Free Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) by Susannah Sandlin Page B

his jawline. He hadn’t talked about that night in almost three years. For six months before that, he’d done nothing but talk about it—to the department psychiatrist, to his mom, and then to Warren Doucet and the region’s captain up in Thibodaux, who wanted to make sure Gentry’s head was screwed on straight before he offered him the position in Region 6 that let Gentry come home. Until then, he hadn’t realized how badly he wanted to come back to the parish.
    “Lang was strung out that night.” Gentry spoke softly. “Really strung out. He’d been screwed up for a long time, but the drug use had gotten worse. That night, he had a gun and a nothing-to-lose attitude.”
    He and his LDWF partner had been doing what started as a routine boat check in bad weather, not expecting to find a haul of drugs in the small trawler. Lang had been on the aft deck, on guard over the fishing tanks full of drugs.
    “What went wrong?”
    “He tried to bluff me. He took aim at my partner, thinking I wouldn’t call his bluff. Lang was sure his baby brother wouldn’t shoot him.” In his nightmares, Gentry always saw the defiance on his brother’s face turn to shock when he saw the kid he’d always called Gent raise his weapon and fire without hesitation. “I put two bullets in him. I didn’t miss.”
    Jena nodded. “And he went over the back end of the boat?”
    The ship had been tossing like a kid’s toy in that maelstrom. “I don’t see how he could’ve survived with those wounds in those conditions. We were at the tail end of a tropical storm and the river was as rough as I’ve ever seen it.”
    Rough and wide and deep. The Mighty Mississippi had earned its nickname that night.
    “Well, you weren’t that close to Eva’s killer and he was wearing a hood. It’s probably just somebody who looks like your brother.” Jena fished her truck keys out of her pocket. “But yeah, I’ll get the digital files sent to me and send them to you on the down-low. But there are two things I want in return.”
    “Name them.” He appreciated not only her not being judgmental, but also the way she’d nudged him through his story without pushing.
    “Keep me in the loop, Gentry—no going rogue. Talk to the lieutenant. Tell Warren what you just told me. It’s probably got nothing to do with your brother, but on the off chance that it does, Warren needs to know. Let him make the call as to whether or not it goes to the region’s captain or the sheriff, but don’t let him get blindsided.”
    Damn it, she was right and he knew it. Warren deserved that consideration and more for taking a chance on the youngest son of his first partner, “Big Hank” Broussard. Warren was only in his midforties, but he had his shit together. He was no-nonsense but fair and, in his way, kind.
    Gentry took a deep breath of the heavy night air and watched the shrimp boat for a few moments. “Agreed. Let me look at the files, and I’ll talk to Warren.”
    He didn’t look forward to either one.
    Before heading back to Montegut and a pile of paperwork, Gentry decided to take a short jaunt west to Dulac. If somehow, by some miracle, Lang had survived that night, he would come back here, return to his old stomping grounds. It was possible that, even if he were alive and laying low around Dulac, he wouldn’t know Gentry was back in Terrebonne Parish. They had never run in the same circles. Just after Gentry graduated high school, Mom had moved to Shreveport with her second husband—Louis the accountant—and Gentry’s two stepsisters; he had few ties in Dulac from the old days. Four years older, Lang by then had been deeply immersed in his small-town gang, picking up day jobs on the shrimp boats to make ends meet.
    More than anything, though, when a person was hurt and needed to lick his wounds, he went home, or whatever passed for home. It was why Gentry had wanted the job in Terrebonne so badly. Lang would have the same instincts. He’d fallen in