief washed over Jadyn and she lowered her arm. “Jeez, Nelson. I’m not going to shoot you.”

  She looked over at Samuel, who was hunched over on the stump, propping his head up with his hands. He looked like a running year of bad weather. But he probably wasn’t a flight risk now that everyone who wanted a piece of him was out of commission.

  Deputy Nelson dropped his arms and hurried over to Vincent. Colt was crouched beside him and had already tossed his shotgun to the side.

  “Did I kill him?” Deputy Nelson asked.

  “No,” Colt said. “He passed out. But he’s going to be thinking about you for a while every time he sits down.” Colt pointed to the bloody hole in Vincent’s pants.

  Deputy Nelson’s eyes widened. “Wow! I can’t believe I shot someone.”

  Colt rose from the ground and patted him on the back. “The first one’s always the hardest. I’m happy to get you some counseling.”

  Deputy Nelson frowned. “I was thinking you should buy me a beer.”

  Colt grinned and Jadyn laughed. “It’s a deal,” Colt said. “How did you find us, anyway?”

  Deputy Nelson opened his mouth to reply but before he got out a single word, Maryse and Taylor burst through the brush and into the clearing. Maryse took one look at the scene and rushed over to Jadyn, throwing her arms around her.

  “I’m so glad you’re alive,” Maryse said.

  Jadyn smiled as Maryse released her. “Me too.”

  “I am so sorry we brought that crazy psycho woman out here,” Maryse said, huffing to catch her breath. “If she had killed you and Colt, I would never have forgiven myself.”

  Things Jadyn hadn’t understood—like how Sophia had found them and how Helena had gotten there—now started to make sense. Speaking of which, she wondered where the ghost had gotten off to. She glanced around but couldn’t see hide nor hair of the galloping ghost. “You came looking for us?”

  Maryse nodded. “When Colt didn’t check in, we got worried. I was going to come alone but Mildred pitched a fit, and Taylor insisted she come since she brought Sophia to town. Then Sophia convinced us that she was the only person who could talk Samuel out of hurting anyone, so…shit. Really bad call on that one.”

  “We found the fake entrance to the
channel,” Taylor continued, “and then Sophia pulled a gun and made us get out of the boat and swim to shore.”

  Jadyn stared. “And you ran all the way here? No wonder you both look ready to drop.”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said. “Maryse had Mildred call the sheriff’s department and ask them to send backup, but we didn’t know how long he’d be.”

  “And that’s how Deputy Nelson found us,” Jadyn said. “Well, you saved the day with your backup call.”

  “Least I could do since I brought the enemy here.” Maryse stared down at the unconscious Vincent. “Who the hell is he?”

  “That’s what I was wondering,” Helena said as she staggered into the clearing. She was still wearing the cowboy gear, but had replaced the snake with a hot-pink whip. The cowboy hat had taken a beating and was all crumpled and cockeyed on her head.

  Jadyn held in a grin. “It’s a long story. One we don’t have all the answers for ourselves.”

  Maryse glanced at Helena and flinched. “If it’s all right by you, I’ll wait until you’ve sorted it out and I’ve had a shower and at least two beers—maybe therapy—then you can tell me all about it.”

  “And cinnamon rolls,” Helena threw in. “Damn it. Someone owes me an entire tray of cinnamon rolls.”

  “It’s a deal,” Jadyn said to Maryse.

  “Uh, guys,” Deputy Nelson broke in. “If we want to get this party back to Mudbug before that storm hits, we need to get a move on.”

  “He’s right,” Colt said. “Maryse and Taylor can take Maryse’s boat back. Jadyn and I will take Samuel and Sophia’s body. Deputy Nelson can take Vincent, and he goes straight to the hospital with a set of handcuffs attached to the gurney.”

  “Yes, sir,” Deputy Nelson said.

  “If you’re all done jawing,” Helena said, “would someone please get me the hell out of here?”

  Jadyn couldn’t agree more.

  ###

  It took them a bit of time and a lot of effort to haul Sophia and the still-unconscious Vincent to the boats, Vincent being the majority of the effort due to his size. Deputy Nelson handcuffed him to the boat in case he woke up and decided to make a dash for it, but Colt doubted he would be dashing anytime soon with that bullet in his rear.

  The paramedics from the hospital picked up Sophia’s body at the sheriff’s department and hauled it off for processing. Colt was not even ready for the hailstorm of shit that was coming over his killing one of the richest and most influential women in the state. Maryse and Jadyn had drifted off to the hotel as soon as they hit the dock, both talking about long hot showers as though they were better than winning the lottery. At the moment, Colt agreed with them.

  But first, he and Jadyn needed answers from Samuel.

  He brewed them a pot of coffee and everyone took a seat in his office. Before he could even start with the questions, Samuel, who’d been silent the entire boat ride back to the dock, began to talk.

  “I’m so sorry,” Samuel said. “You don’t deserve everything that happened today. Neither of you.”

  “And you do?” Colt asked. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you faked your death to get away from Sophia.”

  Samuel nodded. “She was brilliant and beautiful and I was a lowly construction worker with humble beginnings. She enchanted me. It wasn’t until after we were married that I saw the cracks in her armor.”

  “I assume she’s disturbed,” Jadyn said.

  “Oh no,” Samuel said, “disturbed is far too light. Sophia was a sociopath. She was just a very skilled one.”

  “How did you figure it out?” Jadyn asked.

  “The first thing I noticed was the cunning with which she dispatched anyone at the corporation she considered a threat to her own promotion. Her father didn’t believe in giving family something they hadn’t earned, and that included his daughter. She did completely unethical things to rid herself of some of her competition.”

  “Did you confront her about it?” Colt asked.

  “At first, but when I realized she was actually gleeful over how her victims had suffered, I knew I was wasting my breath.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave her?” Jadyn asked.

  “Don’t you think I would have if I could? You don’t understand. People like Sophia don’t care about anything but the game. And for Sophia, the game was controlling anything she wanted to control. That included me. When I started pushing back, she told me that if I ever left her, she’d have my entire family killed.”

  “And you believed her?” Colt asked.

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Colt nodded. “I guess I would have.”

  “Wow,” Jadyn said. “That’s a living nightmare. So did you rig the explosion to fake your death, not knowing that Sophia’s father would be in that building?”

  “No!” Samuel plopped his coffee mug down on Colt’s desk, sloshing the dark liquid onto the desktop. “It wasn’t me who rigged the explosion. It was Sophia. I knew she was up to something. She’d been spending a lot of time in one of the units I was working in. It focused specifically on excavation, which is where I learned about explosives. I was programming the software to handle their tolerance calculations.”

  “And Sophia worked with you on that programming?” Jadyn asked.

  “Yes. I knew she had an ulterior motive, but at the time, I took it as her keeping an eye on me. I didn’t think…and then all the pieces began to fall together.”

  “Like what?” Colt asked.

  “I found parts for explosive devices in a box in the back of our bathroom cabinet. It was Sophia’s space and I usually didn’t go into it, but that day I was out of shampoo. I recognized the box as one our explosive parts were delivered in and checked the contents. She had everything she needed to build a bomb that could easily level a small office building.”

  “What did you do?” Jadyn asked.

  “I watched her as closely as possible. What else could I do? If I went to the police, they would have thought I was crazy, and even if they took me seriously enough to question her, it would only have made things worse for me.”

  Colt shook his head. “You would have had an almost impossible time convincing them that someone of Sophia’s wealth would be involved in such insane behavior. And the cops would have trod lightly because of her influence in the city.”

  “Exactly,” Samuel said. “So I watched and waited, hoping that I could figure out what she was up to before she put something into action. But I was too late.” He shook his head. “The box went missing from the bathroom cabinet one morning and the maid informed me Sophia had left for the office an hour before. I’d slept so soundly that I never heard her leave and I dressed in a panic and set off for the office.”

  “Maybe she drugged you,” Jadyn suggested.

  Samuel’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought about that before, but you could be right. Anyway, one of the executives pulled me aside as soon as I entered the building to give me a warning about Sophia. Apparently, her father had informed her that morning that he was giving the chief operations officer position to one of the older male vice presidents in the company. He’d made the decision and told the top executives the night before.”

  “Did one of them tip off Sophia?” Colt asked.

  “Maybe,” Samuel said. “Or maybe she had his office bugged. I’d always wondered. Regardless, I knew it was going to be bad.”

  Jadyn drew in a breath. “Are you saying Sophia killed her father?”

  Samuel nodded, clearly miserable. “I think so. When I reached her office, she was sitting there studying her nails and smiling, as if nothing negative had happened to her that morning. I pretended I hadn’t heard anything and greeted her as I always did, then said I needed to speak with her father about some hardware upgrades and left.”

  Samuel drew in a huge breath, then blew it out. “As soon as I was out of her sight, I practically ran to her father’s office, but his secretary said he’d stepped out to one of the power bu
ildings to meet with me as I’d requested. But I hadn’t requested a meeting at all.”

  “Sophia,” Jadyn said and shook her head.

  “I ran across the facility until I was out of breath, then slowed to a fast walk and jog when I could manage it. I was just about to turn the corner to the power building when it blew. I dived behind a metal storage container that was sitting close to the building. Between the two, I was sheltered from the blast.”

  “And when it was over,” Colt said, “you just walked away?”

  “I guess I went into shock. Debris covered the container completely, so I was hidden from sight, and there was no reason for anyone to look for me there. I just sat there, my mind racing so fast it made my head hurt and my body so weak I couldn’t even work up the energy to try and escape.”

  Samuel shook his head. “I sat there so long my legs went numb. I heard the sirens and screaming around me but I just sat, completely silent. I didn’t know how long it had been before I finally got the strength to dig my way out of the debris. When I did, I discovered it was pitch black and the facility was empty, and that’s when it hit me.”

  “Everyone thought you were dead,” Jadyn said.

  “Yeah. It was the perfect opportunity to be rid of Sophia forever and still protect my family. So I dived into the bayou and swam away. Then I hacked myself a new identity and created a new life.” He put his hands over his face and sobbed. “All this time, my parents thought I was dead. They buried an empty coffin. And I’ve been afraid to contact them all this time because I knew Sophia would be watching. And she almost won. What I don’t understand is how she found me. Was it the fingerprint?”

  Colt shook his head. “There was never a fingerprint.” He told Samuel about Sophia’s artist friend and how Sophia hired Taylor.

  “It’s all so unbelievable,” Samuel said. “No one will believe it.”

  “People will believe,” Jadyn said. “You have my word along with Colt’s, Maryse’s, and Taylor’s. All of us saw what you saw. They can’t call us all liars.”

  Colt blew out a breath. “I have to be honest. I don’t know what to do about all this. I have no intention of asking the prosecutor to pursue identity theft charges. You’ve been punished enough already and no one was harmed by your actions, as the real Clifton Vines was deceased. The New Orleans police don’t have a warrant out for your arrest, but I’m certain they’ll want to talk to you.”