One

Alex met Agent Isabella Duet beneath the fluttering, green and white striped patio awning of Café du Monde. He hadn’t slept – none of their party had – and he was too gritty-eyed and loopy to experience more than a passing twinge of annoyance that she wasn’t alone.

Alex swayed to a stop next to the rail-side table and squinted – ouch – down at her. “Why’s he here?”

At her side, Carl Patterson crammed the last bite of a beignet into his mouth and glanced up at Alex skeptically, lips white with powdered sugar.

“He’s my partner.” Duet’s voice was clipped, as it had been over the phone an hour ago, when he called her from the hotel. Her blue eyes were cold and hard as marbles in the morning sunlight, fixed on him with the intensity of an agent, rather than a friend.

Alex should have been immune to that look, after spending the last twelve hours with Ava, but, somehow, he wasn’t. “Yeah, but this is…” He gestured vaguely.

“What?” she asked, all faux innocence. “Special circumstances? Illegal? If you want to talk to me, you can talk to Carl, too.”

Alex huffed, but was too tired and desperate to put up a fight. He dropped down into the chair across from her and took out his phone. When he’d pulled up the photo of Remy Ava had texted him, he placed it down on their side of the table, between their plates.

They traded sideways looks, and then leaned in together to peer down at the screen. After a beat, Duet frowned and reached to pull the phone closer. “This is your nephew?”

Alex had told Ava to be sure to text him a recent photo, to which she’d rolled her eyes and said, “No duh.” He wasn’t sure if she’d simply selected the most recent, or if she’d selected this one in particular for maximum, heartbreaking effect. In it, all three Lecuyer kids were lined up on a picnic bench – he’d spent enough time, by this point, at the clubhouse to know that was where it had been taken, though only a corner of gray siding gave away the location – with Remy in the middle between his brother and sister. A box of doughnuts sat open in front of them, and Cal had chocolate frosting on his nose. Ava must have told them to “squeeze in” before she snapped the pic, because the younger two were pressed in tight to Remy’s sides, so that he’d had to lift his arms to accommodate them. The little ones were beaming, Cal in a manic way, Millie with girly bashfulness. Remy’s smile was subdued by comparison, a little crooked, a lot shy, and the expression reminded Alex startlingly, painfully, of one of his own old school portraits, before he’d had braces and hadn’t wanted to flash his snaggled teeth. Alex’s chest had squeezed tight a few minutes ago, when he opened it, and he watched something similar, if more removed, happen on Duet’s face.

She lifted her head, brows notched together, lips downturned, and Alex nodded. “Yeah. That’s Remy. He’s eight. Tall for his age, about here.” He held his hand out beside the table in rough approximation. “His hair was a little on the long side the last I saw him a few days ago.” He nodded to the phone, where the kid was sporting a rather fantastic mullet, hair as black and slick and thick as his dad’s, as Colin’s, as Alex’s. “But, obviously, if Boyle’s trying to hide him, he’ll have cut it. Brown eyes. In Knoxville, he was pulling charms off a keychain and dropping them like breadcrumbs.”

Carl’s brows lifted. “Smart kid.”

“Yeah, he’s sharp. As far as eight-year-old kids go, I’d say he’s not super sheltered, and he’ll know to play it cool in this situation…but he’s also an eight-year-old kid, and Boyle’s a psychopath, so we need to find him as soon as possible.”

Duet chewed at her lip and looked back down at the phone a long moment. “Can you send this to me?”

“Yeah, of course.” Alex took his phone back and did so. There was a ding from somewhere near Duet’s jacket pocket.

A waitress happened past, an older woman of the sort who always paid Alex a little extra attention. Harmless flirting; usually flattering, annoying in his current state. “Hey, hon, getcha anything?” She cocked a hip and smiled.

“Uh, yeah. Café au Lait. And beignets, please.” He wanted about a gallon of strong dark roast, hold the damn chicory, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He managed to scrounge up a smile that felt rusty – he swore his cheeks creaked like unoiled hinges – and only then did she move on.

As he watched to make sure she was out of earshot, he caught a glimpse of the couple sitting three tables over. Ava was leaned back in her chair, legs crossed, arms folded, mouth a tight, flat line as she scanned the patio and the street beyond it. Across the table from her, Tenny was leaned forward, resting on his elbows, demolishing a plate of beignets like he was in an eating contest, and somehow not managing to spill powdered sugar all over his black hoodie.

Both of them had insisted on tailing him, to ensure Duet wasn’t followed, to search for any suspicious parties around them, and, probably, because neither of them were going to ever trust Alex.

He shook his head and turned back to his own table. A large hunk of grit broke loose from the corner of his eye and slid across it like the sharp scrape of a nail. He reached to rub at it, exhaustion bearing down on him like a freight train. The all-day travel, the lack of sleep, the constantly looking over all their shoulders, would have left him beat regardless, but the adrenaline crash of the shootout in the theater parking lot had left him feeling like he had the worst hangover known to man.

“Look,” he said, voice going rough, and impatient. “I know this isn’t your case, and you don’t owe me shit, but I’m just…” He let his hand thump down on the table, eye watering where the piece of grit was still lodged up under his upper lid. “This is a kid. Boyle’s – he’s fucking insane , and I don’t even know where to start–” He cut himself off when he realized his breathing had gone unsteady, and swallowed down the rest of what was fast becoming a desperate, embarrassing plea for help.

Across the table, both agents had gone still. Duet sat up straighter in her chair. She looked startled. “Alex–”

“We’re going to conduct our own search, and follow our own leads.”

“ We ?” she asked.

“Who’s we ?” Carl wanted to know.

Alex continued, “I don’t have my badge on me.” Ava still had it, somewhere. “I’m not here for your case. I don’t give two shits about those bodies in the swamp, and I won’t interfere with whatever you guys are still doing here. I only care about the kid. If you know anything that might help me find him, I’d really appreciate it.” He tried to make his face do beseeching, but didn’t think he succeeded.

They traded another glance, during which the waitress returned with Alex’s coffee and food. He nodded his thanks, too distracted to bother with anything flirtier, and heard the woman sniff to herself as she walked off. He picked up the coffee, drained half of it in two big gulps that singed his tongue, and wrinkled his nose at the taste of chicory.

Finally, Duet faced him again. “Alex, I’m sorry about your nephew. I really am.” She seemed sincere, but Alex sensed a but looming on the horizon. “But.” There it was. Fuck. “Kidnappings have to be reported to, and investigated by the proper channels.”

“Right.”

“You know that,” she chided. “Civilians don’t ever find missing children. If you have a credible belief that Boyle’s in New Orleans, you need to report Remy missing to the local police and–”

“Yeah. Okay.” He pushed his chair back, metal legs screeching over the brick.

“ Wait .” She lunged halfway across the table and slapped her hand down onto it, nearly overturning the second half of his coffee. “Alex, wait, listen to me,” she hissed, urgently.

He waited, hovering half out of his chair, hands gripping tight to its arms.

Her eyes were huge, her jaw tense. Slowly, quietly, she said, “You need. To go. To the local police .” Her brows lifted for emphasis.

An image flashed into his mind as though thrown there: Sergeant Dale Dandridge, hitching his gun belt higher on his thick waist, face flushed from walking, his gaze shifty as they stood on the dock outside The Bait Shop.

“Shit,” he murmured.

“Yeah.” Duet nodded. “Good luck.”

~*~

Ava and Tenny arrived a solid fifteen minutes before Alex was scheduled to meet his FBI contact so they’d have a chance to scope out the patio, and the street, and take note of anything suspicious before the supposedly trustworthy feds (what a fucking oxymoron) arrived. Their waitress thought they were a couple, and Tenny rolled with it, putting on a Southern drawl, making cow eyes across the table at Ava and spinning some unnecessary tale about them being on a second honeymoon.

(It was actually hilarious, but Ava was too preoccupied to play along.)

She searched every face for a sign of malice; every reach for a coffee cup for some hidden signal being sent. And then the feds arrived, and her attention laser-focused on them.

The man was closer to fifty than forty, heavyset, unremarkable in a way that screamed law enforcement.

The woman could have been Jenny Snow-O’Donnell’s sister.

“Of course,” Ava muttered under her breath as she watched them settle into a table. “Just of course .”

“What?” Tenny said around a mouthful of beignet.

“Her.” She tilted her head toward the table. “She looks like Colin’s wife.”

He glanced over, and then smirked.

“She’s probably gonna put all of us in cuffs, and all because Remy Lécuyer’s sons can’t say no to a leggy blonde.”

Tenny said, “Is this you admitting to dying your hair?”

She shot him the bird across the table and he laughed into his coffee.

“His stupid sons,” she amended, and he nodded along of course, of course .

Then Alex showed up, and she felt the quietest, weakest pang of sympathy for him. He looked dead on his feet, boots braced wide apart, wavering side-to-side as he arrived at the feds’ table and greeted them. He was tired – they were all tired – but worse than that, he wasn’t used to doing what he’d done last night. He’d almost shot a cop, and while the rest of them wouldn’t have hesitated to if it had been absolutely necessary, Alex was doubtless going through an identity crisis. A reevaluation of his own moral code.

She felt sorry for him, even if she couldn’t sympathize directly.

( Not true , an unhelpful voice piped up in the back of her mind; it sounded like her own voice, like her real one, when she wasn’t moored against the black tide of desperation. She’d questioned herself in college. Had changed her hair, and her wardrobe, and slept with a tennis-playing prep. A regret to mull over later.)

They were sitting too far away to hear what Alex said to the agents, but she saw him put the phone down and knew he was showing them the photo of Remy. The woman’s brows knitted as she looked at it, and her expression was one of what Ava gauged to be professional concern when she glanced back up at Alex.

“They’re not going to help,” Tenny said, and made a happy sound when his second plate of beignets arrived. “Thank you kindly,” he told the waitress.

“I know,” Ava said, in response to his first comment, and then frowned across the table at him. “What the hell are you doing? How many of those are you gonna eat?”

“I’m carb loading.” He stuffed the last bite into his mouth, too big, one cheek bulged out like a baseball player with a huge wad of chaw. Dusted powdered sugar off his fingers and lifted his brows as if in challenge. “I believe energy is going to be the order of the day.” But it came out muffled and soggy and Ava wrinkled her nose and turned away.

Over at the other table, Alex was poised to get up, and the blonde was leaning across the table, arm stretched across it, beseeching. From this angle, the tableau presented as one of two lovers, the man leaving, the woman begging him to stay. In her current state, Ava found herself disgusted by its melodrama.

She sipped at her water and wished it was coffee instead.

Alex’s expression – guarded, grooved with exhaustion – cleared, and he nodded, and stood, and headed for their table.

The blonde turned her head to watch his retreat, and her gaze collided with Ava’s. Ava wore shades, and knew her expression was closed-off besides, but the blonde’s was anything but, brow furrowing and lips compressing. Worry? Or jealousy?

“Good God,” Tenny said, mildly. “He’s walking right up to us. Clueless tit. ‘Oh, your cover? What’s that? I’ve blown it? Aw, jeez,’” he said in a startlingly good impersonation of Alex, the New Orleans accent sanded down by his professional life.

“You could do the late night circuit with that trick,” Ava said.

“You know, I really think I could,” he said in his own voice. “I’ve got the looks for it.”

“Hm.”

Alex arrived at their table, and he looked like shit: haggard, face drawn, eyes shadowed by exhaustion and the burnout of excess emotion.

“Anything useful?” Ava asked.

He took a breath, and hesitated.

“That’d be a no,” Tenny said.

Alex’s glare was halfhearted, and crumpled quickly. He wiped a hand down his face, and Tenny, in a rare stroke of sympathy, hooked a chair from the neighboring table with the toe of his boot and dragged it over.

Alex collapsed into it and sat forward, shoulders hunched, elbows on the table. When Tenny slid his coffee over, Alex accepted it with an absent bob of his head. After a sip, he said, “She can’t help us directly–”

“So this was a massive waste of time,” Ava sighed.

“No,” Alex snapped, and then shook his head, and sipped more coffee. “No,” he said, heavy and tired again. “I had to try. They worked the case down here with Boyle when I left, and there’s still a chance they might know something valuable. They’re cautious – as anyone would be in their position – and it’s not unlikely that they think I’m off my rocker. Any good agent would want to steer clear of this mess, so I think the fact that they want to speaks to their…” He gestured limply. “Lack of corruption. Whatever. But she reminded me that there is a cop in this city who’s a big fan of the Lean Dogs, and who doesn’t have so many pesky scruples when it comes to working off-book.”

Ava’s heart didn’t leap with hope – she was beyond that sort of feeling at the moment. But a little ping of interest sounded in the back of her head.

Alex’s posture slumped a little further, this time with relief, she thought, in response to whatever her face did. “Dale Dandridge. He likes Mercy. He’ll want to help.”

Tenny took his coffee back and drained it. “Right, then. You’re not going to see him alone, though.”

Alex frowned. “What?”

“You’re dead on your feet, and someone has to have his wits about him.”

Alex looked unimpressed.

“Don’t do Jeff from Spring City,” Ava suggested.