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He brushed one of the curls away from her face so that it didn’t cover her eye. “Right back at you.”

“Yeah, like I have a life. I just work and go home.”

Ryker gave a disbelieving chuckle. “A beautiful woman like you? I don’t believe that for a second.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Give me your number.”

“This is stupid.”

“What if it isn’t? Wouldn’t it be fun to be feeling one another up sixty years from now?”

“Fine,” she huffed and grabbed his phone out of his hands. She keyed in her name and number and then handed him back his phone. Ryker pressed a button and her purse vibrated.

“Didn’t trust me, huh?” she asked as she pulled her cell phone out of her purse.

“Just wanted to give you an opportunity to plug in my contact information so that you wouldn’t just ignore my call, thinking it was spam.”

“Sure you did.” Then she laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

3

It had been tough going because Zed had not made it easy. They’d been following him since dawn and it was almost dusk. It would normally be twenty yards between every viable track. Sometimes they would find where the grass had been depressed, or when they were really lucky, they might find a little bark that had been recently rubbed off a log. Like Jase said, they couldn’t always assume it was Zed, but it was in line with the path they were tracking, so they had to assume it was his spoor.

“Spoor is a stupid word,” Ryker murmured to Jase as they found another spot where the marsh grass had been stepped on.

“I don’t know what to tell you, take it up with Webster’s dictionary,” Jase sighed. “It’s the proper term hunters use for the things we find when we’re tracking, like footprints.”

“So, say footprints.”

“Shut up, Ryker.”

“Just saying.”

“Well stop—”

Ryker held up his fist, causing Jase to immediately stop. Ryker pointed to a section of Spanish moss that was dangling from one of the bald cypress branches. Ryker pointed to it and Jase nodded. They’d been following Zed through the dryer marshland since dawn, but by the looks of things, he was heading back toward the swamp.

Silently, they ducked under the moss-covered tree and followed the spoor, sighting two depressions that were slowly filling with muddy water.

We’re close!

They both pulled out their binoculars and did a sweep of the area. Jase pointed to something and Ryker shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, indicating he didn’t understand.

Jase got up close and murmured in his ear. “Look at where the pond scum has been disturbed. He’s given us a road map, right to him.”

Ryker still didn’t see it, there were breaks in the algae all over the place. He squinted his eyes, and then he saw it. Zed had zigzagged. Now that he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it. It was clear that Zed had crossed and ended up behind that giant grouping of mangrove roots.

“How do you want to play this?” Ryker asked in a barely-there whisper.

Jase pulled out his small notebook, identical to Ryker’s. They’d each been using it to keep track of spoor sightings. Jase wrote down what he wanted. He would fall back two hundred yards this side of the swamp, and Ryker would go forward two hundred yards. Then they would each cross over to a point one hundred yards past the mangroves behind Zed’s root system. Jase looked down at his watch and gave them twelve minutes to get into position.

“Then we close in on him.” He grinned. “Got that?”

Ryker knew his grin was even bigger as he nodded.

Jase wrote down something else and handed the notepad to Ryker.

Ryker read:

And don’t fall into any sinkholes.