Prologue
Aidan
The day was warm and humid, but a light breeze stirred, creating just a slight ripple on the shimmering water and an occasional glint among the rich growth of trees and grass. But looking ahead, with the sun also casting dazzling bits of diamond reflections on the water, Aidan Cypress thought about the beauty of the region.
But it didn’t alleviate his sense of dread.
They’d all been waiting.
And now it was possible the last shoe had dropped.
He had always loved his homeland, the Florida Everglades. There was an incredible sense of peace and majesty to be found here in the great sweeps of trees, hammocks, and saw grass prairies. Birds soaring high in colors that shamed a rainbow held sway over the skies, and the land and the water offered so much more in nature’s bounty.
Despite the beauty of the great “river of grass,” he knew dangers awaited the unwary and the vulnerable. Alligators basked in the sun on the embankments of the countless streams and ponds that continually moved throughout the tropical wetlands; the area was home to extremely poisonous coral snakes, eastern diamondbacks, pygmy rattlers, and the cottonmouth.
He swatted at his cheek.
Of course, there were the mosquitoes and other flying pests like gnats that could drive one wild. But he’d been out with Jimmy Osceola in his flatboat many times and had almost become oblivious to the flying pests that could be far more annoying than a fear of lethal predators.
He also knew that once upon a time, it had been this great river of grass that had given his people sanctuary. In the early 1800s, peoples from Georgia had fled south: Upper Creeks, Lower Creeks, and many other Indigenous people. They all became known as Seminoles, or sometimes, Runaways. The Seminole Wars raged throughout the early 1800s, and many Indigenous people were rounded up and shipped out to reservations in the West. But in the end, approximately six hundred people survived in the Everglades, never surrendering. Sometimes they were known as the Undefeated, or the Unconquered. Those six hundred or so people eventually thrived and in time separated into their two main language groups, Hitachi and Muscogee. In the mid-twentieth century, they were finally recognized as the Seminole and Mikasuki Tribes of Florida.
Aidan grinned to himself. Times changed. Now his people were doing well. It didn’t hurt that they’d purchased many of the Hard Rock properties, not the least of which was just in Hollywood near tribal offices, the stunning Guitar Hotel and the casino drawing thousands of people from across the world—not to mention, of course, the local population who just enjoyed a night or two away to experience the pools, the fabulous restaurants, and, naturally, the gaming.
He was glad Amy Larson and Hunter Forrest were there right now. A friend of his in casino management had arranged for a very special room for them. They really needed the break because the two of them had been on the case from the beginning, following the bizarre killings that had to do with the Book of Revelation—and the coming of the Apocalypse. He’d worked with Amy many times, and he loved her dearly as a friend. He’d met Hunter Forrest when crucified victims had been displayed just south of here, and he admired the man tremendously.
And with all that they had seen...
They deserved a break. One they might have expected to be cut short.
Because they’d all dreaded that despite the monsters taken down so far, more would be out there. And now...
He was resigned to the fact this had been bound to happen—the dreaded arrival of the pale horse, and whatever truly lay behind the devastation they’d been fighting.
The Everglades were truly a national treasure of nature, and the very wild beauty of the place invited those who loved the remote and austere elegance of the landscape and also those who wanted to make use of it.
“Pull in here,” he called back to his friend Jimmy Osceola. They’d taken the flatboat rather than Jimmy’s airboat so Aidan could watch the shoreline. Aidan worked for the FDLE—Florida Department of Law
Enforcement—and he was proud of his expertise in the forensic field. But Jimmy was just a hell of a nice guy who loved people and loved being a tour guide in the Everglades.
Aidan didn’t know what he was going to find, if anything. When whoever was really behind the Horsemen cases had begun, the killings had been shown in pure spectacle, victims hanged as if crucified and left to be discovered. Then there had been the ridiculous displays with dead gang members.
But these trends never repeated themselves. Still, one of Jimmy’s customers had been convinced she’d seen something strange on the embankment, and so, when he’d finished the tour, he’d called Aidan. Just because a worried tourist had seen something that bothered her didn’t necessarily mean there was anything wrong...
Except as he somehow knew inside, the fourth horseman was still out there—and whoever was behind it all wanted something. Aidan’s sixth sense warned him the pale horse would waste no time in arriving.
And as he had feared, this tourist had been right—there was something wrong. Very wrong.
Aidan hopped off the boat, motioning to Jimmy to stay behind, and walked slowly and carefully toward the flash of pale color he had seen against the intense green of the foliage. Jimmy was an amazing guy who loved his people, their culture, and the Everglades. He was not, however, in law enforcement.
And as he came closer, his heart seemed to freeze, and he hated his own instinct.
There was a hand sticking out from the ground with fingers outstretched as if they’d been reaching, trying desperately to dig out. Except that...
As he came nearer, he realized there was no way the hand might dig a body out of a grave.
The hand was attached to a ravaged forearm and nothing more.
A few feet away, half-covered by brush, was a foot with part of an ankle, and beyond that...
More. More chopped-up body parts—body parts belonging to more than one person. This was no leftover or regurgitated meal discarded by a predator. These parts had fallen out of one of the barrels entangled in a stretch of mangrove roots.
Only one barrel had fallen over.
He could see four more barrels. Perhaps there were additional barrels in the twisted and tangled undergrowth that proliferated in the area.
Carefully he inched forward; he could see what looked like a small figurine—a pale green horse—lying near the overturned barrel, but there was more. It appeared there was something twisted in the fingers protruding from the grass and roots and fallen leaves.
Slipping on gloves, he reached to keep his distance from the area of the crime scene until
the medical examiners, photographers, the rest of his team, and the detectives and agents could arrive.
It was a torn scrap of paper, possibly secured by the person before death, and maybe unnoticed by the killer—or even purposely left to be discovered. He had to be careful with the paper; the elements had already played havoc with the dismembered corpses here.
Naturally, at the same time, his phone was ringing. Caller ID showed him Amy Larson, FDLE agent on loan to the FBI for the Horsemen cases, was on the line.
How the hell did she know already?
A sixth sense like his? Or...
“Aidan,” she said before he could speak. “Any chatter, any anything? Mickey Hampton called and told me he opened a package at our office—it contained one of those plastic horses.”
“A pale horse,” Aidan said, swallowing. “Pale green, the color of death, of rot and decay. Amy, he’s here. Our fourth horseman is at work already, out here once again in the Everglades.”
“You found a body?” she asked.
Aidan looked around and winced.
“Definitely. Um, more than one.”
“How many?”
“Amy, frankly, I have no idea. I’m just very afraid things may get a whole lot worse before...well, hopefully, before we all do our best to stop whatever Apocalypse is being planned, and...”
He broke off. As he’d spoken, he’d managed at last to read the faint writing on the scrap of paper he’d extricated from the fingers.
“‘The Reaper Follows,’” Aidan said.
“Pardon?” Amy asked.
“Scrap of paper in a hand—”
“A dead man was holding a scrap of paper?”
Aidan shrugged, shaking his head.
“Aidan?” Amy pressed, concerned.
“A hand. Fingers attached to a hand and a forearm. Just get the hell out here, please! I’m pinging you the coordinates. And...”
Behind him, he felt a presence; Jimmy Osceola had stepped off the boat. And now Jimmy let out something of a twist between a startled choke and a scream.
“Oh my God, what—” Amy began.
“We’re good—Jimmy just saw... Please, Amy, tell Hunter—all hands on deck. The Reaper isn’t following—the Reaper is here.”
1
Hunter Forrest was grim as he surveyed the scene at the coordinates Aidan had sent.
When the little plastic horse, the “pale horse,” had shown up at FDLE, they’d known their respite was over. Whoever was making use of the biblical warning regarding the Apocalypse and the Four Horsemen who would bring it on wasn’t going to stop until he, she, or they had played their game out to the very end.
They’d circumvented so much of the insanity already, Hunter thought. But now they were playing the finale—the endgame—without knowing what that game was intended to be.
Except, of course, that it would include the deaths of more innocents. As apparently it had already done.
A pale horse—pale green. The color of death and the rot and decay that followed.
Then again...
This was the Florida Everglades.
Where one could often find miles and miles—and miles—of nothing but waterways, saw grass, palms, and more natural flora and fauna. Where Miccosukee and Seminole tribal lands abutted state and federal lands.
There were no security cameras lurking around, just a few gators here and there.
No one to see the pale horse easily dispense pale, sickly green—dispense death.
In truth, they were looking at many colors here, mostly green already, but deep green, bright green—colors of life. And apparently these murders had been intended to stay hidden—for a time at least. All in all, they had discovered eight large oil drums filled with body parts. It was going to take a team of medical examiners to put them all together. It was truly horrendous, like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, except this puzzle had been created from dismembered corpses.
The strange thing was they hadn’t heard of any mass killings. And by the evidence they had ascertained so far, the victims hadn’t been shot. And since they were in so many pieces, they had been left anywhere from a few days ago to a few weeks ago. The medical examiners on-site couldn’t tell them much until they had time to try to piece the bodies together in a mass autopsy.
But so far, they hadn’t found a bullet in any body part, nor had any cartridges or shells been discovered in the area.
“They weren’t killed here,” Amy Larson said.
Hunter turned to look at Amy, his partner and so much more, and wondered if he wasn’t appearing to have a bit of green on his own face as she did. Despite the years he had spent in the service of law enforcement, this was one of the most horrendous crime scenes he had ever come across.
Even seasoned medical examiners were looking a bit green.
Just like the fourth, “pale” horse.
But Amy stood firmly and grimly, angry and determined. She was a beautiful woman, about five-ten in height, with sweeping, dark auburn hair and classic features. She usually tied her hair back when working and wore very professional-looking pantsuits—unless law enforcement was making use of her looks in any kind of an undercover operation. But a professional appearance took nothing away from her sculpted face or the emerald flash of her eyes.
She turned to him, frowning, one brow arched. “I hate to admit it, but I’m not feeling much like a hardened law enforcement officer at this moment. What? Do I look as...queasy as I feel?” she asked him.
“No. The green in your face just enhances the shade of your eyes,” he told her.
“You look a little bit under the weather, too, you know.”
“I’m human. And back to what we’re seeing, I agree, they weren’t killed here. They were murdered elsewhere and dumped here. This isn’t going to be easy. We’re going to need to have identities on these corpses to discover who they were and how they all wound up being here at the same site,” he said.
Amy nodded as she looked around, shaking her head. “This is...so strange. We were meant
to find the bodies eventually, I think. Why else leave a toy horse and note? But to chop human beings up like this and put them in barrels... I don’t believe we were supposed to find them quite so quickly. The tourist was concerned because she saw a barrel had fallen over or a predator had knocked it over. And when we did find them, I don’t think the killer wanted us finding out who they were.”
“I agree on that, too. I think you’re right about that,” Hunter said.
“But!” another voice chimed in.
They turned to see their friend Aidan Cypress, forensic specialist, coming their way.
“But?” Amy queried, frowning.
“But while we may be missing a few fingers here and there—the wildlife around here does get hungry—we are going to have many. And it’s likely we’ll discover most of the identities between fingerprints and DNA.”
Hunter studied Aidan and said thoughtfully, “We’re on the pale horseman. With each of the others, there has been a leader—except we believe that these leaders have been following someone else.”
“The horseman above the other horsemen?” Amy queried.
He nodded. “And I’m wondering... Okay, what I’m thinking is we’ll have a fourth horseman—but expendable to whoever is really pulling the strings. All these things are meant to cause chaos, just like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is loose, of course, because there are so many interpretations of the Book of Revelation. But bear with me. The First Horseman, riding the white horse—seen as Christ himself by many but seen as the Antichrist in later interpretations—came to create war and conquer. The Second Horseman, seated upon the red horse, had a great sword and was to go forth and slay men. The Third Horseman, riding the black horse, was given scales and talked about the price of food—and that was interpreted as someone bringing famine. The pale horseman rides along with the grave and brings death and an overall interpretation is the demise of a quarter of the population. But here’s the thing—we’ve stopped the white, red, and black horse riders. And while they were clever, I’m going to go with either batshit crazy or maniacally brainwashed.”
“And you think there’s someone directing all the so-called horsemen,” Amy said. She grimaced. “Someone who isn’t batshit crazy.”
“Right,” Hunter agreed.
Aidan was nodding. Hunter arched a brow to him.
“You know, hungry big alligators will eat smaller alligators,” Aidan said thoughtfully.
“What?” Amy asked, frowning.
“I got it. I think we’re all three thinking that maybe...this leader of the pack may have been getting rid of baggage, those beneath him doing the dirty work and anyone who failed him or wasn’t toeing his line closely enough,” Hunter speculated.
“A theory. Possibly,” Aidan said. “A toy horse was sent to the FDLE, and there’s a toy horse here. We may discover that some of these people were failed followers, and some of them are victims who were simply
getting in the way or causing trouble.”
“Okay, at the beginning, I was called in on this specifically because of the cult involvement. And let’s face it, we’ve taken down a few sadly deluded people,” Hunter began.
“But this kind of planning isn’t crazy, four horses until the Apocalypse—” Amy said.
“Tells us that there will, yes, be a fourth horseman—and then a someone over them, someone who has caused all this for a greater plan. And while he or she might have had a few crackpots—conspiracy theorists, whatever—in their employ, I don’t believe the master puppeteer really believes in the Apocalypse or even the Bible or any other religious texts. This elongated path of death and destruction calls for something else, something deliberate,” Hunter theorized.
He looked around at the scene again and shook his head. “We’ve all seen the power of a charismatic leader, especially a cult leader, someone who can truly convince others he—or she—knows the way to the afterlife in all good grace. It’s often mind-boggling that the human mind can be so twisted and coerced. But brainwashing is very real. The puppeteer found people in different stages of loss, confusion, or personal trauma and belief to prey upon. Some are just those who...” His voice trailed for a minute.
He knew a lot about cults and was called upon when cult activity was suspected because he’d spent time in a cult as a boy. It had started out for the right reasons—his mother had been infuriated by her rich father’s refusal to help those in need in any way. She had believed she was bringing his father, him, and herself to a better place of kindness and faith.
Only to discover that when rules weren’t obeyed, kindness was the last thing on a cult leader’s mind. And the cult concept was being used here. But he believed it was being used for a very specific reason.
“Hunter?” Amy said.
She was worried about him, and he smiled. “I’m just trying to figure out what the endgame in all this might be. What could someone want? Everything in this has been the same—death and destruction—but different. Bodies out here, bodies in a cave, gang killings, bodies displayed, and bodies hidden. Why?” He grimaced. “Going back to scores of great minds in our field—when crimes are committed, we look for motive, opportunity, and means. When the Behavioral Analysis Unit got started, they had to take a new look at motive when they dealt with killers like the Son of Sam—his motive was that a dog told him to kill. They interviewed and studied serial killers, trying to learn the reasons killers would select victims at random, victims who had done nothing to them. Anyway, I think we have both situations going on here—the follower ‘horsemen,’ some of whom do believe in what they’re doing in a cult fashion, and then someone with a definite desire to make something happen.”
“Like what, though?” Aidan asked.
“I don’t know. And figuring that out might be the key,” Hunter said.
They were all quiet for a minute.
“Hey!” Amy said, pointing to the score of officers, agents, forensic experts, and medical examiners carefully searching the area. “We’re not alone
in all this.”
“No. But still, Amy, you are targeted,” Aidan said grimly. “Amy, the horses are always sent to you or appear wherever you and Hunter may be.”
“Hey, my friend, you’ve been with me at some of the most frightening twists in this thing, but as I said, we’re not alone. I’m always careful. And I have you and Hunter and amazing teams behind me.”
“I know,” Aidan said. “And I know you won’t sensibly back away from this.”
“I can’t,” Amy told him. “And we’re all only safe when we find the truth.”
Hunter nodded. “I did spend time taking classes and working with some of the behavioral analysis agents, and I think we might bring someone in on this. I’m trying to put a finger on just who we might be looking for, but we all know that help can be just what we need, too.”
“Well, I admit I’ve never been able to take any of those classes—trace evidence, blood spatter patterns...you name it. But no profiling. But! I think I can tell you a few things, and you can tell me a lot more,” Aidan said. “The Everglades seems to be the prime location, so we may be looking for someone who is a Floridian or loves and knows Florida. Or at the least, we’re looking for someone who has really studied the maps and the terrain. And I think it may be someone who even knows where all the boundaries are on tribal land, state land, and federal land. They know many of the waterways, and also where roads come close to waterways.”
Hunter smiled grimly and nodded. “And someone who is a narcissist, convinced of their own power, so much so that taunting us along the way brings them extreme pleasure. Clues are spread about, but the real leader of all this is convinced they’re superior to any of our efforts to come close to the truth. Yet we all believe that while we were supposed to find these bodies, we weren’t supposed to have found them so quickly. I also believe the victims were dead before they were chopped to pieces. The horror of the situation—corpses in pieces, rotting and green—is something that is supposed to disarm us. A barrel fell over. We found these victims a little early. It may help, or it may not.”
“Maybe law enforcement was supposed to have been on edge by the arrival of the pale horse at the FDLE office,” Aidan said. “They would be desperately looking but having to take time to find the bodies. If the barrels had all remained tightly sealed, it would have been some time before they were noticed here, where they are.”
“Still, for now, we wait for forensics and the medical examiners to tell us just who we have here and what clues there might be. I’m going to speak with Assistant Director Garza and find out if he doesn’t have an agent from the BAU he thinks might be able to help on the profiling side. I don’t think these barrels were brought through the roads. It would be a long way through rugged terrain to
carry them out here. They were brought through the waterways,” Amy said.
“And here’s the thing—no security cameras are hidden in these trees,” Aidan said. “There’s nothing to catch on video, no facial recognition to be used.” He wrinkled his face and said dryly, “Alligators and even the most beautiful birds don’t make great witnesses.”
“We need to work on the victimology,” Hunter said.
“And we will get names for you,” Aidan vowed.
His friend and coworker was angry, Hunter thought. And he didn’t blame him. Some people found the Everglades to be a no-man’s-land of heat, mosquitoes, and killer creatures. To Aidan, the area was a natural wonder, one that offered exquisite birds, tranquil waterways, and nature, all beautiful and hazardous at its best.
He understood. He wasn’t from the area himself, having endured his own strange childhood. But he knew Amy loved an airboat ride and watching for the various storks to be seen along with the Florida panther, endangered and protected, and yet seen by a lucky few.
He knew such an area—treacherous to the unwary—had been used through the years as a dumping ground, but never on a scale such as this.
“Thanks, Aidan,” he said. “I know you and your team will get whatever there is that can be gotten.”
Aidan nodded and tried to smile. “So, how was the holiday?”
Amy laughed softly. “Not sure you can call so few days a holiday, but wow! Aidan, thank you. It was beautiful, wonderful! Incredible.”
“I’ll get you back there!” Aidan promised.
“Let me add to that. Thank you, thank you, thank you! It was great,” Hunter emphasized. He noticed Amy was frowning, wandering toward something that wasn’t really a trail, but more or less like animal tracks between saw grass and trees.
“Amy?”
“Be right back!” she promised. “I thought... I’m probably wrong. I’ll be right back!”
There had been movement.
Of course, there could well be movement. Man wasn’t the only creature to prowl through the Everglades. But...
Amy moved carefully, going inland, back toward the road, doubting she was going to stumble upon an alligator this far inland from the water, but it was possible. The danger that might be faced was more likely that of venomous snakes in this area. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
