Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Gator
By the time I hung up on Romeo, every man in the bar was already moving.
All but one.
That was one of the benefits of having only six brothers instead of a clubhouse packed with assholes who needed somebody to explain the same thing three different ways.
Juju grabbed the keys to the boats. Worm shoved his laptop into a bag and disappeared toward the back room for the gear we kept locked up.
Donut abandoned his plate without complaint, which told me he understood exactly how serious this was, while Braveheart headed for the door and Thore finally stepped away from Angel.
Angel hadn’t moved.
He stood in the middle of my bar staring at me with a look that made it very clear our argument was over for one reason only.
Fiona was in trouble.
I pointed at him as I came around the bar. “Before you get any ideas, you listen to me. This is my bayou, and you don’t know where Romeo’s hidin’.”
Angel’s eyes narrowed. “You think I’m staying here?”
“Didn’t say that.” I grabbed my cut from the back of a chair and shrugged into it. “I said you listen to me out there. You go chargin’ through those trees because you finally got close to your girl, you could make shit worse.”
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t argue. That worried me more than if he’d threatened to tear my head off again. I’d known Angel a long damn time. Quiet usually meant somebody was about to have a very bad day.
Worm came back carrying two bags and tossed one toward Braveheart. “How many?”
“Rome found at least two sets of tracks,” I told him. “Heard movement from more than one direction and spotted a boat somebody tucked across the channel.”
Juju stopped near the door. “So at least two, probably more.”
“Yep.” I checked my weapon before sliding it beneath my cut. “And the whole damn swamp went quiet.”
That got every Bourbon King’s attention.
Angel looked between us. “Meaning?”
“The critters know us.” I headed for the door, and the others followed. “Romeo and Fiona have been out there almost two weeks. By now, the frogs probably sit beside them for breakfast. If everythin’ around that cabin suddenly crawled into a hole, it’s cause someone new walked in.”
Angel’s expression hardened.
We took two vehicles from the bar to the private landing instead of trying to ride seven motorcycles lined up somewhere like a fucking announcement.
Nobody talked much on the drive. There wasn’t anything worth saying yet.
Romeo knew someone was around the cabin.
He didn’t know who. And he didn’t know how many.
Until one of us laid eyes on the bastards, everything else was guesswork.
Angel sat beside me in the passenger seat, one hand resting against his thigh while he stared through the windshield.
I’d never seen him this still. The Angel I knew had always carried danger like some men carried a pocketknife.
Quiet, useful, and close enough to reach when necessary.
Steele used him as an enforcer for years because Angel didn’t need much convincing once he decided someone deserved what was coming.
Now his daughter was at the other end of the bayou.
That put an entirely different edge on him.
“You ain’t gonna like this,” I said as I turned onto the narrow road leading toward the landing.
His gaze shifted to me. “Probably not.”
“When we get there, you leave Fiona to Rome.”
Something cold moved across his face.
I kept going before he could interrupt. “You see her, you don’t run to her. You don’t grab her. You don’t decide this emergency means she suddenly gotta be ready for you.”
Angel stared at me long enough that I could almost hear him deciding which part of my face he wanted to break first.
“She’s my fucking daughter.”
“I know exactly who she is.” I tightened my hands on the wheel. “And she knows who you are. Ain’t the same thing yet.”
His attention returned to the windshield. “I’m not gonna scare her.”
“That wasn’t a promise.”
“It’s the only thing you’re getting.”
I almost smiled. “Figured.”
We reached the landing a few minutes later.
Juju and Braveheart had the first boat in the water before I finished parking, while Worm checked the second and Donut loaded our gear.
We weren’t taking the direct channel. Whoever found Romeo might know enough to watch it, and there was no reason to announce ourselves with seven men coming straight up the middle.
I divided us between the two boats. Juju took Worm and Donut through the western cut, where they could circle behind the cabin.
Braveheart came with me, Thore, and Angel through a narrower channel that would put us farther south.
Nobody questioned the split. My brothers had been running these waters together too long to need a speech.
Angel climbed in behind Thore.
I pointed at him once. “You fall overboard, I’m not turnin’ around.”
“Drive the fucking boat, Crawley.”
“There he is.”
Thore snorted as I pushed us away from the dock.
The farther we went, the less New Orleans existed. Houses disappeared first, then docks, then every sign that anybody had ever decided civilization was a good idea. Cypress trees closed around the channel, their roots rising from black water while Spanish moss shifted overhead in the weak breeze.
We cut the motor well before the cabin.
Braveheart took the paddle without being asked, guiding us the last stretch while I listened.
Romeo was right.
Silence in the bayou was never a good thing.
I’d grown up with those sounds around me. Even when you couldn’t see the wildlife, you heard it. Frogs, insects, birds, fish and gators breaking the surface. The bayou was quiet; it was never fucking silent.
This stretch was.
Thore noticed it too. His eyes moved toward the trees before meeting mine.
Angel leaned forward slightly. “They still here?”
“Somethin’ is.”
We tucked the boat beneath hanging branches and stepped into shallow water one at a time. Angel moved like a man who’d spent most of his life expecting violence, which made me slightly less worried about bringing him along. Slightly.
I checked my phone.
Juju: IN POSITION.
Good.
We moved inland.
Romeo’s cabin sat farther ahead through the trees, mostly hidden from where we approached. I could see a corner of the roof and part of the porch through gaps in the brush, but nothing moved around it.
Then Braveheart touched my shoulder and pointed.
A man crouched behind a fallen tree twenty yards ahead, his attention fixed on the cabin.
And he was armed.
That answered one question.
He wasn’t lost.
I held up two fingers and pointed right. Thore moved in that direction with Braveheart, while Angel stayed beside me. I didn’t need to tell either Bourbon King what I wanted. We’d done enough ugly shit together to understand one another without announcing it to everybody in the swamp.
The man never saw Thore come around behind him.
One second, he was watching Romeo’s cabin. The next, Thore had him on the ground with Braveheart helping keep him quiet. It was over fast enough that the silence around us never really changed.
Angel looked down at the dead man.
“One,” I said, as I sent a text to the others.
“Rome found at least two,” Braveheart reminded us.
“There’ll be more.”
“Probably.”
We kept moving.
The next one was farther north, positioned where he could see part of the porch and the water. Juju reached him before we did. There was movement through the brush, then the man disappeared backward so quickly it almost looked like the bayou swallowed him.
A few seconds later my phone buzzed once.
Juju: TWO.
I almost felt sorry for the stupid bastards.
Almost.
They had walked into a swamp where Rome and I, together with my men, spent most of our lives learning every channel, trail, patch of high ground, and place some dumbass from outside Louisiana thought made a good hiding spot.
That was their mistake.
The third man caused more trouble.
He moved.
Not toward the cabin. Away from his position, cutting through the trees toward the water like he had finally realized something had changed around him. Braveheart saw him first and shifted to intercept. The man heard something, turned, and reached beneath his jacket.
Angel was on him before I could move.
One second, there were several yards between them. The next, Angel hit him hard enough to drive both of them into the side of a tree. The weapon fell into the leaves, and Angel pushed one forearm against the man’s throat and held him there while the bastard clawed uselessly at his arm.
“Angel,” I hissed.
His head turned slightly.
“Need him breathin’ long enough to answer questions.”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure that mattered to him. Then he released enough pressure that the man sucked in air.
I stepped closer. “How many?”
The man looked between us and said nothing.
Angel smiled.
It wasn’t friendly.
“Wrong choice,” I said, shaking my head. I caught Angel’s shoulder before he could demonstrate exactly why. “Later.”
His eyes stayed on the man for another second before he shoved him toward Braveheart. “Three.”
My phone buzzed again.
Juju: THREE.
I frowned, typing back to let him know we had number four.
Four men.
Could have been all of them?
Didn’t feel like it.
We moved closer to the cabin and finally got a clear view of the hidden boat Romeo had mentioned. Bigger than I expected. Plenty of room for several men. Whoever brought it in had known enough to keep it out of sight from the main channel.
Thore crouched beside me behind a cluster of cypress knees. “Four accounted for.”
“Yeah.”
Angel looked toward the cabin.
Nobody had fired a shot.
That bothered me.
They’d been here long enough to get men into position around Romeo. If killing everybody inside was the goal, they could have tried already.
I studied the cabin through the trees. “They’ve had plenty of time to light that place up.”
“They don’t want her dead,” Angel said.
I looked at him.
His gaze never left the cabin.
“They want her alive.” He answered a question no one asked.
“St. James is running out of heirs. If she found the information Carly found—and it’s clear she found something if she sent someone after her—then she thinks Kaitlyn is her great-niece.
” Angel glanced at me before turning his eyes back to cabin.
“She wants to groom her to run the Society.”
There was no hesitation in his voice.
“Then Romeo’s the obstacle,” I said.
Angel’s jaw hardened. “Yeah.”
Which meant these men were likely waiting for a chance to separate him from Fiona.
Or waiting for whoever gave the orders.
I looked toward Thore. “We got four.”
He understood immediately. “You think there’s another.”
“I think nobody brings four men into somebody else’s territory and then sits around waitin’ unless there’s a motherfucker givin’ orders.”
Angel was already moving.
I grabbed the back of his cut.
He spun on me fast enough that I nearly earned the punch we had postponed at the bar.
“Let go.”
“We don’t know where the fifth man is.”
“My daughter is in that cabin,” he hissed.
“And Romeo’s still alive, which means whoever’s left ain’t made his move yet.”
Angel stepped into me. “You don’t know that.”
“No. But I know if you charge through that fuckin’ clearin’ and somebody’s watchin’, you just told him exactly where to fuckin’ aim.”
That stopped him.
Barely.
I released his cut.
My phone vibrated again.
Worm: NO FIFTH ON NORTH SIDE.
I looked toward the southern tree line.
Nothing.
Too much nothing.
Thore shifted beside me. “Could be closer to the house.”
“Yep.”
Angel’s eyes moved over every window. “Or already inside.”
The thought settled heavily between us.
I reached for my phone, intending to call Romeo, when a sharp sound came from the cabin that sounded like glass breaking.
Every man around me froze.
Then Fiona screamed.
Angel moved before I could grab him.
“Angel!”
He didn’t look back.
Thore started after him, and I was already moving too because whatever careful plan we’d brought into the swamp had just gone straight to hell.
Angel hit the clearing at a dead run.
And this time, I didn’t try to stop him.