Jena smiled. “Well, maybe. More likely your first guess.”
He took his hand off the steering wheel long enough to snap his fingers. “I know. Maybe it’s a guy who brings his girl out here when they want to be alone. You know, rollin’ in the mud or having sugarcane sex. I bet that’s it.”
Jena clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop it. Oh my God. Sugarcane sex.”
They reached the end of the cane fields, and Sugarcane Lane stretched to their left. More mud, marked by a handmade road sign. Mac slid his gaze her way and grinned. “At least I got a reaction out of you. You looked pretty down-and-out when we met for a late lunch in Chauvin.”
“You talk to Gentry since last night?”
“No, but I knew he and someone from the sheriff’s office were going to talk to your brother this morning.”
Jena watched the mud splatter the truck as they made the slow turn onto the road. “Yeah, Jackson was so out of control that Adam Meizel arrested him and charged him with assaulting an officer.” Jena shook her head. “It’s my word against his about the drugs since he hasn’t changed his story. He stopped talking altogether as soon as my dad arrived.”
“Your dad’s a big-shot attorney, right?”
“He’s a big-shot something,” Jena muttered. “He waved his magic legal wand and will probably have Jacks back in New Orleans by the end of the day. Anyway, I see where our complaint came from.”
A few yards ahead of them, a woman stood in the mud, wielding a stick.
“What’s she holding—is that a wooden ruler?” Mac squinted through the mucked-up windshield.
“No, I do believe that’s a table leg.” Jena looked in the small notebook she kept in her shirt pocket and flipped the pages. “And I assume the woman threatening the gator with the table leg would be Doris Benoit. Her husband, Ronald Benoit, called it in. Said the alligator was attacking his wife’s dog, whose name is Chewbacca, and he didn’t care if the gator ‘ate the goddamned thing’—that’s a direct quote.”
She smiled at the sight of Mac chewing on his bottom lip, his attempt at remaining professional. Even so, he had to clear his throat a couple of times as he got out of the truck.
“State wildlife agents.” He waved at the woman. “I see you’ve got an unwanted visitor.” He walked to stand beside Doris just as she poked at the gator with the table leg and caused it to hiss and back up again. “Ma’am, would you please not poke the gator anymore? Hissing is his way of telling you he doesn’t much like that.”
The well-named Chewbacca—a gnarled mop of mud-brown fur on four legs—barked incessantly.
“Mrs. Benoit, could you take your dog inside while we handle this?” Jena already wore her LDWF baseball cap, but slid on her sunglasses when she thought Doris was looking at her face—at her scars—too closely. “Any reason you called us instead of the nuisance hunter?”
“Ronnie, come get Chewie and take him in the house!” Doris’s voice could carry for miles out in this quiet, flat landscape, although the only other place that looked occupied was the spot where the road ended and a few yards of sparse grass tried to hold on to life before the water took over.
“As for the nuisance hunter”—Doris turned back to Jena—“that Ray Naquin’s done been out here two or three times and he ain’t done nothing. Same dang gator keeps on comin’ back.”
Jena looked around. “Who else lives around here? Think somebody’s feeding it? Gators don’t usually hang around humans unless there’s a food source. It hasn’t eaten any dogs or cats, has it?”
“No dogs live here but Chewie.” Doris looked up and down the street. “There used to be some folks that lived down to the end of the lane in that blue house. Morales or somethin’ like that, but they moved. It’s just us and that crazy man at the end of the road, near the water. I wouldn’t put it past him to feed a gator. Matter of fact, I’d lay down money on it. I asked him to shoot the dang thing and he slammed the door in my face.”
Jena looked at the road’s final house. It was a wooden structure on short brick piers, narrow but stretching far back on the deep lot. It reminded her of the shotgun houses in New Orleans’s older neighborhoods, only no self-respecting New Orleanian would paint a shotgun house white, and this one was white. Well, technically, it was gray. No one had painted it recently. It wasn’t in terrible shape, though. Definitely looked solid. If the guy was crazy, he at least took care of his house.
First problems first. Something was wrong with this gator. It was fairly young, judging by its size of five or six feet, and had enough fight in it to hiss at Doris. Although to be fair, Jena kind of wanted to hiss at Doris herself. The alligator didn’t try to leave, which was odd, especially for a young gator. It should’ve hightailed it toward the water at the first sign of Doris and her table leg.
It also apparently hadn’t tried to charge at Doris, and Jena had no doubt the gator could catch her if she ran. A motivated gator could run thirty miles an hour. Doris was pure dumb lucky.
Jena was glad Ray Naquin hadn’t been called first. She didn’t want to put this gator down and have it used for meat and hide. She wanted to have it examined and then autopsied, if necessary, to see what was wrong with it.
“Mac, would you get the duct tape out of the truck? And some rope?”
Mac had been overseeing the Chewbacca handoff to a sullen dark-haired man with a cigarette hanging out the opposite side of his mouth from the one in his wife’s mouth. Smoking bookends.
“We’re going to catch him instead of shoot him?” Mac had taken off his sunglasses and hung them from his pocket, so those chocolate-brown eyes gave away his excitement. Why did he make Jena feel so ancient?
She still wanted to prove herself worthy of wearing the enforcement badge again, but after falling in Jackson’s room and dealing with her parents all morning—Dad had brought her critical, razor-tongued mother with him as well—she didn’t have the energy. There was proving yourself fit for duty, and there was being stupid. Today, she’d settle for not being stupid.
“Yeah, if you don’t mind. Just get a rope and tape—I think that’s all you’ll need. This guy’s hissing but he’s not moving very much.”
While Mac jogged back to the truck, Jena kept an eye on the gator, which seemed content to take an occasional step to the side but didn’t seem inclined to make a run for the water. Weird.
“So, what’s the man’s name?” She jerked her head toward the house at the water’s edge. “Does he live there alone?”
“I dunno. I just call him The Hermit.” Doris took a last puff of her cigarette, dropped the butt, and ground it with the toe of her already-mud-coated running shoe. “He’s just a funny old hippie type. Lives over there by himself. Don’t talk to nobody. Don’t want nobody talking to him. Don’t get no visitors. Even Chewbacca won’t go over there. God only knows what he does all day. Maybe feeds gators.”
Maybe. Or maybe Chewie and Doris were not his cup of tea.
“Here we go.” Mac walked up with two rolls of silver duct tape, enough to secure the mouths of a dozen bull gators. “Okay if I go ahead and catch him?”
“Go for it. Just watch his tail—he can knock you flat before you see it coming. Been there, done that.”
Mac was probably disappointed by his first alligator catch in the wild. Once Jena had finally shooed Doris out of the way, the gator closed his mouth and didn’t even react when Mac looped a noose around its snout and pulled the line taut. When he sat on its back and wrapped the duct tape around its jaws, the alligator did little more than give its tail a couple of halfhearted swishes.
“You gonna take this to Ray or send it to the forensics lab?” Mac asked. “Something’s wrong with this little guy.”
“Definitely the lab.” Jena looked at her watch. “Call and let them know we’re bringing him in. Think you can get him in the back of the truck by yourself? I’m not supposed to do much lifting.” She hated admitting that, but here she was, being responsible and not stupid.
“Yeah, he’s not that big, and kind of scrawny.” Mac slid his arms beneath the reptile’s belly and lifted him, getting a good whack of the animal’s tail across his back in the process. “Damn, that hurt.”
“Told ya. Better secure his feet too and make sure nothing in the back will fall on him and hurt him.”
Mac glared back at her. “Want me to give him a pillow and blanket as well?”
Jena ignored him, and had to admit to herself she kind of enjoyed being the team’s most experienced agent. She only had a couple of months on Mac as far as Wildlife and Fisheries was concerned, but she’d spent several years before that as an officer with the New Orleans Police Department—the choice of career that had set off the worst of the conflicts with her parents. Well, until she joined LDWF, went through their tough paramilitary-style enforcement training, and moved to Terrebonne Parish.
Grace and Jackson Sinclair had been, and were still, horrified by her career choices. Jena’s mother still clung to the futile hope that her daughter would come to her senses and move back to the city. She also had hoped that move would be the outcome of the shooting—that Jena would realize she needed a safer job.
The purchase of her monstrous house might have been their final acceptance.
“Come down to the house next to the water when you’re finished, or wait by the truck and stay alert,” she called to Mac over her shoulder. “I want to talk to the guy who lives there and make sure he’s not feeding gators.”
Jena left her partner wrestling to secure the gator’s feet, the whole operation overseen by Doris, and walked to the edge of the water. She couldn’t resist the pleasure of watching the way the bright-orange beginnings of sunset behind her illuminated the water in front of her. Everything was so close to the earth out here. There was a purity to it, a serenity.
Maybe the guy who lived here wasn’t a hermit or a crazy. Maybe he could look past the poverty and see the rich, savage beauty all around him.
She glanced over at the house and saw him. He stood in the open front door, leaning against the jamb, wearing a pair of jeans but no shirt. Watching her.
“Hey, I need to talk to you for a minute. State wildlife agent.” She turned and walked toward him, barely registering long silver or blond hair and a tall, muscled body before he turned and went inside, slamming the door behind him.
Oh hell no. That wasn’t happening.
Jena sped up.
CHAPTER 8
Cole stood inside the door, knowing she’d be there any second. She would knock, probably with a firm rap to remind him who had the authority here, and it wasn’t him. She would expect to come inside, and while he could deny her entrance without a warrant, he wouldn’t. It would raise too much suspicion.
His fists clenched and unclenched. Again. Again. The press and release of tension filtered out some of the stiffness from his arms and shoulders. The woman was striking, her wistful expression had resonated with him, and he had wanted to look at her. He’d looked long and hard enough that she’d caught him standing in the doorway like an idiot. Otherwise, he could’ve pretended to be gone and not answered his door. Now, hiding wasn’t an option.
The last thing he needed in his life was a woman. Especially a woman with a badge and a gun.
Though expected, the sharp knock made his shoulders jerk upward, and his fingers clenched again into fists. Weapons his body provided to protect itself, to protect him, to keep everyone away.
“Sir, I know you’re in there. I’m Agent Sinclair of Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries.” Her voice was clear and no-nonsense. He tried to place her accent—she wasn’t from Terrebonne Parish but didn’t have a typical Southern accent either. “I want to talk to you about the gator in front of your neighbor Doris’s house. It’ll only take a minute or two.”
Damn. Now that he knew his neighbor’s real name, the Wicked Witch was dead. Now she was Doris.
He took a deep breath, turned, and opened the door an inch. Maybe two inches.
A hazel eye, heavy on the green, and the bill of a dark-green baseball cap came into view, peering through the crack. A strand of hair that trailed over her forehead from beneath the cap shone like pure molten fire.
“You can open it all the way, you know. I don’t bite. I’d like to come inside for a few minutes and talk, or you can come out on the porch. Having a conversation isn’t optional, but where we have it is. For now.”
Damn it. Cole had to admit he was stuck and it was his own damned fault for standing in the doorway and watching her for so long. He opened the door wide, dread giving way to curiosity when he finally saw her face up close. She was beautiful but lightly scarred, more on her cheeks than her forehead, so she’d probably been hit by flying glass rather than having her head go through a windshield. Fairly recent too. The spots were still pink, but they were scars and not wounds. Five or six months old, he’d say. Eventually, they’d fade and, with her fair skin, would easily cover with makeup. If she hadn’t been so close—not to mention his fixation on her face—he wouldn’t have noticed them even now.
“Are you going to let me come inside, or are you coming outside, or do I need to make it an official order?”
Stop being an idiot, Ryan.
Cole stepped aside and motioned her in, just a man with nothing to hide. She pulled a notebook from her uniform pocket and handed him a business card. When he reached out to take it, their fingers brushed, and Cole jerked back his hand as if shot. He hadn’t been touched in a long time, even in the most innocent of ways. That brief brush of fingers awoke memories he’d spent five long years sweeping out of his head—or so he thought. Apparently, he’d merely been sweeping them into a corner.
He looked at the card, then back up at her. “What can I do for you, Enforcement Agent Jena Sinclair? Is it pronounced Jenna or Gina?”
She cocked her head, causing sunlight from the open doorway to reflect on hair almost as deep red as the sinking sun—at least what he could see of it beneath her baseball cap. “It’s pronounced Jenna; my parents didn’t want to waste consonants. But I’m at a disadvantage. Do you have a name?”
Panic filled Cole for a moment before common sense stepped in to take its place. He had no reason to hide his name. Not here. “Cole Ryan. Come on in so I can close the door before my neighbor gets too curious.”
For the first time in five years, another person other than a contractor or electrician walked into his living room, into his house. The place seemed to shrink in half.
“So you and Doris don’t get along?” Jena looked away from him for the first time and glanced around the room. It probably looked rustic to someone like her, because she sounded like an educated city girl. Maybe New Orleans—the accent sounded right. More Brooklyn than Southern. He’d made the furniture himself, except for cushions and a couple of lamps. Everything was oiled unfinished wood or pale-blue milk paint. He found the combination soothing.
Now she was looking into his eyes again. Staring at him because she’d asked a question and he’d never answered. Idiot.
“I have no problem with Doris. I didn’t even know her name.” He shrugged. “We don’t really talk.”
“You don’t like to talk to people, do you? I mean, slamming the door in my face was a clue that was hard to miss. I’m perceptive like that.”
That made him sound like a psycho in the making and, hell, maybe he was. Cole needed to get off Jena Sinclair’s radar, not further on it. “Yeah, sorry about that.” He forced himself to try to recall the fine art of conversing. “I moved here about five years ago, just wanting to get away from everything. Doris struck me as somebody who’d always be . . . around.” Needy, asking for something, forcing him to talk to her.
He tried a smile, but didn’t think he quite remembered how. His face felt contorted. “I didn’t think Doris and I would have much in common.”
Jena looked at him more closely—all of him. When her gaze returned to his face, he expected disgust but if he had to put a name on her expressi
on he’d say intrigued.
“So why were you trying to move into the middle of nowhere and get off the grid? Something bad happen? Running away from something or someone?”
They stared at each other a second beyond awkward. She probably thought he was on the run, would end up doing a background check on him, and learn the whole sorry story that made up the life of one Coleman Thomas Ryan, until five years ago a lifelong resident of Yazoo City, Mississippi. Then again, she was a wildlife agent, not a regular cop. Maybe they weren’t so keen on background checks or even flipping Google searches.
As for him, he found her intriguing as well—something he didn’t want. All he wanted from Jena Sinclair was a hasty departure.
“I thought you needed to talk about Doris’s alligator. Not much I can tell you. I’d been working around the house”—most decidedly not dressing an illegally obtained alligator—“when I heard her yelling at that brown rag mop of a dog. I went to the porch and saw her in the street batting at that poor gator with a big stick of some kind.” Cole shrugged. “That’s all I know, except it was weird that the gator wasn’t running from her. Hell, I would’ve run from her.”
He’d intentionally left out the guy with the binoculars, probably a bird-watcher, but he hadn’t meant to add that last part. It made Jena laugh, however, so he was glad he’d said it, then chastised himself. He had his life planned and there was no room in it for an intriguing red-haired wildlife agent who, judging by her scars, had a past of her own.
“It was a table leg, actually,” Jena said. “And I thought the same thing about the gator. We’re loading it up to send to the state lab for testing because its behavior is so odd. Have you noticed any other weird things about the alligators around here while you were, what did you say . . . working around the house?”
Smart cookie, Jena Sinclair. Yeah, there had been a dead bull gator lying just off the bank by his house this morning with a human arm in its belly. He didn’t plan on volunteering that tidbit of information.
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