«Gifford!» Serena shouted, lunging toward him. He squeezed the trigger as she knocked him off balance. The shotgun bucked as another deafening explosion rent the air. Water sprayed up against the hull of the game warden's boat, dousing Burke and Davis with a rain of mud and shredded vegetation. The two men ducked, covering their heads with their arms, then came up swearing.
Burke pointed a warning finger at Gifford. «I've had it with you, Sheridan. You're a crazy old man. There's been plenty of witnesses to that. I can get the sheriff out here. You can't just go around shooting at people who want to do business with you.»
«Hell,» Gifford said, wading out into the water, his fierce gaze fixed on Burke. «I said a long time ago they ought to open season on Texans. This state wouldn't be in the mess it's in if we'd 'a kept you greedy sons of bitches on the other side of the border!»
Serena eyed the muddy water with distaste, a tremor of fear snaking down her spine. Then she looked at her grandfather's back as he advanced toward the game warden's boat and forced herself to take the first step in, her shoes sinking into the muddy bottom. She grabbed Gifford by a belt loop on his jeans and tried to pull him back toward shore.
Burke had turned hot pink; his eyes bugged out of his head as if someone had suddenly pulled his tie tight enough to cut off his wind. «Keep it up, Sheridan! Come on, say a few more lines like that one! They'll sound real good at your competency hearing!»
Gifford tried to launch himself toward the boat, but Lucky stepped in front of him and planted a hand on his chest.
«C'est assez. Go on up to the house, mon ami,» he said softly. «Go on.»
The old man stood for a moment, grinding his teeth, his weight on his forward foot, his big hands twisting on the shotgun. The only other sound was Beausoleil playing «J'ai Ete au Zydeco» on the portable radio with inappropriate joy.
«Gifford, please,» Serena whispered behind him, pressing her cheek to his broad back as her feet sank deeper into the goo.
«Come on, Giff,» Pepper said from the bank. «He ain't worth the trouble.»
Gifford snarled a curse, jerked around, and waded back to shore. With Pepper whispering and gesturing animatedly beside him, he headed for the cabin.
Lucky's gaze settled on Serena. She was up to her knees in the bayou. The color was draining from her face and her eyes looked huge as she stared at him.
«Foute ton quant d'ici,» he murmured. «Go on, chere, get away from here. I'll take care of this.»
She backed away slowly, grimacing as the mud sucked at her shoes.
Lucky turned and advanced on the boat, wading right up alongside it until he was waist-deep in the muddy water. «This is no way to do business, M'sieu Burke,» he said, his low, rough voice just above a whisper.
Burke leaned down, bracing his hands on the side of the boat, his gaze intent on Lucky s face. «You tell your friend to start cooperating, then, son,» the Texan said, also speaking softly, as if the weight of the subject required a tone of conspiracy. «My company has gone to a lot of trouble to choose that site, and they mean to have it.»
«Is that supposed to be a threat?»
«It's a fact, son.»
The words hit him wrong. Burke's tone, his voice, his accent, his air of command, all conspired against him in Lucky's mind. For a split second he was back in Central America taking orders from a big Texan who had sold him down the river, a lieutenant colonel who had been using his covert operations team to make himself a bundle. Lucky had uncovered the man for the traitor he was, but not before spending a year in hell. That all came back to him in a flash, and the reins of control slipped a little through his mental fingers.
«You know, there's a lotta things I'm not too sure of,» he said to Burke, a chilling smile curving his mouth. «But there's one thing I do know for certain.» In the blink of an eye the smile was gone. He grabbed the knot of Burke s tie and gave it a yank, pulling the man down toward him so they were nose to nose. «I'm not your son.»
The Tristar rep was over the side of the boat and diving headfirst into the bayou before he could register a protest. He landed in the water like a whale and came up spitting mud.
«You hadn't ought to lean over the side that way, mon ami,» Lucky said, wading casually toward the shore. «You might fall in. You fall in, there's no tellin' what might get you in this water.»
As if he had conjured it up by magic to illustrate his point, a water snake slid out of some reeds near the bank. Burke swore and scrambled to get back over the side of the boat. Davis helped him, grabbing him by the back of his pants and hauling him up, shouting at Lucky all the while.
«I mean it, Doucet! I've had it with you running roughshod! Your days out here are numbered.»
Lucky made a face and waved him off. Serena met him on the bank, glaring up at him. Color had come back into her cheeks, he noticed.
«Can't you show respect for anybody?» she asked sarcastically.
«Mais yeah,» he said flippantly. «My maman, my papa, the Pope. Len Burke ain't the Pope, sugar. I don't think he's even a good Catholic.» He gave her an infuriating indulgent look. Behind them the motor of the game warden's boat roared to life, then faded into the distance.
«That's it,» Serena declared, stopping in her tracks. She threw her hands up in a gesture of defeat. «I've had it. There's something about this place that drives people over the edge. I can't stand it. Gifford is going around shooting at people. You- You're-«She couldn't finish the sentence, she was so upset. She gave in to the urge to stamp her foot. It seemed she could control little or nothing out there-not the situation, not her fears or her passions or her temper, least of all her guide.
«This whole situation is just ridiculous,» she said, pacing a short stretch of bank, her arms crossed tightly against her. «Why didn't Shelby call me? Why didn't she just explain all this to me to begin with?»
«Gee,» Lucky said with mock innocence. «Could it be she didn't want you to know? Could it be she thought she might pull off the deal without having you know a thing about it until it was too late?»
Serena shot him a look from the corner of her eye. «Oh, for Pete's sake, you make it sound like a big conspiracy.»
«That's because it is a big conspiracy, sugar,» he said, leaning back against the trunk of a massive live oak. He shook a cigarette out of the pack from his shirt pocket and dangled it from his lip without lighting it.
«Don't be ridiculous,» Serena snapped. «You're trying to tell me Shelby is in league with the Tristar people to drive her own grandfather from his land?»
Lucky shrugged. «C'est bien. You got it in one. It's a sweet deal. She gets a nice fat commission on the sale and her inheritance besides. On top of that, she and the politically ambitious Mr. Talbot bring industry to a town with a depressed economy. There's nothing like a local hero in an election year, you know.»
Serena planted herself squarely in front of him, settling in for the argument. «You're way off base. In the first place, Mason doesn't have an ambitious bone in his body. If he were any more laid-back, someone would have him interred.»
«You heard your grandpapa, chere. The powers that be want Talbot in office. His daddy wants him in office. Shelby wants him in office. You think he's gonna tell all those people no? You think Shelby would let him?'
«You make my sister sound like Lady Macbeth. Shelby is hardly that calculating or devious.»
Lucky knew exactly how devious and calculating Shelby could be, but he didn't give voice to his own experiences. He used Serena's instead. «Isn't she? Are you forgetting what you told me last night? She left you out here alone. You could have been killed.»
«That was an accident, a joke that went wrong.»
«Was it?»
Serena dodged his steady gaze. He was dredging up old hurts inside her and they had no place here. Besides, no one had been more relieved than Shelby when Serena had been found after her ordeal. Her sister had wept at her hospital bedside and had begged her forgiveness… and she had thrown her fear of the swamp, the fear that had resulted from that incident, up in her face time and again since then.