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of conditions on land and in water, and almost every person they encountered carried multiple firearms.
    She’d wanted to work in the outdoors, away from the city, and it had been eye-opening to find out how much the problems of drugs and crime had stretched into the rural areas. But at least their violent cases were rare here in Terrebonne, broken up by long stretches of blue sky and fresh air.
    For three months, it had been the best job in the world. Until she walked into that cabin full of blood and found Gentry looking like he’d seen a ghost.
    “Lieutenant Doucet was at the funeral, and a couple of the sheriff’s guys came,” she said. “I think the parish paid for the burial.”
    He didn’t respond, so she asked the question that had been nagging at her since he mentioned his hometown. “Were you looking for the suspect in Dulac? Was it somebody you recognized?”
    Something had felt off-kilter about the way Gentry had reacted to the Eva Savoie murder, almost like it was personal.
    Gentry had been staring into space but looked back at her now—sharply, she thought. “Why would you think that? I was just tending to family business.” He paused, then shifted gears. “Any of the old-timers from down the bayou come to the funeral? Anybody who looked out of place?”
    She frowned. “Out of place like maybe her murderer?” Gentry’s description could fit half the guys in Louisiana: tall, thin, dark-brown hair of medium length, brown eyes, short beard. “There were a few people there. Other than law enforcement, there wasn’t anybody under seventy except Miss Eva’s niece—well, great-niece.”
    “Hmph.” Gentry steered the boat around the curve into Wonder Lake and headed northwest toward their launch on Bayou Terrebonne. “Heard the niece was some kind of entertainer up in Nashville.”
    Jena stifled a grin. He’d stretched out en-ter-tain-er , stressing each syllable, as if it were a criminal activity he needed to put a stop to. “You got something against entertainers, Broussard?”
    “Just not an occupation that appeals to me.” He relaxed and sped up the boat now that they were on open water. “I can’t see some fancy, high-maintenance woman hanging round Montegut or Chauvin.”
    She smiled. “Or Dulac?”
    “Got dat right.”
    Jena had seen him turn on the Cajun charm before. He’d settle into a heavy South Louisiana patois to fit in and make the people he dealt with feel comfortable talking to him like he was a regular guy. In reality, he’d gone to LSU, same as her, and had worked several years in LDWF’s Region 8, including metro New Orleans, before transferring back to his home parish.
    She still hadn’t quite figured out what made her partner tick. He was single and uninvolved—or so said Stella, the dispatcher and resident busybody, who’d supplied the rest of the biography. Including the fact that Gentry had transferred in three years ago after a case went wrong in New Orleans. Jena had looked up the case and understood a lot more about her partner’s moods once she saw that he’d killed his brother during a drug bust.
    Jena could see other things for herself. Gentry was too ruggedly handsome for his own good and had the potential for trouble written on every muscle, of which he appeared to have many. The man even looked sexy in the LDWF uniform, and their uniforms were about as sexy as a dead swamp rat. Yet he was a loner, and there was an undercurrent of sadness to him sometimes when he had his guard down. Maybe because of what had happened with his brother.
    Still, out of the five-agent LDWF unit assigned to Terrebonne Parish, Jena had to admit the lieutenant had paired her with the right person for her first months of field duty. They’d become friendly, maybe almost friends, without an ounce of real sexual chemistry—exactly how they needed to be as work partners. She was woman enough to admire his looks without wanting to do anything about it. LSU and New Orleans were