Page 114 of The Cajun Doctor

Vacillating between extreme anger and extreme worry over Samantha, he stood there for fifteen minutes before he gave it up and tossed the remainder of his dripping cone in a waste bin and wiped his hand on a napkin, discarding that, too. He considered heading to the fishing camp, hiding out, till this whole fiasco with Samantha blew over. But, no, he needed to return to the plantation and see what he could do about fixing one of the slave cabins for Molly’s father.

Just then, he heard a popping noise. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but all hell was breaking loose in the parking lot. Brad and Sonny and cops with SWAT T-shirts, and the landscaper, were running toward the building, all with weapons visible. Daniel saw Luc following on the melee and yelled in a panic, “What’s up?”

“A gunshot from inside the building,” Luc said as he ran past.

So, Daniel ran, too. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! I should have stopped her from getting involved in this debacle. I should have tied her down, if I had to. If she’s dead, I’m going to kill someone. Nick, and then the FBI agents who conned her into this mess. But she’s not dead. She can’t be dead. Why think the worst? Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!

Daniel made it inside just before the cops began pulling out the crime scene tape and barring people from entering or exiting the building. He swerved away from the elevators where a bunch of cops were filing in, and instead followed those going up the stairway. One of them with earbuds, reported to the others. “The kid’s been shot. Head wound. Non-fatal. The perp has the sting out in the parking garage.”

The kid . . . that would be Angus. And the sting . . . son of a bitch! Coltrane had Samantha. In the parking garage.

As he assimilated those words, Daniel swiveled on his heels and headed back down to the first floor and the door leading to the parking garage. He was at a full-out sprint through the connecting corridor, but was unprepared for the sound of gunfire that he heard ahead of him. He might have cried out in dismay. Too late! He was too late!

Some cops tried to hold him back, but he struggled against their restraining arms and hollered, “I’m a doctor. Let me through.”

He was unprepared for the sight that met his eyes. A cop with an apparent thigh wound was being helped upright by his fellow cops. Daniel started to go to the cop, but he was waved over to the other wounded, instead. The other wounded being Nick Coltrane, who lay on the stone floor of the garage, blood pouring from his face, his chest, and one thigh. Maybe even more places. Samantha was standing off to the side, sobbing with shock, her face pressed against John LeDeux’s flak vest, his arms around her heaving shoulders. She appeared unharmed.

Daniel dropped to his knees beside Nick, and someone handed him a pair of disposable gloves which he pulled on with expert speed. He checked for a pulse. None. Heartbeat. None. Then he pulled Coltrane’s eyelids back. Pupils constricted. With a weary exhale, he glanced at his wristwatch and declared, “T.O.D. Three twenty-seven.” He stood up, tossed his gloves aside, then looked toward Samantha, who was still plastered against LeDeux’s chest as he murmured some words of comfort to her. She hadn’t even noticed Daniel’s presence. Without a word, he left the building.

Once outside, he saw Angus being helped toward an ambulance. He appeared to be arguing with an EMT about getting into a wheelchair. A bunch of gauze bandages circled his scalp, but he was ambulatory. So, that was good. He waved at Angus, and the boy waved back. The cops were rushing Angus and the EMT’s to avoid the news vans that were already barreling into the parking lot. They would want to keep Angus’s . . . and Samantha’s names out of the press until the mob bosses were no longer a threat. And on the remote possibility that Coltrane might have associates involved with him, other than the Misty person.

Daniel was probably in shock as he drove back to Bayou Rose. Death was traumatizing, even when the victim was a bad guy. He was too upset to think beyond the moment. Driving his car. Watching the highway, that’s all he was capable of. He did think about what would happen next in terms of the FBI and the cops. With Coltrane’s death, the baby trafficking case was over as far as Angus and Lily Beth and Samantha having to be in hiding, although the feds would be working to arrest his overseas connections, those people facilitating the sale of the babies. But, more than that, there was still the Dixie Mob situation that required Angus to remain hidden, and by association, Samantha and Lily Beth would stay, too.

Well, Daniel couldn’t stay himself. He just couldn’t be around Samantha and pretend there was nothing between them. There wasn’t, apparently, from her end. Other than the one-night/one-week stand business. But he was a fool for love, as the old song went, and if he ever said that out loud, he was going to surgically remove his own tongue.

On the other hand, he had things to do at Bayou Rose.

When he got back to the plantation, Lily Beth and Tante Lulu were the only ones there. Emily, at least, was glad to see him. She oinked and oinked and oinked until he picked her up and gave her a kiss. No, not on her mouth, but on the top of her snout. And, really, it was only a sort of air kiss. Axel and Maddie barely gave him a glance, considering him of no importance. Clarence, on the other hand, greeted him with the usual, “Holy shit!” But then the bird let loose with a whole string of new words, “I’m a Ragin’ Cajun!”

Daniel glanced at Tante Lulu who shrugged. “I dint have nothin’ ta do whilst y’all were gone.”

He set Emily down with an admonition to stay put. Ignoring her woeful eyes, he left the room and went down the back stairs with Tante Lulu and Lily Beth.

“Don’t you want to know what happened?” he asked.

“We already know,” Lily Beth said. “Angus called us from the hospital.”

“Samantha is at the hospital, too. Jist ta be checked over,” Tante Lulu added.

“You should be relieved that there is no more threat from Dr. Coltrane,” Daniel said to Lilly Beth. “Now you can do whatever you want about the baby.”

Which caused Lily Beth to burst into tears and leave the kitchen.

“What did I do?” Daniel asked Tante Lulu.

“Nuthin’. The girl is jist confused, and her hormones is hummin’, givin’ her the blue moodies.”

“Did Angus say when they’d be back?”

“In an hour or two,” Tante Lulu answered. “Where’s all mah groceries, by the way. I knew I shoulda gone ta the store myself.”

“Just hold your horses. Aaron is bringing them.”

Daniel went into an anteroom where he grabbed a broom, dustpan, some rags, and cleaning products. “I have a little job to do,” he explained to Tante Lulu, whose eyebrows were raised with curiosity.

Which, of course, was like raising a Cheez Doodle before her pet gator, because Tante Lulu immediately followed after him as he went out the back door. “Whatcha gotta do?”

“I need to see if one of the slave cabins is liveable for a few days . . . or weeks.”