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Chapter 1
With the sun dipping over the treetops and dusk settling beneath the boughs of the cypress trees, Deputy Shelby Taylor checked her watch. It would be dark before long. She should be turning around and heading back to the town of Bayou Mambaloa.
Named after the bayou on the edge of which it perched, the town was Shelby’s home, where she’d been born and raised. But for a seven-year break, she’d lived in that small town all of her life.
So many young people left Bayou Mambaloa as soon as they turned eighteen. Many went to college or left for employment in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Houston or some other city. Good-paying jobs were scarce in Bayou Mambaloa unless you were a fishing guide or the owner of a bed and breakfast. The primary industries keeping the town alive were tourism and fishing.
Thankfully, between the two of them, there was enough work for the small town to thrive for at least nine months of the year. The three months of cooler weather gave the residents time to regroup, restock, paint and get ready for the busy part of the year.
As small as Bayou Mambaloa was, it had an inordinate amount of crime per capita. Thus necessitating a sheriff’s department and sheriff’s deputies, who worked the 911 dispatch calls, responding to everything from rogue alligators in residential pools to drug smuggling.
Shelby sighed. Having grown up on the bayou, she knew her way around on land and in the water.
Her father had always wanted a boy. When all her mother had produced was Shelby and her sister, he hadn’t let that slow him down. A fishing guide, her father had taken her out fishing nearly three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of the year, allowing her to steer whatever watercraft he had at the time—pirogues, canoes, bass boats, Jon boats and even an airboat.
Whenever a call came needing someone to get out on the bayou, her name was first on the list. She had to admit that she preferred patrolling in a boat versus in one of the SUVs in the department’s fleet. Still, there were so many tributaries, islands, twists and turns in the bayou that if smugglers hid there, they’d be hard to find, even for Shelby.
She’d been on the water since seven o’clock that morning after an anonymous caller had reported seeing two men on an airboat offloading several wooden crates onto an island in the bayou.
The report came on the heels of a heads-up from a Narcotics Detective with the Louisiana State Police’s Criminal Investigations Division.
An informant had said that a drug cartel had set up shop in or near Bayou Mambaloa. The parish Sheriff’s Department was to report anything they might find that was suspicious or indicative of drug running in their area.
Because the tip had been anonymous, Sheriff Bergeron had sent Shelby out to investigate and report her findings. She was not to engage, just mark the spot with her GPS and get that information back as soon as possible.
The caller had given a general location, which could have included any number of islands.
Shelby had circled at least ten islands during the day, walked the length of half of them and found nothing.
The only time she’d returned to Marcelle’s Marina had been to fill the boat’s gas tank and grab a sandwich and more water. At that time, she’d checked in with Sheriff Bergeron. He hadn’t had any more calls and hadn’t heard from CID. With nothing pressing going on elsewhere in the parish, he’d had Shelby continue her search.
Normally, any chance to get out of the patrol car and on the water was heaven for Shelby. Not that day. Oppressive, late summer heat bore down on her all day. With humidity at ninety-seven percent, she’d started sweating at eight in the morning, consumed a gallon of water and was completely drenched.
She wished it would go ahead and rain to wash away the stench of her perspiration. Maybe, in the process, the rain would lower the temperature to less than hell’s fiery inferno.
She passed a weathered fishing shack and sighed as she read the fading sign painted in blue letters—The Later Gator Fishing Hut. She released the throttle and let the skiff float slowly by.
A rush of memories flooded through her, bringing a sad smile to her lips. Less than a month ago, she’d spent a stormy night in that shack with a man she’d harbored a school-girl crush on for over twenty years.
She’d insisted it would only be a one-night stand they’d both walk away from with no regrets. She didn’t regret that night or making love to the man. It had been an amazing night, and the sex had been better than she’d ever dreamed it could be.
However, despite her reassurances to him, she’d come away with one regret.
It had only been one night.
She wanted more.
But that wasn’t to be. He’d gone on to the job waiting for him in Montana, never looking back. He’d left Bayou Mambaloa twenty years ago. His short visit hadn’t been enough to bring him back for good.
She hadn’t been enough to make him want to stay.
Shelby gave the motor a surge of gas, sending the skiff away from the hut, but her memories followed. Focusing on the waterway ahead, she tried to banish the man and the memories from her thoughts.
By the time she headed back to Marcelle’s Marina, the heat had taken its toll. She was tired, cranky and not at her best.
Shelby almost missed the airboat parked in an inlet half-hidden among the drooping boughs of a cypress tree. If movement out of the corner of her eye hadn’t caught her attention, she would have driven her boat past without noting the coordinates.
When she turned, she spotted two men climbing aboard an airboat filled with wooden crates.
