Bijou didn’t look at any of them. She kept her too-old eyes on him. There was no doubt she could read the distaste on his face. “Don’t do it. If you arrest him, he’ll be out in an hour and you’ll lose your badge. Don’t bother. I’d rather have you around.”
“Who are they?” He nodded toward the two women with Bodrie. One had lipstick smeared across her face. Someone had drawn on her breasts with lipstick, and cocaine still clung to her belly.
“One is my tutor and the other is my governess. They get paid a fortune for something that has nothing at all to do with me.” There was no bitterness in her voice, only weariness, and acceptance. “When he gets tired of them, he’ll fire them and hire new ones.”
“Can I take you somewhere else?”
She shrugged. “Where? I have no other relatives. I have no idea who my mother’s people are. There’s me and Bodrie.” She shrugged a second time. “I’ve got this. This is a nightly occurrence.”
“I can’t leave you here.” Remy shook his head. He’d shoot himself first. He’d never ever sleep again if he left a child in such an environment. He could sort it all out at the station once he got her out of harm’s way. “Get out to the car. I’m taking you to Pauline Lafont. She owns the Lafont Inn.”
“I know her,” Bijou responded. She looked around the room, and for the very first time, she looked like the child she was. Her shoulders sagged, and for one moment, tears swam in her eyes. She blinked them away and nodded, bolting past him for the door.
Once in the patrol car, he scribbled his private number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “You get into trouble, call me.”
Pauline had taken her in for the night, just as he’d known she would. He’d gone back and talked to his supervisor and then, on suggestion of the captain, took a leave of absence. It took a long while for the sick feeling to leave his gut and an even longer time to forgive himself for the way he’d handled the situation. Bijou needed someone to treat her with a little caring, not shake her until her teeth rattled. And he damn well should have stood up to the department, even if it did cost him his job. He’d been so disgusted with them, himself, and especially Bodrie Breaux.
The encounter with Bijou had changed his life. He’d left New Orleans and joined the service. He traveled as often as he could, to see if more of his kind were in the world and, if so, how they handled the savage nature of their leopards. He had resolved to be more in control and to come back home and change things, make more of a difference. He’d run into Bijou a couple of times after he’d returned home, mostly when she was in some kind of trouble, but she avoided his eyes. To his knowledge, she didn’t drink or do drugs, although she was often at the parties.
“She’s just a little kid, Gage,” Remy murmured aloud. “Cut her some slack.”
Gage laughed, a taunting, annoying sound that made Remy wish he wasn’t always striving for control. He had the urge to shove his brother out of the airboat.
“Well, Bijou is no little girl anymore. She’s stop-traffic, drop-dead gorgeous.”
Remy’s heart stuttered and, deep inside, his leopard snarled and unsheathed his claws at the note of interest in Gage’s voice. He still felt protective over that child and he was damn well going to look at her like she was a child, even though he knew Gage was right about the way she’d grown up. Something in Gage’s smug, secretive attitude raised an alarm. He was missing something. His head went up and he fixed eyes that had gone a cobalt blue on his brother.
“Saria didn’t bring that girl out here, did she?” He knew the answer before his brother answered. A snarl escaped, a low sound that set the swamp into a frenzy of warning calls. “She’s not home two minutes and they’re already in trouble together.”
Gage shot him a look and then hastily turned his attention to picking his way around a cypress grove. He cut the speed of the boat and maneuvered around the large broken knobs sticking up in the water. “They found a dead body, bro. They didn’t actually kill the guy.”
“Fils de putain,” Remy snapped, swearing under his breath. “It’s bad enough to have Saria runnin’ the swamp at night, but draggin’ Bijou with her is ridiculous. Don’ think for a minute those two aren’t goin’ to get into trouble. Damn Drake anyway.”
“Well, you can take it up with him,” Gage said. “He’s guardin’ the vic, keepin’ the gators and other creatures off the corpse.”
Bright lights lit up the swamp just ahead as the boat eased its way around the bend. The sound of a generator matched the steady drone of insects. Alligators bellowed disapproval from various directions, reminding them that every step they took on solid ground or in the water was dangerous. Cypress trees rose out of the water, long tails of moss hanging from nearly every limb, draping the branches and swaying with the slight wind.