She gave in to it for a few moments, just let herself taste and feel and smell. Every sense was engaged except her brain, and she shut it out as their tongues tangled, his skin both silky and hard beneath her fingers.
Until he slid a hand to cup her left breast. She felt him hesitate, and it was as if the roof had blown off and the rain had come in. Her brain reengaged and reality came with it.
Jena took a step back. “I better check on Mac.” And have a good cry.
“No you don’t.” Cole grasped her wrists and pulled her into his bedroom, taking the lantern with them.
“Cole, don’t feel obligated.” God, that sounded harsh, but she wanted a pity fuck from Cole Ryan even less than one from Ray Naquin, from whom she expected no better.
He pulled her to the bed and sat. She had no choice but to do the same. He didn’t speak for a few moments, as if collecting his words. Great, now he was going to treat her like a china doll.
“I have two things to say. Which do you want first—hard and practical or soft and practical?”
“Do I have a choice? What if I don’t want to hear either one?”
“Neither was not an option.”
She sighed. “Fine. Hard and practical.”
“Okay then. I’m a paramedic, or I used to be. I’ve seen a lot of gunshot wounds. I know what bullets do when they go into soft tissue, and I know how it looks when they come out. That has no bearing, positive or negative, for me in wanting to be with you. There are millions of women with perfect bodies, and I’m betting yours was one of them until six months ago. But the one you have now is the one I want—not the one you had before I knew you.”
She stared at him. “Forgive me if all I can say to that is, Why? Why would you choose deformity over beauty?”
He smiled, and it was the smile she’d first seen from him. Fragile and gentle and broken. Like her.
“Because we’re alike, Jena. Everybody has scars; some are more visible than others, that’s all. But anyone without a scar is someone I don’t want to know because it’s someone who doesn’t feel things deeply. You have to understand loss to recognize a gift when you see it.”
He leaned over and kissed her again. “You are my gift. I want to be yours, if you’ll let me.”
She gave him a small, halting nod that seemed to take every ounce of energy she had.
Jena gave herself over to him, relishing the feel of his hands as they slipped beneath the sweater he’d given her to wear, but reality had another interruption, this time in the form of Mac’s voice.
“Hey, guys, stop whatever you’re doing. We’ve got company!”
CHAPTER 29
Damn it. Cole gave Jena a final smile and quick kiss, then pulled on his sweater, extinguished the lantern, and led her to the living room, all in a few seconds. Mac was still propped near the wood-burning stove, but had pulled himself into a seated position.
“I saw lights outside but couldn’t even crawl over there to assess the situation.” A state about which he was clearly unhappy.
Cole and Jena peered out either side of the front windows. “Two boats pretty close to the front porch,” Jena whispered. “One’s Ray Naquin’s.”
“The other one’s the Patout kid,” Cole said, squinting. “He’s holding . . .” Damn it, a bottle, into the neck of which he was stuffing a rag. “Molotov cocktails, I’m guessing. They’re gonna try and burn us down, and probably think they’ll shoot us like ducks in a gallery when we run out.”
Cole turned to Mac. “Can you walk, with my help?”
“Walk where?”
“We’re all going to the workhouse.” Cole tracked the progress of the Molotov cocktail. Make that cocktails, plural. The Patout kid was making a line of them. He was going to lose everything he’d worked so hard to build. Those thoughts had to stay in the background for now, though, or they wouldn’t survive long enough for him to mourn. Their best hope was getting the hell out before the fire started flying.
“Okay, guys. Here’s my only suggestion. I have an escape into the swamps out the back of the workhouse cooler and a pack of emergency supplies I’ve already stashed near the exit in case they tried something like this. But we need to move now. The outside of the house will take a while to burn because it’s wet, but if they get a Molotov cocktail through one of these front windows, the interior will burn fast. We don’t have much time.”
Jena spoke up, and Cole recognized her agent voice. “Get Mac out there now. Fast. I’ll keep them occupied for thirty seconds to give you a head start, then I’ll follow you.”
Cole didn’t like it, but he saw the determination on her face and knew he could help Mac better than she. Her training was inarguable, but she was still recovering herself, and he was strong. “Okay. You ready to go, big guy?”
Mac muttered something Cole thought it was best he didn’t hear.
“I’m going to break out the window and shoot Naquin if I can, so don’t stop if you hear gunfire,” Jena said. “The kid might run if he’s on his own.”
“Got it.” Cole helped Mac to his feet, slung the agent’s right arm over his shoulders, and they headed toward the back. Before they walked out the back door into a slackening rain, Cole heard breaking glass and then a blast as Jena knocked out one of his windowpanes and took a shot with no hesitation.
He didn’t know if she hit anyone, but she got their attention. Everything in him wanted to run back inside when he heard return gunfire, but he couldn’t. Mac was really hobbling, though, so when they finally got to the back steps, he said, “Sorry about this, Mac.”
“Wha—”
Before the agent could finish his question, Cole picked him up in a fireman’s carry and sloshed through the water to the workhouse, praying he didn’t reopen that wound. At least it wasn’t on the side rubbing against Cole’s back and neck.
“You’re a load,” he said, noting with approval that Mac had put on his shoulder holster and had his weapon. Also, that once he’d gotten over the shock of being picked up, he’d gone limp and hadn’t fought.
“Yeah, well, warn me next time you’re gonna do something like that, okay?”
Cole edged inside the workhouse, set Mac down, and gave him a grim smile. “Agreed. Try to get to the cooler in the back of the room. There’s a panel in the rear that pops out and we can exit there—it was a safety measure to keep anyone from getting locked inside the cooler. I’m going back for Jena.”
By the time he reached the door of the workhouse, though, she was halfway across the backyard. Beyond her, he saw flames and heard the crackle of something small exploding. A window maybe.
Rage filled him, the rage he’d spent five years tamping down so it wouldn’t destroy him. Yet it wasn’t the same kind of rage. This time, his rage had a legitimate target that he could either fight or outwit.
This time, he had a chance to save the people he cared about. If his house burned, big fucking deal. Houses could be replaced. People couldn’t.
“Come on.” Jena tugged at his sleeve. “It won’t take them long to figure out we exited the back way.”
Cole shook away the cobwebs, closed the workhouse door, and turned the deadbolt. Every few extra seconds offered an advantage. “To the cooler.”
Mac stood on one leg in the back of the refrigerated unit, the surroundings eerily lit by his flashlight. He’d removed the panel, but the activity had taken a toll. He looked pasty, and his situation was not going to get easier.
Cole closed the cooler door behind them and nodded at Jena to open the back door. As they stepped out into thigh-deep cold water, the sound of a single shot and splintering wood sounded from behind them. “They’re in the workhouse,” he whispered. “Go straight ahead, as fast as you can. Don’t use your lights any more than necessary. I’m right behind you.”
The going was brutal, with mud sucking at each step as if reluctant to let the foot go. Mac didn’t make it far before he was breathing heavily.
“Jena, think you can carry this
pack?” Cole slung the emergency rations backpack from around his shoulders and held it up, illuminating it very briefly.
“Slip it on me.” With a little fumbling, he managed to get her arms through the pack, and heard the click of her fastening it around her waist. “I’ve got it. Help Mac.”
Exactly what he had in mind. He moved ahead of her until he almost fell over Mac. “Buddy, we’re gonna have to do this again so we can make some time, okay?”
“Yeah.” The strain in Mac’s voice and his lack of argument spoke volumes about the pain he was in.
It took some help from Jena, but he finally got Mac out of the mud and settled onto his shoulders. Cole looked around to get his bearings, and ducked instinctively at the sound of a rifle shot. “Let’s move,” he whispered. “Jena, can you keep one hand on me to make sure we don’t get separated? I’ve got my pirogue stashed about halfway up the inlet, and we’re gonna try to reach it using the light as little as possible.”
“Right behind you.” She paused and whispered, “I might not want to know the answer to this, but what do I feel brushing past my legs every once in a while?”
Snake. Gator. So many options. “Probably a fish, but don’t think about it too hard.” He was trying not to.
They needed to find people, someone with a phone, or at least a dry spot to hole up in until daylight. Which meant they needed to get to the highway that skirted Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes.
They trekked on silently but for the sucking mud and slosh of water. In some places it was only up to their ankles, then it would gradually deepen to Cole’s waist before the mud beneath it tapered up again. He was glad Jena was a tall woman, and he was glad that, so far, the land had tapered and not dropped off suddenly. A broken ankle or leg, and their chances of getting out of this would dwindle. They’d drown if they didn’t get shot.
Every five or ten minutes, he’d stop and listen. So far he’d heard gators, owls, frogs. A couple of times something else slithered past his leg and he tried not to flinch where Jena might notice. She’d kept fingers under his poncho and cinched through the belt loops on his jeans the whole way.
What he didn’t hear was other people, though, even ones trying to move quietly.
Cole had been trying to count steps to give him an approximation of where to make a northward turn to reach the outlet and, he hoped, find the pirogue. They’d kept a steady eastern pace for what he estimated to be an eighth of a mile—it just seemed like longer because their pace was so slow.
“Jena, I’m making a sharp left now. We’re going toward the outlet and see if we can find the boat.”
“Gotcha.” The words came out breathy, but then again Cole was sucking wind himself. Mac wasn’t a tall man—maybe five ten or five eleven—but judging by his weight, he was all muscle. Plus, when they’d started their trek, he’d been holding part of his weight up with his arms to relieve the pressure on Cole’s back. Now, not so much.
“Mac, you doing okay?” Cole whispered.
No answer.
“Hold up and let me look at him,” Jena said. Cole stopped and, behind him, Jena softly shook Mac and tapped on his face a couple of times. “He’s out.”
“That’s probably a blessing, at least until we can get somewhere dry and stop moving. You ready?”
“Ready.”
They slogged on for another half hour, give or take an hour in this dark night. Cole stopped abruptly when something poked him in the cheek, causing Jena to run into his back.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I don’t know; I need both hands to hang on to Mac. Step around me and see what I’ve run into. I don’t want to use the flashlights.”
He felt her moving to his right. “It’s a tree,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “And listen.”
Faint voices reached them from the direction of the bayou inlet, which was a lot closer than Cole had thought. This had to be the tree to which he’d tethered his pirogue. It wasn’t like there were dozens out here from which to choose.
He kept his voice as soft as possible. “There should be a rope tied to the tree about waist high. See if you can find it.”
She stepped forward again. “Got it.”
Okay, good news: he knew exactly where they were. Potentially bad news: the fact that there were audible voices meant someone was nearby. At this time of night, unless Wildlife and Fisheries had realized Jena and Mac had been off radar too long and put out a search, it might not be anyone they wanted to meet up with.
“One of us needs to keep Mac out of the water,” he whispered. “The other needs to follow the rope to the outlet without breaking cover and assess. You want rope duty?”
“Yes,” Jena said. “Since you’ve been carrying him so long, I might have fresher legs and can get to the water faster. Plus, I weigh less, so I can move more quietly.”
It had been a long time since Cole had been willing to put his fate in someone else’s hands, but Jena knew what she was doing. Probably better than his DIY Swamp Man macho badass self. Might as well admit it.
“Agree. Take Mac’s gun—it’s been in the water less than yours. And drop the pack next to my foot—it’s waterproof and you can move faster without it.” With their modern pistols and watertight ammo, switching pistols probably didn’t matter, but she needed every advantage.
“Okay.” She slipped behind him and fumbled until he heard her unsnap the strap on Mac’s holster and pull out the gun. She found Cole’s right hand, slung over Mac’s legs so tightly he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to straighten it out, and wrapped his fingers around cold metal until he had it in firing position. “That’s my pistol, just in case. Don’t move or I’ll never find you again. I’m going to follow the rope now.”
He felt a gentle press of her lips against his and then she was gone. Forget the past five years; he’d never felt so alone.
CHAPTER 30
Jena was so sick of being waterlogged, she didn’t care if she ever had so much as a shower again. She sure didn’t want to slog through the wetlands in the pitch dark any longer.
She didn’t like the way the rope played out in her hand, though. If it was attached to the pirogue, and the pirogue was partially on marsh grass, it should have more tautness than what she felt.
If the pirogue was compromised, she wasn’t sure what Plan B might be, but she had a feeling Cole probably had Plans B and C already lined up. Ironically, after tonight, she thought The Hermit of Sugarcane Lane might’ve made one fine LDWF enforcement agent.
Moving methodically and displacing as little mud and water as possible, Jena followed the rope but didn’t pull on it. If someone was watching the pirogue, any movement of rope or boat could give them away. They’d been smarter than Ray and Marty so far, not that a couple of cane toads couldn’t outwit those two on a normal day, but she didn’t want to reverse their record.
Plus, today was far from normal. Ray was mean and he was desperate; he had to know his only hope at keeping up his Black Diamond shipping operation and keeping himself out of federal prison would be to get rid of her and Mac—and now Cole—in some way that didn’t implicate him. Mean plus desperate equaled dangerous.
Because things had happened so fast when she and Mac had lost control of the situation, she couldn’t remember the last message she’d sent to Warren. She thought it had simply been a terse sentence or two to let him know they were staking out where someone fitting Marty Patout’s description had been seen dumping gators back into the bayou.
Unless Mac had sent a text later, it could be sometime tomorrow before anyone began looking for them, and they’d probably start looking at Marty, not Ray. Marty was up to his scrawny neck in this, but Ray was older and smarter.
Was he smart enough to figure this out on his own? The more Jena thought about it, the more she knew there had to be another player. Someone able to order the stuff and coordinate the deliveries. No, make that two other players. Someone to order the stuff and someone to order the stuff fro
m, whether in New Orleans or Houston or Timbuktu.
Marty Patout would know how to order stuff on the Internet. Ray Naquin? Maybe.
The person who had plenty of time, a desperate need for money, and maybe the savvy to pull it all together was not Marty Patout, however, but his mother. She was fighting an illness she had little hope of beating, a business that was probably mortgaged to the hilt to cover medical bills unless her late husband had a hefty life insurance policy, and a young son who would need some degree of care the rest of his life.
Jena tried to put herself in Amelia Patout’s situation and she could understand. To a degree she could sympathize.
Everyone ended up in their own deep, black pit at some time. It was how they climbed out that separated them. Jena had tried to kill herself out of guilt and a feeling of inadequacy, but had been blessed enough to have someone intervene in time for her to realize how much she had that was good. Cole had withdrawn from the world in pain and distrust but, when pushed between right and wrong, he had chosen right.
Maybe Amelia Patout had taken the only road she could see to provide for her sons when she was gone, and greedy old Ray had been happy to play along. Hell, he probably thought he was doing charity work.
Charity work that had already destroyed a lot of lives.
Jena saw lights gleaming on the water, and decided to crawl the rest of the way, or as far as she could. The water was about knee-deep, so she tucked Mac’s pistol in the back of the pair of jeans borrowed from Cole, which she had belted with cord.
Crawling was easier than walking upright, except the part about the front of Cole’s sweater soaking up brackish water like a sponge.
When she got close enough to see through the grass to clear water, she belly-crawled the rest of the way to the edge, very slowly so as to move the tall grass as little as possible. Finally, she reached a point at which she could see through the grass across the inlet. Ray’s boat sat directly across the water. He perched in a chair on one end with a rifle propped beside him, binoculars trained toward Cole’s house. On the back end of the boat sat Marty Patout, his hair glowing white, watching the pirogue.
Black Diamond (Wilds of the Bayou Book 2) Page 20
