People considered him wild and, yeah, he’d done some outrageous things in his sorry life, but this scene wasn’t wild. It was . . . well, sad.
Good Lord! I must have grown up along the way without realizing it. My brother will be so pleased . . . if I’m ever dumb enough to tell him. Of course, Dan will be quick to point out that I came to this realization inside a strip club.
If it wasn’t for his concern over Snake, Aaron would skip this rodeo and stop at the Swamp Shack for a beer before calling it an early night. This was not his scene.
That was, until he spotted the blonde bombshell sitting on a high stool outside one of the lap dance alcoves. She wore some kind of see-through, black blouse thingee, or maybe it was underwear. Who knew today! A scrap of red fabric barely covered her crotch. Her long, bare legs were crossed at the knee with glittery red fuck-me-please high heels dangling from both feet. She couldn’t have looked more bored if she’d been chewing gum and blowing bubbles.
Maybe we could be bored together.
No, no, no, that is not why I’m here.
Still, he paused and asked, “Don’t suppose you know some woman here by the name of Fleur?”
“Cain’t say ah do, sugah,” she drawled in an exaggerated southern twang. “Won’t ah do?” She licked her crimson lips and made a kissy noise at him.
He was just about to respond when he felt something smack against the back of his calves. He turned to see a cleaning lady with a raised broom. With her straggly blonde hair and a skinny body in a shapeless uniform, she looked like a bag lady.
“Oops,” the woman said and grinned, showing him a dark space where one of her front teeth should be. The grin told him, without words, that that swat with the broom had been deliberate. And, oddly, peering closer, he could swear it was just black gum on her one front tooth. Whatever! He started to turn back to the lap dancer, figuring he could stand around here and look for his contact as easily as prowling the joint aimlessly.
Another poke in the back. This time, the broom, handle end now, was prodding his shoulder.
He was getting annoyed now. “I beg your pardon . . . Doris,” he said after checking out her name tag.
“Were you asking for Fleur?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Do you know Fleur?”
“I might,” she said.
“Get lost, Doris,” the lap dancer ordered. “Yer interferin’ with mah business.”
Yeah, he wanted to agree, but wait a testosterone minute. Was the cleaning lady surreptitiously beckoning him to follow her with a forefinger held near her one hip.
He tilted his head to the side in question.
She cast a suddenly frightened glance out toward the bar where an employee was taking note of the lap dancer waving for him. The guy was built like a Greyhound bus.
He had no time for this shit. Taking the cleaning lady by the forearm, he frog-marched her toward a side corridor. “Are you Fleur?”
“Um. Who wants to know?” she asked, shrugging out of his hold and rubbing her arm as if he’d hurt her.
He hadn’t. At least he hoped not.
“Snake asked me to look for someone named Fleur if I couldn’t find him outside in the alley.”
“Snake?”
“Brian Malone.”
“Do you mean Brother Malone? Brother Brian?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Why would he ask you to come here?”
“Maybe because I’m a pilot. Snake and I served in the Air Force together.”
“Aaah!” she said, as if now she understood.
He wished he did.
“Well, Brother Brian must be in trouble then,” she concluded. “This is bad. Really bad. I need to get out of here and check with one of my team members. Mother Jacinta should know what’s up.” She stared at him kind of funny then. “If Brother Brian is . . . um, incapacitated, I guess you’ll have to take over.”
“Take over what?”
“The escape plan. Getting the girls out and flying them to Dallas. From there to Mexico.”
“What? Who? I’m not going to friggin’ Mexico, with or without some girls.”
“Didn’t Brother Brian tell you anything?”
“Not much.”
“I’m with the Sisters of Magdalene convent in Mexico. We have six girls upstairs who’ve been kidnapped. All part of the sex trafficking ring being run out of this dive. Mexican Mafia working with the Dixie Mafia.”
“So, a bunch of crackpot nuns are going to crack a dangerous human trafficking operation? Seriously? What are you? Special forces nuns?”
“We’re not here to crack any operation. That’s up to the government and law enforcement who aren’t doing a very good job, by the way. No, we just need to get these six girls on a plane to the Street Apostles’ refuge outside Dallas.”
“That’s all?” he said with another dose of sarcasm. “And you expect me to get involved . . . why?”
“Your friend, Brother Brian, must have expected you to.”
He swore under his breath. He shouldn’t have to remind himself that his buddy was in trouble, might at this very moment be wounded or worse. “You mentioned your team members. Are you a cop, or with the feds?”
“Hardly.” She laughed. “I already told you. I’m a nun. Sort of.”
He had no time to ask her what a “sort of nun” was. “That’s right. Snake told me you were a nun. Would you rather I call you Sister Fleur?”
“Whatever. Just Fleur will do.”
A nun who says “Whatever!” Who is on some asinine mission in a strip club? She’s the damnedest nun I ever met. Aaron shook his head to clear it. “I’ve gotta find Snake, now,” he said.
“We have to get the girls out, now,” she said at the same time.
But just then the guard who resembled a bus, the one who’d been signaled by the lap dancer, came stomping toward them. “What the hell are you doing out on the floor, Doris? Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning the urinals in the VIP men’s room?”
“Oh, I forgot.”
The Bus rolled his eyes and muttered, “She forgot.” He glanced at Aaron and made a twirling motion with a forefinger near his head to indicate that the cleaning lady was a few bricks short of a full load.
“We were just talking,” Aaron said, which was a big mistake.
Fleur looked at him as if he was the one missing a few bricks.
Now suspicious, the bouncer asked, “About what?”
“Um, it’s like this, Mister”—Aaron paused to check out the guy’s name tag—“Albertson. I have this thing about cleaning ladies. The first time I got laid it was with a cleaning lady. I was only fourteen, and well, it was pretty amazing.” He shrugged and pretended to be embarrassed. Actually, he was embarrassed. How do I come up with this crap? Oh hell, it’s the best I could do on short notice.
Albertson pocketed the twenty that Aaron slipped him, then glanced between Aaron and the clearly unattractive cleaning lady. “With all the hot babes here, you want this? I don’t believe it. Is this some kind of Candid Camera or Punk’d or something?”
Aaron passed the smirking guy another twenty and said, “Actually, I was wondering if Doris and I could go upstairs.”
“Are you frickin’ serious?” Albertson let out a hoot of laughter.
But Aaron noticed that he pocketed this twenty, too.
“I’ve heard of guys going for some pretty weird kinks, but cleaning ladies? That’s a new one.” When he was finally able to get his laughter under control, Albertson asked Fleur, “Are you willing?”
She was startled at first and indignant.
Aaron kept winking to alert her to his ploy to get them upstairs and hopefully find out what happened to Snake.
When The Bus went off to ask his boss if it was all right for the cleaning lady to take a trick, Aaron hissed at her, “Get with the program. You said the girls to be rescued are upstairs.”
“Oh.”
“Didn’t you see me winking?”
&nb
sp; “I thought you had a nervous tic.”
He put his face in his hands for a moment and hoped that when he looked back up, this would all be a bad dream. But, no, The Bus was back. “Fifty bucks!” he announced.
“What?” Aaron and Fleur both exclaimed, he because he thought it was a rip-off, she because she probably thought she was undervalued. But then, they both said, “Sure!” at the same time, too.
Following the big bruiser as he made a pathway through the crowd, then up the stairs, Aaron and Fleur exchanged several whispered remarks.
“Our mission goes down at eleven p.m. sharp,” she informed him.
Once again, this woman sounded more military than nun-like. When most nuns talked about a mission, they usually meant a religious vocation in some foreign land, bringing Christianity to the natives. When he was a kid, they were always asked to save their pennies for the poor missions. But that was neither here nor there. “Eleven! It’s ten-thirty now!”
And there was another difference between this cleaning lady and the average nun. Her body. As he followed her up the stairs, and her uniform cupped her bottom with each lift of her legs, he couldn’t help but notice a nicely shaped ass.
She glanced back at him over her shoulder and made a disgusted sound.
Busted!
“It’s a short time frame on purpose, to get the girls out the second-floor fire exit and down to the van in the alley. The longer we have them out of their locked rooms, the greater the chance of discovery.”
“There is no van in the alley,” he noted. “I already told you that, didn’t I? I was just there.”
“There will be. Sister Evangeline will be driving. Did you bring a vehicle?”
He nodded. “A pickup truck.”
“We might have to use that, too.”
“Nice of you to ask.” He was beginning to think this was a big mistake, friend or no friend.
“It’s for a good cause.”
“The Cancer Society is a good cause. Wounded Warriors is a good cause. Hookers for Jesus is not a good cause.”
“Stop being an ass,” Fleur said.
“A potty mouth on a nun? Really?”
“Shhh!”
“Just out of curiosity, does your religious order do strip clubs all the time?”
“This is a one-time thing. Hopefully. We usually work in jungles, or on city streets.”
“Aren’t I the lucky one?”
“Shhh!” she hissed again.
They came to a desk in the wide second-floor corridor where a woman who looked almost as big and muscular as The Bus sat, not topless or in some sexy hooker attire, thankfully, considering her size and gray-threaded brown hair, but wearing a T-shirt with the Silver Stud logo and black slacks. There was a list of services on a laminated cardboard table poster. He handed over his fifty bucks.
“Room thirteen, end of the hall, fifteen minutes,” Ms. Bus said.
“Fifteen minutes!” he complained. “It takes me fifteen minutes to get my boots off.”
“Here’s a news flash, Forrest Gump,” The Bus said with a smirk, already heading back downstairs. “You don’t need bare feet for a blow job.”
Once The Bus was gone, Fleur whispered to Aaron, “This is Sister Mary Michael.”
Of course, she was a nun. Why hadn’t he realized that? In his defense, it was the first time he’d seen a nun who looked like a bouncer.
Then Fleur told Ms. Bus, “This is . . .” She glanced at him and raised her eyebrows.
He realized that he hadn’t yet given her his name. “Aaron LeDeux,” he said.
“Aaron LeDeux,” Sister Mary Michael repeated with a smile. “Thank God! We were expecting you.”
“You were?” Aaron asked dumbly. This was a day, rather night, for dumbness on his part.
“Brother Brian said he called you to come help.”
“Ah,” he said.
Sister Mary Michael glanced right and left to make sure she was not overheard. “Brother Brian got himself shot. He’s in the back of the van. Mother Jacinta is caring for him, but he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Whaaat? Snake is injured. Call 911.” Aaron pulled out his phone.
“Shhh. No, no, no! No police or ambulances,” Fleur cautioned. “There’s a doctor at the ranch headquarters in Dallas.”
He was afraid to ask who would be taking Snake there. He knew.
“At least I’m dressed for a ranch,” he quipped.
“It’s not that kind of ranch.”
Fleur took him by the hand and yanked him along with her, down the hall, to room thirteen, which was next to the exit door. To his surprise, Sister Mary Michael followed after them. She was about the same height as he was and fifty pounds heavier.
When Fleur opened the door, Aaron was taken aback. Literally. Huddled about the small room, which held a single bed and not much more, were six obviously frightened girls of various ages and nationalities, mostly under sixteen, he would guess. Also in the room was a woman in a nun outfit. A real nun, or a nun stripper? he wondered.
The nun acknowledged Fleur’s entrance with a nod of her head, and his presence with a raised eyebrow, but then she said, “Let’s all pray until we get the cue to run.”
“What cue?” he asked.
All the nuns dropped to their knees and began to pray the “Our Father.” The girls stared at them as if they were crazy, not believing yet that they were about to be rescued, but then they, too, dropped to the floor.
He stood. Not that he was against prayer, but couldn’t they pray as they ran?
Just then, there was an explosion somewhere below, followed by several others. They sounded distant, like maybe in the basement, or the far side of the club’s main floor.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed. “Snake emphasized nonviolence.”
“Firecrackers,” Fleur explained.
Organized chaos ensued as the group was herded out the door by Sister Mary Michael, along the hall, around the corner to the exit door, and down the metal fire escape to the alley. More explosions could be heard popping and sirens sounded in the distance. Just before they entered the sliding door of the van, which had miraculously arrived, Fleur announced, “By the way, when I heard your last name, LeDeux, I realized that we share a mutual acquaintance.”
“Yeah, I know. Snake?”
“No. Tante Lulu.”
Why was he not surprised?
Chapter One
Oh, brother! . . .
On a lazy Sunday afternoon in late August, Aaron LeDeux sat on the upper verandah of Bayou Rose Plantation with his brother Daniel. The plantation was named for its once famous rose garden, not because it was on Bayou Rose. It was, in fact, on Bayou Black. Why they hadn’t named it Bayou Black Plantation was anyone’s guess.
Cajuns! Who could ever figure them out!
Beside Dan’s chair sat Emily, a small potbellied pig, one of the few animals remaining from Samantha’s old animal rescue days. Emily had been depressed (Yeah, I know, a depressed pig!) before becoming attached to Dan. Every once in a while, Dan’s hand would extend down and scratch behind her ears.
On Aaron’s side lay Samantha’s elderly German shepherd, Axel, snoozing in the sun. Sometimes he would snore, other times he growled at something happening in his dreams, or else he let loose with the most noxious farts. Samantha’s big Savannah cat, Maddie, which resembled a cheetah, was probably off chasing snakes, along with the two “normal” cats, Felix and Garfield. From inside the house, there was the occasional “Holy shit!” coming from Clarence, Samantha’s foul-mouthed cockatoo.
Ah, life on Bayou Rose Plantation! Good thing Samantha had gotten pregnant, diverting her attention in another direction. Otherwise, who knew how many animals they would have here? Or what kind. Goats, horses, peacocks, ducks, and gerbils came to mind.
Both men had longneck bottles of Dixie beer in hand, their legs crossed and propped on the balcony rail, Aaron’s in worn denims and scruffy cowboy boots, Dan’s in more conservative k
hakis with sockless loafers.
They were twins, bonded from birth, but from a young age, they’d moved to a different beat, deliberately seeking their own identities, especially in physical appearance. Aaron, a pilot, kept his brown hair longish and had a reputation for being a bit wild. Dan, a pediatric oncologist, kept his hair business professional short and his lifestyle conservative.
Despite outward appearances, having recently passed their mid-thirties, they were still connected by that extrasensory twin-thread that allowed them to sense the other’s feelings, even when far apart. They loved each other deeply.
For once the Louisiana temperature was mild and balmy. Even so, a sharp contrast to Alaska, where they’d grown up. A day of serenity.
But then Dan asked the question that had been a constant refrain of late. “What the hell are you doing every night, Aaron?” Dan shook his head as he stared him down. “I’ve been getting a bad vibe lately.”
“Um,” Aaron said, taking a draw on the cold brew, giving himself time to think of a suitable answer. The longer he kept his family and friends in the dark about his activities, the more they could claim ignorance as a defense if everything suddenly blew up. Literally.
What had started as a favor more than a year ago had turned into a lark and then a bloody mission. How he’d gotten suckered into continuing work with street monks and psycho nuns was a case for some psychiatrist’s couch. Sucker Syndrome.
“Gone almost every night from dusk till dawn. No explanation. Hardly any sleep when you’re off to fly copters for Remy’s company.” Remy was one of their many newly discovered “kinfolk” here on the bayou. “You could be spending the night with three twelve-dollar hookers and look more rested. It’s a wonder you don’t zone out and crash going back and forth over the Gulf to the oil rigs with so little rest.”
“Holy crap! You sound like my mother, not my brother.”
They both went silent at that last, having suffered the loss of their mother in Alaska a few years back. They still grieved.
To break that somber note, Dan poked him in the arm with his beer bottle. “You know what people think, don’t you?”
Aaron grinned. Yeah, he did.