The Buried (The Apostles) by Shelley Coriell

Author:Shelley Coriell [Coriell, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

Lamar Giroux’s fishing boat wasn’t fast or big, and it smelled like Allegheny Blue, but it did a hell of a job winding through twisting sloughs and creeks. Hatch had spoken to Jonny Mac minutes ago. Janis was no longer talking, but his teammate could still make out low, shallow breaths. Hatch ran the spotlight along the shore of Nettle Creek and peered through the dense shrubbery for any sign of a young woman buried alive. Downriver a pack of dogs barked.

“Shine the light to the right near the lilies,” Grace said as she squinted through the blackness, softened only by a sliver of moon. “Something’s been there.”

The spotlight cut across the lilies and landed on a flattened patch of broken reeds. His pulse spiking, he grabbed a low-hanging cypress branch and pulled them closer.

Damn. Too narrow for a boat, even a fourteen footer. “Another gator slide,” he said. Another dead end.

Grace maneuvered the boat out of the tiny creek, gliding to a set of yellow-slitted eyes poking out of the water. Hatch stared down the gator until it blinked and spun away. He’d take on every gator in Florida if it meant getting to Janis Jaffee in time. Although time was key, Grace continued to boat slowly down the river as he searched the banks, looking for any signs of human disturbance. Hatch ground his back teeth. Make that any signs of a disturbed human. They were dealing with a twisted and dangerous mind.

Once on the Apalachicola River, Hatch’s phone vibrated with a text from Lieutenant Lang. “Cell phone company just identified two towers picking up signals,” he told Grace. “Cross section of the towers is some place called Bremen’s Bayou. Name ring a bell?”

“Northwest of here,” Grace called out over the gun of the motor.

“Big area?” Hatch asked.

“Couple hundred acres.”

Even with the roar of the outboard, he heard the excitement in her voice. “What?”

“One of Lamar’s old hunting buddies keeps his dogs on a floating pen in that area. Janis heard the dogs right before she was dragged from the boat. We find the dogs, we’ll find the girl.”

Within fifteen minutes, Grace had them racing down the Apalachicola River and onto Bremen’s Bayou, a slow-moving waterway surrounded by cypress and oak dripping with Spanish moss. His light glided over cypress roots reaching up from the water like fingerless hands. The trees hung low over the water, and branches scratched the side of the boat. And some of the branches—

“Broken!” Grace said on a fast breath. “The wood’s still damp at the break. Someone’s had a boat back in here recently.”

She inched the boat through the tangle of branches. His light landed on a flattened bush and a pair of crushed white trumpet-like flowers. He fanned the light higher. “Drag marks. Too wide for a gator.”

Grace jammed the boat into the bank. He launched himself over the side, his feet sinking into swampy earth. Swatting brush, he chased the drag marks into the knot of blue-black shrubs and trees. Vines reached for his hands and legs.

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