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

by Susannah Sandlin

  Gentry could come up with a dozen examples of Lang’s lack of foresight, but this crime spree—killing Eva Savoie and Tommy Mason, shooting Jena Sinclair, kidnapping Ceelie—it all had the marks of a man growing desperate and spiraling out of control without the vaguest idea of where it would end.

  Once he’d killed Eva Savoie and had the misfortune to be spotted by the one person in parish law enforcement who would recognize him, he kept digging himself deeper. He wouldn’t abandon the gold mine; he’d keep digging, trying to get the coins.

  Gentry finally made his way down the pier and through the clump of officers gathered around the front porch of the cabin.

  “Clear out of here!” Sheriff Roscoe Knight could bellow like nobody’s business. “Everybody out but Lieutenant Doucet and Agents Broussard and Billiot.” He glared at a deputy who couldn’t be older than twenty-two or -three. “Now!”

  Everybody scattered, which made room for Gentry and Paul to go inside. The place stank of molding wood and sheetrock and animal shit. It sickened him to think of Ceelie here.

  Gentry nodded at Warren and Knight, waiting to hear the details. “Looks like your brother and Ms. Savoie were here,” the sheriff said. “Since you know both parties, take a look around at what they left and see what you can tell us that we don’t already know. This room and the bedroom through that door.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Those are the only spots here we see any signs of them. You”—he pointed at Paul—“are supposed to be some hotshot tracker. Tell us what you can see inside, then look around outside.

  They nodded and took a slow walk around the front room first. A rifle lay on a side table, absent its magazine. Gentry glanced at Warren. “This Sinclair’s weapon?”

  “Yep—we checked the serial number. We have to assume he still has the shotgun, Sinclair’s SIG Sauer, and the pistol he used to shoot her,” Warren said. “He either left in a hurry, or he didn’t know how to get a clip for it. Sinclair must have detached the magazine before she lost consciousness.”

  Smart. The shotgun and the two handguns were bad enough, but Gentry was relieved that Lang didn’t have a loaded tactical rifle at his disposal.

  Paul squatted and studied the floor. “Have these footprints been disturbed?”

  “No, we’ve been walking around them.” Knight crossed his arms over his chest. “Warren says you state guys have to know about tracking and you’re the best he’s seen. Figured you’d want to check them out.”

  During their training, LDWF agents learned to track wildlife and the hunters who weren’t supposed to be killing them. Gentry studied the patterns over Paul’s shoulder. “Definitely two sets of recent prints, although there’s a lot of trash in here too,” Paul said. “One larger set, one smaller.”

  Gentry let out a relieved breath. A smaller shoeprint meant Ceelie was ambulatory. That was a good sign.

  He edged around the shoeprints and stepped into the bedroom, where an old rusted double bed had been pushed against a decaying wall. A cloth lay across the back of a wooden chair, and Gentry lifted it with one finger—a man’s plain navy T-shirt.

  Lang’s, maybe? He examined the sleeves and found heavy bloodstains on the left side. Maybe Lang’s. He threw it back across the chair.

  An old dresser in the corner didn’t appear to have been disturbed, but he saw something lying on the mattress and walked over to investigate. Blood—still fresh, judging by its color—spattered the mattress near the head of the bed, although there wasn’t enough of it to indicate a heavy cut.

  He leaned over to see what had caught his attention from across the room. Small, round, white discs. A button. No—he counted them—four buttons. Like one might find on a blouse. Small bits of white thread were scattered around them. Gentry remembered Ceelie had been wearing a white blouse this morning—one with buttons that might’ve looked a lot like these.

  The thought that Lang would touch Ceelie—maybe cut off her clothing—sent a rage through Gentry that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since New Orleans, when he’d called Lang’s bluff and shot him. He thought all this time that he’d been angry at himself, but this anger was too familiar. All along, he’d been angry at Lang for forcing his hand. And now, for shooting Jena. For taking Ceelie.

  Three years ago, they’d been in a random situation Lang had tried to play to his advantage. This time, it was very, very personal, and Gentry’s anger burned hot.

  He walked away from the bed, but turned to look at it again from halfway across the room. From this vantage point, he could see more scuff marks on the floor. Big boot prints. As if Lang had been pacing.

  Something caught his attention from under the bed—a snake. He pulled out his pistol, ready to shoot it. When it made no movement he stepped closer, squinting in the dim light coming through the empty window casings. Not a snake . . .

  He squatted and looked a few seconds longer before he recognized what were dark, soft strands of black hair.

  All the adrenaline that had propelled Gentry through the past twenty-four hours drained from his body. He slumped to a seat on the floor, holding the long, thick strands of hair in his hands, stroking them as he’d done so often the last few days. Ceelie had never said so, but she was proud of her hair. It helped her define who she was, her heritage, her traditions. Lang would only do this out of meanness, to hurt her in an emotional way. Maybe trying to break her spirit.

  “You okay, Broussard?” Paul walked in and studied the bed, bent over the buttons, and then looked at what Gentry held in his hands. His jaw clenched, and his dark eyes appeared jet-black in the dusky room. “That son of a bitch cut off her hair?”

  Gentry nodded.

  “That crazy fuck. This shit has to end.” Paul Billiot, who in the three years Gentry had known him had never uttered a curse word or raised his voice, stomped out of the room. Gentry almost laughed, probably out of hysteria, because his first thought was that he couldn’t wait to tell Jena that Paul had said not one, but three profanities.

  Paul must have gone straight to their lieutenant with the news, because by the time Gentry had climbed to his feet, still clutching the hair, Warren was headed for him with a don’t-screw-with-me look on his face.

  “Broussard, you’re off duty as of now. Go home. Feed that goofy-looking dog of yours. Get some sleep. Call me in eight hours and maybe we’ll talk about bringing you back on. Hopefully, we’ll have brought this to a close by then.”

  “No. Warren, don’t ask me to do that.” Gentry held up Ceelie’s hair. “Do you see what he did to her? Do you realize this could be the least of it?”

  The buttons. The blood.

  “I’m not asking you. I’m ordering you.” Warren settled a strong hand on Gentry’s shoulder. “This is getting too personal for you, you’re emotionally spent, and I want you off duty for a few hours.”

  “But—”

  “No arguments, Broussard. Look, we just got word that Jena Sinclair made it through her surgery. She’s got a long recovery but the doctors say she’s gonna make it. If you don’t want to go home, go to the hospital in Houma. The doctors are waiting for her to wake up; let her see a familiar face when she does. If she’s able to talk and remembers, find out what else she knows.”

  “But—”

  “Broussard!” Warren raised his voice, then pulled it back. “Gentry, you can walk out of here and go off duty to serve a later shift; Mac Griffin’s running shuttle back and forth to the boat launch and the vehicles. Or I can fire you, in which case I’ll have Sheriff Knight throw you in a cell for being an unemployed civilian interfering in an active investigation. I am not joking. Your choice.”

  Gentry stared at him a minute. He considered punching the man in the face, but that would be Lang’s way out. He was better than that, even though Warren was wrong. He needed to be here.

  But if he couldn’t, at least he could talk to his partner.

  CHAPTER 27

  They had heard the far-off sound of outboard motors a half hour after Ceelie
had finally gotten Lang to shut up. Maybe he was trying to translate the Cajun French she’d spit at him, because that had done the trick. His incessant chatter had driven her crazy, although she’d learned a lot that might help her.

  After her transfer of the curse, he’d taken another pill, finished off the last of the water, and eaten the last pack of crackers in front of her, giving her the evil eye as he chewed.

  The impact of two days with little food or water, and a lot of blows to her face and head, had begun to wear on her. The room tilted more often, her vision grayed, and nausea rolled through her in waves. She stayed conscious by her sheer refusal to give in to it. If she survived, she’d have time later to moan about her physical condition. When you were trying to figure out how to stay alive, little things like how your face must look, what hair you had left, or which body parts hurt the most? They didn’t matter.

  They heard the motors at about the same time, a drone of engines—no, multiple drones—coming through the window. Lang ran into the front room and came back with the duct tape. He tore off a length and roughly slapped it over Ceelie’s mouth. As if she had enough strength left to yell.

  “C’mon, bitch, time to move.” He jerked her up by her bound wrists and pulled her into the front room. The rifle and shotgun, his pistol, and Jena’s SIG Sauer lay on the counter of the kitchenette, along with a cell phone he’d told her belonged to the late Tommy Mason.

  Lang looked at the assault rifle a moment, picked it up, turned it to Ceelie, and made a rat-a-tat-a-tat sound as he pretended to shoot her. Then he set it on the counter and left it. Ceelie knew nothing about semiautomatic rifles, but she thought its ammunition clip thing was missing.

  He dragged her out the door and shoved her into the boat, her right shoulder taking the brunt of her fall.

  Then he stopped to listen. Ceelie struggled to sit up, straining to hear the direction that the motor sounds were coming from. She’d swear she heard them on all sides, which sent a current of hope through her. Law enforcement was closing in.

  Lang must have decided the same thing. He started the boat and moved slowly, his gaze in a constant loop around the horizon. He avoided open water and kept the boat as near the bank and overhangs as he could.

  He was paying no attention to Ceelie and she gave serious thought to rolling herself off the boat and into the water. She imagined how it might work. Her wrists were taped together in front now, and her legs were free. She couldn’t swim with her arms bound; did she have enough leg strength left to hold her breath and try to push herself to shallow water? Was the water already shallow enough? If she jumped, would Lang shoot her as soon as she surfaced?

  She didn’t know the man well, but she knew the type. He was unhinged. On the verge of panic. In over his head and aware of it.

  He was also fixated on those coins, however. Until she’d unsettled him with her Cajun curse, he’d talked nonstop, and Ceelie knew his plans, such as they were. He’d found out about the coins when he’d gone to a Houma pawnshop a few weeks ago and recognized Tante Eva coming out. He’d talked to the pawnshop manager and learned about the Confederate gold, which reminded him of the story LeRoy Breaux had told him.

  Lang considered the coins his way out. Out of poverty, and out of living in hiding with Tommy Mason’s charity his only means of support other than the odd day jobs he could pick up as he moved around Houma, where he wouldn’t be recognized. With the coins, he could disappear, free of law enforcement and the drug dealers to whom he owed money. A lot of money.

  Maybe he’d fake his own death again. Last time, he’d been picked up by a small fishing boat owned by the cartel of drug dealers. It had been following the larger boat just in case someone needed an escape hatch. This time, he’d travel to Texas and kill some nobody who fit his description, plant Tommy Mason’s cell phone in the poor dirtbag’s pocket, and spend the rest of his life drinking margaritas and snorting cheap Mexican cocaine.

  Langston Broussard was deeply delusional.

  Ceelie had spent a lot of time making her own plans, and drowning or having her head blown off by an enraged kidnapper while she floundered in a muddy swamp didn’t figure into it. She decided not to jump.

  So she sat in the boat like a good abductee and waited until Lang either got his ass caught or found another spot to hide. Then she’d have to do some fast talking—assuming she could get him to untape her mouth.

  Lang turned the boat a hard right into a narrow bayou overhung with trees, and came to a stop about twenty yards after making the cut.

  Swiveling to look at the bank, Ceelie glimpsed a glint of sunlight on metal deep within the trees. Lang ran the boat as far up the muddy bank as he could, jumped out, and jerked her to her feet. She tried to stay upright when he slung her toward the woods, but slipped in the mud and only managed to keep her head from hitting a protruding stump by catching herself on her elbows.

  God, she was tired. The mud covering her chest between the flaps of her open shirt felt so cool she was tempted to wallow in it. But Lang pulled her up by what was left of her hair and shoved her ahead of him. “In that shed. Now.” He spoke in an exaggerated whisper.

  The door to a rust-tinged tin shed stood ajar. A few yards beyond the structure lay what was left of a wooden house, long abandoned and on the edge of collapse. She tried to point toward the house, which wouldn’t feel as much like baking inside a tin can as the shed, but Lang shoved her inside. “Get in there. We’ll only be here until dark.”

  Ceelie had long lost track of the time, but judging by the angle of the sun, she’d guess it was about midday. She gestured toward her mouth. Unless he removed the tape, she had no hope of talking Lang into her plan and making him think it was his idea.

  “Forget it. I don’t want to hear your yapping.” He pushed her into the back corner, and she sat, grateful for the dirt floor but keeping an eye out for snakes. With her luck, she’d talk Lang into taking her home and then get killed by a cottonmouth in this godforsaken shed.

  He ignored her for a while, but after pacing every inch of the shed about a thousand times, he finally leaned over and none too gently ripped the tape off her mouth, taking a chunk of skin with it. Like that mattered at this point. Still, it hurt, and the tape-ripping had opened some wounds on her face, not to mention removing the top layer of her lower lip. Rivulets of blood tickled her chin as they ran down and ended in red droplets splattered onto her exposed, muddy chest.

  Her mouth was so dry that she had trouble getting the words to start. “Lang, they’re getting close. If you want those coins, now is the time.”

  He’d been pacing again, tapping his fists against his thighs in time to his steps. Now he stopped. “Where are they?”

  Ceelie said a quick prayer that he didn’t kill her. “They’re at the cabin on Whiskey Bayou. I won’t tell you exactly where because I’m not stupid. Once you have the location, you have no reason to keep me alive. And without me, you’ll never find them.”

  He grinned, a macabre scarecrow with a shaggy growth of beard and sweat beading on his thin chest, which sported several bug bites since he’d left his T-shirt behind at the last cabin. “What’s the difference if I kill you now or kill you at the cabin as soon as I have the coins? You know damned well I’m not leaving you to my goody-two-shoes brother.”

  It mattered because, at the cabin, she’d have a fighting chance. She knew where to find the ax, the kitchen knives. She knew a box of wooden matches lay inside the throwing-table drawer, so she could set the damned cabin on fire for a diversion if she had to.

  That, Lang didn’t need to know. “Let’s just say I want to stretch out my time with you as much as I can.”

  The toe of his heavy boot connected hard with the muscle of her left hip, and she couldn’t help but cry out. She chastised herself; that had been her fault. If she’d learned anything in the past twenty-four hours, it was that sarcasm led to pain. “That was out of line.” She tried to put some humility in her voice. “I’m sorry.”
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  “You should be.” Lang took a bottle of pills out of his jeans pocket and tapped one into his palm, then dry-swallowed it. Ceelie assumed the pills were amphetamines, judging by his lack of need for sleep and jittery energy. How many could he take before he crashed or his heart stopped? It probably wouldn’t happen fast enough to save her.

  “There’s one big problem, little Celestine, my voodoo queen.” Lang resumed his pacing. “Cops will be all over that cabin.” He stopped. “Can you make us invisible with your voodoo hoodoo? No, didn’t think so. Useless bitch.”

  “Look, I want to get this done once and if I’m not going to have those damned coins, they might as well be yours. You have Tommy Mason’s cell phone, right?” She’d planned this part; she just had to sell it. “If the phone isn’t dead, call the sheriff’s office and tell them you want to talk. Give them a location far away from the cabin, down in South Terrebonne. They don’t know where we went after that last hideout, assuming they even found that. For all they know, we went south.

  “That might work.” Lang kept pacing. He was making her dizzy. “I could tell ’em we’re in Cocodrie.”

  “They wouldn’t expect you to hide somewhere a lot of people lived in, like Cocodrie. Maybe say you’re east of Cocodrie toward East Bayou, a mile or so behind that little church on Little Caillou Road. I was there once, so I know it’s isolated out there except for a few fishing camps. A lot of places they’d have to search.”

  She paused to let some of that sink it. Judging by the frown on his face, he was listening. “Why the hell would I do anything you come up with, Celestine? Ain’t like you’ve got anything to gain by helping me.”

  No, but she had so much to lose. She hadn’t realized how much this new life back in the parish had come to mean to her, even given the circumstances. “You’re right. I’ve got nothing to gain, so you might as well consider it. Think about it. The sheriff will send everybody he has to keep you from running that boat out to the Gulf and getting in international waters.”