I say,” Lucia told him. She sat at Axel’s other side, happy to see him. “So, are you really relaxing for the evening? I guess no one can work twenty-four hours a day.”
He didn’t answer for a moment; their waitress appeared with the drink orders she’d evidently received from the first arrivals. Friendly and smiling, she asked the others for their preferences and suggested a few appetizers.
They ordered.
“So, you guys getting anywhere?” Tate asked him.
“One step at a time. Strange, though,” he told the group. “A girl disappeared years ago—the night of your camping trip in the Everglades. Her body was just found. Or her bones, I should say.”
“Where?” Len asked.
“In the Everglades.”
“Near where that poor other girl was just found?”
“Different area—deeper into the Everglades, or more off the beaten path, really, between the Tamiami Trail and the tip of the peninsula.”
“That’s so sad!” Lucia said.
“Terrible,” Mya said. “I told you—scary place.” She shuddered. “And the fact that we were out there! Now that’s truly scary. You’re going to catch this guy, right?”
“Statistically, there are twenty-five to fifty active serial killers on the loose at any time in the United States,” Tate said, shaking his head and looking at Axel. “Sorry, I went to law school—spent some time in the prosecutor’s office. I looked you up, too. You’re something special.” He laughed. “More than being a ‘special’ agent. Your unit has its own offices, special assistant director, special field director—you guys are elite.”
“Yes, I have a great unit. Actually, I think we’ve been promoted to ‘branch,’” Axel said, shrugging pleasantly at Tate.
Tate Fielding had been a kid when the murders had started. But his apparently casual interest here seemed to be a bit too...casual.
And he’d looked up the Krewe of Hunters.
“And you go all over,” Tate said. It wasn’t a question.
“We handle special cases.”
“A very special agent on very special cases. We’re lucky we rate down here,” Tate said, lifting his glass of beer to Axel. As he did so, their waitress returned.
“Soda with lime,” Tate said as Axel’s glass was delivered. “I guess you don’t ever consider yourself to be off duty.”
“Oh, sometimes I do. Not tonight,” Axel said pleasantly.
“You’re going to work again after dinner?” Elly asked him. “Your life must be exhausting!”
Axel smiled. He leaned forward. “That’s why we’re considered to be so elite. We don’t stop, you see, until we get answers to all the questions we have.”
He heard the sound of a chair scraping back. It was Raina. She stood. “Excuse me, guys. Trip to the ladies’ room.”
“Right inside,” Lucia told her. “To the left!”
“Thanks!” Raina called to her.
“Still nothing from Jordan?” Len asked Lucia as Raina walked away.
Lucia shook her head. “Tate, he really didn’t call you with any kind of an excuse or anything? It’s not like him not to answer me at all.”
Axel stood. He didn’t know what they were going to find when the lab came back with a report on the hunk of meat he’d taken from Raina’s yard. But anyone who knew her or knew about her knew full well a very big and potentially lethal dog would happily die before allowing anything to happen to her.
Now, Raina was away from her dog.
“Excuse me, phone call,” he said.
He stood. As if on cue, his phone started ringing.
He walked away from the table, surprised to see by his caller ID that it was Raina calling him.
“You’re all right?” he said quickly. “I was just heading in to check on you.”
“I’m fine—just in the ladies’ room. But we have to go. Axel, I got a call from Jordan. I can’t go back to the table. Not now. I’m all right. But I have to try to remember this call. Please. Can you say goodbye for us? Can we go right away?”
“Absolutely. I’ll say goodbye. Pick you up on the way out,” he told her.
He strode back to the table. “Hey, guys, sorry. Call from some tech at Miami-Dade,” he told them. “Probably more of nothing, but yeah. I’m always working.”
“I can give Raina a ride home,” Lucia said.
“That would be great, but I’ve got her dog and it’s complicated.” He decided to take a shot in the dark. “Titan is sick,” he said. “We left him with a friend of mine.”
“Titan! Oh, no, poor puppy. He’s going to be okay, right?” Elly asked.
“Hopefully. Anyway, thank you all for a great partial evening,” he said. He looked around, curious to the way her friends might react. Elly—truly concerned. Lucia—dismayed. Both Mya and