Rose, Charlotte - Bayou Flood [The Shifters of Alligator Bend 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (7 page)

“I hope not,” Virgil said. “We need your brain to be runnin’ to solve this problem.”

“I’ll do my best, then. Good night.”

Virgil and Gabriel sat in silence for a few minutes, finishing off their beers. Finally, Virgil stood up.

“Adele’s right. It is way late. And we’re gettin’ an early start tomorrow mornin’. I’m gonna go get some shut-eye.”

“Night,” Gabriel said, giving him a small wave.

“Night.”

Virgil left the main houseboat and made his way over to the smaller houseboat where his family lived. He stopped for a moment on the main deck and looked up at the brilliant stars illuminating the bayou sky. He’d loved them all his life, but he realized they weren’t as beautiful to him now. Nothing was as beautiful as the moment when he’d first kissed Sophie’s soft mouth. He only hoped he’d have another chance.

Chapter Five

Sophie spent most of the night tossing and turning, trying to decide whether she should even go see Virgil and Gabriel after all.

Maybe I shouldn’t bother. Maybe it’s just going to be a waste of time. Maybe Georgina is right.

Georgina also completely lied to me when I called her after the disaster at the club. Georgina also let me believe she thought we hallucinated because of mold. Was that really necessary?

After several hours of fitful rest, Sophie got up and practiced her guitar for a bit, trying to clear her head. At the end of her session, she finally decided to go to the bayou, if for no other reason than to get Virgil and Gabriel’s side of the story. She at least owed them that much. Heading out to the river, she rented a boat, plugged the coordinates Virgil had given her into the GPS, and headed out toward Alligator Bend.

The first forty-five minutes of the trip were easy. The sky was clear, and the water was smooth. As she sailed down the river, Sophie’s mind began to clear. She stopped being confused about Georgina, stopped trying to wrap her head around the idea of being mated. Sophie simply relaxed and allowed herself to enjoy the beauty of the bayou. Then her phone let out the unwelcome beep that signified a low battery.

“Shit,” Sophie muttered. “This is what I get for staying up all night. I forget all the important things.”

She stopped the boat and dug through her bag, but there was no charger in sight. She hoped the phone could power through until she arrived at the congregation, but she knew her distance from a reliable signal would put extra strain on the battery. She started the boat back up and started traveling faster, hoping she would get there on time. She knew she wasn’t very far away, and she tried to reassure herself that her phone could last and guide her the rest of the way.

She’d only traveled three more miles when things got worse. Glancing at her phone to check the rest of the instructions, she realized she’d completely lost her signal. The screen was frozen on the last step and couldn’t load the next portion of the directions. The low-battery signal was coming more frequently, and Sophie realized she was in deep trouble. She was careening through the bayou with a limited sense of direction.

Looking at the radio on board, she cursed, wishing she’d thought to get call numbers for one of the houseboats in case of emergency. Still, she knew it was her only possibility of rescue. She powered it up.

“Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan,” she said into the microphone. “All stations, all stations, all stations. I am in a Catamaran dinghy. I am unsure of my exact location. I am somewhere near Alligator Bend, Louisiana. As I said, my GPS has gone out, and I am unsure of my exact location. I am in need of assistance to guide me back to New Orleans.”

But Sophie was only greeted with silence.

No need to panic. No need to panic at all. Just because nobody is in range now doesn’t mean I’m going to be stranded forever. Someone will come along soon. I’ll try again in a little while.

Fanning herself in a futile attempt to keep the heat at bay, Sophie leaned back and tried to relax. To kill time, she did some guitar exercises that had been trained so deeply into her muscles that she didn’t even need an instrument to work on them. Finally, though, the anxiety started creeping back, and she picked up the radio and put out her distress signal.

Again, she was greeted by silence. Sophie felt her stomach knot.

Shit. Okay. I still don’t need panic. Someone has to come along eventually.

A crackle came through on the radio. “Sophie? That you I just heard over the radio?”

“Yes! It is! Gabriel? Is that you?”

“You know it, baby. And I have Virgil here with me. We were out workin’ on some of the boats when the radio went off. Don’t worry, baby. We’re gonna come find you. Just relax and sit tight. We’ll be there soon.”

“Okay. Over and out.”

Sophie settled down in the boat and tried to relax. Gabriel and Virgil would find her. They had been born and raised in these swamps. It would be simple for them to find her, even though they didn’t have her exact coordinates.

Still, she couldn’t deny that the bayou had taken on a savage appearance in the previous five minutes. Half an hour ago, she had been reveling in the beauty of nature, but suddenly, the whole place seemed vicious. In an instant, she realized just how dangerous her beloved wetlands could be. The sun beat down, and though Sophie didn’t burn, she became aware of the fact that she could roast and dehydrate under its rays. The depths of the water concealed dangerous snakes, and even—Sophie hesitated to think it—alligators. The kind that wouldn’t transform into men and protect their mates. It was something she had always known, but she found it easy to forget on beautiful, calm days. Now, she was acutely aware of all of the horrible things that could happen while she was waiting. When she heard the roar of the motorboat, she wanted to jump for joy, if she wouldn’t have run the risk of tipping the boat. Instead, she held still, a smile on her face as her rescuers emerged on the water.

* * * *

Virgil steered Sophie’s boat, piloting it alongside Gabriel’s as they headed back toward the congregation.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked. She looked awfully pale.

“I’m fine, really. I just had a bad scare out there. I really thought I was lost.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Gabriel and I won’t let anything happen to you. We will always protect you.”

Pulling up to the congregation houseboats, they secured their vessels and hopped onto the main boat, heading immediately for the kitchen. Lunch had ended a while ago, but there was still food warm on the stove for anyone who had been busy with work or chores during the normal lunch hours. Gabriel got Sophie settled at the table, and Virgil hurried to prepare her some food.

“So,” Virgil said, placing a bowl of dirty rice in front of her. “You know Georgina Fucher?”

Sophie nodded and swallowed a spoonful. “Wow, this is amazing,” she said. “Anyway, yes, I know her. We’ve been friends for a couple of months now. She happened to be in the audience at one of my shows, and we struck up a conversation at the bar afterwards. We really clicked, and we got very close very fast. She started accompanying me to my shows and chilling out with me beforehand. I get horrible stage fright, and Georgina is good at calming me down.”

Gabriel sighed. “Well, that’s about as bad as I expected. Did you get the chance to talk to her?”

“Yeah.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That she never felt like she belonged with the congregation and never wanted to be part of the fishing business. She said that she always had other dreams and that when she got the opportunity of a lifetime, the congregation banished her.”

Virgil sucked in his breath. “It’s true that we banished her. I ain’t gonna lie about that one. But we don’t banish people unless they do somethin’ to seriously harm the congregation. We got rules.”

Sophie raised an eyebrow. “Rules?”

“Yeah. We’re not gonna throw family away. They have to do somethin’ horrible for us to cast ’em out. Like the two brothers who knowingly claimed a woman who wasn’t their mate.”

“Georgina—no, Georgina would
never
kill anyone.
Never
.” Sophie was beginning to regret her decision to come out to the bayou, thinking that Georgina must have been right all along. There was no way her friend could do something so awful to deserve banishment.

“You’re right, she wouldn’t,” Virgil said. “And we ain’t sayin’ she killed someone.”

“But she did betray us.”

“Tell me how, then. I need to know the truth.”

“It’s kind of a long story,” Virgil said. “Armand, the guy you met when we rode in? Well, at one point, he and his mother, Rosaline, got captured when they were in gator form and put in the Aquarium of the Americas.”

Gabriel jumped in. “Rosaline and Armand are albino gators, so they were a pretty famous display. ’Course, nobody knew they were shifters, and they weren’t about to just take human form. Keepin’ a low profile is in our best interest. We’d been tryin’ to get them back, but we were stuck. And then Ferdinand Villemont decided he wanted to buy ’em from the Aquarium for his private zoo.”

“Well, that’s illegal, right?” Sophie asked. “You don’t get to keep dangerous predators as pets.”

“People who have as much money as Villemont generally get to do whatever they want,” Virgil said, taking her hand. “He faced resistance, but he was doin’ his best. Our first big attempt to free ’em, Villemont just so happened to be at the Aquarium, and it fucked up the whole plan.”

“Turns out he was in cahoots with Georgina the whole time,” Gabriel said, rubbing his eyes, as though the memory gave him a headache. “She’d let him know about our plans. He even pretended to capture her, made us worried sick, thinkin’ she was gonna die bein’ apart from us. But she was plannin’ with him the entire time.”

Sophie gasped. “I just—she’s such a great friend. Well, I guess she hasn’t been so good to you. But she’s been so good to me since I’ve known her. It’s so difficult to imagine her doing something so conniving, you know?”

Virgil nodded and squeezed her hand, hoping to comfort her. “I’m sorry to have to break it to you, baby. It’s tough learnin’ that someone you trusted ain’t the person you thought they were.”

Sophie sighed. “So what happened then?”

“We got word that Villemont had bribed a museum employee to sell him the gators under the table. Xavier and Oscar managed to pull off the rescue, and Georgina was right there with Villemont. Adele, their mate, was the one to first be suspicious of Georgina. We refused to believe Adele, but when Oscar and Xavier went in for the rescue, Georgina was right there. They managed to pull off the rescue, though it was a pretty sticky situation.”

Sophie’s face lit up. “Wait. When the Aquarium reported that a couple of gators had disappeared…”

Gabriel nodded. “But they didn’t disappear. They just got to go home.”

“So, what? Villemont and Georgina ended up off the hook?”

“Not right away,” Virgil said. “But like I said, he has more than enough money to get out of whatever trouble he’s in. He’s been causin’ trouble in the bayou ever since. Looks like he bailed Georgina out, too. We didn’t realize she was still workin’ for him. Guess he really took a likin’ to her.”

Sophie sighed and rubbed her temples.

“You okay, baby?” Gabriel asked. “You need an aspirin or somethin’?

“Yeah, I’m fine. This is just so much to take in. And, I mean, no offense, but I’m a little confused right now. How am I supposed to reconcile two versions of what happened with Georgina’s banishment? How am I supposed to choose between my best friend and my so-called mates?”

“You don’t have to explain to us, baby.” Virgil pulled her into a tight hug. “This can’t be easy for you at all. We know we have to earn your trust. We ain’t gonna judge you if you need to take time to figure things out.”

Gabriel gave a small smile. “Look, why don’t we change the subject for a while? We’ve given you our side of the story, and that’s all we can do. Why don’t we show you around the ship instead? Take your mind off of things.”

Sophie seemed to perk up at the suggestion. “That sounds awesome.”

“Let’s go, then,” Gabriel said, helping her out of her chair.

Virgil beamed with pride as he and Gabriel showed Sophie around their home. As they approached Gabriel’s quarters, though, he held his breath. He didn’t just want her to be impressed by the living space—he wanted her to stay there for a while.