Leopard 05 - Savage Nature

been the old man,” Beau denied. “I don’t know anything about any killin’.”
    Gilbert shook his head. “Remy, you know us. We never killed anyone.”
    “What the hell were you doing here if you didn’t intend to kill us?” Drake demanded. “You think intending to kill but not finishing the job is going to get you off the hook?”
    “You got it all wrong,” Beau said. “I knew this was goin’ to happen. I told you, Gilbert. I knew we should have just laid low.”
    “You knew what was going to happen?” Remy asked.
    Gilbert sighed. “We were set up to take the fall. We were set up, Remy.”
    Drake toed the man’s boot. “How many times have you heard that, Remy?”
    Remy smirked. “Oh, that one’s new to me, cuz I’m wet behind the ears.” He glared at the Tregre brothers. “Is that what you think? I’m wet behind the ears? You think you’re smarter than me?” He bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “You hear that, Drake. Gilbert thinks he’s smarter than I am.”
    “You’re twistin’ my meanin’, Remy,” Gilbert said. “We came to talk to the boy—Renard’s boy. We figured he was blood kin and might help us.”
    “Help you kill off his team? His friends? The only family he’s ever known?” Drake scoffed. “If you think that, you don’t know the meaning of loyalty and you sure don’t know Joshua.”
    Both men shook their heads. “We didn’t come here to kill anyone,” Gilbert insisted. “We knew you’d been out in the swamp last night. You were at the Merciers and also our property, lookin’ around. The scent was everywhere.”
    Beau looked at Drake with something close to respect. “You cut through the swamps followin’ our boat, didn’t you? I didn’t think anyone could do somethin’ like that and I’ve lived in the swamp my whole life.”
    Remy held up one finger. “You cut through the swamp followin’ a boat?”
    “All of them,” Beau said. “All his men, and Saria led the way. They must have run.”
    “And waded through the reeds in a couple of spots,” Gilbert contributed. “There was no other way.”
    “My sister was runnin’ the swamp at night? Wadin’ through the reeds with gators?”
    Remy’s voice had gone very quiet. Drake had hoped he wouldn’t go all commando on him, but now that he knew how insane he’d been to even try it, let alone have Saria with him, he couldn’t really blame the man.
    “We knew they were running do, Remy,” he said. “Although we’re familiar with the rain forests and the danger in them, we had no idea how truly dangerous what we asked Saria to do last night really was. She was amazing and we were damned stupid to risk it.”
    That was as much as he was conceding to Remy. The man could take it or leave it.
    “So you were runnin’ dope, Beau? Right under my nose?”
    “There’s a big difference between takin’ a boat out to deliver soap to a buyer and killin’ someone, Remy,” Beau pointed out. “We didn’t kill anyone.”
    “So how did you get into the drug business, Beau?” Drake asked.
    “Delivery,” Gilbert emphasized. “That’s what we were comin’ to talk to the boy about.”
    “First of all, let’s get something straight,” Drake said in disgust. “Joshua is a man. He does a man’s work and he takes a man’s responsibility.”
    Beau sighed and looked at his brother, shaking his head. He looked down at the ground, defeated. Gilbert scowled. “You don’t want to hear the truth.”
    “Sure we do, Gil,” Remy said. “Spit it out and don’t try sugarcoatin’ it, because I think our leader has an itchy trigger finger right about now.”
    “You may have heard the rumors about our father,” Gilbert muttered. “Every one of them was true. He raped women and beat them. He beat our mother, beat us. He killed Renard. We couldn’t prove it, but he did. And he gambled. Mostly he lost.”
    Drake raised his eyebrow.
    Gilbert flushed. “I’m not whinin’ about my life. I’m tellin’ you the truth. He began workin’ for the Merciers, runnin’ their gardens for them. Mostly, he told everyone what to do. And he made deliveries to special customers. Eventually we took over makin’ the deliveries. The money was good and we didn’t think much about it until we started makin’ those deliveries in the middle of the night to boats comin’ in from all over.”
    “So you’re saying you didn’t know about the opium when you first started working for the Merciers?”
    Gilbert