The Excerpt
“If it’s justice you after, it’s Reule Arnoux you wanting to see.”
Those words brought a shiver of reluctance when Shannon Harper had first heard them. They sat no easier now as the shallow pirogue slipped along glassy bayou waters, propelled by the leisurely dip of a single oar.
Shoving damp hair from her brow, she asked, “How much farther?”
“Up dare apiece.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just drive?”
“You cain’t get dare by da roads. Only way be through the bayou, same way folks been coming for generations.”
The man’s whispery tone gave her a sudden chill. “Generations? What do you mean by that?”
“Only dat dare been one of his kind out dare where no roads can reach dem, where only those who need dem know where to go.”
( . . . and a bit more . . .)
His kind. She didn’t know whether to laugh or tremble. If her guide was trying to scare her . . . it was working. “This Arnoux, is he some sort of bayou vigilante?”
“He be da law, da only kind we believe in.”
“But what can he do? I mean, he’s just one man—”
When the boatman glanced over his shoulder, something in his expression dammed the rest of her words in her throat. Hairs prickled along her arms with the same chill she’d experienced as a little girl when warned by gruesome stories of the swamps and what happened there to the unwary and unwise. Was she being both?
“Lady, you be smart not to axe too many questions. Reule, he might not want to see you. He don’t like to take up for your kind, but since you kin to Douvee . . . we see what we see.”
Lafayette wasn’t Detroit. She’d been away so long, she’d forgotten the microcosm of distrust and ignorance of the isolated swamplands she no longer thought of as home.
It was crazy what she was doing, crazy and against everything she worked so hard to uphold. Under normal circumstances, she never would have considered taking such a step outside the avenues of law and order.
But nothing had been normal since she’d gotten her paternal grandfather’s letter stating that her father was missing, would she come?
Compelling snippet. And yes, those quick responses are never good. But sometimes publishes have quotas or have so many they can handle at once. So once they hit that 'quota', everyone else gets that quick response denial. So if it seems form and not giving you a 'we liked this and not this' then that could be the issue. Take heart and keep trying. Best to you, Nancy.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing start indeed.
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