Her heart bolted to her throat. “J.D.?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. This is about Rebecca Lemay’s accomplice. We got a match on the prints you lifted from your car. They belong to a former psychiatric patient named Ellis Cooper. This guy sounds like a real nutcase. You be careful down there.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve already notified the sheriff in Torrence. He’ll provide backup if I need it.”
“Evangeline?”
“Yeah?”
“Hang in there. We’re going to find him.”
Her eyes burned with tears, but she had no time for emotion. No time for a breakdown. She had to find J.D. Nothing else mattered.
“I can’t lose him,” she whispered.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I know, but he’s so little. So helpless…” She trailed off. “He’s all I’ve got.”
And at that moment, the revelation of how much she loved her son humbled and staggered her. And shamed her because she hadn’t realized it before.
She loved that little boy more than her own life. She would do anything to protect him.
By the time she drove into Torrence, terror was a cold vise around her heart.
She parked in front of the police station and bolted inside.
The officer behind the front desk was on the phone, but he hung up the minute he saw Evangeline. “Detective Theroux?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been expecting you. The sheriff called a little while ago on his way out of town. He said to tell you the place is all clear. He didn’t see hide nor hair of anyone out there.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Half an hour maybe. He also said to tell you he thinks you’re on a wild-goose chase.”
The last was shouted at Evangeline’s back as she raced back through the door.
Twenty minutes later, she turned off the main highway onto the gravel road. The shade of the forest seemed deep and oppressive, the whisper of wind through the leaves the worst kind of omen. But when she finally pulled into the clearing, the sight of the sheriff’s car filled her with hope. Maybe he’d come back for a second look.
Evangeline parked beside the squad car and got out. Checking her weapon, she clutched the grip in both hands as she slowly climbed the stairs. Opening the screen door with her foot, she quickly stepped inside and swept the air with her gun.
The house was quiet.
Too quiet.
She should be able to hear the creak and moan of the wooden floors as the sheriff moved through the house, but she heard no sound at all. Nothing but the drone of mosquitoes that swarmed through the broken windows and sagging screen door.
Evangeline swatted one from her eyelashes as she eased through the house. “Sheriff Thibodaux? You in here? It’s Detective Theroux.”
She hated to give away her position, but she also didn’t want a startled lawman shooting her. Retracing her steps into the front hall, she started up the stairs.
“Sheriff? I’m coming up.”
At the top of the stairs, she heard something in the front bedroom, and as she pushed open the door, a scream rose to her throat.
The sheriff lay on his back on the floor, his eyes open and staring. Yellow fluid oozed from a wound on his neck and another on his arm where the skin had split from the rapid swelling.
As Evangeline stepped into the room, she saw something slither across the floor and disappear into the shadows. She froze, her heart pounding fiercely, and then she took another careful step inside.
Kneeling beside Thibodaux, she felt his wrist. She couldn’t find a pulse, and she feared he’d gone into cardiac arrest.
A floorboard creaked out in the hallway, and she jumped to her feet. She edged back to the door, glanced out, and then realized too late that the danger was already in the room behind her.
She saw a movement out of the corner of eye. Before she could whirl, something slammed into the side of her head, and she dropped to her knees, then pitched face-first to the floor.
When Evangeline came to, she was lying in water.
The smell of dead fish and stagnant water clogged her nostrils, and as she struggled to open her eyes, she thought she must still be in the swamp.
Her hand lifted to the throb at the side of her head and gingerly she probed the goose egg she found there. As everything slowly came back to her, fresh panic bloomed in her chest.
She wasn’t in the swamp. She was in a room, like a cellar. Several inches of smelly water covered the floor where she lay, and to her left, she could see daylight. As she turned her head to the window, she saw something swim by her face.
Choking back a scream, she tried to remain motionless, but she couldn’t stop trembling and her heart was pounding so violently, she thought it must surely be sending out vibrations in the water.
As she watched, the snake glided around and came back toward her. The head was up out of the water, and in the light from the window, she could see the gleam of its eyes. Could even make out the vertical pupils.
And then she saw another. And another.
They were everywhere.
Evangeline lay paralyzed as a black body slithered over her legs. Another touched her bare arm. She closed her eyes and tried not to scream.
When she dared look again, she counted at least a half-dozen diamond-shaped heads swimming in the water.
Ever so carefully, she turned her head away from the window. She could see a set of steps leading up to a door. Between her and the stairs, Thibodaux lay facedown in the water.
His body was still now, and Evangeline knew that he was dead. She’d read somewhere that death by snakebite was more often the result of heart failure than from the venom.
Evangeline could believe it. Her heart even now pounded so hard she was afraid her chest might explode.
Her head throbbed, too, and she thought of her mother, lying helpless on her own living room floor. She thought of J.D., missing from his crib, and an image of his little face materialized behind her closed eyelids. His sweet, innocent smile. The eyes that looked so much like Johnny’s. How could she ever have doubted her love for that baby? Her need to find him and protect him was like a raging wildfire inside her chest.
She had to find a way out. She couldn’t allow herself to remain frozen by terror. Her son needed her. She was all he had left.
And he was all she had left.
Evangeline lay very still and tried to work out a plan. Would it be better to spring quickly to her feet or take the slow approach?
She had no idea. She wasn’t even sure she could move quickly, given her injury and the numbness in her arms and legs. She flexed her muscles to try and warm them up.
Bracing herself, she counted to three, then leaped to her feet, jumped over the sheriff’s body and let panic hurl her up the steps.
