Simon (Bayou Brotherhood Protectors #8)

Chapter 1

“It’s been a week and a half since Landry and Camille’s wedding, and Gisele hasn’t stopped talking about her cousin Holly.” Rafael Romero held the end of the jon boat steady.

Sinclaire Simon Savier, who preferred to go by Simon, not his callsign Sin, raised the face shield on his welder’s mask and lowered his torch. “Has Ms. Hazard had any more messages since her return to Bayou Mambaloa?”

Rafael shook his head. “Not so far. But then she’s only been back a short time. Whoever left the message on her mirror in Atlanta might not know she left.”

“Anyone who went to the trouble of writing a message on her mirror in her locked apartment most likely knows her every move.” Simon set the torch on the ground and pulled the hood over his head. “Where’s she staying?”

“She was staying at her grandmother’s place,” Rafael said. “It’s on an island in the bayou.”

Simon frowned. “Doesn’t that limit her ability to get a job?”

“Not if you have access to a jon boat or a pirogue. I doubt anyone would try anything as long as she’s with Bayou Mambaloa’s Voodoo Queen.”

“If they believe in that garbage.”

Rafael cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t believe in Voodoo?”

“No.” Simon turned away and set the welder’s hood on the worktable behind him.

“Don’t you believe in magic?” Rafael asked.

“No.” He’d learned that magic didn’t exist. Luck didn’t exist. What happened did so without the help of magic, curses or potions. He found it ridiculous and backward that so many people on the bayou believed in Voodoo.

Voodoo curses, gris-gris pouches and lucky rabbit’s feet didn’t affect the outcome of events.

His hand went to his pocket to feel the soft fur of Johnny Smallwood’s lucky rabbit’s foot. Memories flooded into Simon’s mind.

Bang!

Simon dropped to the dirt, his heart slamming hard against his chest, his ears ringing. Dust spread in a wave like fog, clouding his vision, filling his nostrils and choking his lungs.

“Sin? Johnny? Ringer? Mack? Talk to me,” La Blanc sounded in Simon’s ear as if from the end of a very long tunnel.

“Sin here,” Simon said, his own voice muffled in his numbed senses.

“Mack here,” his other teammate reported in.

“I can’t find Ringer,” La Blanc said, his voice tight, desperate. “Oh, Jesus.” Silence then, “I have Ringer. He’s hit. Hey, man, hang in there. We’ll get you out of here.”

Simon’s heart swelled into his throat at the hollow fear in La Banc’s tone. Ringer was La Blanc’s friend, his battle buddy. Like Johnny was Simon’s. They were all friends, teammates, members of Delta Force. They’d trained, fought and spent most of their lives together. They had each other’s backs.

“Johnny?” Simon choked out. “You hear me?” When his battle buddy didn’t respond, Simon crawled through the chunks of broken brick, searching for his friend, “Johnny!”

His hand touched something softer than the rubble of the destroyed building. A groan sounded, and a hand reached out in the haze to grasp his arm in a desperate, almost painful grip.

“Johnny. That you, buddy?” Simon coughed the dust from his throat and knelt in the rubble. “Talk to me, man. Are you hit?”

His friend’s hand squeezed his arm.

In the darkness, mired in the heavy dust filling the air, Simon ran his free hand over his teammate, searching for a wound.

When his fingers skimmed across Johnny’s midsection, he encountered something warm and wet.

A least one source of his friend’s injury.

He yanked off the olive-drab scarf he’d wrapped around his neck and pressed it into the bloody mess, applying pressure to slow the flow. “Stay with me, Johnny.”

“Not going...any...where,” Johnny croaked and gave a brief gurgling cough. “Dude,” he wheezed, “do me...a ...favor.”

“Anything,” Simon said. “You got it.”

“In my pocket.”

Simon leaned close to hear Johnny’s words, the ringing in his own ears making it difficult.

“What’s in your pocket?” Simon asked. “And don’t tell me it’s a banana,” he tried to joke, but the laughter wasn’t in him.

“Ha,” Johnny coughed. “Take it.”

“Take what?”

“Get it,” he said and coughed again.

Simon patted Johnny’s pants pocket on the left and didn’t feel anything. He did the same on the right pocket. Something was in there. Shoving his hand into the pocket, something soft brushed against his fingertip. In that moment, he knew what it was. He closed his hand around it and pulled it free.

The hand Johnny had on his arm slid down to where Simon held Johnny’s lucky rabbit’s foot. The idiot had carried it everywhere since he’d joined the Army.

“Keep it,” Johnny said. “It’s lucky.”

Simon shook his head, glad the darkness kept his friend from seeing the movement. How could his rabbit’s foot be lucky when it had allowed Johnny to be hit? The man was losing blood faster than Simon could staunch the flow.

“Yours now,” Johnny’s voice faded off. He drew in a rattling breath and let it out.

“Johnny, you need to keep it. It’s your lucky charm,” Simon said, pushing air past the knot in his throat.

Johnny’s fingers wrapped around Simon’s and the rabbit’s foot. “You need it...more,” he wheezed in a breath and let it out. “Lucky in battle.” His fingers tightened. “Lucky in...love.”

Though Simon could argue the luck in battle, he couldn’t argue Johnny’s luck in love.

The man had found a woman strong enough to handle his many absences whenever he was deployed.

A woman who’d stayed loyal and true to their love and union.

A woman who’d given him a son, managed their home and worked a fulltime job, never complaining that he wasn’t there every step of the way.

She loved him, and he loved her with all his heart.

Johnny’s body tensed, his hand on Simon’s tightening. “Keep it,” he said, his voice barely more than a raspy whisper.

“I’ll give it to Lacy,” Simon offered.

“No.” Johnny’s fingers tightened on Simon’s. “Yours... Keep...”

“Okay,” Simon said. “I’ll keep it.”

“Promise,” Johnny whispered, the sound swirling with the dust still floating in the air.

“I promise.” Simon maintained pressure on the wound with one hand while holding the rabbit’s foot in the other.

Several seconds ticked by. The silence was deafening.

“Johnny?” Simon’s fist curled around the lucky rabbit’s foot, his chest tightening painfully. “Don’t you leave me. You’re my wingman. I need you. Lacy and Tyler need you.”

“Tell Lacy...love her... love Ty...” Johnny’s voice faded with each word. His hand loosened and slipped off Simon’s.

Simon leaned close to his friend. “Johnny, stay with me, buddy.” This couldn’t be happening. They should be on their way back to their pickup point.

Fuck. He was losing his best friend.

Simon shook with the force of his emotions. He shook so violently he thought the explosion might have set off an earthquake.

“Simon?” A voice called to him as if from far away. A hand rested on his shoulder and shook him. “Hey, man, are you okay?”

Simon blinked his eyes open. Bright light surrounded him, not the dark haze of that Syrian night. Instead of being surrounded by rubble and choked by dust, he knelt on clean concrete, with bright sheets of aluminum stacked nearby.

The hand on his shoulder gently shook him again. “Simon, are you with me now?”

He looked into Rafael Romero’s dark brown eyes.

His brows formed a wedge over his nose as his gaze locked with Simon’s. “There you are.” His lips twisted in a wry grimace. “For a moment there, I thought I’d somehow hurt you when I lost my grip on the hull.” His frown eased.

Simon pinched the bridge of his nose, finding it difficult to pull himself out of Syria and back to...

“What...happened?” he asked.

“I dropped the hull of the boat we were working on. You’d have thought a bomb went off, the amount of noise it made.” The frown returned. “Is that it? Did the noise trigger you?”

Simon pushed the images, emotions and that sense of loss to the back of his mind, behind the wall he’d worked so hard to erect between the past and present. “I’m fine,” he said, his tone more abrupt than he’d intended.

Rafael held out a hand.

Simon took it reluctantly and let his teammate pull him to his feet.

“You were back in Syria, weren’t you?”

“No, I just lost my balance,” Simon lied.

Rafael laid an arm across his shoulder. “PTSD is real and nothing to be ashamed of. I still drop to the ground when I hear loud and unexpected noises. I still have nightmares about some of the hairier missions. I think we all do.”

Simon shrugged and stepped away, forcing Rafael’s arm to fall to his side. “I’m used to the nightmares,” he admitted. “It’s been a while since I’ve had one in the daytime.”

“That’s on me,” Rafael said. “Wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t dropped the hull.”

Footsteps scraped on the concrete floor and echoed throughout the cavernous area of the old boat factory that the Bayou Brotherhood Protectors had remodeled into their regional headquarters.

Remy Montagne, the leader of their band of brothers, stopped next to the jon boat hull they had been working on minutes before and nodded. “It’s looking good. Your welding has improved a lot since we reopened this place.”

Still wobbling internally, Simon gave a brief nod and muttered, “Thanks.”

Remy looked up from the boat at the two men. His brow furrowed briefly. “Something wrong?”

Simon shook his head. “No,” he answered, hoping Rafael wouldn’t tell the boss otherwise.

“Just finishing up,” Rafael said.

“When you reach a stopping point, join us at the Crawdad Hole. I have some protector work to assign.”

“Great.” Rafael bent to retrieve the welder’s mask from the floor. “We’ll be right behind you.”

Remy nodded. “See you there. Shelby gave me a pass for a couple of hours, but I’m not staying long. She’s had the day off and could use a break from chasing Jean-Luc around all day.”

“I can only imagine,” Rafael said. “He’s a very busy little guy.”