With the sun dipping over the treetops and dusk settling beneath the boughs of the cypress trees, Deputy Shelby Taylor checked her watch. It would be dark before long. She should be turning around and heading back to the town of Bayou Mambaloa.
Named after the bayou on the edge of which it perched, the town was Shelby’s home, where she’d been born and raised. But for a seven-year break, she’d lived in that small town all of her life.
So many young people left Bayou Mambaloa as soon as they turned eighteen. Many went to college or left for employment in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Houston or some other city. Good-paying jobs were scarce in Bayou Mambaloa unless you were a fishing guide or the owner of a bed and breakfast. The primary industries keeping the town alive were tourism and fishing.
Thankfully, between the two of them, there was enough work for the small town to thrive for at least nine months of the year. The three months of cooler weather gave the residents time to regroup, restock, paint and get ready for the busy part of the year.
As small as Bayou Mambaloa was, it had an inordinate amount of crime per capita. Thus necessitating a sheriff’s department and sheriff’s deputies, who worked the 911 dispatch calls, responding to everything from rogue alligators in residential pools to drug smuggling.
Shelby sighed. Having grown up on the bayou, she knew her way around on land and in the water.
Her father had always wanted a boy. When all her mother had produced was Shelby and her sister, he hadn’t let that slow him down. A fishing guide, her father had taken her out fishing nearly three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of the year, allowing her to steer whatever watercraft he had at the time—pirogues, canoes, bass boats, Jon boats and even an airboat.
Whenever a call came needing someone to get out on the bayou, her name was first on the list. She had to admit that she preferred patrolling in a boat versus in one of the SUVs in the department’s fleet. Still, there were so many tributaries, islands, twists and turns in the bayou that if smugglers hid there, they’d be hard to find, even for Shelby.
She’d been on the water since seven o’clock that morning after an anonymous caller had reported seeing two men on an airboat offloading several wooden crates onto an island in the bayou.
The report came on the heels of a heads-up from a Narcotics Detective with the Louisiana State Police’s Criminal Investigations Division.
An informant had said that a drug cartel had set up shop in or near Bayou Mambaloa. The parish Sheriff’s Department was to report anything they might find that was suspicious or indicative of drug running in their area.
Because the tip had been anonymous, Sheriff Bergeron had sent Shelby out to investigate and report her findings. She was not to engage, just mark the spot with her GPS and get that information back as soon as possible.
The caller had given a general location, which could have included any number of islands.
Shelby had circled at least ten islands during the day, walked the length of half of them and found nothing.
The only time she’d returned to Marcelle’s Marina had been to fill the boat’s gas tank and grab a sandwich and more water. At that time, she’d checked in with Sheriff Bergeron. He hadn’t had any more calls and hadn’t heard from CID. With nothing pressing going on elsewhere in the parish, he’d had Shelby continue her search.
Normally, any chance to get out of the patrol car and on the water was heaven for Shelby. Not that day. Oppressive, late summer heat bore down on her all day. With humidity at ninety-seven percent, she’d started sweating at eight in the morning, consumed a gallon of water and was completely drenched.
She wished it would go ahead and rain to wash away the stench of her perspiration. Maybe, in the process, the rain would lower the temperature to less than hell’s fiery inferno.
She passed a weathered fishing shack and sighed as she read the fading sign painted in blue letters—The Later Gator Fishing Hut. She released the throttle and let the skiff float slowly by.
A rush of memories flooded through her, bringing a sad smile to her lips. Less than a month ago, she’d spent a stormy night in that shack with a man she’d harbored a school-girl crush on for over twenty years.
She’d insisted it would only be a one-night stand they’d both walk away from with no regrets. She didn’t regret that night or making love to the man. It had been an amazing night, and the sex had been better than she’d ever dreamed it could be.
However, despite her reassurances to him, she’d come away with one regret.
It had only been one night.
She wanted more.
But that wasn’t to be. He’d gone on to the job waiting for him in Montana, never looking back. He’d left Bayou Mambaloa twenty years ago. His short visit hadn’t been enough to bring him back for good.
She hadn’t been enough to make him want to stay.
Shelby gave the motor a surge of gas, sending the skiff away from the hut, but her memories followed. Focusing on the waterway ahead, she tried to banish the man and the memories from her thoughts.
By the time she headed back to Marcelle’s Marina, the heat had taken its toll. She was tired, cranky and not at her best.
Shelby almost missed the airboat parked in an inlet half-hidden among the drooping boughs of a cypress tree. If movement out of the corner of her eye hadn’t caught her attention, she would have driven her boat past without noting the coordinates.
When she turned, she spotted two men climbing aboard an airboat filled with wooden crates.
At the same moment, the taller one of the two men spotted her, grabbed the other man's
arm and pointed in her direction.
“Fuck,” Shelby muttered and fumbled to capture the coordinates with her cell phone, knowing she wasn’t supposed to engage. If these were truly drug smugglers, they would be heavily armed.
The tall man pulled a handgun out of his waistband, aimed at Shelby and fired.
As soon as the gun came out, Shelby ducked. Though it missed her, the bullet hit the side of her boat.
She dropped her cell phone, hit the throttle and sent the skiff powering through the bayou as fast as the outboard motor would take her.
Another shot rang out over the sound of the engine. The bullet glanced off the top of the motor, cracking the casing, but the engine roared on.
Her heart pounding like a snare drum at a rock concert, Shelby sped through the water, spun around fields of tall marsh grass, hunkering low while hoping she would disappear from their sight long enough to lose herself in the bayou.
For a moment, she dared believe she’d succeeded as she skimmed past a long stretch of marsh grass. She raised her head to peer over the vegetation, looking back in the direction of the two men.
To her immediate right, bright headlights dispelled the dusky darkness as the airboat cleaved a path through the marsh grass, blasting toward her.
Her skiff, with its outboard motor, was no match for the other craft. She had to steer around marsh grass or risk getting her propeller tangled, which meant zig-zagging through the bayou to avoid vegetation.
Not the airboat. Instead of going around, it cut through the field of grass, barreling straight for Shelby in her skiff.
She spun the bow to the left, but not soon enough to avoid the collision.
The larger airboat rammed into the front of the small skiff. The force of the blow launched the skiff into the air.
Shelby was thrown into the water and sank into darkness to the silty floor of the bayou.
As she scrambled to get her bearings and struggled to swim to the surface, the skiff came down hard over her. If not for the water’s surface breaking the boat’s fall, it would have crushed her and broken her neck
Instead, the hard metal smacked her hard, sending her back down into the silt. Her lungs burned, and her vision blurred.
Her mind numbing, she had only one thought.
Air.
The black water of the bayou dragged at her clothing. The silt at her feet sucked her deeper.
Her head spun, and pain throbbed through her skull. She used every last ounce of strength and consciousness and pushed her booted feet into the silt, sending herself upward. As she surfaced, her head hit something hard, sending her back beneath the water before she could fill her lungs.
Shelby surfaced a second time, her cheek scraping the side of something as she breached the surface and sucked in a deep breath.
She blinked. Were her eyes even open? The darkness was so complete she wondered for a second if the blow making her head throb and her thoughts blur had blinded her. Or was this how it felt to be dead?
She raised her hand to touch the object that had scraped her cheek. Metal. In the back of her mind, she knew she was still in the boat, but it was upside-down. The metal in front of her was the bench she’d been seated on moments before. She wrapped her fingers around the bench to keep her head above water in the air pocket between the bottom of the boat and the bayou’s surface.
A whirring sound moved away and then returned, growing louder the closer it came to the inverted skiff. It slowed as it approached. Then metal clanked against metal, and the skiff lurched, the bow dipping lower into the water.
Still holding onto the bench, Shelby’s murky brain registered danger. She held on tightly to the bench as the skiff was pushed through the water.
The whir outside increased along with the sound of metal scraping on metal. The front end of the skiff dipped low in the water, dipping the hull lower. Soon, Shelby’s head touched the bottom of the boat, and her nose barely cleared the surface.
Whatever was moving the skiff was forcing it deeper.
Shelby had to get out from beneath the boat or drown. Tipping her head back, she breathed in a last breath, released the bench and grabbed for the side of the skiff. She pulled herself toward the edge, ducked beneath it and swam as hard as she could, her efforts jerky, her clothes weighing her down. She couldn’t see her hands in front of her.
and her lungs screamed for air.
When she thought she couldn’t go another inch further, her hands bumped into stalks. She wrapped her fingers around them and pulled herself between them, snaking her way into a forest of reeds. Once her feet bumped against them, she lifted her head above the water and sucked in air. For a moment, the darkness wasn’t as dark; the thickening dusk and the glow of headlights gave her just enough light to make out the dark strands of marsh grass surrounding her.
The whirring sound was behind her. Metal-on-metal screeches pierced the air, moving toward her. The grass stalks bent, touching her feet.
In a burst of adrenaline, Shelby ducked beneath the water and threaded her way deeper into the marsh. She moved as fast as she could to get away from the looming hulk of the skiff, plowing toward her through the marsh, pushing the skiff beneath it.
The adrenaline and her strength waning, she barely stayed ahead of the skiff being bull-dozed through the grass.
Shelby surfaced for air, so tired she barely had the energy to breathe. It would be so much easier to die.
Holding onto several stalks, she turned to face her death.
The engine cut off. Two lights shined out over the marsh. Another light blinked to life, the beam sweeping over the skiff’s hull and the surrounding area.
As the beam neared Shelby, she sank beneath the surface and shifted the reeds enough to cover her head. The beam shone across her position.
Shelby froze. For a long moment, the ray held steady. If it didn’t move on soon, she’d be forced to surface to breathe.
When she thought her lungs would burst, the beam shifted past.
Shelby tilted her head back, let her nose and mouth rise to the surface and breathed in.
The light swept back her way so fast she didn’t have time to duck lower. Shelby stiffened, her pulse pounding through her veins and throbbing in her head.
Before the light reached her, it snapped off.
She dared to raise her head out of the water enough to clear her ears.
“She has to be dead,” a voice said.
Through the reeds, Shelby could just make out two silhouettes between the headlights
of the airboat.
“We need to flip the skiff and make sure,” a lower voice said.
“I’m not getting in that water to flip no skiff. I saw four alligators earlier.”
“You don’t see them now,” the man with the lower voice argued.
“Exactly why I’m not getting in the water. You don’t know where they are in the dark. If you want to check, you get in.”
After a pause, ...
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