Deadly Touch - Heather Graham Page 0,3
made a sound.
“Hi. You okay?” he asked softly. “Raina, right?”
She nodded.
“Yes.” She croaked out the word.
A bit of a fog had fallen. The moon was full, or just about so, and it cast a strange glimmer over their little clearing, the wetlands, waterways and tree-laden hammocks.
Was it him? Had he been such a wonderful storyteller that his story had come to life?
There was a rich field of sawgrass stretching behind him, caught in an eerie glow between the fog and the moonlight.
And she saw it, sailing upon...the sawgrass and wetlands.
Idiot—she certainly had yet to get a high school degree, much less her college degree! She knew great old-fashioned sailing ships could not be on a sea of grass!
But the dog whined again. Axel Tiger looked out across the land beyond them as she had.
He turned back to her.
“You see it,” he said softly, a note of surprise in his voice.
She could barely form words. She whispered, “The ship.”
“The night, the fire, the fog,” he said. “But there’s nothing to fear. If pirates roam, they do so praying. They pray they might somehow find their way to atonement. Some say they learned the hard way and now they guard the Glades, doing what they can to stop evil from occurring. I’m being whimsical. You need to go back to sleep. It’s a great program they’ve got going for your group in the morning. You’ll want to be awake for it.”
He looked back at what appeared to be an endless sea of grass bathed in fog and the strange glow of moonlight.
He saw the ship. She knew he saw the damned ship. He’d even asked if she’d seen it, and now...now he wanted it to be a vision cast within her imagination.
He looked back at her again.
“Please, don’t be afraid. Timothy and I are here, and we have a few Miccosukee police on duty just over there at that picnic table. You’re safe. Don’t worry, we’re all watching. I’m watching. Go back to bed.”
There was little choice. She nodded and slipped back into her tent. She laid down, but she stayed awake and stared at the canvas, at the fire dancing again.
Two things kept rushing through her mind.
The ship. She’d seen the ship.
He’d known her name. No big deal; he probably knew all their names. This was an amazing program.
Eventually, she slept. She woke with the sun and the sound of laughter and conversation. It was time to start the day.
The program was wonderful. She loved learning the history of the area, what needed to be protected, how the entire ecosystem worked. She loved learning about the different Native American tribes that had come to Florida, and how the Seminole and Miccosukee had settled the Everglades.
She loved it all...
But in her heart, she felt she had touched something and then lost it.
She didn’t see the pirate ship again.
Nor did she see Axel Tiger again. As in all things, memories faded as the years went by and she became a college graduate.
And stepped out into the world.
One
Now
She was found—what remained of her—on the south-side embankment by the road and the canal that stretched the length of the Tamiami Trail, just about ten miles west of the casino.
It wasn’t surprising she had been partially consumed. What was surprising seemed to be that she had been almost neatly bitten in half.
The top half remained; the bottom half did not.
“This is how we found her. Exactly how we found her,” Detective Nigel Ferrer, Miami-Dade Homicide, told Axel. At his side, Andrew Osceola of the Miccosukee Tribal Police shook his head.
“We haven’t touched anything,” he said, echoing Nigel. “No one has touched anything. Even Doc Warner said that since you were on the way, he’d hold off for a minute.”
Axel nodded and hunkered down by the body. He was somewhat surprised his old friends were so courteously resolved he become involved as quickly and completely as possible.
He wasn’t a medical examiner. He had, however, seen his share of murders and the sad state in which a body—recently a viable human being—might be found.
The Everglades beckoned to nature lovers and bird-watchers, but also offered a tempting place to dump a body. The miles of wetlands were hardly ever traversed fully, and numerous creatures survived off carrion, plus trees, grasses and brush that all but enveloped any form—living and dead.
“We would have found her, anyway—without the tip from the so-called psychic,” Nigel said.
“Vultures,” Andrew added quietly. “Of course, they’ll come for anything. A dead possum, roadkill...”
His voice faded. They