Edmée nodded. “The city’s spoke. If we don’t move fast...” She shook her head. “I ain’t heard this kind of warning since before your babies come into this world. The danger is real.”
Jezebel turned to me. The whites of her eyes were littered with red lines. “I’m sorry, Emma. I’m so sorry.”
My hands dropped to my side. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
Jezebel turned to Edmée. “I don’t know if I can go back. The spirits are loud here. In the city...”
“You going to send Emma out there alone?”
Jezebel shook her head. “No. Get Daniel.” She inhaled. “I need messages sent.”
Edmée nodded.
As Edmée walked back toward the kitchen, Jezebel sat on the edge of the sofa and sighed.
I couldn’t stop the pull I had as I went closer, crouched, and laid my hand on her knee. “What is happening?”
She covered my hand. “I wanted so much.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The prophecy told me that I carried within me a leader for New Orleans. It warned of destruction that would come and lives lost. It said to protect my offspring and help him understand.”
“Him? You mean Kyle?”
“No, child. The spirits are blind to gender, unlike most of us. A leader isn’t based on the chromosomes within their genetic makeup. I wanted to believe that the spirits were also blind to sibling rivalry. That both of my children would take their rightful place.” She exhaled. “If I hadn’t done what I did, that might have happened.”
“What did you do?”
Rett
“They’re fucking with us,” I said after the trackers on Ingalls’s and Boudreau’s cars had taken my men on a wild goose chase. “They know we’ve tracked them.”
“I thought,” Leon said, watching the same screen I was watching, “they’d take us into the bayou. Ingalls’s car crossed the river just like the Cadillac with Mrs. Ramses had earlier. It seemed like he was heading in, but now he’s on I-12. And Boudreau, he went near where our boys dropped him and Ingalls off for their bayou adventure, but he passed all the roads too. Headed west on 10.”
“Where is the warehouse our mole within Boudreau’s organization talked about?”
“Northeast of Baton Rouge, near the train yard.”
Leon and I were back in my inner office. We’d gotten what we wanted from the meeting in the Upper Ninth. The jury was still out on the Johnny family. That verdict wasn’t as important as Emma. Even though the sun was about to rise, I wasn’t tired. No, I was the opposite, ready to jump out of my skin if we came up with one more dead end.
My phone vibrated with a text message. Looking at the screen, I saw the message PRIVATE NUMBER.
“Fuck.”
I hit the text. Words appeared as a circle in a whited-out picture spun.
“COME GET HER.”
I gripped the phone tighter as the picture populated. “Fucking Christ,” I mumbled.
“What is it, boss?”
The picture was of Emma. I knew every inch of what I saw. I also recognized where she was. This picture was taken over a month ago, before we’d rescued her. She was tied to the chair. Her face was covered with a black cloth bag, but every other inch was exposed.
I knew my wife.
While it should be reassuring that the picture wasn’t recent, it wasn’t. I killed the two sons of bitches with her. Either they snapped this picture and sent it to someone else or we missed someone else in our presence.