Page 2 of Slack Tide Kill

Mud Beasters sped by oblivious. She surged for the bank, dragged herself out and ran shaking to the inlet on the second pipe.

No one came out. She ran back to the outlet, but there was only a steady flow of reddened, wheezing faces emerging from the mud; nothing to indicate it was them.

What was happening? Had someone just tried to kill her, or…

Without thinking, she jumped back into the water and returned to the pipe.

This time, there was nobody there. She ran her fingers over the smooth walls as she swam through. Nothing to snag her, nobody hiding, nothing at all.

She emerged again, panting hard, and climbed back to the bank.

"Are you OK?" a voice came.

She turned to see a wide-eyed young man wearing a red cross on his armband.

"What?"

"Just, I noticed you went through twice. Did you lose something?"

Sally fought for control. Had someone really grabbed her ankle, or had it been… what? Panic? Had someone else panicked and latched onto the nearest person?

"Ma'am?"

Sally opened her mouth to say something, tell him what she thought had happened, but stopped as her thoughts sped ahead. There was another possibility.

What if she'd imagined the whole thing?

Claiming an attempted murder now would halt the entire race, in her name. She closed her mouth as the consequences played out in her head.

After Dark Peak she'd gone through compulsory therapy; a dozen hourlong sessions. Her record was already scarred by that, and it showed. Deputy Director James McMaster at the National Crime Agency had kept both her and her partner Liam O'Connell on desk duty for the last three months.

She'd kept busy in her off-hours with the private investigation that had brought her to the UK in the first place: the Louisiana massacre she'd survived at 18, possibly tied to a school spree stabbing in Lincolnshire on the day she arrived. But without her full warrant, she'd been forced to take side alleys and detours, fostering anonymous contacts and digging by proxy. It was like investigating in slow motion, and it ground her down.

She needed to get off desk duty, with only nine months left in her exchange.

But if she halted the Mud Beast now?

She'd be done. Dark Peak had been national news, after all. She could see the follow-up.

'FBI agent nearly dies in the dirt, now hallucinates burial alive everywhere she goes?'

She couldn't let that be the headline.

"I'm fine," she said. "Just got mixed up."

The young man tried for a smile. "Well, it happens. People get turned around in these tubes. If you're sure?"

"I'm sure," Sally said firmly. "Thanks."

She turned and dived back into the water.

The rest of the Mud Beast passed in a blur. Her body performed the feats she told it to. Rope climbs. Wall vaults. Barbed wire crawls. None of it really touched her, because she wasn't really there at all. She was back in the water, back in the dirt, fighting for her life.

At the end they gave her a medal, a banana and a bottle of electrolytes. She ate the banana then vomited in the trash can at the edge of the parking lot. She tossed the medal and the bottle in after, then headed to her car.

It was still early, barely 9 a.m. in Hawkenbury, Kent. She'd driven 90 minutes to get here, and was no longer sure why. At her leased vapor blue Ford Mustang GT, she drank a quarter gallon of water and dropped into the driving seat without thinking to put down a towel. She cranked up the heat and just sat there, heels of her hands pressed into her eyes, feeling the hot air wash over her but getting no warmer.

Maybe five minutes passed. Maybe half an hour.