Deep Shadow

the idea at first. The route would take him uncomfortably close to the lake, but at least he would be able to keep the cypress head in view, which appeared to adjoin the limestone rise at the foot of the hill.

Arlis switched off the light, gave his eyes time to adjust and then began hiking southwest as his brain considered the hill’s unusual contour.

I wonder if that’s part of the property I bought. A chunk of high land like that would be a good place for a cabin someday.

Prior to buying the land, Arlis hadn’t walked the entire ten acres. The owner—a young weekend rancher who had inherited the property—said it wasn’t necessary, so why not leave the bushwhacking to the surveyors?

The owner was afraid of going near the lake, that was the problem. The man never came right out and said it plain, but he was.

That fact had struck Arlis as rather humorous. There wasn’t an animal in Florida dangerous enough to spook him off his own land and that included a couple of fourteen-foot gators that he had killed personally. He had used the Winchester to shoot one of the monsters behind the eye and he’d caught the other by using a whole chicken on a hook that he’d made himself out of a tarpon gaff.

Up until today, Arlis had believed that buying the acreage—mostly sight unseen—had been maybe the smartest thing he had ever done. He had believed it from the start. Because of the owner’s spineless attitude about the lake, Arlis didn’t feel bad at all about not telling the man he had found the two gold coins and a busted propeller that he was now convinced had come from Batista’s plane.

Doc had returned from the lake with yet another golden peso, hadn’t he? That was proof enough.

At least I was right about the plane, Arlis reminded himself. For fifty- some years, men looked for the thing, but it took me to find it.

Mixed with his fresh anger, thinking about Batista’s plane brought back some of his confidence. It caused him to feel stronger, too, and he decided to pick up the pace a little, not bothering to move quietly through the brush. What did it matter? He could no longer see the lights of his truck, which told him the murderers were busy doing something else.

Perry and King had given up and he was free. It was a mistake the bastards would pay for. Perry, especially.

Because Arlis was feeling more like his old self as he plowed through the brush, he was surprised when he began to hear voices again. He knew it was another damn hallucination, but it sure did sound like Tomlinson calling to him.

“Hey! Don’t you . . . we’re down here! Follow my . . . Hey! Go get help!”

The same jumbled words, but the voice was fainter now that Arlis was abreast of the limestone mound. Hearing the voice stopped him, though, he couldn’t help himself. He stood there listening to the buzz of cicadas and mosquitoes whining near his ear and then he heard a noise that wasn’t a man’s voice and probably wasn’t a hallucination.

Arlis turned and looked in the direction of the lake. It wasn’t a comfortable thing to do because one of his eyes was almost swollen shut. After a few seconds, though, he understood the source of the noise.

Something was following him.

It was an animal, not a man—Arlis had spent enough time in the woods to know the difference. The noise came from behind him, a steady, plodding sound of bushes being crushed by the weight of something dragging its body along the ground on four paws. It was the sound a bull gator would make pushing through saw grass.

Seconds after Arlis stopped, the animal stopped.

It’s gotta be a gator, he thought. What else could it be?

The man took several experimental steps and he heard the animal begin to move again. He stopped. A moment later, the animal stopped.

Arlis stood there thinking about that, then decided, Nope, that’s no gator. Can’t be a croc, either, not this far inland.

It was because of the way the animal was behaving. In all his years of hunting the swamps, Arlis had never come across a gator that was smart enough to match its own movements to the movement of its prey. When a gator got on the scent, it kept right on coming, even if you had a rifle handy and fired off a few rounds. A gator was about as sensitive as a bulldozer when it was on a feed.

Arlis took another few steps and he heard the animal begin to move again. Arlis stopped and again the animal stopped.

No, it wasn’t a gator. This thing was behaving more like a big cat. A panther, maybe.

Arlis felt a chilly, liquid sensation radiate through his lower spine. He’d never been afraid of panthers in his life. He’d had no reason to be. Back in the days when the Everglades was mostly free-range, wide open and wild, it was a fine place to hunt. People weren’t scared of animals. Animals were scared of people—and for good reason.

But Florida had changed in recent years and the Everglades had changed, too—along with the creatures that lived in the swamps.

Gators weren’t afraid of people anymore. They didn’t need to be, not since the state decided to put them under legal protection. Arlis had heard the same was true of panthers. Less than a year ago, he had talked to some hunters who’d had to shoot a panther that had been shadowing them near their camp off Fortymile Bend. It was hard for Arlis to believe, but the men weren’t drunks or braggarts and swore it was true. They’d had no choice, they said, because the damn thing just wouldn’t leave them alone. It was a big hungry male.

Behind Arlis, the field of saw grass and scattered trees darkened as a cloud sailed beneath the stars. He gripped the tire iron in his right hand and found the flashlight with his left. With the light, he probed the bushes. Thirty yards behind him, he spotted a thicket of wax myrtle trees that were leaning at an odd angle.

The animal was hunkered down there, he realized. It was something heavy, built low to the ground.

The worst thing he could do was attempt to run away. It was better to take the offensive in these situations—be the attacker man or beast—so Arlis began walking toward the thicket, walking faster and faster, as he waved the light ahead of him like a torch.

He yelled, “Hey! Get out of here!,” as he might to an aggressive dog, and it worked. The myrtle trees began to thrash as the animal retreated.

“I’ll be damned,” Arlis whispered as he stopped to watch. It wasn’t one animal, it was three—three lizard- looking creatures, maybe forty pounds each.

Man, they were fast.

Iguanas, Arlis thought. They were pet-store animals that had escaped—the port of Boca Grande was loaded with the things. Arlis wasn’t related to the famous Lee County Futches, but he knew the story. The iguanas had come over on boats from Central America, the pets of bored cargo captains.

As Arlis watched, the lizards disappeared into the shadows, but then they reappeared a minute later in the far distance. He could see three pairs of orange eyes watching him and he sensed that the lizards were no longer afraid. He felt that radiating chill in his lower spine again.

They’re pack hunters, he thought. They’re stalking me.

But these lizards were too small to attack a man . . . weren’t they?

To his left, he heard something else moving and he spun around to look. It was a familiar sound: the subtle slosh of mud and waves as something big entered the water.

He swung the flashlight toward the cypress head, with its natural moat, and Arlis saw another set of glowing eyes. The eyes were the same bright color—orange. This animal was huge, though. Its eyes were spaced more than a foot apart, which told Arlis that the animal was at least thirteen feet long—the formula used by alligator hunters was a simple one.

The eyes stared back into the light, fixated, for an instant, then vanished in a swirl of silver froth before Arlis could get a good look.

Was it another iguana?

No, he thought. It couldn’t have been an iguana. The ugly little bastards didn’t grow that big. A croc had orange eyes, but this was too far inland, Arlis reminded himself, for it to be a saltwater croc. And this animal seemed to be spooked by bright light, which was unlike most crocs or gators in his experience.