Turnabout Shallow Secrets by Rick Ollerman

Author:Rick Ollerman [Ollerman, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime fiction
Publisher: Stark House Press
Published: 2015-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty Eight

Fetterman woke up slowly, the skin on his face burning in the morning sun. He rocked the canoe as he pulled himself up into a sitting position then made the mistake of pressing his fingers into his head. There were several places that were very soft and very tender.

His mind was shouting questions but he didn’t rush to come up with any answers. Instead, he lowered a hand into the river and brought splashes of tea-colored water to his face.

The river.

The canoe.

The details of the night before filtered their way through the thick mental haze as slowly he began to remember what had happened.

He had lost the girl. O’Neil, too, who wasn’t even supposed to be there.

Weights were attached to his eyelids and he knew if he allowed them to close he would be asleep again almost immediately. He forced himself to sit hunched over forward so he couldn’t lay back.

A tiny smile cracked his dry lips as he recalled one pleasant thought from the night before. Fetterman’s eyelids touched and he visualized the black holes in both sides of the dead man’s neck.

He dried his hands on the front of his shirt and checked out the canoe. There was no paddle in the bottom of the craft, no paddle floating in the water anywhere that he could see. They had stranded him.

Fetterman studied the land along the banks of both sides of the river. He looked upriver and downriver, trying to recognize the shape of its path, but if he could trust his eyes and memory they told him there was nothing familiar about any of it. There were some breaks between the mangroves, some treeless patches of dirt or grass where he might be able to climb ashore, but there was nothing but sawgrass and palmetto beyond. He knew that he must have drifted a good distance to the south.

He slumped back into the point of the canoe, not caring about the uncomfortable pressure from the fiberglass sides pressing into his back. Unconsciously, he fingered the largest lump on his forehead, wincing when he pressed too hard. What was supposed to happen now?

At some point, Fetterman had no idea exactly when, Hill would show up at the cabin looking for the girl. When he found no one there what would he do? Would he figure out what happened and take off, try to save himself? Would he go on to Miami without either Fetterman or the girl?

Would he come look for me?

A moment’s hope but Fetterman let it die. He knew better than to think that he or anybody else would come between Hill and getting that money. Hadn’t they proved that with all the bodies they’d left behind? Still, it was a pleasant thought if not a realistic one.

He knew that the river eventually connected to the Gulf of Mexico and that there would be boats there, someone who would come to help him if he waved them down. If he were more himself, he could take their boat from them, he knew that.

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