Free Firefly Island by Lisa Wingate Page A

morning.”
    Daniel nodded. “Yeah.”
    We drove along in silence for a few miles, until finally Daniel lifted my hand and brought it to his lips, kissing my fingers. “I love a woman who can handle a U-Haul, by the way.”
    My sticky, road-weary skin came alive with goose bumps, and the apprehension that had been haunting me drifted out the window. “Now you’re trying to flatter me.”
    â€œIs it working?”
    â€œMaybe.” I smiled at him, filled with the returning warmth of adoration.
    â€œMy guess—in a half hour or less, we’ll be pulling into our driveway,” he offered.
    The words our driveway were just settling over me, a warm and sweet-smelling bubble bath, when Daniel hit the brakes, snapping me forward against my seat belt.
    â€œThere’s another one.” Leaning close to the window, he peered into the night, pointing.
    I turned just in time to see a deer amble into the road and stop.
    â€œIs a doe-deer! ’Nudder one!” Nick announced gleefully.
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding.” I felt my mouth hanging slack. “You think it’s the same deer? Maybe it’s, like, messing with us.”
    â€œCan’t be.” Daniel shifted his hands on the steering wheel,and we proceeded slowly forward on what would forever be known as The Night of the Kamikazi Deer .
    Sometime later, after having passed through one small town and watched every four-legged wild animal in the county cross the road, we topped a hill and spotted what had to be Moses Lake. Around us, the moon cast a faint glow against waxy live oak leaves as we wound into the valley. Some sort of massive bird swooped across the car, then sailed over the dark expanse of water, following the moon’s glistening path toward the horizon.
    â€œWow,” I whispered, watching branches play a hide-and-seek game with stars and moon and water. Lights glittered on the lake’s surface here and there, seeming to float free in the blackness—boats, I supposed. Houseboats, perhaps. I hadn’t thought of the lake as being big enough that people might live on it, but Daniel had mentioned that the ranch included miles of lakeshore. I guessed it made sense that the lake would be huge.
    An unexpected tingle rushed over my skin as we descended a small hill into the utter darkness, Moses Lake dipping out of sight. An aura of romance and danger simmered through me like a trail of smoke, scented with an intriguing fragrance I couldn’t quite place. For the past month, Kaylyn had been sending me bits of mystery and lore pertaining to Moses Lake, and now all of it was churning in my head. I felt the history of the place slipping over me, drawing me into a mix of past and present. Comanche hunting ground, pioneer settlement, site of a secret gathering of Civil War dissenters determined to join forces with the Mexican army and cause the South to rise again. Location of a mysterious frontier settlement where all the residents had vanished one winter. To this day, no one knew what had happened to them.
    Though the river had been here since time immemorial,the lake was man-made, a product of the Corps of Engineers during the building boom of the fifties. The water’s surface hid what was left of towns, farms, homes, and an old Spanish mission run by monks who came to the area with dreams of enlightenment, but eventually abandoned their vision.
    â€œThis is it. This is our road,” Daniel said, turning off the highway. Gravel rumbled beneath the Jeep’s tires, and when we’d bumped and bounced our way to the top of the next hill, I could no longer see lights in the distance. Except for the glow of the moon, everything around us was impossibly black, the thickly wooded hills filled with shadows that shifted as we drove. Tiny pinpoints of eyes glittered in the fringes of the headlights here and there. I didn’t want to think about what those might belong to.
    Were Baby