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She summoned up the strength and screamed once again, this time with enough force that birds squawked and flew from their nighttime perches.

“Monique…is that you?” Bill Stanger, the busboy at the café and her nearest neighbor, yelled out from his front porch.

“Bill…help me!” she cried.

Her assailant delivered one final kick, and then Monique heard him running away.

Thankfully Bill came to help her. He took one look at her and then gently scooped her up in his arms and carried her inside and to her sofa as she cried with intense pain.

“Where’s your phone, Monique? I need to call the police, and you need an ambulance. Where’s your phone?” he asked again urgently.

“On my…my nightstand,” she managed to gasp out.

It didn’t take long before Daniel and a team of his men entered her shanty. Daniel rushed to her side. “Monique, are you okay? Can you tell me what happened?”

She spoke haltingly amid her tears, explaining what had happened from the time she received the knock on her door until Bill came to help her. He only asked her a few questions about the physical description of the attacker, which she couldn’t answer, and then the medical team came in with a stretcher to take her to the hospital.

“Daniel, can you do me one favor?” she asked amid tears. “Would you call Jacque and tell him what’s happened?”

“I’ll be glad to do that,” he replied.

As they carried her outside, she continued to weep with pain and fear. The only person she wanted with her right now was her partner in crime, the man who she knew would make her feel safe.

It was just after eleven thirty when Jacque’s phone rang. He saw that it was Daniel, and sleep immediately fell away.

“Chief, what’s going on?” he asked.

“Monique has been attacked,” Daniel replied.

Jacque shot up in the bed. “Where?”

“In front of her shanty. I don’t know exactly what happened, but she asked that I call you.”

“Where is she now?” Jacque asked as he quickly scrambled out of bed.

“I had her taken to the hospital. She should be there now.”

“Thanks.” Jacque hung up and immediately got dressed. He grabbed his phone and his car keys and quickly left his shanty.

His thoughts were in turmoil as he hurried through the swamp to get to his car. Daniel had said she’d been attacked. What exactly did that mean and how badly had she been hurt?

Damn, he should have asked more questions. Hopefully he’d get answers when he reached the hospital. What had she been doing outside her shanty at this time of night? He should have insisted she stop with her snooping after she’d received the threatening note. If this attack was about that, then she was done. He would make damned sure of it.

He reached his car and roared off toward the small hospital that served the town.

His gut tightened in knots of tension, and anger battled with anxiety inside him. The anger was mostly directed at himself for indulging her in the hunt for her mother’s elusive book. He should have never agreed to any of it in the first place. What he should have done was go to Daniel and let the lawman know her intentions. Right now, he couldn’t figure out exactly why he hadn’t done that.

It didn’t take long for him to pull into the parking lot in front of the emergency room entrance. Jumping out of the car, he raced inside and approached the woman at the receptionist desk. “I’m here for Monique Santori,” he said.

“She’s back with the doctor right now. If you’ll just take a seat, somebody will be out to talk to you when they can,” she said.

“Thanks,” he replied, then sank down in one of the green plastic chairs against a wall.

Would he even be allowed to speak to anyone about her condition? He wasn’t related to her in any way. With all the privacy laws, he had no idea. But she had wanted him to know what happened. She had asked Daniel to call him.

She had been attacked. That was all he really knew. Had she been stabbed? Shot? How, exactly, had she been attacked? The fact that she’d needed to come to the hospital ripped him up inside.

He was the only person in the waiting room, and as he sat alone with his thoughts, he couldn’t help but be wildly worried about her.