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"Shit," she muttered, dropping to her knees.
The sound of the rifle shot registered in her mind a split second before the bullet hit.
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The bullet ripped through the plastic back window of the Jeep, destroyed the windshield, and shattered the front window of the store. All in less time than it took to draw a breath-not that A
She dropped flat on the ground, the crushed shell biting into her bare arms as she scooted under the Jeep, dragging her duffel bag with her. She couldn't hear a damn thing for the pounding of her pulse in her ears. The heat from the Jeep pressed down on her. Hands fumbling, she dug her Sig Sauer out of the bag, twitched the safety off and waited.
She couldn't see anything but the ground. If she crawled out from under the Jeep at the front, she could make it up onto the gallery. Using the Jeep for cover, she could climb through the broken front window, get to the phone, and call 911.
A screen door slapped in the distance.
"Who's there?" Sos called, racking the shotgun. "Me, I shoot trespassers! And survivors-I shoot them twice!"
"Uncle Sos!" A
"I'd rather unload this buckshot in some rascal's ass! Where y'at, chère?"
"Go back in the house! Call 911!"
"The hell I will! Your tante, she already called! Cops are on the way!"
And if they were lucky, A
She adjusted her grip on the Sig and scuttled toward the front end of the Jeep. The shot had to have come from the road or the woods beyond. She hadn't heard or seen a car. A shooter in the woods at night would lose himself in a hurry. It would take a dog to track him, and by the time a K-9 unit arrived, he would be long gone.
In the distance she could hear the radio car coming, siren wailing, giving all criminals in the vicinity ample warning of its imminent arrival.
Pitre was the deputy. To Sos and Fanchon, he showed a modicum of respect. To A
"Someone tried to kill me," she snapped. "Yeah, I think I don't wa
Pitre shrugged, as if to say, "suit yourself."
The slug had passed through the front window of the store, shattered a display case of jewelry made from nutria teeth, and slammed into the old steel cash register that sat on the tour ticket counter. The cash register had sustained an impressive wound, but still worked. The slug had been mangled beyond recognition. Even if anyone ever went to the trouble of finding a suspect, they would have nothing to match for ballistics.
"Yeah, well, thanks for nothing, again," A
He feigned i
A
"Ooooh! You go
"I'd rather give bone marrow. Go piss up a rope, Pitre." She flipped him off as he drove away.
After walking Fanchon back to the house, she used the phone in the store to call Fourcade. She chewed at a broken fingernail as she listened to the phone ring on the other end. On the sixth ring his machine picked up. He had asked her to stay the night, now the night was half gone and so was Fourcade. Where was he at one-thirty in the morning? Her mind worried at that question as she helped Sos board up the window to keep out looting raccoons.
It bothered her that she wanted Nick here for emotional reasons and not just as another cop. If she was going to get through this mess with Renard and the department and Fourcade's hearing, she had to be tougher. She needed to learn to separate the issues. She could almost hear him in her mind: You're not dead. Suck it up and focus on your job, 'Toinette.
And then he would put his arms around her and hold her safe against him.
As they worked on the window, she answered Sos's questions as best she could without revealing too much about the situation she had become embroiled in. But he knew she was holding things back from him, and she knew he knew.
He gave her a hard look as they walked out, his temper still up and bubbling. "Look what you got yourself in now, 'tite fille. Why you can't do things no way but the hard way? Why you don't just marry Andre and settle? Give your tante and me some grandbabies? Mais non, you gotta run off and do a man's job! You all the time beatin' on a hornet's nest with a stick! And now you go
"It'll work out, Uncle Sos," A
He made a strangled sound in his throat, but cupped her face in his callused hands. "We worry 'bout you, chérie, your tante and me. You're like our own, you know dat! Why you gotta make life so hard?"
"I don't mean to look for trouble."
Sos heaved a sigh and patted her cheek. "But when trouble comes lookin' for you, you ain't hard to find, c'est vrai."
A
"If my life is going to stay this complicated, maybe I'll have to think about moving into an asylum," she muttered as she stepped down off the gallery and turned the corner to her stairs.
A small box wrapped in flowered paper with a white bow sat on the third step from the bottom. Renard. A
She stuffed the box into her duffel bag and went up to the apartment.
The sense of violation struck her immediately. The feeling that someone had invaded her home. From her vantage point in the front entry she could see across the living room, could see that the French doors were shut, the bolt turned. The air in the apartment was stifling and stale from an unexpectedly hot day with closed windows. A faint undertone of something earthy and rotten lingered. The swamp, A
Images of Lindsay Faulkner flashed through her mind- lying on the floor like a broken doll; head swathed in bandages like a mummy.
The messages rolled out of the machine. A Mary Kay lady who had seen her on the news and wanted to compliment her on her complexion. A distant Doucet "cousin" who had seen her on the news and wondered if she could help him get a job as a deputy.