Black Diamond (Wilds of the Bayou Book 2)

by Susannah Sandlin

  ALSO BY SUSANNAH SANDLIN

  The Penton Legacy series

  Redemption

  Absolution

  Omega

  Storm Force (stand-alone spinoff)

  Allegiance

  The Collectors series

  Lovely, Dark, and Deep

  Deadly, Calm, and Cold

  The Wilds of the Bayou Series

  Wild Man’s Curse

  Written as Suzanne Johnson

  Pirateship Down

  The Sentinels of New Orleans series

  Royal Street

  River Road

  Elysian Fields

  Pirate’s Alley

  Belle Chasse

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Suzanne Johnson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503940413

  ISBN-10: 1503940411

  Cover design by Michael Rehder

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Dave Grummond always thought that when he died—which should occur no time soon since he was only twenty-five—he would experience a visual reel of his life followed by a beckoning bright light. He was no saint, but he figured he had time to right his wrongs and settle his debts before Saint Peter welcomed him to his eternal resting place.

  Instead, as sinew and muscle ripped from bone and consciousness faded, his last, fleeting thought was of the robot in that old movie The Terminator, specifically Schwarzenegger’s glowing orange eyeballs. And there was no bright light that followed, just a black emptiness settling across his vision.

  The day had started like most early March mornings in eastern Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana: damp and low forties, with a dense fog that shrouded the bayous and marsh. Within a couple of hours of sunrise, the chill would burn off and segue into an overcast day of about seventy-five degrees.

  Not yet, though. He’d rolled out of bed at five thirty, sneaked out of the house without waking Rae, and stopped in the mudroom long enough to slip a dark-blue jacket over his lucky LSU sweatshirt and tug on heavy socks beneath his boots.

  Saturdays needed rituals, and this was Dave’s. He’d go out early and catch a mess of catfish or, if he was lucky and had the energy to take his twenty-foot vintage Carolina Skiff down the bayou, he’d show up by midafternoon with a cooler full of whatever finfish was in season. Then the gang would get together and have a fish fry or, if it was a bad fishing day, a big iron pot of rich gumbo filled with turtle meat or whatever was in the freezer. There was always good bounty to be had in the freezer.

  Yesterday, however, he’d had business farther up in the parish, so he’d borrowed his brother’s little fourteen-foot skiff, which he now maneuvered into the tangled, narrow waterways of Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes, hoping to catch whatever he could find. Tonight, when all his buddies gathered, he’d pull out the engagement ring he’d bought on the installment plan for Rae. The last payment had laid waste to most of his Friday paycheck from the refinery, but he wanted to ask her tonight. He felt lucky.

  Inside the left pocket of his jeans rested the tiny emerald-cut diamond ring nestled inside its velvet-lined box, the stone set in platinum. It was the most expensive thing he’d ever bought besides his boat.

  He couldn’t wait to see Rae’s face fill with that look she gave him sometimes when she didn’t think he was watching. That look was love, and anyone who said that was too sappy had never seen it.

  Dave picked out an isolated branch of the mazelike bayou, sank some lines, and settled back to soak in the first warming rays of the morning sun. He’d fallen half asleep when a hard jolt against the right side of the boat almost tossed him off his seat.

  “What the hell?” He slid fingers around the worn leather cushion of the single captain’s chair behind the steering column, clenching his nails into the padding as the boat took another hit farther back, hard enough to turn the prow twenty or thirty degrees to the right and knock one of his three rods into the water.

  Maybe he had drifted against a submerged cypress log; this wasn’t an area he’d fished before. Then again, there was barely any current, so the boat shouldn’t be moving this much.

  A soft bump from underneath his feet again sent the vessel rocking gently from side to side. Dave jerked his gaze from one edge of the boat to the other, spotting nothing but a few bubbles. No way that had been a log.

  Screw this. He could fish somewhere else; more than half the parish was bayou or lake or inlet. Nobody had to know he’d let himself get spooked by what was probably a damned turtle or even one of those hellacious gars that occasionally made their way this far south. Those fish could grow to ten feet long, could weigh three hundred pounds, and could easily pull a lone fisherman overboard. He wanted no part of a gar.

  Leaning to the side, Dave reached forward and grasped the two remaining fishing rods, pulling them into the boat. He stood slowly, keeping an eye on the water, but froze at the sight of two round, hooded eyes rising above the bayou beside him, followed by a long, bony snout.

  An alligator. He’d almost pissed himself over a damned stupid alligator. Probably a mama whose nest he’d accidentally approached.

  Dave let out a whoosh of relieved breath, the air condensing in small puffs from his mouth. He needed to switch on the outboard and get his ass moving. When confronted with the size of an adult human, gators weren’t aggressive animals unless you attacked first or disturbed a mother protecting her young. Lessons from Alligator 101—among the first things one learned growing up on the bayous of South Louisiana.

  Dave had better things to do than fool with a mama gator.

  A hard thrust to the side threw him off balance, and he fell toward the back of the boat. His right ear jammed hard into the underside of the outboard and stunned him for an instant, until the tickle of a dark streak of liquid on his cheek brought him around. He scraped a finger across his earlobe and it came away crimson.

  “Damned gator. Son of a bitch! I’m leaving already.” He staggered to his knees and reached for the key to turn on the motor, but was startled by the reappearance of the reptile, its head rising above t
he side of the boat a couple of feet from where Dave knelt. This was no mama alligator. It was a big bull, about twelve feet long judging by the length and girth of its head, and its jaw span was enormous. Dave had a close view since it chomped down on the side of the boat nearest to where he knelt, frozen in place. It clamped its teeth on the edge of the fiberglass and pulled the vessel downward.

  Before he could counteract the sudden movement, he lost traction, propelled himself over the gator, and hit the bayou headfirst. Above him, through the churning cold water, he could sense the gator still wrestling with the edge of the boat.

  Gators didn’t get rabies, but this one was sure acting like it. He’d never heard of one behaving this way, unprovoked.

  Limbs heavy with his waterlogged clothing and boots, he swiveled and floundered downstream. If he could get to the bank and crawl out, he’d buy some damned fish at the market and have a helluva story to tell tonight.

  He glanced back when he felt the pressure of a nudge against his right calf. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but through the cold water and rising panic, he’d begun to sweat. The gator had left the boat behind and caught up with him, opening its wide jaws as it took another pass at Dave’s leg.

  No, you don’t, damn it. He kicked the gator a glancing blow to the side of its snout and, seeing a heavy tree limb protruding from the bank in front of him, grabbed hold of it. He could pull himself ashore, hopefully sending the gator off to find a smaller, easier target that wouldn’t kick it in the teeth.

  With a growl and a lunge, the reptile used its powerful clawed feet to propel itself ahead of Dave and sink its teeth into his upper right arm. Dave tried to conjure up the alligator lore he’d heard his whole life. He thrust his legs at the gator’s body, yelled when he could get his head above water, used his free left arm to punch at the animal’s eyes.

  Then it began to roll—the infamous alligator death roll. Dave struggled until he wasn’t sure what was up or down. He wasn’t sure when to take a breath or when to hold it. His face would meet cool air and by the time he’d sucked a half breath into his lungs, he’d roll underwater again.

  Rae crossed his mind. Who’d take care of her, and how long would she have to wait, not knowing what had happened to him? How long until somebody found his body? What if they never found him? What if there was nothing left to find?

  Then he saw his salvation—a quick glance, but enough to make him struggle harder. A boat had pulled up along the bayou opposite him, and someone was onboard.

  “Help!” was all he managed on the next spin, and hope rose as the man held up a rifle, taking aim.

  But no shot came, and Dave became vaguely aware in his graying vision that the man had put down his rifle and had begun puffing on a cigarette.

  The scream when Dave’s humerus pulled loose from its socket sounded as if it came from someone else, someone in a bayou far away. He and the pain became a single being. Its burn radiated to every bone and nerve ending until the alligator spun again and the sinew and muscle of Dave’s right arm gave way. Then the world around him grew deep red as his blood mixed with the bayou mud and his screams became no more than harsh rasps.

  The pain disappeared, which on some level Dave knew was a bad thing, and as he raised his head from the water to take a last, gasping breath, he looked into the smiling face of the man who wasn’t going to save him. He looked just an instant, before a huge clawed foot swung toward his face—a foot whose bottom held a tiny, blinking orange light.

  Then blackness.

  CHAPTER 1

  Mac saw the body first, which ticked off his partner. Not that finding bodies was ever a good thing, but Mac spotting it first told Jena she was still too much in her own head.

  For the past few hours, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries enforcement agents Jena Sinclair and McKenzie Griffin, aka Mac, had been motoring along the inlets, fishing camps, and launch areas that lined both sides of Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes in eastern Terrebonne Parish. Other than issuing a couple of citations for fishing without a license and a few warnings to people without the proper number of life jackets, they hadn’t come across much of interest.

  Jena tossed a couple of ibuprofen into her mouth and washed the pills down with a sip from her bottle of water. She eased a hand into the left pocket of her uniform trousers and snagged another pill, this one only a quarter-inch long, pale green, and oval. She didn’t slip the pill into her mouth until she was sure her partner was looking the other way. That, and the bandage around her left wrist, were things her partner didn’t need to see. The vertical line of pink scars that marched along her left wrist had healed, but she covered them up anyway; they were nobody’s business but hers.

  The scars on her body, also still pink and fresh, were nobody’s business either. The scars on her face, she could almost hide with makeup.

  Besides, Mac wasn’t her partner, not really, or at least she didn’t think of him that way yet. He was the newest and youngest member of the six-person enforcement team covering Terrebonne Parish for the LDWF as part of Region 6. At twenty-five, Mac fancied himself a ladies’ man, had moved here from some outpost of Northern Maine in search of adventure, and had earned his reputation as a motormouth. The guy liked to talk. She didn’t know much more about him. But she was on “easy field duty,” and that had earned her a stint partnering with Mac.

  She took the ibuprofen for the aches caused by bouncing on the water in their sturdy, speedy patrol boat. The small dose of alprazolam, the antianxiety meds from which she had almost tapered off, had been prescribed for the residual pain from the toll taken on her psyche over the last six months. Two bullet wounds that had left her scarred inside and out, a horrible lapse in judgment that had almost gotten a civilian killed, and four months under the roof of her parents in New Orleans. All three had marked her.

  Scars marked her face and body.

  Scars marked her wrist.

  Scars marked her soul.

  She’d wanted to quit her job, feeling she’d failed her LDWF team, not to mention a whole division where women enforcement agents were seriously outnumbered—not only because of the physical demands but also, Jena suspected, because of the longstanding tradition of male game wardens. She had considered transferring to a quiet, isolated research lab and putting her wildlife forensics background to work. But the expensive—and wise—psychiatrist hired by her parents had urged her to get out of their house as soon as she could. He’d convinced her that she would never be at peace with what had happened until she returned to her job and the place she called home.

  New Orleans was no longer that place. Her parents’ home hadn’t been that place in a long time. Not that they didn’t love their kids, but warm and nurturing wasn’t her parents’ style.

  Transferring to a forensics lab where she could dig around with dead things all day would have made her life easier, but her lieutenant in Terrebonne Parish had offered her a deal, even after she came clean about the suicide attempt. He’d had her tested and retested, and she had passed both times, making her officially not a risky head case. It had been a moment of weakness she deeply regretted, and her lieutenant, Warren Doucet, could see that. He was unwilling to let her go before she made a genuine attempt to rejoin the unit.

  Come back to the Terrebonne Parish enforcement team and give it six months, Warren had proposed. Then, if she still wanted to transfer into forensics or research, he’d help clear the way. She’d agreed out of respect for him.

  Riding on the water today, however, surrounded by the wide vistas of marsh grass punctuated by the few scrubby trees that so far had resisted hurricanes and saltwater intrusion from oil drilling, she realized Warren and the psychiatrist had both been right. This was what she loved—this flat patchwork of fragile land sinking slowly into the Gulf of Mexico. The job she did could help preserve it a few generations longer. Even if she couldn’t save it, she could do her part with every littering citation, every water-related DUI, every poacher put out of b
usiness.

  Jena wanted to stay with this team of agents, but she didn’t ever want them to learn about her blackest day. The day where she’d given up, where she could see no happiness in her future, where an overly vigilant private nurse had found her bleeding out on one of her mother’s immaculate white bathroom floor mats. She had begged the woman to let her die and was glad she’d been denied.

  Rich parents could cover up a suicide attempt since the nurse had found her early and they could afford a shrink who made house calls. Money could hide anything. If she’d learned one overarching lesson growing up among the elite of uptown New Orleans, it was that when money talked, everyone else shut up.

  “What’re the pills?” Mac had been quiet for a while, but now he glanced over his shoulder from his post at the wheel of their water-patrol boat. His warm brown eyes—which still reflected every emotion that passed through his mind because he hadn’t been field-hardened enough to turn them blank and inward—were cloaked by dark sunglasses. It left his face smooth and void of expression, just like that of any other law enforcement officer worth his training. Keeping the eyes neutral, especially with a partner, was a harder lesson to learn. “You still having pain from the gunshots?”

  “Take off the sunglasses and I’ll tell you.” Jena cocked her head. “I can’t talk to you with those pretty brown eyes covered up.”

  Jena had only been cleared from the purgatory of desk duty at regional headquarters in Thibodaux a week ago, and she didn’t know Mac well enough to confide in him. Not yet. She trusted his training, which meant she felt confident that he’d have her back while they were on duty. Trusting him with her emotions and her mental and physical condition was another matter.

  What she had learned in a few days, however, was that he could be distracted if his guard was down. Mac had already gotten a rep as the unit’s playboy; he’d fall for flirtation every time, even when they both knew nothing would ever come of it.

  Mac grinned and settled the glasses atop his LDWF baseball cap. “Can’t resist my sex appeal, eh?”

  He was so easy. “You sound like a Canadian, Mac, or somebody from Maine. Folks around here don’t end sentences with ‘eh.’ Ever.”