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“I do.” She distanced herself from Gabe only long enough to find her burner. “I don’t have her number, but I do have Antoine’s. Someone’s going to have to get her from Burke’s place if she’s able to legally represent us. I don’t know if she’s licensed to practice in Louisiana, or if that was just theater the day she took the dollar to represent Xavier.”
“Which was only Tuesday,” Gabe said glumly. “Feels like a year ago.”
She patted his thigh. “Don’t get discouraged, Gabe. We’re figuring stuff out.”
He sighed. “Not fast enough.”
Bayou Gauche, Louisiana
THURSDAY, JULY 28, 9:00 A.M.
“No.” Cicely turned on her heel and walked into Burke’s kitchen, a woman on a mission.
A mission to avoid her son, who was just about going out of his damn mind.
Xavier looked at Antoine, who’d arrived in a boat to escort Willa Mae to the police station where both Molly and Gabe had been detained. While I sit here doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing. “Come on, man. Take me with you. I need to help.”
Antoine gave him a look of sympathy. “I get it, but I’m with your mom on this one. At this point, you are too valuable a witness to lose. You are not safe out there. I’m sorry.”
Xavier crossed his arms over his chest, fighting the urge to pout. “I was five years old when I saw Nadia Hall murdered. Nobody’s gonna take my word for it anyway.”
“You’d be surprised,” Willa Mae said, pausing in the hallway. She wore a suit. And heels. And pearls.
“You look nice, ma’am,” Xavier told her. “Very lawyerly.”
She snorted. “I should. I was a lawyer for more years than you’ve been alive.”
“How did you know to bring a suit, Miss Willa Mae?” Carlos asked. “We just ran from town with the clothes on our backs.”
“Yeah,” Manny chimed in. “Are you clairvoyant or something?”
Willa Mae gave them a fond smile. “No, although I wish I were. I just figured that you boys might need an attorney after the fine mess y’all’ve gotten yourselves into.”
Xavier’s brows shot up. “We didn’t get ourselves into any—” He cut himself off when he saw the sparkle in the older woman’s eyes. “You’re just messin’ with me.”
“Only a little. Now, you listen to an old lady. Your mother needs you. She needs you alive, she needs you whole, and she needs you to sit with her and hold her hand. I know you feel like you need to do something. At this point, that’s what you can do. You can help your poor mama get through this. She’s keeping a stiff upper lip, but she is falling apart inside.” She gave his cheek an affectionate pat. “Be the man that I know you are and take care of your mother. Stop this feeling sorry for yourself. Not that you don’t have a right to,” she added. “But it isn’t going to help you or the woman sitting at Burke’s kitchen table trying her best not to cry.”
Xavier bowed his head for a moment before nodding because Willa Mae was right. “Yes, ma’am. But please let us know what’s happening.”
“Kid, you know everything we do,” Antoine said. “That Lott’s impersonator is Nicholas Tobin, that the grand fromage was Mule, and that some dude in a hoodie offed him, then ran.”
“Grand fromage?” Manny asked.
“Big cheese,” Willa Mae supplied, and Manny laughed while Xavier shook his head.
“And the dude in the hoodie was feeding a body to the gators,” Carlos inserted helpfully. “You can’t forget that part.”
“I was trying to,” Antoine said with a grimace. “This is why I’m not a cop. I don’t have the stomach for such things. You ready, ma’am?”
“I am, indeed. I’m leaving, Cicely,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll call you when I know something. For now, don’t worry. They’re just being interviewed. André said that Gabe has video evidence that they didn’t have any part in this morning’s murder.”
“This morning’s murder,” Xavier said with a sigh. “Now we’re labeling the murders to keep track. I don’t even know how many there’ve been.”
“I know,” Carlos said. “I’ve been keeping a list.”
“Of course you have,” Xavier muttered. “So? How many?”
Carlos took out his phone and counted. “Fifteen, starting way back at the beginning. Nadia Hall, Rocky, Dr. Benson, and Paul Lott. Then the guy who you shot, Xavier, but who somebody else—who was not you—actually killed. Eckert the hit man, the pathologist, the mortician, the three guards who attacked Molly’s family, the two that Val took out, the lady who pretended to be Nadia’s sister, and Mule. Fifteen.”
