Bayou Dreaming

chapter one

Papillon, Louisiana

Present day

Roxanne King stared at the man who'd called her out to his small farm at three in the morning. Archie Johnson was in his late seventies, and he didn't mind running around in the middle of the night in his underwear. The man was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and a thin white T-shirt. His hair was wild and his glasses threatened to fall off his face.

"I'm confused. Who do you think is in your barn?" She'd gotten the call as she was working the night shift. She worked days, but she took the occasional night shift when the normal guys needed time off. Usually it involved catching up on paperwork and breaking up the occasional bar brawl. It sometimes ended up being a weird therapy session with the participants of the aforementioned brawls. She'd taken more than one person in custody straight from jail to their first AA meeting.

Sometimes the person in jail was merely a dumbass who pushed her until she couldn't ignore him and she tossed him in the back of her cruiser because she couldn't let herself do what she wanted to do with him.

She was not going to think about Zep Guidry. No. She was concentrating on this very important breaking and entering call.

"It's the rougarou," Archie said, pointing toward the barn. He'd said the word like it had some magical power and he didn't want to be too loud about it.

"Rouga-what?" She didn't recognize anyone by that name, but then Cajun ways were still a mystery to her and she was several years into this job.

How the hell she'd ended up in a tiny parish in Southern Louisiana she had no idea. To say her new home was a big dose of culture shock would be underplaying the experience.

"Archie! Archie!" The diminutive Caroline Johnson made her way down the steps, a robe in her hand. Unlike her husband, Caroline was dressed from head to toe in a housedress, slippers, and robe, her hair in a silky-looking wrapper. She held the extra robe out. "You put this on."

Archie frowned his wife's way. "It's hot as stink out here, woman."

Caroline shook her head. "No. You're showing off for the ladies. You be a gentleman. You know how I feel about other women appreciating your body."

Roxie was sure Archie was in fine shape for his age, but the sight of his skinny body did not inspire lust.

"You keep your jealousy to yourself," Archie proclaimed. "It's hot and I'm not covering up because the deputy might get the wrong idea. I've never cheated on you in fifty-two years."

They started to argue about the prospect of Archie's skinny body causing the women of Papillon to lose their minds with desire, and Roxie again wondered how she'd gotten here. She'd been on a fast track. She'd been one of the first female snipers ever to serve in ESU. One man who couldn't be a decent human being and here she was refereeing bar fights and calming down tourists who thought Otis was going to eat them--calling a gator by his given name, and somehow that being the most normal part of her day.

This was her life. Her whole life.

A light pierced the darkness of the night around them--a vehicle coming up the long road that led from the highway. The Johnson farm was remote, but then most places in the parish could be considered remote. The Johnson farm was on the north end of town, and there was no ambient light out here. When she'd first moved to Papillon, that darkness had been a foreign thing. A moonless night had felt almost oppressive. Now she appreciated the contrast. There was night here in a way she'd never experienced, and somehow the darkness of the night made the day brighter.

Yeah, she was becoming quite the poet, but one of the things she'd learned was that when she wasn't constantly on the move, she thought way, way too much.

The car turned up the long drive, but she couldn't make out what kind of vehicle it was. The lights weren't the new super-bright kind, but then most of the vehicles around the parish were older. When the Burtons had gotten their brand-new F-150 complete with LED headlights, the number of UFO sightings had gone through the roof. And it wasn't like there hadn't been many before.

"Woman, why are you worried about my naked knees when we've got a rougarou on our land?" Archie asked, pointing to the barn. "You should give me back my shotgun."

"I hid your shotgun because your eyes are going, you paranoid old man," Caroline retorted. "That is probably a poor bunny rabbit running around out there. You don't need to take another shot at it."

"A bunny rabbit wouldn't scare the goats," Archie shouted back.

The lights turned and stopped next to her SUV. They blinked out and she hoped Major hadn't felt the need to follow her out here. Or Armie. She knew the sheriff and her fellow deputy often monitored the radio even on their nights off. Even though she'd promised she would call if she came up against something she couldn't handle alone.

And she would. Probably.

"All right, could someone explain what's going on." She needed to take charge, and that meant getting these two to focus on something other than Archie's ragged shorts. "You said someone was in your barn. I need to know how many people you think are in there."

"It's the rougarou," Archie insisted.

Sometimes she had trouble understanding some of the more rural residents. They often broke into French. She'd learned serviceable Spanish, but French hadn't been important to policing in the city. Especially not the Cajun French a lot of people spoke around here. "Is that a name?"

"That is the imaginings of a crazy old man," Caroline said with a long sigh, and gave Archie a stern look. "Put your robe on."

Roxie bit back a groan. "Is there or is there not someone lurking around the barn?"

"There is." Archie blocked his wife's attempts to cover his body. "It's back and we're all in trouble now."

"It?" She was missing something.

"He's talking about a swamp creature," a deep voice said.

A familiar voice.

"Zéphirin Guidry." Archie breathed the name with a sigh of relief. "Thank you so much for coming. It's the damn rougarou. We thought it was gone, thought your daddy killed the whole nest of them way back in 'eighty-two, but I heard that rustling tonight and knew it was back."

Zep stepped on the porch, his long legs hauling him up with ease. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, worn boots on his feet. It was his usual outfit. Given the time of night, most people would have had to get out of bed to get dressed, but Zep had likely come from a bar. His natural habitat. The only thing that was different from his normal clothes was the bag slung over his chest. "Hey, Rox . . . Deputy King."

She was so glad she'd perfected her poker face at a young age because every time she saw that man, she wanted to sigh and stare for a long time. Zep was a work of art. Six foot three, with broad shoulders and muscles she wasn't sure how he'd earned, Zep was simply the most beautiful man she'd ever met. His jaw was sharp in contrast with the softness of his too-long, dark wavy hair. It had a slight curl to it that made her want to run her fingers through it right before she rubbed her cheek against his and let the scruff she found there tickle her skin.

He was the baddest boy of the parish, and she'd already made her mistake with him.

You are gorgeous, Roxanne King. I think I could spend some time with you. I think I could spend a lot of time with you.

Unfortunately, he spent time with a lot of women. And she didn't do bad boys. Well, she didn't do them more than once.

"What are you doing out here, Guidry?"

There was the little frown that hit his face every time she used his last name. If she hadn't been certain she knew the man, she would have thought it was hurt on that handsome face of his. But she knew what it really was. Frustration. Zep was a man used to getting what he wanted. He'd decided he'd wanted a second night with her, and when she'd refused, he'd begun the chase.

He was a man who lived for the chase.

"Archie called me," he replied. "Probably right after he called you."

Archie shook his head. "Oh, no. Before. I knew I would need a hunter, and everyone knows you're just like your daddy was. You have ways. You can see them, talk to them."

Sometimes she wondered if she was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. "You think Guidry here can talk to the rag thing?"

"The rougarou," Zep corrected her before turning back to Archie. "You said it was in your barn?"

Archie blinked and then nodded. "Yes. It's in there. I heard something rustling around. The goats were going crazy. I heard it growl and it cursed. I definitely heard it curse in its language. There was a light, too. I saw it under the doors, and then it was all dark."

Zep nodded like that made sense somehow. "I'll go check it out." He gave Caroline Johnson a charming grin. "And you better get your husband dressed, Mrs. Johnson. Women see all that masculinity and they won't know what to do with themselves."

Caroline's eyes lit with righteous fire. "That's what I said. You cover up, old man."

Zep hopped off the porch and started across the big yard, his cell phone lighting the way.

"Hey, you need to hold up." Roxie followed him. The last thing she needed was for him to walk into a dangerous situation and get himself hurt. Her ass would be on the line for letting a civilian take control.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she didn't want to see him injured, that the thought made her stomach ache. Because she didn't care.

"It's nothing," Zep insisted. "Or rather it's not a police thing, I suspect. The Johnsons don't have anything to steal. They certainly don't have anything in that barn unless someone is trying to steal a goat. I wouldn't recommend doing that. Those damn goats can be mean. They've got horns and don't mind using them."

She fell into step beside him. "I should still go first. I don't understand why they called you. You're not a neighbor."

"We're all neighbors out here," Zep said. "And he didn't call me because I live in town. He called me because I know how to deal with wildlife."

The parish didn't have an animal services department. The sheriff's office had to handle most of the wildlife encounters. She'd had to take a couple of classes from park rangers to teach her how to not freak out. "You think something got in the barn? What about the light he saw?"

"I think Archie likes to get into the whiskey, and he's still got an excellent imagination. Unless we want to have a serious discussion about whether or not a swamp creature is hiding in the Johnson barn."

She sighed as they approached the barn in question. "Swamp creature?"

"The rougarou is our version of a werewolf," Zep explained. "I'm surprised you haven't heard of it yet. We haven't had a sighting in years, but folks love to talk."

Roxie hadn't studied local lore. Of course, she didn't do much of anything beyond work and have the occasional beer with the guys-who treated her like one of the guys. The small group of employees at the Papillon Parish station consisted of herself, Sheriff Armie LaVigne, and four deputies. She was the only female among them, and not one of them looked at her like she was a woman.

It was exactly what she wanted.

But one night, the man beside her had sent the strongest reminder that she wasn't one of the guys. He'd proven to her she was a woman and she could want everything a woman wanted. Love, affection, passion.

She wouldn't get any of those things from him. Not for longer than a night or two, and then she would be one in the long line of women who pined over the gorgeous . . . what had the town librarian called him? A rakehell. The woman read a whole lot of historical romances.

In this century, they would call Zep Guidry a player.

She wasn't going to get played again.

"Maybe you should stay up on the porch with the Johnsons," she said as they began to approach the barn door. The night around them was eerily quiet, and she was starting to get a little adrenaline pumping. Not because she believed there was a swampy werewolf behind those doors. Rather because she didn't.

"You want to face whatever's in there alone?" Zep asked.

"Do you honestly believe there's some supernatural creature in there?"

"No, of course I don't, but I do know Archie," Zep replied, his voice going low. "I know he sounds like a crazy old man at times, but he does know his livestock. If he says something upset those goats, then something was in there. Might not be now."

"So what you're saying is we might open that door to a goat massacre." It was not a pleasant thought. "I left New York for this."

"I think New York has its share of predators, city girl," Zep replied with a low chuckle she wished she didn't find so sexy. "But I don't think there's one in that barn."

"Why?"

There was that chuckle again. "Because it's so quiet. I assure you if those goats were being attacked, they would not be silent about it. There would be a lot of noise. According to what Archie told me, they were bleating like crazy about twenty minutes ago and then everything went silent. I think whatever was in there is likely gone now."

They'd made it to the barn doors, and sure enough, there was perfect silence coming from inside. She held out a hand to let Zep know she wanted a minute and was surprised when he went still, too.

She should order him back to the house, but the truth was she didn't mind having some company, and he might be able to help. The darkness could be disorienting, and sometimes these old barns could be minefields. "Have you been in this barn? Is it like some of the others I've seen?"