near the clearing for dousing the weekly campfires. He scooped up some swamp water and poured it on the fire then stirred the embers with the shovel, repeating the process until everything was cool to the touch. By the time he was satisfied that the fire was dead and out, with no potential to flare up later and endanger anyone, the line of children had long ago passed beneath the archway into town.
He stowed the bucket and shovel by an old oak tree for the next story time, optimistically assuming that there would be a next time after tonight’s scary-story fiasco. Winning over the children was part of his plan to win over their parents and was one of the reasons that he’d started story times and hiking and camping activities with the kids. The sooner he could get the residents to support his role as chief, the sooner he could sleep without one eye open, dreading their next prank.
Of course, if he didn’t fill the two open deputy positions, there was no chance of running a viable police force and gaining the respect of the citizens. Hopefully, at least one of the candidates that Cole had helped him line up to interview tomorrow in Naples could be convinced to move to Mystic Glades to take up a position. All of the previous candidates had bolted after reaching the part of the interview where Zack gave them the lowdown on life in his town. He was starting to think he should just lie and trick someone into moving here. After all, that was basically what Cole had done to him.
Cole’s wife’s inn had only recently been rebuilt after a drug runner, using Mystic Glades as his personal home base, had burned it to the ground. The drug runner had been dealt with—thanks largely to Cole—and the town was a safe place to live once again.
But since Cole worked quite a distance away in Naples, he wanted to make sure the town, and the woman he loved, always had someone nearby to maintain order. So he’d ruthlessly used the town’s gratitude toward him to pressure them into putting up the funds to create the Mystic Glades Police Station and everything that entailed. In return, they’d made him promise to bring in someone worthy of the job as chief who could then bring in the staff that he needed to get the job done. That’s why Cole had contacted Zack.
They’d met three years ago at a law-enforcement seminar in Nashville and had become fast friends. Cole knew that Zack was a career officer, hungry for advancement. So he’d dangled the carrot of becoming chief of police, of starting his own department from the ground up, betting that Zack would bite. Which he did, resigning his position and moving to Mystic Glades without even having visited the area first.
He should have been furious with Cole for tricking him, for painting the town to be a tropical paradise with a supportive township that would welcome his presence. Nothing could be further from the truth. But he knew how deeply Cole cared for Silver. His love for her had been clear over the phone, and painfully obvious once Zack had seen the two of them together. That was when Zack’s anger at his friend’s trickery had dissipated. Because Zack knew what it was like to love a woman that way. He’d found his soul mate right out of college. But before they could begin to plan their life together, she’d discovered she had breast cancer.
Four months later she was gone.
Zack closed his eyes, his body going rigid as pain washed through him. It had been five years since he’d lost Jo Lynne, and still the memories hit him when he least expected, making it hard to breathe. Coming here, leaving behind all of the places that constantly reminded him of her, had been even more of an incentive than becoming chief of police. But he was finding that age-old saying to be true—you can’t run from your past.
Especially if you carry the scars around inside you.
A high-pitched shriek shattered the night. Zack’s eyes flew open, his hand going to the pistol holstered on his hip as he studied the trees and bushes, turning a full three-sixty, trying to figure out where the sound had originated. Everything was quiet and still. Even the crickets. But not for long. They started up again, their rhythmic chirps punctuated by the occasional deep-throated croak of a bullfrog. But that shriek, the sound that had the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, didn’t repeat. And the acoustics in this swampy, tree-filled part of the Glades made it impossible to pinpoint the direction where the sound had come from.
What had he heard? Could it have been a scream? As far as he knew, no one else was out here. The town was isolated, nothing around it for miles. And the residents knew better than to roam the swamp at night. There were far too many four-legged critters scavenging for food to make that safe. So what could have made that screech?
A swishing noise had him jerking his head up to see a large brown owl overhead, flapping its wings and gliding into the clearing. It landed on a cypress stump about ten feet away, blinking its dark, round eyes and watching him with lazy curiosity. The tension drained out of him and he let out a shaky laugh. An owl. He’d nearly drawn his gun on a bird. He shook his head and dropped his hand from the butt of his pistol. If his brothers back in Murray, Kentucky, could see him now, they’d laugh their fool heads off.
Having grown up painfully poor in the eastern part of the state, there’d been no video games or cable TV to keep him and his three brothers out of trouble. So they’d chased away boredom by playing cops and robbers in the thick woods and hills, or hide-and-seek in the twelve-foot-high rows of cornstalks on their daddy’s farm.
As they’d grown older, they’d learned to track and hunt, doing their part to thin out the herds of deer that would otherwise suffer and die of starvation or disease—or destroy the crops Zack’s family depended on to keep their bellies full and a roof over their heads. So he was quite familiar with the kinds of wild animals that roamed that part of the country, from the tracks they left to the sounds they made. But two months in southern Florida was hardly enough for him to get used to the wildlife around here. He’d just have to assume that the screech he’d heard had been made by the owl that was still blinking at him, as if wondering if he’d make a good next meal.
Maybe he’d Google owls later and figure out what kind this one was. But he’d have to wait until tomorrow morning’s planned trip into Naples. He certainly couldn’t search the internet here. Mystic Glades was notorious for interfering with the signals of electronic equipment, and he’d long ago given up trying to surf the net on his laptop. Even the GPS in his pickup truck rarely worked out here. Which was another reason that prospective deputies weren’t keen on moving to the Glades.
Living life without internet was inconceivable to many, downright prehistoric to others. He was still in withdrawal himself. Snapping a picture of some crazy thing he’d come across in the swamp and texting it to his buddies back home or his family was so second nature that he still found himself pulling out his phone several times a week to do just that.
Until he remembered he was living in the land that time forgot.
He started down the path again, but he kept a close eye on his surroundings. While residents of this backwater town, including the children, understood the dangers and took them in stride, this was all new to him. He was still learning how to acclimate himself to the hostile environment so he didn’t become a gator snack or experience the painful, possibly poisonous bite of a snake. Cottonmouths and rattlers weren’t uncommon out here.
But it wasn’t reptiles or the slithering inhabitants of the Everglades that had him studying everything with a keener eye than usual.
Buddy’s outlandish stories about monsters and people disappearing in the swamp had obviously gotten to him just as it had the children. Because even though he knew that mournful, terrified-sounding screech had to have come from the owl, he couldn’t help a niggling doubt that kept running through his mind.
What if I’m wrong?
Tears streamed from her burning eyes. Blinking furiously, she stumbled to a halt and braced herself against a tree, her stiff fingers curling against the rough bark. Her breaths came in quick, shallow gasps as she raised a hand to block out the bright morning sunlight streaking down through the canopy of tree branches overhead.
How many times had she prayed for sunlight, to feel