Bayou Blue

by Raquel Byrnes

  Thoughts like that are dangerous. For both of you.

  “Well,” she said softly. “I’ll see you in the morning?”

  “First thing,” Jake answered. Biting back any compassion, he called to her. “Riley?”

  She stopped midway. “Yes, Jake?” Her voice seemed softer, somehow.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. I have to put my parish first in all of this. I don’t care who your family is.”

  He saw her body tense and knew his words found their mark.

  The expression on her face hardened.

  “You don’t need to keep reminding me where you stand, Jake. I got it,” she said with heat and shut her doors.

  The curtains caught in her door twitched in the breeze. He leaned back onto the railing and watched the blinking of the lightning bugs bobbing just over the water’s surface. Citrine’s words came back to him and he ground his jaw against their truth.

  Jacob, I know that once you fall, it’s completely.

  Turning his back on the landscape, Jake glanced over at Riley’s railing.

  He and Riley saw the world in completely different ways. His view, grounded in home and family, was in direct opposition to the way she thought. A life like the one Jake lived in the bayou had no place in Riley’s mind. She saw it as backward and boring and he knew it.

  Besides, Jake had changed since Citrine really knew his heart.

  The kind of happiness he’d sought back then wasn’t meant for him. He learned that that hard way.

  7

  The call came in that hour of the night when most terrible things happen. Racing to the hospital, I met my mother, father, and older brother, Raymond, in the emergency room near our family’s house in Rancho Bernardo. I’d been at the police station trying to get information on a victim for my article when the phone buzzed in my pocket.

  I remember the whooshing of the doors and the smell of puke and antiseptic as my heels clicked frantically along the beige linoleum. My mother’s ruined make-up ran down her cheeks and my father held her in his arms. In front of them, the doctor stared at his clipboard and muttered out my brother’s condition.

  Eight years ago, when Randy should have been celebrating his fifteenth birthday, he was instead getting his stomach pumped in an attempt to rescue him from the thirty sleeping pills that were trying to kill him. The liter of vodka as a chaser didn’t help. Randy never did anything by half measure.

  A flurry of activity fluttered behind the privacy curtain as the hospital staff wrestled with my thrashing brother.

  I remember how cold the air conditioning made the room. I remember wondering where he got the pills. But most of all I remember the sound of the defibrillator humming as it cycled up to shock my brother. A low buzzing that shook my stomach into jelly and shattered my nerves. The mechanical whir of gathering power, and then the doctor shouting, “Clear!”

  Through a split in the curtain I saw Randy’s hand flop against the gurney railing and I screamed…

  Wrenched awake, I sat up in the bed sweating and gasping for the breath I’d lost in my dream.

  Finding my bearings, I took in the morning sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains draped in front of the French doors and remembered where I was. Another series of vibrations made me jump.

  The room, with its gauzy canopy over the bed and the cozy fireplace, looked more romantic in the daylight. I shook my head, sighing. How did I end up like this? Trapped in an idealistic getaway while having nightmares about my deceased brother and fighting with Jake.

  I reached for my phone quaking on the nightstand.

  “Yeah,” I cleared my throat. “This is Riley.”

  “Where have you been?” Bradley’s exasperated voice, bounced out of my phone. My boss sounded like he was two seconds from a coronary. “I’ve texted you, I’ve called, and left messages. Your agent is going insane.”

  I rubbed my eyes and covered a yawn. “My agent?”

  “Yeah, Perry is here.”

  “What? Why?” My stomach tumbled. “What’s happening?”

  “What’s happening?” Bradley’s baritone laugh puzzled me. “You are, honey. You’re what’s happening. Have you read the papers?”

  “Uh, no…I’m kind of out of the loop right now.”

  Bradley rustled papers, spoke in muffled tones to someone, and then was back. “Your exposé on Whitford hit big. The Times and the Post picked it up. And I heard from a friend at the Justice Department that they’re talking indictment.”

  I sat in stunned silence as the information seeped into my addled brain. I spent months on a series of articles on corruption in the city planning committee only to get them shot down by Bradley.

  It wasn’t until I followed a lead to the nail salon of a judge’s mistress that I really understood the depth of the corruption. My series sparked an investigation that led to the downfall of several senators and a judge.

  “A federal indictment, really?” I chewed on my thumbnail, and then remembered what he’d said about my agent. “You said Perry is there?”

  “She asked for you,” Bradley said, his voice distanced from the phone.

  “Yeah, Riley,” Perry’s scratchy smoker’s voice piped up. “Hold on... Bradley, put her on speaker will you?”

  “Hello?” My voice reverberated.

  “OK, can you hear me?” Bradley asked. “OK, so this morning I’m meeting with the owner of the paper and I get a call from Newsweek about an article on you—”

  I let out an audible sigh.

  After Randy’s death and the chemical plant explosion, everyone wanted to interview me and my family about the terrorist actions of one of our own.

  The fact that the Drake family is known for their humanitarian and ecological crusading only fueled the fire of the press’s appetite for anything and everything on us. A tabloid even posted a paper on the environment that Randy wrote in high school, as if a ninth grade diatribe on recycling was proof of my brother’s guilt eight years later.

  That the jackals were my own colleagues was not lost on me.

  My stomach tumbled again, and I eyed the antacids on my nightstand. I wondered if they would hear me chewing them and decided to wait.

  “No, no, listen,” Bradley went on. “So I’m telling them the standard, ‘No Comment,’ and referring them to your family’s publicist, right?”

  “OK.”

  “They want an article from you, not about you. They’re interested in running a feature on your investigation of Whitford and the planning committee corruption. I mean, this story has politics, judges, embezzled funds, a mistress…It’s hot and they want it. They’re thinking something along the lines of, ‘Cub reporter’s rise to the top’ type of thing—”

  Confusion and a little hope bubbled in my chest. “Excuse, me, what?”

  “I said they’re interested in the whole story; how you first found out about the missing funds, how your office got ransacked when Whitford tried to steal your notes, the death threats, all of it.”

  “What…what did you say to them?”

  “Nothing. I called Perry,” Bradley answered and I heard the sound of his chair scraping back on wood floor. His voice grew fainter as he moved away from the phone mic. “Here, you can sit here.”

  “Well what did Perry tell them?”

  “I said I was thinking more book deal than magazine space,” Perry spoke over Bradley and the excitement in his voice fueled mine.

  “Wow, uh, wow,” I didn’t know what to say. Other than being grateful that it didn’t have anything to do with Randy. Then a thought hit me and I frowned. “Bradley, you said you were meeting with the owner of the paper, right?”

  “Uhm, yeah, don’t worry about that, honey. That’s not on the table, anymore.”

  “What’s not on the table, Bradley?” I asked, despite knowing the answer.

  “We were talking about letting you go, Riley,” Bradley said with regret. “Your family name is recognizable and with all the hate mail, we were wor
ried about the public sentiment turning into a security issue.”

  Or a public relations issue.

  “I see.” I bit my lip on the rest of my thought.

  “But that was before Newsweek and the book deal,” Bradley continued. “I mean, you don’t really work on the premises anymore, anyway.”

  “What Bradley means is that things are changing, Riley,” Perry interjected. “You’re turning a corner in your career.”

  I looked out the window at the rippling green water flowing along the grass covered banks of the bayou and sighed. “Perry… I need to tell—”

  “Save it for when you get here,” Perry interrupted. “I have a table for us at Rio’s.”

  My brows arched. Rio’s was expensive and elitist. I never even tried to get a reservation there despite my family’s name. Up until now, I’d met with Perry exactly one time. At his office. Now he wanted to take me to a very public lunch and talk business?

  “Perry, I can’t meet with you today—”

  “Sure you can.” I heard papers rustling in the background. “Oh, did I also tell you that Global Media called? They think they might have a show idea that would be the perfect vehicle for your kind of investigative journalism. It’s very hard-hitting, the intrepid truth-seeker, and all that. They think your family’s name recognition coupled with the press you’ll get for taking down Whitford and the corruption will be enough to launch a decent show. We need to discuss this as soon—”

  “Perry, stop!”

  “What? What’s wrong, Riley?”

  I rubbed my temple, pushing at the headache there. “I’m…I’m out of town right now. I’m not in the state, actually.”

  The silence on Perry’s end made my heart beat fast.

  “Where are you, Riley?”

  “I’m in Louisiana.”

  Fumbling noises and the sound of the receiver hitting the cradle followed as they took me off speaker phone. A second later, Perry’s voice came back on.

  “Are you insane?” He sounded genuinely interested in the answer.

  I hadn’t told him about the letter from Randy. He didn’t know my mother ordered me not to come out here. That alone might cause political backlash. The Drakes wielded a hefty media hand. I knew he didn’t want the paper to land on the wrong side of an argument with my family.

  “I have a court order for Randy’s things,” I told him. There was some truth to that. I glanced at the MP3 player on the nightstand and gulped down the lump in my throat. “Just a day or two, tops.”

  The tension eased out of Perry’s voice a bit. “That’s all?”

  “Perry…” Tired of explaining myself to everyone, I sounded irritated that he even asked.

  “OK, OK,” He backtracked. “Give me the number of your hotel in case you can’t get a signal out there in the boonies.”

  I peered at the welcome card on the nightstand and rattled off the address and phone number to Perry.

  “But really, I’ll only be a few days.”

  “Be sure it is. I don’t want any bad press from locals protesting your presence to derail the deals coming down the pike. It’s a sensitive time right now, Riley. Keep that in mind,” Perry warned. “I’ll keep the meeting with Global Media, hear what they have to offer, but you need to come back soon. Newsweek and the publishers won’t wait around forever.”

  “I’ll be back soon, Perry.” I mumbled.

  He hesitated, but seemed satisfied when he finally answered. “Just a couple of days?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess there’s no harm in that.”

  “See you soon, Perry. Tell Bradley I said goodbye.”

  Perry rang off, leaving me in the silent room watching the breeze blow dandelion flurries past my window. Overhead, the sun sent faint sheets of light through the darkening clouds onto the shifting branches of the trees and bushes. In the distance, a rumble warned against the gathering storm. I got up, pulled the curtain from between the glass doors, and shut out the breeze. Below, the smell of frying sausage wafted up, but I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  I flopped back down and pulled the covers up to my chin. Blinking at the ceiling, I stared in shocked silence at the white paint. Excitement and dread twisted together in my gut. I flipped onto my stomach and pulled the pillow over my head.

  So much hung in the balance—my family’s name, Randy’s innocence, my career—and here I was in La Foudre digging up trouble. Once again, the fear of failure, of not having the will to pursue the truth swirled in my head. I felt alone and out of my element. I knew the city, the urban flow of Los Angeles and San Diego, but this place sent me off kilter.

  Closing my eyes, I pled again for strength and assurance that I was doing the right thing.

  I have so much doubt, Lord. Give me direction…

  Perry’s excitement over the book deal and television show played in my head. I knew taking down Whitford might bring recognition, but this was bigger than I expected.

  Newsweek? Global Media?

  I sucked in my breath at the implications. All of these accolades. They should mean more, shouldn’t they?

  So why don’t they, Lord? Isn’t this everything I’ve always wanted? Why doesn’t any of this seem important anymore?

  My phone vibrated and I popped out of the covers to look at the name.

  A text message from my mother flashed across the screen. Call me.

  I stared at it before hitting delete. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  I thought about Jake and went over what I wanted to tell him today. I could go about my plan to interview people at the blast scene without him, but judging from the reception I got yesterday, I wasn’t going to get very far with the locals on my own. I hated to admit it, but I needed Jake right now.

  Someone knocked on my door, and I sat up in bed, smoothing my hair down.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Jake.”

  I thought he went home. It was barely seven in the morning and he’s already back?

  “Uh…I’m just getting up.” I looked down at my extra-large Star Wars t-shirt and plaid boxer shorts and grimaced. “Give me a minute.”

  Crawling across the bed, I pulled my suitcase up and fumbled for a decent outfit to wear.

  Something bumped against my door and then Jake’s voice muffled through. “Yeah, well I have to head out for a few hours, so take your time.”

  “What?” I sprang out of bed, slid across the wood floor in my socks, and yanked open the door. “You can’t take off!”

  Jake stood in the hallway all showered and smelling of soap. In a black t-shirt and jeans, he had an old black cowboy hat in his hands. I focused on a tiny cut at his jawline from the razor and he raised his finger to it grinning.

  “Cut myself.”

  I nodded and smoothed my wild air down. “You’re leaving?”

  Jake cocked an eyebrow. “Got an early meeting this morning.”

  “You couldn’t have woken me up sooner?” I wrestled my curls into a pony tail at the top of my head. “I forgot to set my alarm this morning. Besides, you can’t blow off our meeting. You promised.”

  Jake’s gaze darted to my room and I remembered Randy’s MP3 player on the nightstand.

  “Yeah, well. You can wait an hour, or two. I’ll be back soon.”

  “But…”

  Jake shook his head. “You’re not even ready. I’ll talk to you when I get back.”

  Irritation sizzled and I spied his keys hanging by a clip on his belt loop. I’d interviewed a pick pocket named Millie once for a piece on runaways and panhandlers. She’d shown me how to do a bump and boost. She made me practice on a mannequin with bells that jangled if one hit them. A neat trick for parties, but not much else…until now.

  I balled my fists, thinking. Jake was not going to get away if I could help it.

  “Wait a second. You gave me twenty-four hours. You wouldn’t talk last night and I just spent six of them sleeping.”

  Jake, already turnin
g away, stopped. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Seeing my chance, I stepped out into the hallway pulling the door closed. I bumped up against Jake and in the process, snaked the keys off his belt loop. I squeezed them in my fist to keep them from jingling.

  Jake stared at me, perplexed. “What are you doing?”

  “The room is messy.” I grinned at him innocently. “There’s clothes everywhere.”

  Jake took a couple steps back, leaned against the opposite wall and shoved his hat on his head. His eyes narrowed. “What’re you up to?”

  I shrugged, hiding the keys behind my back. “What do you care? You’re leaving.”

  He jutted his chin in my direction. “You’ll be here when I get back.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  I looked at him, but my phone started buzzing in my hand and I lost focus. The screen flashed my mother’s number again and I hit the button to decline the call.

  Jake checked his watch. “I gotta go, Riley.”

  I shrugged again and opened my bedroom door. “Nothing’s stopping you, is it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I guess not.”

  I watched him for a few seconds, appreciating the way his t-shirt highlighted his strong back and shoulders as he walked away.

  “Be here when I get back, Skywalker,” he called over his shoulder.

  Embarrassed he’d caught me staring, I slipped back into my room. Once inside, I took the world’s fastest shower. I threw on some jeans and a blouse and grabbed my purse.

  The sound of Jake’s irritated voice spurred me to take the stairs two at a time.

  I strode into the kitchen with a smile. Jake patted down his pockets and lifted a newspaper off of the table while talking to Citrine.

  “I just had them, not two minutes ago. What about Michelle? Has she seen them?”

  Citrine stood at the stove stirring a pan full of scrambled eggs. She pushed some sort of sausage around on the skillet. It looked like a black snake and made me re-think eating breakfast.

  “Michelle is at school, Jacob,” Citrine answered and reached out to tap Jake’s hat. “She started two weeks ago.”

  Jake stopped looking, took his hat off, and looked at us questioningly. “It’s September already?”