Deadly Touch - Heather Graham Page 0,79
Andrew and Axel addressed the makeshift search party, warning they had to be careful, as they all knew, at night. They all loved the Everglades, and they all knew even without possible danger from a killer there were plenty of predators to be found in the darkness.
The parties split up. Axel remained with Andrew. Nigel had arrived and apparently the three of them had a plan.
“She’s coming—and the dog?” Nigel asked, referring to Raina.
“Safer than leaving her—and the dog—anywhere else,” Axel said.
“And like hell you’d be leaving me. It’s my friend who’s out there,” she said.
“We going to follow the route the python hunters suggested?” Nigel asked.
“It’s as good as anything else,” Axel told him. “And it jives with the placement Angela reported on the cell phone.”
“Let’s do this. Titan going to be okay on an airboat? Billie Osceola has one waiting for us.”
“He’ll be fine,” Raina said with assurance. She paused a minute and then turned to Andrew. “Billie Osceola? A relative?”
He grinned. “There are lots of us Osceola—Miccosukee and Seminole. But Billie. Yeah, I think we’re third cousins or something like that.”
They drove the distance to the village where Billie Osceola was indeed waiting for them; he was going with them.
“I’m better at navigating an airboat than any of you.”
“Hey!” Andrew protested.
“You want the airboat?” Billie asked.
“Take her away,” Axel told him.
The moon suddenly broke from the clouds as they started out. It provided a glow over the Everglades—the hardwood hammocks and the wetlands, fields of sawgrass barely covered in water, deeper pools scattered as if by a casual hand.
The airboat had a powerful light, illuminating each area as they moved.
They saw all manner of creatures.
They woke sleeping gators, and at one point bounced over something.
“What the hell?” Nigel murmured.
“Python, I think. Damn things are getting to be just about everywhere down here. We have to kill them when we find them. It’s kind of sad. It’s not the fault of the damned creatures that they’re out here. Found a rock boar in my yard the other day. Cool little dude.” He hesitated. “I didn’t kill it. I have a friend who’s a science teacher in the city. Gave it to her. Didn’t tell her where I got it—and she didn’t ask.”
They kept moving through the night. The powerful beam at the front of the airboat cut through mud and muck and foliage and trees.
“Stop!” Axel called out suddenly.
Raina hadn’t seen anything.
And not for lack of searching.
“What?”
“There’s something on that mangrove limb over there,” Axel said. “Billie, can you get us a little closer?”
“Am I a driver extraordinaire or what?” Billie asked.
He maneuvered them into position. Raina saw there was a piece of clothing caught on one of the branches.
Axel reached for it, drawing it in.
“Oh, my God!” Raina breathed.
“You know what this is?”
“It’s one of Jordan’s jackets...he had it on the other day, when he was at my house,” Raina said.
He studied her for a minute and handed her the jacket.
“See what you get,” he told her.
“See what I get?”
“Put it on,” he suggested.
She swallowed hard and then did so quickly.
“There’s, uh, there’s no mirror,” she said.
“Close your eyes. Let your mind be the mirror,” Axel told her.
She closed her eyes. For a minute all she felt was the humidity and the heat, slightly relieved by the fall of night. She heard crickets, something large slinking back into the water, somewhere.
A single cry from a night bird.
Then she saw a strange darkness. And she thought she could see Jordan. Something was covering his head.
She heard a harsh whisper.
“Sorry—you deserve this!”
“Bastard! Jennifer didn’t!”
The voices were whispers in her head. She couldn’t place them. She knew Jordan had to be the one speaking, the one in the strange darkness...
He started to run, and he ran and ran. She heard cursing behind him.
“Dammit, we need guns!”
“No guns, always traced...”
But she—Jordan—made it. She heard him panting desperately for breath. He was caught suddenly and barely kept himself from crying out. But he’d loosened the ropes on his wrists and they fell free. He struggled out of his jacket, leaving it entangled on the branch. He’d reached into his pocket for his phone, called Raina and then saw it—the large bull alligator on the path before him. He’d disturbed the beast.
“Oh, shit!”
His phone fell as he flew down another path—zigzagging. They’d been taught all their lives that an alligator could run with amazing speed, but that zigzagging confused them.
He zigged and zigged and zagged and then...
Nothing.
“Raina!”
She felt Axel’s hand on her shoulder.