Chapter 1: Barnyard Hostage: A Texan's Worst Morning
The air in New Orleans was thick enough to chew, a stew of river damp, stale beer, and perfume from tourists who’d spent too much. Carter and I were parked in the crumbling lot of the Flambeau Royale, which was a fancy name for a dump that smelled like despair and industrial cleaner. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel of my pickup.
“You see him?” Carter asked, leaning so far forward his forehead almost touched the windshield. At twenty, he still had that puppy-dog eagerness that made me want to protect him and shake him at the same time.
“I see a lot of sad people losing their Social Security checks. Tommy’s not one of them.” I drummed my fingers. Our friend had vanished three days ago after a text about a “sure-thing” poker game here. Tommy’s sure things usually had the certainty of a screen door in a hurricane.
“We can’t just sit here.”
“We’re not.” I killed the engine. “We’re going in. But you stick to me like ugly on an ape, understand? We ask a few questions, look around, and leave. This isn’t a John Wayne movie.”
“You’re the one who brought the stun gun,” he muttered.
“It’s for inspirational speaking. Come on.”
The casino floor was a sensory assault. The relentless ching-ching-ching of slots, the clatter of chips, the low murmur of losers. The carpet was a violent pattern meant to hide stains, and the air conditioning was cranked to arctic, probably to keep the suckers awake. We moved through the maze, trying not to look like two rubes from a Texas dairy farm who were wildly out of their depth. My boots stuck to the floor with every step.
A bored-looking bartender pointed us toward a back hallway when Carter showed him a picture of Tommy on his phone. “Private game.That way. But you don’t wanna go back there.”
We wanted to go back there.
The hallway was quieter, lit by flickering fluorescents. The noise from the casino became a dull throb. A large man in a suit that strained at the shoulders stood in front of a plain black door. He didn’t look like a welcoming committee.
“You’re lost,” he stated. His voice was like gravel in a coffee grinder.
“Looking for our friend. Tommy Gerrity. He’s about yay high, bad mustache, worse judgment.” I kept my tone light, my posture loose.
“Don’t know him. Floor’s back that way.”
Carter, God love him, took a step forward. “We just need to know if he’s okay.”
It happened fast. The guard’s hand went to Carter’s chest. I saw red. My Texas wasn’t just an accent.
I didn’t use the stun gun. I drove my heel down onto the instep of the guard’s polished shoe, hard. He grunted, his grip on Carter loosening for a split second. That was all I needed. I shoved Carter toward the door handle. “Open it!”
Chaos. The door swung inward. The room was a small, smoky office, not a card game. And there he was.Tommy. Or at least, Tommy’s clothes. He was slumped in a chair, out cold, and someone had put a rough canvas sack over his head. Like a damn prize hog.
Another man, wiry and quick, lunged from behind a desk. Carter, panicking, grabbed a ceramic lamp and brought it down on the guy’s shoulder. It shattered. The wiry man howled. The big guard was recovering, turning on me with a snarl.
“Get him!” I yelled at Carter, pointing to Tommy’s limp form.
Carter ducked under the guard’s swinging arm and heaved Tommy up in a fireman’s carry. I kicked a rolling chair into the big man’s path, grabbed Carter by the back of his shirt, and hauled us all backward into the hall.
We ran. A clumsy, desperate sprint through the service corridors, following exit signs, Tommy a dead weight on Carter’s back. We burst out into the alley behind the casino, the humid night air hitting us like a wet towel. My truck was a block away. Every second felt stretched thin, expecting shouts, hands, bullets.
We made it. Carter dumped Tommy into the truck bed, but I swore and yanked him back out. “Not the bed, you idiot! The trunk! Less visible!”
We manhandled the unconscious, sack-headed form into the trunk of my sedan, which I’d brought for exactly this unlikely scenario. Carter slammed the lid shut. I peeled out of the parking spot, leaving a little rubber on the pavement, my heart hammering a rhythm against my ribs.
We didn’t speak for forty miles. Just drove, checking the mirrors for phantom headlights. The adrenaline began to sour into a shaky nausea. We crossed into Mississippi before I dared to pull into a rest stop, one of those empty, overlit concrete zones between nowhere and elsewhere.
I killed the engine. The silence was absolute. Then, from the back of the car, came a solid thump.
Carter and I froze, staring at each other.
Thump. THUMP.
Then, a voice, muffled by the trunk lid and the sack, but blisteringly clear in its fury. It was not Tommy’s East Texas drawl.
“Putain de merde! Ouvrez cette porte! Je vais vous arracher les yeux et vous faire les avaler!”
More banging. Aggressive, rhythmic cursing. In French.
Carter’s face was pale under the rest stop lights. “Bree,” he whispered. “When did Tommy learn French?”
My mouth went dry. “He didn’t.”
We sat there for another thirty seconds, listening to the stream of foreign profanity and the violent bangs that made the whole car rock slightly. There was nothing for it. We had to look.
We got out, moving slowly to the rear of the car like we were approaching a live bomb. I fitted the key into the trunk lock, my hand unsteady.
“On three,” I breathed. “One… two…”
I turned the key. The latch popped with a sound like a gunshot in the quiet night.
The trunk lid sprang up. In the yellow glow of the overhead light, the figure was writhing, knees drawn up, hands bound in front with a zip-tie. The canvas sack still obscured his head. He went still the moment the cold air hit him.
Carter reached in, his fingers fumbling at the knotted cord at the neck of the sack. He gave me one last wide-eyed look.
We counted down again, mouths forming the silent words.Three. Two.One.
Carter yanked the sack off.
It wasn’t Tommy.
The man blinked against the sudden light, his piercing blue eyes sharp with fury and disorientation. He had dark, disheveled hair, a strong jaw dusted with stubble, and a presence that filled the cramped trunk space. He was dressed in a tailored shirt that was now badly wrinkled, and his expensive watch glinted on his wrist above the plastic binding it. He looked sophisticated, dangerous, and utterly, completely livid.
He took us in—my wild red hair, Carter’s terrified expression, the Mississippi rest stop stretching behind us. His gaze settled on me, and the anger in his eyes cooled into something else: acute, unnerving calculation.
He arched one dark brow. His voice, when he spoke, was a low, smooth baritone, the French accent laying softly over the English words. “I assume there has been a… monumental error.”
The man in the trunk squinted against the harsh rest stop light, his bound wrists resting on his knees. That initial calculation in his eyes hardened into something sharper, more demanding. The charming accent was still there, but the warmth was gone, replaced by a glacial chill.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice low. “And why am I in the trunk of a… Chevrolet?”
“Our friend Tommy,” I said, the words sticking in my dry throat. “We were looking for our friend. They put a sack on his head. We took who we thought was him. Looks like we got the wrong sack.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Evidently.” He shifted, his expensive shoes scraping against the trunk liner. “Untie me. Now.”
Carter took a half-step back. I held my ground. “Not until we know who you are and why someone wanted to sack your head.”
He let out a short, humorless laugh. “My name is irrelevant. What is relevant is the considerable discomfort you will experience if you do not release me immediately.” He said it calmly, like he was discussing the weather. It made the threat worse.
Then it clicked. The accent, the tailored clothes even in ruin, the cold authority. News fragments, snippets from true crime podcasts Carter listened to while milking. A name whispered in connection with the New Orleans ports, with high-stakes gambling, with things that happened in quiet rooms.
“You’re Jean-Luc,” I breathed.
His blue eyes locked onto mine, and a slow, predatory smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Ah. You have heard of me. Then you understand. Untie me, and I will be… marginally less displeased.”
Carter sucked in a breath. I felt the blood drain from my own face. Jean-Luc wasn’t just a name; he was a cautionary tale. A story that ended with people floating in the bayou.
Fear is a funny thing. It can freeze you, or it can make you move faster than you ever thought possible. Mine did the latter. My fingers fumbled for the utility knife in my pocket. I flicked it open and, before the logic of sheer terror could stop me, sawed through the zip-tie binding his wrists.
The moment his hands were free, he moved. It was a fluid, violent uncoiling. He didn’t punch or kick; he simply launched himself out of the trunk, shoving past Carter so hard my brother stumbled into the side of the car. Jean-Luc hit the asphalt, rolled to his feet with a dancer’s grace, and was running. Not toward the dark fields, but toward the empty interstate onJK\-ramp, his figure getting smaller under the pale moon.
“Get in!” I screamed at Carter, already diving for the driver’s seat. My hands shook as I turned the key. The engine roared to life. I threw the car into drive, my tires squealing as I pulled a hard U-turn, pointing us back toward the highway.
We could see him ahead, a lone figure in a ruined dress shirt, standing at the edge of the asphalt, one arm raised. Not waving for help—commanding it. Like he expected a car to materialize for him.
He glanced over his shoulder, saw my sedan bearing down on him, and his expression shifted. The rage was still there, but now mixed with a dawning, furious realization of his predicament. Miles of swamp and pinewoods stretched in every direction. The only light came from our headlights.
I hit the gas, intending to speed past him. He did the unexpected. He stepped directly into our path, his hands raised, palms out. I slammed on the brakes. We skidded to a stop, the bumper just a few feet from his knees. He didn’t flinch.
He walked around to my window. I didn’t roll it down more than an inch.
“You are leaving me here,” he stated, his breath fogging the glass.
“You tried to run,” I shot back.
“You kidnapped me!”
“By accident!”
He leaned closer, his voice a low rasp through the crack. “Take me to the nearest town. I will forget this. I will make it worth your while.”
“No,” Carter said from the passenger seat, his voice trembling but firm.
Jean-Luc’s eyes flicked to him, then back to me. The persuasion dropped. The threat returned, whispered through the glass. “If you leave me here, the men who put that sack on my head will find me. And when they do, my first call will be to describe the two Texans in a blue Chevrolet who assisted me. You will be the only loose ends they know about. How long do you think you will last?”
A cold knot tightened in my stomach. He was right. We were in it now.
“We just want our friend,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
He saw the crack in my armor. His gaze intensified. “Tommy. The man you came for. The one with the… unfortunate mustache.”
My heart stopped. “You know him?”
“I know where he is,” Jean-Luc said. The sentence hung in the humid air, the only thing of value in this whole damned night.
I looked at Carter. His face was pale, his eyes wide. He gave me the smallest nod. We were already drowning. This man, this monster, was the only rope in sight, even if it was covered in thorns.
I hit the door lock button. The click echoed in the car. Jean-Luc opened the back door and slid in, filling the space with a wave of tension and expensive cologne mixed with sweat.
I pulled back onto the road, the silence thick enough to choke on.
“Where are we going?” Jean-Luc asked after a few miles, his voice now calm, conversational, as if we were on a road trip.
“Home,” I said, my eyes fixed on the yellow lines. “Texas.”
The casual demeanor evaporated. He lunged forward, his hands gripping the headrest of my seat. “Texas? No. You will turn around. Take me to Baton Rouge. Now.”
“We’re not going back there,” Carter said, his voice gaining strength. “Those men are probably all over the place looking for you… and us.”
“Then drop me at the next city. Any city.” Jean-Luc’s command was edged with panic. It was the first real, uncalculated emotion I’d heard from him.
“We have to get off the road. Get somewhere we can think,” I argued, pressing the accelerator harder. The sign said Texas was still a long, long way away.
“You are fools,” he hissed. Then he made his move. His arm shot between the seats, his hand grabbing for the steering wheel. “Give me the wheel!”
The car swerved. I fought for control, one hand on the wheel, the other shoving back against him. “Carter!”
I didn’t need to say more. From the corner of my eye, I saw Carter move. He didn’t hesitate. He balled his fist and swung, a tight, hard arc from his shoulder. The punch connected with Jean-Luc’s temple with a solid, sickening thunk.
The grip on the wheel went slack. Jean-Luc slumped against the back seat, out cold.
I straightened the car, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The silence returned, broken only by the hum of the tires and the soft groan of the unconscious man in the back.
I glanced at Carter. He was cradling his hand, his knuckles already red and swelling, but his jaw was set.
“Nice one, bro,” I said, my voice shaky with adrenaline.
He managed a weak, pained smile. “I told you you needed me.”
We drove on into the dark, the unconscious crime lord sprawled in our backseat, and the weight of what we’d done settling over us like a shroud.