“Would you bite back?” he asked her.
“If you keep threatening my parents, I promise you, I’ll bite back!”
“Not if you want them alive. And slow down!”
Kody slowed down. She had no idea what he was looking for. If she were to turn to the right at the moment, she’d wind up in a canal. Not a pleasant thought. If she turned to the left, as far as she could see, there was nothing but soupy marsh. They were, she knew, near Shark Valley, but it was still ahead of them on the trail by a mile or two.
“Here,” he said.
“Where’s ‘here’?” Kody demanded.
“Slow down!”
She slowed even more and glanced in the rearview mirror.
There were no lights behind them.
She wasn’t being followed. Her heart seemed to sink.
“Right there!” Appleby told her. “See there? See the road? And don’t get any ideas. You sink us in a canal or a bog out here, your parents die. Oh, and you die, too. So, drive, and drive carefully.”
“Do you know how pitch-dark it is out here?” Kody demanded.
“Do you know that’s why they give cars bright lights?” Appleby retorted.
Kody grated her teeth. She turned to the left and slowly, carefully, followed the dirt road Appleby had indicated. It seemed to head into nothing but dense green grass and it slowly disappeared.
“That’s good,” Appleby said. “Here. This is fine. It’s as far as we go by car, my dear.”
She’s already been dragged through the swamp. She’d spent a night in a chickee. She’d walked, not knowing if she’d disturb a rattler or a coral snake, or if she’d step on a log that turned out to be an alligator. She shouldn’t have been so terrified.
And yet she was.
Appleby shoved his gun into his waistband and tossed her a backpack. “Get your flashlight,” he commanded her.
She found a large flashlight in the pack along with water, a folded shovel, a pick and a power bar.
They might have been on a planned hike or tour into the wilderness!
“Turn your light on,” he said.
She did so, as did he. The flashlights illuminated great circles of brush and grass and trees. “There,” he said.
Where?
And then she saw an airboat before them.
“Let’s go!” he said.
She took a step; the ground was no longer solid.
She stepped into swamp and prayed she wasn’t disturbing a cottonmouth.
It was only a few steps to the airboat. She was grateful to climb aboard it.
And then Appleby was with her, the motor was revving and they were moving deeper into the abyss of the night.
*
“I WILL BE there when they arrive,” Jason Tiger assured Nick. “I’ll have Miccosukee police with me. They know how to hide in the night. We’ll be on it, I promise.”
“But don’t approach until we’re out there,” Nick said. “We’re trying to find her parents. We’ll be behind them. We have a ranger meeting us to take us out to the hammock. We’ll take the first miles by airboat and then switch to canoes so that we’re not heard.”
“We won’t approach. Unless, of course, we see that Miss Cameron is in imminent danger.”
“Of course,” Nick agreed.
Nick spoke with Tiger as he waited for Craig to join him. He hung up just as his teammate joined him in the car.
“You know, I keep thinking about this,” Nick said.
“We haven’t thought of anything but for days now,” Craig said grimly.
“No. I mean the timing. I went to Kody’s house at 8:00 p.m. Her mom and dad were still out—at a board meeting. We came to the hotel. We were at the hotel about three hours or so. That would mean that Appleby got to her house, either charmed or laid a trap for her parents when they returned, and then found someone to threaten who had a boat, and got Kody’s mom and dad out on the boat. At least, that’s what he told Kody.”
“And?” Craig asked him. “Ah. Yeah, timing. You don’t think that he really got them out on a boat. We have the Coast Guard out, but, of course, there are so many boats out there. And they can search for the Cameron couple. Thing is...”
“There are hundreds of boats out on the water. It’s dark, and the bay stretches forever, and boats move,” Nick said. He shook his head. “But I don’t think they’re on a boat.”
“Where do you think they are?”
“Somewhere near the house,” Nick said. “I can’t look, though. I have to get out there. I have to get out there as quickly as possible. I know what Kody was doing, where she was looking, what she believed. I need—”
“To be there. I get it. Drop me at the Cameron house. I’ll find her parents, if they are anywhere near the house,” Craig said firmly.
Nick nodded. “Thank you.”
“It’s a plan, my friend. It’s a good plan. I’ll get some help out to the house with me. If Mr. and Mrs. Cameron are anywhere near, we’ll find them. And, if they’re on the water, the Coast Guard will find them. Appleby knows Kody. He knows that she’ll do anything he says as long as she’s worried about her parents.”
“We’re ahead of him by one step this time,” Nick said. “He didn’t know that she got a call through on her phone, that I heard what went on between them. As far as he knows, we don’t have a clue that Kody has been taken, that he has her out in the Everglades.”
“She’s really the right stuff,” Craig said lightly.
She’s perfect! Nick thought, and it felt as if the blood burned in his veins.
He knew he probably shouldn’t be on the case now. Because he would kill, he would die, to see that she was safe. And that was just the way it was.
Chapter Ten
The airboat drifted onto the marshy land just before the rise of the hammock.
Kody’s heart sank when she thought about the impossibility of the task before them. People had known about the Anthony Green stash forever. Scholars had mused and pondered on it.
They’d agreed that the treasure was in the Everglades.
Where bodies and more had disappeared since the coming of man.
“Get your pack. We’ll head straight back,” Appleby told her. “That bastard G-man had it down right, just before everything went to hell, before your silly friend freaked out and ran. You know, this could have all been over. We could have found the treasure. I’d have left you out here, where one of those rangers or Miccosukee police would have found you.
“Yep. It could have all been over. You know, letting that man in was the only mistake I made,” Appleby said, and shrugged. “He talked a good story—he pulled it off. He acted as if he could be tough when needed.” He grinned at Kody. “Maybe that’s why you two hit it off so well. Two actors, cast in different roles in life.”
Appleby laughed, amused by his observation. “Okay, let’s go. Get back there. We’re going to find the site of the pilings, and we’re going to start digging.”
“Don’t you think that this is a little crazy?” Kody asked him. “The local police know that you were here, the FBI know that you were here...they’ll have someone out here.”
“Why would they have someone out here?”
“It was a crime scene!”
Appleby laughed. “They looked for me here. They didn’t find me here. They’ve moved on. They’re checking the airlines and private planes. They’re going to be certain that I’ve fled the area. They won’t be looking for me here. So let’s get started.”
“This is ridiculous. It’s dark. I can step on a snake. You can step on a snake. I saw gator holes back there. You could piss off a gator—”
“Yep. So let’s hurry. Over here. That’s where your lover boy seemed to be when all hell broke loose. And he was going by your determination.”
It was insane. Maybe by daylight. Maybe with a dozen people digging and working...
“It could be worse,” Appleby said.
“Really?”
 
; “It could be summer.” Appleby laughed and swatted his neck. “If it was summer, the mosquitos would be unbearable.”
Every step in the night was torture. At least, once they had moved in from the edges of the hammock, the ground was sturdy, a true limestone shelf.
It was difficult to get a bearing in the darkness. While the stars remained in the sky, the glow of the flashlights only illuminated circles of light; large, yes, but not large enough. She heard the chirping of crickets and, now and then, something else. Something that slunk into the water from the land. Something that moved through the trees. There were wild boars out here, she knew. Dangerous creatures if threatened. There were Florida panthers, too. Horribly endangered, and yet, if one was there, and threatened...
She kept walking, searching the ground, a sense of panic beginning to rise within her as she thought about the hopelessness of what she was doing. And then she came upon an indentation in the earth. She paused and shone her light down.
The dry area of the heavy pine piling would have eroded with time. But beneath the limestone and far into the water, the wood had been preserved.
She’d found it.
A piling that indicated the corner of the main chickee where, decades ago, Anthony Green had maintained the Everglades “office” for his illicit distillery.
She looked up; Appleby was staring at her.
“Time to dig!”
*
“WE’VE BEEN WATCHING HER. She has been safe,” Jason Tiger told Nick. “You don’t see them, but there are three men with me, watching from different angles. Oliver Osceola is in a tree over there—he’s closest. Appleby has kept his gun out, so we’ve been exceptionally careful not to be seen or to startle him in any way.” He was quiet for a minute. “We have a sniper. A good one. David Cypress served three tours of duty in the Middle East. If we need—”
“We need to keep watching now. My partner is searching for Kody Cameron’s parents. She’ll throw herself in front of him, if she’s worried about what will happen to her folks.” The burning sensation remained with Nick, something that he fought—reminding himself over and over again that he was a federal agent, responsible to his calling. He would make every move the way a federal agent would—and that included killing Appleby point-blank if necessary to save a civilian.
The time taken to reach the hammock deep in the Everglades behind Shark Valley had seemed to be a lifetime.
He was here now.
He could see Appleby and Kody.
“All right, we’re ready,” Jason Tiger said. “You call the shots.”
Nick nodded and ducked low into the grass. He kept as close to the ground as he could, making his way around to the area where Kody and Appleby were standing. He came close enough to hear them speaking.
“That’s it! Now dig. It’s there somewhere! You see! Ah, you were such a doubter, Miss Cameron! Dig! We have found it.”
Kody was trying to assemble a foldable spade.
“You need to make a phone call,” she said.
“I need you to dig.”
“Make the call. It’s been an hour again. I mean it—make the call.”
“What if I just cut you up a little bit, Miss Cameron?”
“Then you’d have to dig yourself,” Kody told him. “Make the call.”
“You want me to make a call? Fine, I’ll make a call.”
Appleby pulled out his phone. He placed a call. He appeared to be speaking to someone.
But Nick wondered if there was actually anyone on the other end.
Had the man really taken Kody’s parents out on a boat somewhere? Did he have new accomplices watching over them, actually ready to kill?
Or had Nick been right? Were they somewhere near their own home?
Still a safe distance, hunkered low in the rich grasses, Nick put a call through to Craig. “Anything yet?”
“No. But we have search-and-rescue dogs on the way. We’re going to find them. What’s going on at your end? Have you found Kody and Appleby?”
“We have them. Jason Tiger has had them in sight. We’re good here. Just...just find Kody’s parents.”
As he spoke he heard the dogs start to bay. They were on to something. He suddenly found himself praying that Craig and the men and the dogs weren’t going to find corpses. The corpses of two people he had never met.
“Bones,” Craig said over the phone.
“Bones?”
“And a little gravestone. For JoJo, a little dog who died about a decade ago.”
“Oh, lord. Craig—”
“Hold up. We’ve got something. The dogs are heading across the street. There’s a park over there. I think he has them in the park, Nick. Right back with you!”
*
KODY DIDN’T TRUST APPLEBY. She knew the man really didn’t care if people lived or died.
She wondered with a terrible, sinking feeling if her parents weren’t already dead. If Appleby hadn’t come into the house, waited for them and shot them down in cold blood...
“I want to talk to my mother,” she said.
“What?”
“I want to talk to my mother. I want to know that she’s alive. I don’t believe you and I don’t trust you. And this is sick and ridiculous, and if I’m going to continue to search and help you, I want to know that my mother is alive!” Kody said determinedly.
“Do you know what I could do, little girl?” Appleby asked her. “Do you have any idea of what I could do to you? Let me describe a few possibilities. Your kneecaps. You can’t imagine the pain of having your kneecap shot out. I could shoot them both—and then leave you here. Eventually birds of prey and other creatures would come along and then the fun would really start. They would eat you alive. Slowly. They’re very fond of soft tissue, especially birds of prey. They love to pluck out eyes...you can’t begin to imagine. With any luck, you’d be dead by then.”
Kody wasn’t about to be swayed. “I want to talk to my mother.”
“You can’t talk to your mother.”
“Why not? Is she dead? If she’s dead, I don’t give a damn what you do to me.”
“She can’t talk because there isn’t anyone with her to hand her a phone!”
“I thought she was being held on a boat by people who would kill her.”
“She’s alive and well, Kody. Okay, maybe not so well, but she is alive. She’s just tied up at the moment.”
“Tied up where?”
“Does it matter? She can’t talk right now.” Appleby let out a growl of aggravation. “She can’t talk. I knocked them out, left them tied up. They’re alive, Kody.”
“How do I trust you?”
“How do you not? You don’t have a choice. Start moving. The longer you take, the more danger there is for your mom and dad.”
“Maybe you’ve never even had them!” Kody said.
Appleby grinned. “Mom. Her name is Elizabeth, nickname Beth. She’s about five feet, six inches. A pretty brunette with short, bobbed hair. Dad—Daniel. Six-two, blue eyes, graying dark hair. Yep, not to worry, Kody, dear, I do know the folks.”
Kody managed to snap her shovel into working condition. For a moment she stared at Appleby, then she studied the ground and jumped back.
“What?” Appleby demanded.
“Snake.”
“It will move.”
“Yes, I’m trying to let it. It’s a very big snake.”
“It’s just a ball python,” Appleby said. “Someone’s pet they let loose out here. Damn, but I hate that! People being so irresponsible. They’ve ruined the ecosystem.”
Kody stared at him. He hadn’t minded shooting an accomplice at close range. But he was worried about the ecosystem.
Thankfully, the snake at her feet was a non-native constrictor instead of a viper.
She swallowed hard.
The snake was gone.
She started to dig.
*
“TELL ME YOU’VE got something!” Nick whispered to Craig.
&nb
sp; “Yes! We’ve got them. They were left under the bridge at the edge of the park. They couldn’t twist or turn a lot or they’d have been in a canal. But we have them. We have them both. Elizabeth and Daniel Cameron are safe.”
“Roger that. Thank you,” Nick said. He clicked the phone closed, then inched through the grass and rose slightly, giving a signal to Jason Tiger to hold for his cue.
Kody suddenly let out a little cry, stepping backward.
“What?” Appleby demanded.
“Another snake...it’s a coral snake. A little coral snake, but they can be really dangerous.”
“No, that’s not a coral snake. It’s just a rat snake. Rat snakes are not poisonous.”
“‘Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. Black touch yellow, friend of Jack,’” Kody said, quoting the age-old way children were taught to recognize coral snakes from their non-venomous cousins.
“Yeah! Look, black on yellow!” Appleby said.
“No, red is touching yellow!”
“You want to get your nose down there and check?” he demanded.
“I am not touching that snake!” Kody said.
Appleby made a move. Nick could judge the man’s body motion, the way that he crouched. He was getting ready to strike out.
And that was it.
Nick went flying across the remaining distance between them.
Appleby spun around, but he never knew Nick was coming, never saw what hit him. Nick head-butted the man, bringing him down to the ground.
The man’s gun went flying.
They could all hear the popping sound as it was sucked into the swamp.
Appleby made no effort to struggle. Nick had raised a fist; Appleby just stared at him. He started to laugh. “You won’t do it, will you? Pansy lawman. You won’t do it. In fact...”
Nick didn’t listen to the rest; he was already rising. Jason Tiger and his men were coming in to take the prisoner.
He looked over at Kody, who was standing there, shaking. She hadn’t moved from her position; she was just staring at him.
Then she flew at him, her fists banging against his chest. “Nick! You idiot, he has my mom and dad. He’s going to kill my mom and dad. He’ll never tell us—”