Missing in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (3 page)

“We don’t know that,” Mildred said. She reached over to pick up the keys and dropped them herself. “Damn it!”

Jadyn grabbed the keys. “I’ll drive.”

“You have to work,” Maryse protested.

“It will wait.” She pulled some money from her jeans pocket and left it on the table, then ushered the two women out of the café. Jadyn didn’t know much about Raissa and Zach except that they were good friends of Maryse’s and Mildred’s. But if Luc insisted on a face-to-face, the situation couldn’t possibly be good.
 

As they climbed into Maryse’s truck, Jadyn said a quick prayer that whatever had happened, Maryse’s friends wouldn’t be hanging out with Helena anytime soon.

Chapter Two

Luc was standing in the emergency room lobby talking to Colt when they walked in. Jadyn felt her heart beat a little stronger when she saw the sheriff.
It must be bad if Colt is here
, she thought, trying to convince herself that her reaction to the man was because of the situation.

Maryse immediately ran over to Luc and he pulled his wife into a quick hug. Jadyn lagged back, uncomfortable being present in the midst of a private situation.

“Don’t just stand there,” Mildred whispered, “get over there and find out what’s going on.”

Jadyn shook her head. “Raissa isn’t my friend. I would be intruding.”

“But Maryse and I are your friends, and I’m afraid we might need someone to lean on later.”

Mildred grabbed Jadyn’s arm, giving her no choice but to walk over to where the others stood. As she and Mildred approached, she gave Colt a nod before looking at Luc, waiting for the news.

“I was working a job this morning,” Luc said, “and we came across Zach on the side of Old Mill Highway. He was unconscious and it looks like he was hit by a car.”

“His car was hit?” Maryse asked.

“No. We haven’t located his car yet. It appears as if he was struck while on foot.”

“And Raissa?”

Luc shook his head. “We found no sign of her, but the search-and-rescue dogs are on their way.”

“Maybe she wasn’t with him,” Maryse said. “Oh God! She probably doesn’t know what happened.”

 
“According to their handler at the FBI,” Luc said, “Raissa and Zach were on their way back to Mudbug last night. They left New Orleans around nine o’clock after wrapping up the case they’d been working the last couple of months.”

Jadyn’s pulse quickened. No one had ever told her that the couple worked for the FBI. And if they had a handler, that meant they worked undercover. That explained the heightened concern she’d felt as soon as she entered the hospital.
 

“You think the handler’s telling you the whole story?” Colt asked.

Luc shook his head. “I don’t know. He sounded as confused as we are, but even if he knows anything, he’s not about to tell me.”

Although it was frustrating, Jadyn understood the bureau’s policy. If Raissa and Zach were still on a case, it was likely that everything about and leading up to this incident would be confidential. “Any sign of their car?”

“Not yet.”
 

“No GPS?”

“No,” Luc said. “They were in Raissa’s personal vehicle.”

Colt frowned. “Was there any sign of a struggle?”

“It was impossible to tell if any hand-to-hand combat took place, but we found Zach’s pistol several feet away from him. The magazine was empty.”

“How many rounds?” Colt asked.

“Seventeen. We found all the casings on the highway.”

Jadyn’s heart dropped as Luc’s expression went from worried to grim. She knew he was running through all the possibilities that flooded her own mind, and like her, he hadn’t found a single one that was favorable for Raissa.
 

“Look,” Colt said, “this is all outside of my jurisdiction, and I assume the FBI will take lead anyway, but I’ll get in touch with them and see if I can get in the middle of it somehow.”

Luc nodded. “I appreciate it. They’re certainly not going to let DEA know anything.”

A doctor walked through the emergency room doors and over to Luc. “You brought in Mr. Blanchard?”

“Yes. How is he?”

“We’ve stabilized him, but his condition isn’t good. He sustained a couple of broken ribs and a broken femur. We set the leg but the bigger worry is the considerable swelling on his brain.”

“Oh no,” Maryse said. “How much damage?”

The doctor shook his head. “We have no way of knowing until he’s conscious. And we have no way of knowing when that might occur. Certainly not in the next several hours, but anytime after that…hours, days, weeks…we just don’t know.”

“So we wait,” Maryse said, “indefinitely?”

“No,” the doctor said. “When I spoke to the FBI agent who’s handling this case, he informed me that Mr. Blanchard left specific instructions concerning life support. If there’s no change in his condition within thirty days, we’ll remove him from support.”

Maryse’s eyes filled with tears and Mildred placed her arm around her and squeezed. “Can he survive without support?”

The doctor shook his head. “In his current condition, it’s highly unlikely, but if he improves in the next few days, he might be able to. However, there is always the possibility that he won’t regain consciousness.”

“Oh my God.” Maryse swayed a bit and Jadyn saw Mildred’s arm tighten on her shoulders to keep her steady.

“I’m sorry I don’t have better news,” the doctor said, “but I want you prepared for the worst-case scenario.”

“Of course,” Luc said. “Thank you.”

The doctor gave them a nod and left. Luc leaned over to kiss Maryse’s ear and whispered something to her that Jadyn couldn’t hear. She looked over at Colt, who inclined his head toward a vacant corner in the lobby. She backed away from the emotional scene and joined him in the corner.

“Trying to expand your jurisdiction?” Colt asked, but Jadyn could tell he was making an attempt to lighten the mood.

Jadyn shook her head. “I don’t think I want any part of whatever this is, but given that Maryse is my cousin and Raissa and Zach are important to her and Mildred, I wouldn’t stay out of it if I thought there was something I could do.”

“Good, because the FBI will run this investigation, and they probably won’t even give me information, much less let me participate. And without a local involved, I don’t know how far they’ll get, especially if they start questioning residents.”

Jadyn frowned. “So what do you want me to do? I have even less jurisdiction than you do.”

“Not necessarily.”

“How’s that?”

“Mill Highway runs right through the game preserve, and if I understood the location right from Luc, Zach was found in a protected section. That gives you the right to be in that area regardless of what the FBI wants.”

“I thought Luc said that search-and-rescue dogs were on the way. Those bloodhounds will be able to find her a lot quicker than me.”

Colt shook his head. “There’s a million channels back in that swamp. If she got in a boat…”

Jadyn blew out a breath. She’d been slowly exploring the swamps and drafting maps of the bayous and channels, but it was like a mass of spiderwebs. With a boat, you could quite literally go from Mudbug to Minnesota.

“So if we determine that she’s somewhere in the swamp, I can search for Raissa, and the FBI can’t stop me,” she said finally. “That would be more helpful if I had a clue about these swamps, but with my limited knowledge of the area, I won’t be of much use, and even though she’d normally be the best person to ask, I don’t think Maryse should take on such a task right now.”

“No, but you could hire a contractor—you know, a temporary employee to help you get things sorted out from the lapse when Mudbug didn’t have a game warden.”

“I see,” she said, starting to catch on to where Colt was headed. “And I don’t suppose you know of someone who’d be interested in such a temporary job?”

“It so happens that I have a bunch of accrued vacation. And I’ve been stomping around those swamps since I was a boy…”

Jadyn felt her pulse quicken. It was an ideal plan, except for the part where she was alone in the swamp all day with Colt Bertrand. Sure, they’d faced death together, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to completely relax around him.

It’s because you’re attracted to him and don’t like to admit it.

“Let me see what’s required as far as paperwork goes,” she said, brushing her thought aside. “I’ll give you a call later as soon as I figure it all out.”

“Great. Search-and-rescue will have the hounds out today. If Raissa is anywhere in the area, they’ll be able to track her unless she crossed water.”

“And if they drove off with her in the car?”

Colt locked his eyes on hers. “Then we’ve got an even bigger problem. This highway dead-ends in Mudbug, so if they were moving west, there’s only one place they were headed.”

“And if they went east, they could be anywhere.”

“Yeah. First thing we need to try to do is narrow things down. I’ll hit up the FBI search party and pitch my local knowledge—see if they’ll let me tag along. If they don’t find her, at least we’ll have a better idea of where to start looking.”

“Sounds good.”

“There’s a diner about thirty minutes down the highway from where Zach was found. It’s a long shot and the feds will probably be all over it today, but I might head over there tomorrow and see if anyone saw anything.”

“The day staff isn’t likely to be the same as the night.”

“Yeah, but they’ll know who the night staff were and where they live. I’ll give you a call tomorrow if you’re interested in going.”

“Okay.”

Luc motioned to Colt and he gave her a nod before heading back across the lobby. Jadyn’s mind worked to process all the information she had about Raissa’s disappearance, but no matter where she started, the result was never good for Raissa. The fact that they’d struck Zach with a vehicle and left him for dead told her they had no compunction about killing people.
 

Jadyn hoped Raissa had escaped somewhere in the swamp, but if she had, she was either still running or had collapsed somewhere. If Raissa had been abducted by the people who’d run down Zach, things were much worse. Statistics said if her abductors hadn’t killed her already, they would soon. Jadyn figured they had forty-eight hours—max—and that was only if the kidnappers thought Raissa had something they needed.
 

And if she didn’t, Jadyn hoped to God Raissa was creative enough to make it up.

###

Colt climbed into his truck and watched as Jadyn guided a distraught Mildred and Maryse to Maryse’s truck. Both women were pale and not even bothering to disguise their immense worry for Raissa. Jadyn glanced at him before slipping into the driver’s seat, her concern no less obvious but masked with a look of determination.
 

As they pulled out of the parking lot, Colt started his truck. He had no doubts about Jadyn’s determination to find Raissa. In the short time she’d been in Mudbug, she’d formed hard and fast bonds with Maryse and Mildred. No doubt, she’d do anything to protect those women and that included trying to save someone she’d never even met.

No, he wasn’t worried at all about her commitment to the investigation, but he did have doubts about her qualifications to set foot into something like this. Colt had seen sordid and dirty, and the recent happenings in Mudbug had made him seriously question his decision to return to his hometown. He’d thought leaving New Orleans would mean leaving all the worst of criminal offenses behind him, but he’d been wrong. Dead wrong.

But this—the potential kidnapping of a federal agent, attempting to murder another—this was a level of callousness and ego that he’d never believed could exist in such a small place, even after everything that had gone down weeks before. He squeezed the steering wheel, looking out at the sun rising over the line of cypress trees behind the hospital.
 

What was happening to his town?

He put his truck in drive and headed to the place where Luc had found Zach. With any luck, he wouldn’t run into agency politics, and they’d let him stick around.
 

Colt counted at least fifteen federal vehicles, including two K9 units, lining both sides of Mill Highway as he parked behind one of the vans. He stepped out onto the weedy side of the road and made his way down to where a group of men were gathered. One of the dog handlers was the first man he came upon.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked the handler.

“Special Agent Ross,” the handler replied and pointed to a man talking on the phone about twenty feet away.

“Thanks,” Colt said.

Ross finished his phone call right as Colt stepped in front of him. His rigid posture screamed former military and he eyed Colt up and down, as if mentally assessing his threat level.

“I’m Colt Bertrand, the local sheriff.” He extended his hand.

“Special Agent Thomas Ross,” Ross said and gave his hand a firm shake.