Bayou Hero

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Thank God for small favors.” Alia wasn’t wild about the aboveground crypts or sharing her final resting place with a bunch of other people, but the idea that, one year and a day after she was interred, the workers could pop open the vault and slide someone else in, frankly, made her skin crawl in a major way.

  “Come by the bar tomorrow evening if you get a chance.” His hand fumbled for hers, and he gave it a squeeze, then let go.

  She was still nodding agreement when he reached his car. She watched until he drove away, then moved a few steps back to sit. Getting comfortable, she drew her feet into the seat, wrapped her arms around her legs, then sighed softly, thinking about that second option again.

  When she realized that the bump pressing against her hip was her cell phone, she pulled it out, stared at it a moment, then dialed. Though it was her mom’s cell she’d dialed, her dad answered. After thirty-five years together, neither needed nor wanted much privacy from the other.

  Alia caught him up on the public aspects of the case before her mom came on the line. “Tell me what’s new, chica.”

  “That’s cô bé to you.”

  “Don’t get sassy, girl. Have you had a date since we last talked?”

  Alia ran through her encounters with Landry, but none of them technically qualified as a date. Except...”A man cooked dinner for me this evening.”

  In her mom’s book, that was beyond dating and darn close to being engaged. “Really? What did he fix?”

  She recited the menu, then teasingly added, “That was after he took me out for Vietnamese for lunch.”

  “Ooh.” Lien sounded somewhere between envious and thrilled. “So what are you doing for this man that makes him want to feed you so well?”

  For a moment, Alia wished she could give a naughty reply that would make her mother laugh. Instead, she went for blunt truth. “I’m helping find out who murdered his parents.”

  The silence on the line made clear that her mom’s light mood had vanished like a helium balloon in typhoon winds. “He’s Admiral Jackson’s son.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a part of your investigation.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not supposed to get personally involved with him.”

  “No, I’m not.” Alia watched lights streak across the distant sky and wished they were shooting stars or lightning. She could make a wish or sleep well in her warm, dry cocoon of a bedroom while nature raged outside. But based on their location and movement, she was pretty sure the lights belonged to a medical helicopter, picking up or dropping off a critical patient.

  “Landry is a good guy, Mom,” she said quietly. “He...he gets me. He likes me. And I like him.”

  For a moment she was transported back to Hawaii and the day she and Kanani had become official. Do you like me? he’d asked solemnly, and she’d shrugged. I like your toys. And your bike. Plus, I can run faster and jump higher than you, so that’s good.

  But I can skateboard better, and I can surf. So d’ya want to be my girlfriend?

  Seeing that they’d been pretty equally matched, she’d agreed. Thankfully, her tastes had matured since then. She liked Landry’s eyes...smile...body. His sense of humor and his intelligence. The way he could say so much with only a look, and the way he’d survived a childhood so ugly that it made her hurt for him. She figured she could outrun, outjump and outskateboard him, and she didn’t give a good damn if he could surf.

  “Have you been intimate with him?”

  The question startled a laugh from her. “Aw, Mom, you sound so proper when you put it that way. No, we haven’t had sex.”

  “Intimacy isn’t just about sex, LiLi.”

  Alia thought about the story he’d told her that afternoon—trusted her with—and her throat grew thick. “I know.”

  “What are you going to do? Ignore your feelings and do your job? Avoid him as much as you can?”

  “I was thinking...” Mouth pursed, she drew a deep breath, then expelled it. “I might request to be removed from the case.”

  That earned another silence from her mother. Alia wasn’t a quitter. When she accepted a responsibility, she saw it through. Impossible projects, difficult classes, ugly turns in relationships...she’d learned from her father, whose farming family had been on a first-name basis with hardship, and from her mother, whose family had faced life-threatening adversity in their homeland and made a new home in a new country. Every effort deserved her best.

  “He’s that important to you,” Lien said.

  “I—I...yes.”

  “Will this adversely affect your career?”

  “I don’t know.” It was an important case; Jeremiah Jackson aside, the sheer number of victims made it important. Any solve made an agent look good. This one would carry extra weight.

  “But you’re willing to put your feelings for this man ahead of your career.” Her tone was cautious. Was she disappointed in Alia? Did she think her only child was letting down people who counted on her—her coworkers, her victims, her parents, herself? All for a chance at an affair that might not amount to anything.

  Or could turn out to be everything.

  Alia’s answer was practically a whisper. “Yes?” That little question at the end had nothing to do with her certainty, just her very personal, very vulnerable admission, and her mom knew it.

  Lien let out a heavy breath. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to meet someone who is important enough to take precedence over your job. Someone who wasn’t Jimmy DiBiase. It’s about time. How does Landry feel about children?”

  “You’re still going to have to adopt your grandbabies.” Relief washed over Alia, easing muscles she hadn’t realized were tight. Telling her mom, who would tell her father, was the hard part. Talking to her boss tomorrow would be a breeze in comparison.

  Of course her boss could refuse. She could remind Alia that everyone was putting something on hold for this case. She could insist that Alia’s love life could wait. She could even, as she was good at doing, issue an ultimatum: stay with the case, keep her distance from Landry and be the consummate professional she was trained to be, or else.

  But those were worries Alia wasn’t dealing with until they happened.

  “Tell me something about him,” her mom requested.

  “Ask me something.” When it came to new boyfriends, Alia and Lien were more like best girlfriends than daughter and mother, discussing eye color or dimples or hotness factor rather than anything important.

  So her mother’s question surprised her. “Does he have a good heart?”

  Alia smiled slowly. “He loves his sister and adores his nieces. He treated his elderly cousin with great affection and respect. He helps old friends with nightmares of their own, and he’s got more friends, and better ones, than I do.”

  “Sounds good, LiLi. How does he treat you?”

  Letting her feet plop to the floor, Alia slouched down on her spine until she could prop her heels on the railing. “Sometimes he makes me laugh, and sometimes I make him laugh. He took me to meet the old lady who runs his favorite Vietnamese restaurant.”

  Mom’s voice perked up. “Does he speak Vietnamese?”

  “Not even enough to order. He points at the pictures like I used to do.”

  “Yes, but you were seven.” Then Lien relented. “At least he knows good food. That other one acted like we were trying to poison him.”

  That other one wasn’t the worst of the ways Lien had referred to Jimmy. Some of them had been very colorful, thanks to Alia’s Grandpa Kingsley and her Ông ơi Hieu.

  “We like the same music, and we like to talk, but we don’t have to.” That was a good thing, one she and Jimmy had never achieved. If they weren’t talking, they’d been having sex or arguing.

  She wondered wis
tfully when she would have sex with Landry.

  “He must have issues, with his mother, father and cousin all murdered in such a short time.”

  This wasn’t the time to admit that he despised his father and was a virtual stranger to his mother—though for very good reasons. Her mom wouldn’t understand his parents’ behavior any more than she did.

  She didn’t look forward to sharing those reasons with Jimmy and Jack Murphy in the morning. Just the thought made her stomach tumble.

  “You know, you don’t want to take your career lightly,” her mother said. “But when a man like this comes along—a man of substance—you can’t put him aside and hope he waits until it’s convenient for you. Now the sweet-talking weasel—of course you’d never risk anything for him. He’s just a right-now kind of guy. But if you really think Landry is the forever kind, you owe it to yourself to find out.”

  The forever kind of guy. She’d teased with her mom that her dad was the last one of that kind ever made. It scared her that Landry might be one—might be her forever guy. Special Agent Alia Kingsley, never fazed by murderers, rapists or thugs of any kind, was quaking deep inside at the possibility.

  “Try to help Daddy see it that way, will you? I don’t want him to think that I’m going with my hormones instead of my brain.”

  Her mom snorted. “Your father’s gone with his hormones instead of his brains plenty of times. In the end, though, all he wants is for you to be happy.”

  “And to eventually be the director of NCIS.”

  “Ah, he’s just living through your accomplishments. We both are.”

  Alia laughed. “There’s a frightening thought.”

  “Be happy and give us grandbabies. That’s all we really want from you. And—” Lien turned totally serious. “I’ll deny I said it, but truth is, the grandbabies are optional. You happy and healthy—that’s all that matters.” She paused. “Do you feel better?”

  Silently Alia scanned through her emotions. “I do.”

  “Good. That’s how it should be when you talk to your mama. Love you, sweetie.”

  “Love you and Dad.” Alia disconnected the call and stared into the sky. Had Camilla Jackson ever called her son sweetie? Had she told him she loved him? Had she really felt that love?

  Alia was an equal-opportunity assigner of guilt: if one parent hurt a child and the other didn’t stop him/her, they both failed the minimum standards of decent parenting. But there was still something inside her, old-fashioned maybe, that felt the mother was a little more to blame. Camilla had carried Landry for nine months; she had incredibly intimate contact with him every day for forty weeks. She’d nourished him, diapered him, sat up nights with him. She’d had a mother’s obligation, a connection that even a father couldn’t match in the most primal of ways.

  And yet she’d forfeited her responsibility. She’d turned that monster of a father loose on her children and closed her eyes while he and his bastard friends hurt them. Raped them.

  She should have drowned in that gin bottle. But that would have been too easy a passing. She would be punished in the hereafter, but it gave Alia some warped satisfaction to know she’d suffered in this life, too.

  Chapter 11

  The supervisory special agent in charge of the NCIS office was a formidable woman. Slender and able to intimidate agents far more experienced than Alia, Sheila Martinez listened to Alia’s request to give up the multiple homicide. Now she sat, studying Alia, her expression giving away nothing of her thoughts.

  Alia was doing her best to appear just as impassive. She didn’t think she was anywhere near succeeding.

  After an eternity, Sheila broke her silence. “You want to be excused from a major investigation because you’re involved with one of the subjects—the admiral’s son, in fact.”

  “I’m not—” Alia broke off. Involved didn’t always include sex. There was no way she could deny emotional involvement with Landry. Hell, she couldn’t even deny the hope that it did include sex. Soon. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How far has it gone?”

  “Nothing physical.” Yet.

  “Yet.” Sheila spoke the word Alia had only thought. “And his alibi is reliable?”

  “For the first murders.”

  “How sure are you that the murders are all connected?”

  “I’m convinced of it.”

  After another long silence, Sheila grudgingly said, “Make sure DiBiase has your notes and tell him he’ll be working with Zoe—” Her dark gaze narrowed. “Make that Marcus Trent.”

  Oh, so you’ve met Jimmy, Alia wanted to say, hiding a grin at the change from pretty blue-eyed Zoe to grumpy loner Marcus.

  “I’ll do that this morning, ma’am.” Alia rose, wiping her palms on her pants under the guise of smoothing the fabric. She was halfway to the door when Sheila spoke again.

  “We do an important job here, Alia. It’s not like handing off an account at an insurance agency or assigning a teacher to a different classroom. We need continuity in our cases. We can’t have agents deciding their cases interfere with what they really want to do.”

  Feeling about ten years old again, Alia was searching for an apology when Sheila went on.

  “The job demands a lot. It can be hard to find the right balance between it and your personal life. Some people are cut out for it, especially,” she added with a rueful smile, “if you’re ambitious and determined to be not only the first black but also the first female NCIS director.

  “But that kind of single-mindedness can be awfully lonely at times.” Sheila saw Alia’s gaze flicker to the photos on her desk. “Nieces and nephews. I never married. I’m not one of them who found the right balance.”

  Unsure what to say, Alia remained silent.

  “I hope the young Mr. Jackson is everything you want and more.” Sheila turned stern again. “Because you don’t get a second chance like this. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  Turning on her heel, Alia swiftly left the office. Within half an hour, she was at the police station, seated at a conference table just down the hall from the office Jimmy and Murphy shared with a half dozen other detectives.

  “Well?” Jimmy prodded after a moment.

  The sick feeling was back, tying her stomach in knots. Even when Murphy slid over a zippered bag of lemon cookies, a gift from Evie, she couldn’t have forced even one bite. She’d known this would be hard. She just hadn’t known how hard.

  With a deep breath, she forced out the words. “I think I know why our victims were killed.” Willing her voice to remain empty of emotion, she told them everything Landry had told her. She barely slowed even when the men spoke—Aw, jeez, Jimmy said while Murphy muttered, Damn. She didn’t stop until the story was done.

  Silence echoed in the room for a moment, then Jimmy sighed. “It’s a hell of a motive. I’d’ve killed the bastards myself if I’d known.”

  Murphy agreed. “Puts a whole new slant on the questions I’ll be asking the Wallace daughters this afternoon.”

  “Narrows the suspect list, too.”

  “Speaking of that...” Alia pulled out the notes she’d made last evening and slid the wrinkled paper across the table.

  Jimmy scowled at it. “What? You thought you’d scribble a few lines in your spare time?” In an aside to Murphy, he complained, “She used to give me lists like that to do the shopping, then get pissed because I couldn’t figure out what the hell she wanted.”

  Murphy took the paper and snorted. “Perfectly legible to me.” He read off a few bits of info to prove he could, then shrugged. “You want to come with me to interview the daughters?”

  Yes. She’d never been taken off a case before, voluntarily or otherwise—had never had to let go and be cut out of the loop. Most of her cases, she was pro
ud to say, she’d closed. A few had been consigned to the cold case file, though she still looked them over from time to time.

  But this one was now officially out of her hands. The acknowledgment came with both relief and regret. “No, actually, I’m no longer assigned to this investigation.”

  Jimmy stared at her, but Murphy didn’t appear surprised. Maybe he’d seen more than she’d realized yesterday, or maybe it just took a hell of a lot to surprise someone who’d been a cop as long as he had.

  “Martinez yanked you off?” Jimmy demanded.

  “No. I asked to be reassigned.”

  “Why?”

  “Conflict of interest and all that,” she said blithely.

  “Oh, hell, what you’re doing with Jackson doesn’t have a damn thing to do with how you’re working the case.”

  The disgust in Jimmy’s voice sent warm affection through her. “I’m glad you have faith in my ability to separate the personal from the professional.”

  He flushed faintly. “I always thought you were a hell of a cop, Alia. Besides, damn, who among us hasn’t slept with someone involved in a case?”

  She was the only one to raise her hand. But she hoped to remedy that soon.

  Gathering her stuff, she stood. “By the way, Jimmy, SSA Martinez assigned another agent from the team to work with you.”

  His eyes brightened. “Zoe?”

  “Marcus Trent.” She couldn’t help but laugh at his disappointment. “Good luck, guys. If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  As she walked down the hall, she pulled a cookie from the bag and bit into it. Damn, it was even better than the half dozen she’d eaten yesterday. Maybe she would beg Evie for the recipe and learn to make them.

  Better yet, she’d beg Evie for the recipe and persuade Landry to make them.

  Though the temperature was hovering somewhere around broil when she stepped out of the building, the mere thought of how she might persuade Landry was enough to make her shiver.