The man took one look at Lucky and vacated his seat, shooting Perret a nervous glance as he moved away into the smokier regions of the bar. Sipping his beer, Lucky eased himself onto the stool and hooked the heels of his boots over the chrome rung.

“Hows tricks, Pou? Where’s Willis? In the back cheatin’ at bourre? You out here keepin’ watch or somethin’, little weasel?”

Perret scowled at him and shrunk away to the far side of his stool like a dog afraid of getting kicked. He muttered an obscene suggestion half under his breath.

“That’s anatomically impossible, mon ami,” Lucky said, taking another sip of his beer. “See the things you might have learned if you’d stayed in school past the sixth grade? All this time you’ve probably been wearin’ yourself out trying to do that very thing you suggested to me.” He chuckled at Perret s comically offended expression as he helped himself to a pack of cigarettes lying on the bar. He lit one up and took a leisurely drag. Exhaling a stream of smoke, he shrugged and grinned shrewdly. “ ‘Course, mebbe Willis, he helps you out with that, eh?’

Perret narrowed his droopy eyes to slits. “You bastard.”

Luckys expression went dangerously still. His smile didn’t waver, but it took on a quality that would have made even fools reconsider the wisdom of getting this close to him. “You say that in front of my ma-man, I’ll cut your tongue out, cher,” he said in a silky voice. “My folks are respectable people, you know.”

“Yeah,” Perret admitted grudgingly, bobbing his head down between his bony shoulders like a vulture. He scratched his chest through his dirty black T-shirt, sniffed, and took another stab at belligerence. “How’d they ever end up with the like of you?”

Luckys eyes gleamed in the dim light as he looked straight into Perrets ferret face. “I’m a changeling, don’tcha know. Straight up from hell.”

Perret shifted uneasily on his seat, superstition shining in his dark eyes like a fever. He lifted a hand to the dime he wore on a string around his neck. He snatched his cigarettes out of Luckys reach and shook one out for himself, sliding a glance at Lucky out the corner of his eye. «What you want, Doucet?»

Lucky took his time answering. He stood and shoved the barstool out of his way so he could lean lazily against the bar. He set his cigarette in an ashtray and took another long swallow of his beer before turning to look at Perret again.

«You been sniffin' 'round the wrong part of the swamp this last couple of weeks, louse,» he said quietly. «Me, I think it might be better for your health if you go raidin' elsewhere.»

Perret made a face and shrugged off the warning. «It's a free country. You don' own the swamp, Doucet.»

Lucky arched a brow. «No? Well, I own this knife, don't I?» he said, sliding the hunting knife from its sheath. He grabbed a fistful of Perrets T-shirt and leaned over until Perret nearly fell off his stool. The wide blade gleamed just inches from the man's nose. «And I can cut you up into 'gator bait with it, can't I?»

Conversations around them died abruptly. On the other side of the bar, Skeeter Mouton whimpered and crossed himself, sending up a prayer for the survival of his establishment. Clifton Cneniers accordion sang out from the speakers of the jukebox, sounding as raucous and out of place as a reggae band in church.

«Come on, Lucky, don' go cuttin' him up in here,» Skeeter pleaded. «I won' never get all the blood out the floor!»

Perret turned gray and swallowed as if he were choking on a rock, his dark eyes darting from Lucky's face to the knife and back.

There was a commotion at the back of the room as a door burst open and a group of men emerged, their expressions ranging from avid interest to livid anger. At the front of the pack was Mean Gene Willis. Willis had been a roughneck down in the Gulf and a convict in the Angola penitentiary. He was a good-sized man with fists as big as country hams and a face like a side of beef. He made a beeline for Lucky with murder in his eyes.

Lucky let go of Perret, snatched up his untouched whiskey, and flung it into Willis's face. The big man howled and lunged blindly for Lucky, who met his advance with a boot to Willis's beer gut. Perret took advantage of the distraction to grab Lucky's beer bottle and break it on the edge of the bar. As he swung it in an arch for Lucky's head, a gun went off. Women screamed. Someone kicked out the plug on the jukebox. There was an instant of deafening silence, then a man's voice rang out.

«That's enough! Y'all stop it or I swear I'll shoot somebody and call it in the line of duty.»

Perret dropped his broken bottle and slinked away like the rat he was. Willis lay groaning on the floor, holding his stomach.

Lucky stepped back casually and sheathed his knife, his gaze drifting over the uniformed agent who had hurried out of die back-room card game with Willis. He had gone to school with Perry Davis and had disliked him since kindergarten. Davis was a man of fair, baby-faced looks and an annoying air of self-importance that was only more grating in adulthood, considering the fact that he was lousy at his job.

Lucky picked up his cigarette from the ashtray on the bar and took a slow pull on it. «Is this the kind of thing they were referring to when they named it the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Agent Davis? You playing bourre in a roadhouse?»

Davis gave him a cold look. «What I'm doing here is none of your business, Doucet.»

«No? A respectable employee of the government gamblin' on taxpayers time? That's none of my business?»

«What do you care? I doubt you pay taxes and you sure as hell aren't respectable.»

Lucky chuckled. «That's right, cher, I'm not. You'd do well to remember that.»

«Are you threatening me, Doucet?»

«Who, me? I don't make threats.» His gaze took on the cold, hard look of polished brass, and his voice dropped a notch. «I don't have to.»

A muscle worked nervously in Davis 's jaw. «I'm not afraid of you, Lucky.»

Lucky smiled. «Well then, I guess it's not true what folks say about you, is it? You're every bit as dumb as you look.»

Davis 's pale complexion turned blotchy red, but he said nothing. He holstered his gun and turned away to shoo the bar's patrons back to whatever they had been doing before the ruckus.

Willis struggled to his feet. Doubled over with an arm across his belly, he glared at Lucky. «I'll get you, you coonass son of a bitch. You wait 'n' see.»

Lucky dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the floor with his boot. «Yeah, I'll be losin' sleep over that, I will,» he drawled sardonically. «Stay out of my swamp, Willis.»

He turned toward the door to make his exit and his heart jolted hard in his chest. Serena Sheridan was standing right in front of him with her little calfskin purse clutched to her chest, her eyes wide and her pretty mouth hanging open in shock. In her prim suit and slicked-back hairdo, she looked like a schoolmarm who'd just gotten her first eyeful of a naked man.

Lucky swore under his breath. He didn't need any of this. He would have been just as happy never to have to tangle with the likes of Gene Willis and Pou Perret. He sure as hell had never asked to baby-sit Serena Sheridan. This all came back to the other lives that kept insisting on crossing paths with his, and it was damned annoying.

He took Serena by the arm and ushered her toward the door. «You've got a real knack for showing up in places you hadn't oughta be, don't you?»

Serena looked up at him but said nothing. She suddenly felt way out of her depth. Anyone with half a brain would have spotted Lucky Doucet for a tough customer, but she hadn't quite realized just how tough, just how dangerous he might be. Somehow, the fact that he knew her grandfather had diluted that sense of danger, but what she'd just witnessed had brought it all into sharp focus.