Looking downward and then up. “Tell Raina we’re hoping the best for Titan,” he said. “And hopefully, sometime while you’re still around, we can have dinner!”
“Thanks,” Axel said.
He hurried inside. Raina was waiting by the bar.
He took her arm, leading her out quickly. As they headed for his car, he asked, “Where’s Jordan? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know where he is. He doesn’t know where he is. Axel, he called and just started talking, babbling. He said he got away. I tried to ask from who—and from where. He said it was dark, so dark, and he was screaming about snakes. And he suddenly said, ‘Oh, shit!’ And then the line went dead on me.”
“Dark and snakes? But he didn’t say who or what was going on?”
“He just started talking. The call couldn’t have been more than several seconds. I had just stepped in here. I couldn’t get a word in. I tried. He talked so fast.”
Axel called Angela.
“Anything? Have you got a location on that cell for me?”
“The phone is still on, but the signal’s been in and out. I have people on it.” She gave him the coordinates of the towers the signals were bouncing from.
He thanked her and hung up.
“Anything? Where is he?” Raina asked him anxiously.
“He’s in the middle of the Everglades. Somewhere about twenty miles west of Miami and another five miles south of the Tamiami Trail.”
“Oh, my God! By himself? Running from a killer?” Raina said. “We have to find him, Axel. We have to find him fast. There are all kinds of killer creatures out there.”
“None quite so deadly as man,” Axel said. “Yes. Jon Dickson and Kylie Connolly are on their way. Let’s pick up Titan first and head out. I’ll alert Andrew and he’ll get the tribal folks moving. And Nigel can get the rangers and some of his people on it. We’ll find him, Raina.”
Dead or alive, he thought. But he didn’t say those words out loud.
“He does know something,” Raina said, staring ahead into the night. “He must. The way he was acting, that strange feeling I had. He knows something, but he’s not a killer. I think he might know who killed Jennifer Lowry, and that’s why he was so angry, why he kept saying she didn’t deserve it. Axel, Jordan could be the key to what’s going on. Maybe we should head straight there. Titan is great, but he’s really not spent much time crawling around the Everglades.”
He didn’t want to suggest they should get her dog because it seemed the dog was someone’s target, as well.
“We need him,” he said simply. “There’s no alarm on your house.”
“Titan is an alarm. Oh, my God. You really think someone tried to poison my dog?”
“Yes.”
“To get to me. But... I’m with you.”
“And we need to keep it that way,” he told her.
She swallowed and nodded.
He got on the phone as he drove, calling everyone with voice control. He spoke with Andrew first, then Nigel and Angela. Then he hesitated and called the lab.
“I was just about to call you,” the head of the department told him. “We went high priority as you asked on that sample you gave us. And yes, it was laced. Common rat poison, available many places, but of course we’ll get going on a list. But there’s something else you need to know about the meat.”
“What about it?” Axel asked.
“It was human. Human thigh muscle.”
Fifteen
Raina had always thought she understood the meaning of “darkness.”
But in the middle of the Everglades, in the middle of the night, darkness took on new meaning.
She stood in the back of Andrew’s yard. He had a small army of Miccosukee friends, park rangers and a few other people who knew the area well, even some of the python hunters they were all so quick to disparage as being white-collar businessmen out for a spree or uneducated locals looking for a spot on a television show. Miami-Dade police and others were part of the group, as well; the search would be extensive.
She would never mock those wanting to look like hicks to get on a television show again. They were all there to help.
A couple of the python hunters had an idea of where to search. They’d seen an all-terrain vehicle moving in just about five miles south of Andrew’s that day. That was very strange, because the terrain out there was lousy for fishing or sporting of any kind. Only airboats usually traveled the area.