Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
Katherine’s face blanched. “No. That can’t be right. You’re too young.”
“We thought the same,” Chase said. “We didn’t think we could get pregnant. I was in shock when Sophie texted me last Saturday from Miz Mo’s phone.”
“She used my phone to text you?” Ouida Mae asked.
“Yes, she was upset about a piglet. You had taken her out to Bellamy Farms,” the young man’s lips twisted. “She wasn’t making sense. When she said she was pregnant, I thought she was kidding. She wasn’t.”
“Chase, have you seen Sophie?” Valentin asked.
Chase frowned, shaking his head. “She hasn’t talked to me since the school board meeting. I heard Child Protective Services picked her up last night. I thought they had her.”
“She got away from them,” Ouida Mae said. “She has nothing but the clothes on her back. Do you have any idea where she would go?”
“Wasn’t her mother hauled off to jail?” His brow furrowed.
“Could she have gone to her mother’s house since her mother isn’t there?” Valentin asked.
“No way,” Chase said. “Her mother was hauled off to jail. If that bastard, Leland, wasn’t hauled off as well, he’s probably living in her mother’s house. There’s no way Sophie would go back there. You know he tried to rape her, right?”
“Yes, she told us,” Ouida Mae said. “She mentioned a shack in the bayou where she lived for the last six weeks. Could she have gone back there?”
“I don’t know how far down the road they got before she escaped, but that shack is the only place I know she might go back to. If she can get there, that’s where she’ll go.”
“Chase,” Valentin said, “could you show us where that shack is in the bayou?”
“Did she say anything about the men in the boat?” Chase asked. “Did she know if they finally left?”
“We don’t know,” Ouida Mae said. “We’re worried she might’ve gone to the shack, and those men could still be there.”
“Do you know who the men are?” Katherine asked.
“We think they’re with a drug cartel,” Valentin said.
“Actually, your husband might know more about those men than we do,” Ouida Mae said.
Katherine’s perfectly sculpted brows twisted. “How would my husband know?”
“You’ll have to ask him the details,” Valentin said. “Apparently, they loaned him the money to continue his campaign. With the cartel money, strings are always attached.”
“My husband would never take money from a drug cartel,” Katherine said.
“And teenagers can’t get pregnant,” Ouida Mae said softly. “All I know is there’s a young girl out there who’s alone and afraid. I don’t want her to fall in the hands of that cartel.”
Chase pushed past his mother and out onto the porch. “I’ll show you where the shack is.”
Kathryn reached out and grabbed her son’s shoulder. “It’s too dangerous. You can’t go out there.”
“If it’s too dangerous for me, it’s dangerous for Sophie,” Chase said with remarkable maturity for a fifteen-year-old. “I have to help them find her.”
“I forbid it,” Katherine cried.
“You can’t stop me, just like you couldn’t stop me from seeing Sophie.” He hugged his mother. “I have to do this.”
Chase climbed into the backseat of Valentin’s truck. Ouida Mae and Valentin got in the front.
Valentin shifted into drive and pulled out onto Main Street. “I assume you have access to a boat?” he asked, glancing at the boy in the rearview mirror.
“My father keeps a fishing boat down at the marina. I know where he hides the key,” Chase said. “That’s how I got out to the shack to take food to Sophie.”
Valentin drove to Marceau’s Marina, parked his truck in the parking lot, took his Glock out from beneath his seat and tucked it into his waistband.
“Wow,” Ouida Mae said. “I hope we don’t have to use that.”
“Me, too,” Valentin said.
Chase led the way to a slip along the dock where a fancy fishing boat was moored. He dropped into the boat and fished out a key from under the driver’s seat.
Valentin handed Ouida Mae down into the boat, then got in beside her.
Chase expertly drove the boat out of the slip and into the bayou. He maneuvered around bends and tributaries until he slowed to a stop and moved to the front of the boat to engage a smaller and quieter trolling motor.
They moved forward slowly through a tunnel of overhanging trees.
Valentin sent a text to Remy, pinpointing their location and asking him to share that information with the sheriff and to send backup.
Remy replied, wanting him to wait for that backup.
They couldn’t, not if Sophie was in grave danger. Every minute counted.
Chase stopped the boat in the shadow of a willow tree. “The shack is just around the bend, on a small island, tucked into the trees.”
“You two stay here,” Valentin said. “I’ll check it out.”
“How are you going to do that without the boat?” Ouida Mae whispered.
“The water is only waist deep, maybe a little more.”
When he swung his legs over the side of the boat, Ouida Mae grabbed his arm. “You can’t just wade through the bayou. It’s full of snakes and alligators.”
“It’s a short distance,” Valentin assured her. “I won’t be in the water long.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. He turned to Chase. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, take Miz Mo back to the marina and send the sheriff after me. He’ll have my pin location and won’t need you to lead him here.” He held Chase’s gaze. “Will you do that?”
Chase nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Valentin slipped as quietly as possible into the murky bayou, holding his Glock above the water. His gaze scanned for the tell-tale sign of alligators lurking nearby like floating logs with eyes.
As he neared the little island, voices drifted through the trees—male, angry voices.
As Valentin reached the island, he crawled up the bank and moved silently through the underbrush toward the voices.
“How could you let the bitch get away? If she gets back to town, she’ll bring the law back before we make the transfer,” a man said. “Find her. This time, silence her for good. She can’t be far, this island isn’t that big. We sank her boat. She’d be insane to swim away in this alligator-infested swamp. Go!”
Valentin lay low as a man tromped through the brush inches away.
Once the man had passed, Valentin moved closer until the shack came into view. He’d approached from a side angle and could see the front porch that served as a dock. The shack had been built on stilts a few above ground. An airboat was tied to a piling. He counted three men—one on the dock and the other two on the boat with several ice chests stacked neatly on the deck, marked in bold letters, FISH.
“They should be here by now,” a heavyset guy with tattoos on his arms and neck said.
“They’ll be here,” said another guy who wore khaki slacks, a navy-blue polo shirt and sunglasses. He also wore a shoulder holster with what appeared to be a .45- or .9-millimeter handgun tucked inside.
The man on the dock leaned against a post, his tattooed arms crossed over his chest, his beard long and shaggy. He had a knife seated in a sheath clipped to his belt on one side and a handgun in a holster on the other side of his belt.
A movement caught his eye in the limited crawl space beneath the shack. His first thought was alligator .
As he studied the figure, he realized it wasn’t an animal. It was a mud-covered girl.
Sophie.
To get to her, he’d have to go through four men.
He could tell the moment Sophie spotted him. She raised a finger to her lips and pointed to the water beneath the dock. Valentin had no idea what she wanted him to do.
The girl slid through mud until she reached the water and submerged.
She surfaced at the rear of the airboat with a line in her hand and tied it to the steel cage surrounding the giant fans used to propel the boat. Then she sank into the water, disappearing beneath the surface. If he hadn’t seen her, he wouldn’t have been able to tell what was a fish or a girl moving along the murky bottom of the bayou toward him.
Valentin edged backward toward the water in the shadows of the trees, his gaze trained on the water’s surface, searching for alligators. If the men on the boat or the dock spotted Sophie, Valentin was prepared to shoot.
He concentrated on his breathing and focused on everything around him. Somewhere on that island was a man sent to kill the girl.
Not on Valentin’s watch.
Sophie surfaced nearby like a water nymph, her nose clearing the water just enough to breathe.
Valentin slid into the water with her and pointed in the direction of the fishing boat.
Staying in the shadows and as submerged as possible without getting his weapon wet, Valentin pointed and urged Sophia forward in front of him, prepared to turn and provide cover for her.
They’d reached the bend in the tributary when a shot rang out. A bullet ripped through the leaves of an overhanging willow.
“She’s getting away! And there’s a man with her,” a voice shouted.
Valentin shoved Sophie around the bend and spun to return fire.
Once Sophie was out of range, Valentin rounded the corner and moved as fast as he could half-wading, half-swimming through the bayou.
When the boat came into his view, Sophie was almost halfway there.
Chase stood in the bow of the boat, pointing frantically at the water. “Gator!” he called out.
“Come on, Sophie,” Ouida Mae cried. “Swim faster.”
Sophie gave up all effort to move quietly through the water and swam as fast as she could toward the boat.
The gator was closing on her fast.
Valentin aimed his weapon and fired at the gator before it got too close to Sophie.
He either hit it or scared it because it slowed to a stop.
Sophie kept moving, now only ten yards from the boat.
Ouida Mae and Chase leaned over the side. As soon as Sophie came within range, they grabbed her hands and dragged her over the edge of the boat.
Valentin was still twenty yards out.
The gator had disappeared.
The roar of an airboat’s fan filled the air.
Valentin didn’t have time to worry about an alligator. There were four armed men on an airboat who would be within range all too soon.
He moved as fast as he could through the water, the floor of the bayou sucking at his shoes. As Valentin neared the boat, Ouida Mae appeared with an oar in her hands.
Sophie and Chase leaned over the side of the boat as Valentin reached them. When he started to pull himself up over the edge, Ouida Mae swung the oar so close to him he felt the whiff of air against his face.
When the oar connected with something in the water, Ouida Mae raised it and swung again.
Valentin’s legs still dangled in the water. He had just swung one up over the side when a sharp pain ripped through his calf, and he was dragged downward toward the water.
“The gator’s got him,” Ouida Mae cried. Using the oar like a club, she slammed it over and over again into the alligator’s head.
The reptile’s teeth ripped through Valentin’s pants, and the animal dropped back into the water.
Valentin scrambled aboard the bass boat. “Use the big engine,” he told Chase. “Get us out of here as fast as you can.”
The teenager revved the 450-horsepower engines on the back of the boat, spun it around and shoved the throttle forward. The boat sped through the bayou, Chase steering it easily around tight corners.
But a bass boat wasn’t an airboat. It couldn’t go across marshes without the propellers getting bogged down in the shallows.
All Valentin could hope was that the line Sophie had tied to the back of the steel cage slowed the airboat from taking off long enough for them to put considerable distance between them.
Valentin prayed Remy had received his message and had their backup on the way.
They came to a point where the only way to get back to the marina was to cross a wide-open area of tributaries, weaving through a marsh.
There was no avoiding it.
As soon as they emerged from the shadows of the overhanging trees into the open, Valentin looked back to find the airboat gaining quickly on them.
When they got within range, Valentin could fire on them, and they could return fire.
“Sophie, Ouida Mae,” Valentin called out over the roar of the engines, “get in the bottom of the boat and keep your heads down. Chase, you, too.”
“No, sir,” Chase said, refusing to give up the helm. “You don’t know the bayou like I do. If we make the wrong turn, we could bog down in the shallow marsh.”
Valentin couldn’t argue with that, but he didn’t want the kid to take a bullet.
Soon, they didn’t have a choice.
The airboat was in range of his pistol. Valentin open fire, doing his best to make each round count. But with the boat bouncing on the water’s surface, it was hard to aim and even harder to hit the target.
Three of the four men returned fire while the fourth drove the airboat. They were gaining quickly and would overtake them soon.
Valentin continued to fire until he ran out of ammunition.
With the airboat almost on them, he pushed Chase out of the way and shouted for him to drop to the bottom of the boat. Valentin ducked as low as he could and still see over the bow. Bullets struck the boat and shattered the windshield in front of him.
Valentin couldn’t give up. Three souls on board were depending on him.
Pain stung his shoulder. He knew he’d been hit, but he still had full use of the shoulder. Just a flesh wound, like the gator bite. He didn’t let it slow him down.
He was going so fast that he missed the turn in a tributary and plowed into a marsh. Immediately, the propellers sank into the shallow mud. The boat bogged down, coming to a complete stop.
Valentin abandoned the helm and flung himself over Ouida Mae and Sophie, praying he could shield them and stop the bullets from entering their bodies.
He waited for the men on the airboat to come abreast, bracing himself for the bullets that would surely tear through him and into the women below. He tensed, ready to leap to his feet and throw himself at the murderous cartel members.
The roar of the airboat fans changed and began to move away from the bass boat stuck in the marsh.
Another engine roared nearby.
Valentin raised his head in time to see an airboat with a sheriff’s decal on it race past them in pursuit of the cartel’s craft. Another airboat trailed behind the first. This one had a DEA emblem prominently displayed.
The airboats were quickly followed by one of the bass boats the marina rented to tourists. This last boat came to a stop close to the Edouard’s grounded bass boat.
Remy waved at Valentin and called out, “Is everyone all right?”
Valentin rolled away from Ouida Mae and Sophie. “Are you ladies okay?”
“I’m fine,” Sophie said.
“Me, too,” Ouida Mae reported.
“Chase?” Valentin glanced over to where the teenager still lay at the bottom of the boat. His gut clenched.
“Chase?” Sophie cried and scrambled across the boat toward the boy.
Finally, the kid groaned. “I’m okay,” he said, “but I might need some help getting up. I think I broke my arm.”
Sophie knelt on the floor of the boat beside him, gripped his shoulders and rolled him over into her arms. “Oh, Chase, you’ll do anything for attention.” She winked and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Remy threw a line to Valentin. He tied it to the front of the bass boat and let Remy’s boat pull them as he adjusted the tilt of the bass boat’s big motors. With a little finagling, they freed the boat, and Valentin was able to follow Remy back to the marina.
Katherine Edouard, her mascara smeared and her hair in disarray, stood on the dock. When she spotted her son, tears welled, and she rushed forward.
Sophie helped Chase to his feet. Remy and Valentin assisted him as he climbed out of the boat.
Cradling his arm against his chest, Chase turned away from his mother and waited for Sophie to step onto the dock. “Sophie, we need to talk.”
She smiled gently. “After you have your arm looked at.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to risk losing you again. I want to marry you and raise our baby together.”
Sophie cupped his cheeks in her hands. “I want what’s best for our baby. Being raised by teenagers too young to drive sets us up for failure, and our baby will struggle along with us. We’re too young to raise a child on our own. We need to finish high school and go to college or a trade school.”
“I want to be a part of our baby’s life,” Chase said. “It’s part of you and me. I love you, Sophie.”
Chase’s mother stepped forward.
Ouida Mae intercepted her and whispered, “They were old enough to make a baby; they’re old enough to discuss options.”
Valentin loved that Ouida Mae wanted the young people to make their own...informed decisions.
“I don’t want to end up unemployable because I couldn’t afford the time or cost of getting a degree,” Sophie said. “I don’t want that for you, either. I’d like to speak with a counselor and get all the information before we make a decision.”
“Together,” they said simultaneously.
She smiled and brushed her thumb across his lip. “You will always be my first love, Chase Edouard.”
“I love you, Sophie, and always will,” he said.
“Now, let your mother take you to get that arm looked at. If I’m gone when you get out of the hospital, don’t worry, I will be back…” she said, “when I can return legally. I’m done running away. It’s time I faced my problems and my future with courage.”
Valentin’s heart swelled with pride for a girl who wasn’t his daughter, but he’d be proud to call her daughter any day of the week.
Ouida Mae slipped an arm around his waist and leaned into him. “I love that girl. I’m going to do everything in my power to be a part of her life.”
“If her mother releases her for adoption, I’d snap her up in a heartbeat.” Valentin chuckled. “And to think, I never thought I wanted children.”
“I always have,” Ouida Mae admitted. “But I’d hoped to start with a baby of my own.” She sighed. “Endometriosis might keep me from realizing that dream. I accept that, but I have so much love in my heart I would adopt or foster a great kid like Sophie in a heartbeat.”
Deputy Shelby Taylor walked toward them, clutching a hand to her swollen belly. “The ambulance is here. Anyone willing to share one with a woman in labor?” She doubled over, her face creased in pain. “Yup, that was a strong one. I just want to write up my report before I...” Again, she doubled over. “Screw the report. I’m taking that ambulance. Will someone notify my husband that I’m on my way to deliver his child? If he wants to remain married to me, he’d better get his—” Shelby doubled over, grunting like an animal.
Ouida Mae hurried over to her friend. “Shelby, get into the ambulance. I’m not qualified to deliver a baby. Besides, I need to get Valentin to the hospital for an alligator bite and gunshot wound. So, be a good girl and get in the ambulance.”
“I’m going,” Shelby said. With the help of a paramedic, the deputy climbed up into the back of the ambulance. The door closed, and Shelby was whisked away.
Another ambulance pulled into the marina parking lot. “Chase, Valentin, you’re up,” she called out.
“Ever consider a career as a drill instructor,” Valentin murmured as he passed her and let the paramedic help him into the back of the ambulance. He sat on a bench inside and held out his good arm to help Chase in and settle beside him.
The medical technicians got busy stabilizing the two patients and stowing their gear.
“Katherine and I will meet you two at the hospital in Baton Rouge,” Ouida Mae called out as they hurried to Katherine’s car.
Since they’d resolved the mystery of who had sabotaged Ouida Mae’s classroom and hurt Mr. Jones, and Mr. Edouard had been taken in for questioning for his involvement in drug trafficking through the bayou, Valentin’s services were no longer needed to protect Ouida Mae and the school.
The assignment was over. He had no reason to continue working there or to spend time with the pretty science teacher. He could go back to his work as a Brotherhood Protector, and Ms. Sutton could resume her position as the PE and Gifted and Talented teacher.
Or could he finish the semester with the students and then transition back to being a protector…?
A blur of movement caught Valentin’s attention as Remy raced up from the dock.
“Remy,” Valentin called out. “We need to talk.”
Remy blew past him, shouting, “Later, dude. My baby is having a wife!”