Bayou Pirates Read online

  Just as I was about to shut my eyes and call it a night, my phone began to buzz. I groaned and pulled it out of my pocket, not wanting to do any more work for the day.

  But my mood lightened when I saw that Alejandra García, the Dominican president’s daughter who had helped Holm and me take down the cartel in Haiti, was calling.

  I sat up quickly and answered the call.

  “Alejandra,” I said brightly. “It’s good to hear from you.”

  Alejandra and I had promised each other that we would be better about keeping in touch with one another after our last meeting. We first met when her brother, Miguel, had been kidnapped by the same drug cartel in an attempt to get to President García, and MBLIS had taken on the case. After that, we’d drifted in and out of touch until we reconnected in Haiti.

  “It’s wonderful to hear your voice, Ethan,” she gushed, and I filled with warmth at the sound of her voice. “But you sound tired. Things aren’t going that well in New Orleans?”

  Since she was so involved with the last leg of this case, I’d been keeping Alejandra in the loop on things since Holm and I had gotten back to Miami. I hadn’t updated her since we left for New Orleans, though. There hadn’t been any time. I realized that we had left just that morning and couldn’t believe it. It felt like days had passed already, somehow.

  “It’s going better now,” I told her. “But it was a… difficult afternoon.”

  I told her everything that had happened since our arrival, and she listened with bated breath.

  “Well,” she said when I finished, letting out a long breath as if she had been waiting to release it until I reached the end of my story. “It seems to me like things are trending upward. You caught that one guy, right? The one you and Holm impersonated in Haiti?”

  “Holm, yeah,” I confirmed. “And that is good. Barrett—he’s the detective we’re working with—is ecstatic about that. I guess he’s been trying to get this guy for a long time.”

  Holm and I had impersonated Daryl Williams and Clifton Beck briefly in order to infiltrate the cartel and try to get information on some of its members. It all ended with us being blown up, but it worked well enough for us to figure out how to take them down there.

  “And hopefully, he’ll be able to lead you to the other one,” Alejandra added hopefully.

  “I hope so,” I said with a low laugh. “But Barrett spent hours trying to crack him today in the hospital, and it was no help at all. He was either too loaded or too stubborn to participate.”

  “Well, you’ll get there,” Alejandra said reassuringly. “You always do. There’s no one better at this than you and Robbie.”

  I laughed at this, but I felt a swell of pride as well. She wasn’t exactly wrong. Holm and I did get results.

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. “So, how are things going down in your part of the world?”

  “That’s actually why I called,” Alejandra said, her tone suddenly darker.

  “And here I was thinking you just missed me,” I teased, smiling despite myself.

  “Don’t worry, I still wish you were down here with us still,” she assured me. “But I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  “Oh?” I asked, growing concerned now. “They’re not back, are they? The drug isn’t being distributed again in your country?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” Alejandra said quickly, and relief washed through me. “No, we’re still doing very well down here, with your lab techs’ help, of course. They’ve been invaluable to our doctors and are always so generous with their time.”

  Bonnie and Clyde had been very careful to stay in touch with the Dominican doctors and health department officials who needed them most, and they had sent over their tests for the drug as soon as they finished developing them.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said with a sigh of relief. “I was beginning to get worried. We have our hands full enough as it is here in New Orleans.”

  “I know you do,” Alejandra said, and I could hear hesitancy in her voice now, as if there was something that she didn’t want to tell me.

  “What is it?” I asked, leaning forward on the edge of my hotel bed and resting my elbows on my knees in anticipation of some more bad news. “You can tell me anything.”

  “I know, I know I can,” she said, and I could almost hear her biting her lip on the other line. “I just hate to add to your worries and to your workload.”

  “If it’s something I have to know, it’s something I have to know,” I assured her, feeling a sense of dread well within me, making the dinner of crawfish po’ boys Holm and I had enjoyed at a pop-up stand churn around in my stomach.

  “I suppose it is,” Alejandra sighed. “I hate to tell you this, but some of my father’s intelligence officials have it on good authority that Solomon is headed your way. Again, I really hate to add to your troubles, but I wanted to tell you as soon as I heard and deliver the news personally.”

  I groaned audibly and rubbed my forehead with my right hand, right over my injury from when Solomon blew up that ship.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I grumbled. “To New Orleans?”

  “That’s what they think,” Alejandra said, and I could hear the apprehension in her voice.

  “It’s okay, Alejandra,” I assured her. “It’s not your fault, and I’m glad you called to tell me, even if it’s not good news.”

  There was a brief moment of silence.

  “I’m just sorry that we couldn’t manage to stop him ourselves,” she finally blurted out. “We should have done better. We could have done better. We just were so focused on ourselves and the situation here in Santo Domingo that we didn’t keep our eyes on the ball as well as we should have, clearly.”

  “I don’t know that that’s true,” I argued. “You guys have your hands full down there, even more than we do up here. Mopping up after that mess the cartel handed you can’t have been an easy task.”

  “It hasn’t been,” Alejandra sighed. “I’m just sorry, is all.”

  “Yes, so am I,” I chuckled. “Though I can’t say I’m mad about having another opportunity to bring that guy in after he escaped us the last time. He’s the one that got away in my MBLIS career so far.”

  “I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” Alejandra laughed, and it really was a beautiful sound, having the effect of lifting my spirits almost immediately.

  “So, what makes your intelligence guys think this?” I asked, furrowing my brows together as I tried to work up a timeline of Solomon’s movements since he blew up the ship. “Were they ever able to locate him?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said, her tone darker now. “But we’ve been working closely with the Haitian authorities since you took down the cartel, and they’ve got a better handle on their own government now. And they managed to capture a few of the high-ranking guys in the cartel that got away the first time.”

  “So they squealed,” I finished for her. These gangbanger types always squealed in the end. They were always out for themselves, after all. That’s why they got into this business in the first place.

  “Like pigs,” Alejandra laughed. “It took some convincing, and the Haitians had to bring some of our guys in to help with the interrogation, but we got them to talk in the end. They said that Solomon fled to another ship right after he blew up the original one, and they think he’s headed for America.”

  “Why do they think that?” I asked. “Did he tell anyone where he was going?”

  “Not specifically, but he left some kind of cryptic note for his guys, I guess,” she clarified. “He didn’t see any of them before he fled—looking out for himself and no one else, of course.”

  “Of course,” I chuckled. “When the going got tough, and he saw that things were failing for him in Haiti, he had to get out, protect his own skin. Typical in his line of work, but especially typical of Solomon, from what he told Holm and me when he thought we were Williams and Beck.”

  It was true e
nough. Solomon had practically confessed to us that he got his guys to do all the dirty work for the cartel while he stayed behind, living it up on that ghost ship barking orders at everyone else. That’s why it made so little sense when he told us he killed Jake Wallace, the go-between for the cartel and the New Orleans gangbangers, himself.

  “So the note basically said that he was moving on to higher places, where he knew he could make himself some friends and rebuild the cartel,” Alejandra said. “The other gangbangers took that to mean New Orleans since it’s the only place they managed to get the zombie drug into circulation outside of the island.”

  The Dominican Republic and Haiti shared the island of Hispaniola and had a long history of troubled relations with one another, though based on what Alejandra was telling me, it sounded like things were getting better. If anyone could mend those fences, I knew it was her and her father. They had the skills and the wherewithal to do it.

  “Interesting,” I said. “That is kind of cryptic. And it doesn’t mean for sure that he’s coming here. But if he is, we’ll catch him this time. I promise you.”

  “I know you will, Ethan,” Alejandra said kindly. “And we’re so grateful for all of your help. We can take these guys down once and for all. We’re going to get there if we just keep working at it. I know it.”

  “I know it, too,” I told her. “And most of our work is already done. It’s just the last lingering branches that need to be cut off, and Solomon is the biggest one of them. We’ll deal with this, I promise.”

  “Thank you, Ethan,” Alejandra said gratefully. “And it really was good to hear from you again. I’ll let you go now, but do stay in touch and let me know how things go.”

  “I will,” I promised her, and she clicked away, leaving me to my warm bed and a much-needed night’s sleep.

  CHAPTER 18

  The next morning, I rolled out of bed sore from the previous day’s events but well-rested. I met Holm in the lobby downstairs to head to a breakfast of French pastries in the Quarter.

  After breakfast, we took a drive to the hospital where the victim who tested positive for the drug the previous morning was being treated, during which I told my partner about my conversation with Alejandra the previous evening.

  “Damn,” he said from the passenger’s seat, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve been holding out on me, Marston. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “I didn’t want to ruin your breakfast,” I chuckled as we rounded a corner. “I know how much you’ve been looking forward to the food down here.”

  Holm grinned and rubbed his stomach with a satisfied sigh.

  “Oh yes,” he confirmed. “And it lived well up to expectations.”

  I had to admit, he wasn’t wrong. There was a reason NOLA was known for its cuisine, and especially for its seafood and pastries. Our last two meals were some of the best I’d ever had. It seemed like you couldn’t walk three feet in this city without running into a world-class restaurant, even if it was a tiny hole-in-the-wall. Everything here was top notch.

  “Anyway, we’ll have to talk to Barrett about it, give him a description of Solomon,” I continued. “We don’t know for sure that he’s coming here, but if he is, we want to be ready for him this time.”

  Holm nodded in agreement as I pulled our rental car into an open space in the hospital parking lot.

  Barrett had left us a message earlier that morning that the doctors believed it would be alright for us to question the victim now. She was still in intensive care as a critical case, but she was apparently more cognizant now and spent some periods awake and semi-lucid.

  It would have to be good enough for us. If she could tell us anything about what had happened to her and where these people were hiding their stash of the zombie drug, that would go a long way toward helping our case. Nina didn’t have this kind of information yet, since the gang had just started trusting her with information on this new product.

  Holm and I met Barrett in the ICU, hanging back outside the woman’s room, which had its curtains drawn.

  “Have you seen her yet?” I asked the detective.

  “Only briefly,” he said, his lips set in a thin, troubled line. “She’s in rough shape.”

  I grimaced.

  “How rough?” Holm asked warily.

  “Enough that the nurses considered not even calling her family yet when she told them her name, since it might disturb them too much to see her,” Barrett said, shaking his head. “They did call them in the end, though. Just in case.”

  Barrett didn’t need to explain what he meant by this. No one wanted this girl to die alone, and they were afraid that was where things were headed.

  I shut my eyes tight and shook my head. All things considered, after what this girl had undoubtedly been through, maybe things would’ve been better for her if they just ended quickly.

  “Maybe they’ll figure something out,” I said, more to reassure myself than anyone else. “Clearly, she’s a fighter if she’s made it this far. She could still pull through.”

  Barrett nodded.

  “There’s always hope,” he said, though he didn’t sound all that hopeful.

  “We have a name now, then?” Holm asked. “Other than Jane Doe, I mean.”

  “Addison Cameron,” Barrett said. “Her folks are coming in from Georgia. Should be here later today.”

  I nodded.

  “Alright, let’s get this over with so they have their time with her, then,” I said, nodding in the direction of the shrouded hospital room. “Are they ready for us?”

  “The doctor was just in there,” Barrett said. “Give him a minute.”

  So we waited in agonizing silence until an older man in a white doctor’s coat came out. He came over to us immediately, a pained expression on his face.

  “I can’t hold off on sedating her much longer,” he said quietly when he reached us. “It’s not humane. You have twenty minutes.”

  “We understand,” Barrett said with a sigh. Then, to us when the doctor had gone, “I guess it’s even worse than I thought. Can’t say I’m all that surprised.”

  I clenched my fists at my sides and moved toward the hospital room door.

  “Alright, let’s hurry so she can have some peace,” I said, ushering for the other two to follow me.

  Barrett hesitated, as if he didn't want to go back inside, but did so in the end.

  I knocked on the door softly before I entered. A nurse called for me to come inside.

  “You’re the agents?” she asked us. Holm nodded. “I’ll wait just outside then. Call if anything beeps funny, or she asks for anything.”

  She then scurried out of the room to hang by the door, giving us some privacy for our interview.

  Looking at the girl, I understood why everyone was so concerned. Her face was blackened and swollen with bruises, and she looked like she could barely open her eyes. Her hands looked like they had been badly burned, and the rest of her was covered in bandages and wires. I could tell that she had been pretty before, with long, thick brown hair and fine features. I hoped that she would be again if she could get better.

  Her eyelids fluttered slightly when we came inside the room.

  “Hello, Addison,” I said quietly, moving over to the chair the nurse had left empty at her bedside, sitting down, and gently resting a hand on the woman’s covered shoulder. “My name is Ethan. And this is my friend, Robbie, and I think you already met George. We’re with the police. Is it okay if we ask you a couple of questions?”

  She made as if to nod slightly, and I squeezed her shoulder gently.

  “Thank you, Addison,” Barrett said, sitting down in a chair on the other side of her hospital bed. Holm propped himself on the windowsill, pulling the curtains shut behind him to keep the room dark for her comfort. “Can you tell us about the man who gave you the drug? Do you remember him at all?”

  “Not really,” she muttered, shaking her head slightly as her eyelids continued to flutter
between half open and shut. “I mean, I only really talked to him for a couple of minutes, and then he bought me a drink. He must’ve slipped something in it or gotten the bartender to do it, though I’m not sure when he would’ve had the opportunity.”

  She winced in pain, and I glanced up at her vitals on the monitor next to her, but they looked stable to me.

  “Where was this, exactly?” I asked gently. “Was it at a party? Do you remember?”

  “No, not a party,” she said, sounding a little surprised at this suggestion. “I was at a bar. The Lafitte bar.”

  “The pirate?” Holm asked, and it was our turn to be surprised. “Like the hotel?”

  “That bar is right next to the hotel,” Barrett confirmed. “It’s owned by the same people. A popular spot even for people who aren’t guests there.”

  “Were you there with someone?” I asked, turning back to Addison. “Or did you go alone?”

  “I was supposed to meet my friend, Sarah, but I showed up early,” she said, making as if to shake her head again. “He came over to me, seemed cute and charming enough. The next thing I remember was waking up in the back of his car, all beat up like this.”

  I exchanged a look with Holm and Barrett. That was some consolation, at least. She didn’t remember much of what happened to her. It was all traumatic enough without adding that to the mix.

  “Can you describe him for us?” Barrett asked, pulling that small notebook back out of his jacket pocket along with a small pencil to match.

  “Um, white, average height, dark hair, short but not too short,” Addison said, lowering her eyebrows as if she was concentrating hard. “Slender, but not too skinny. Brown eyes, I think. Maybe they were hazel. I can’t be sure.”

  “This is good, really good, Addison,” Barrett assured her as he scribbled all this down furiously on his notepad. “Any scars, tattoos, or other distinctive markings?”