Free A Hard Death by Jonathan Hayes Page B

up with him; despite his chemical reek, the air around him was suddenly furred with tiny gnats. Swatting them away was pointless—more insects instantly gushed back into the bug vacuum he’d just created.
    He gulped down water; the gallon jug seemed heavier with each pace. But ahead, the flashing signal looked brighter.
    Then he heard a slow, dry rustling somewhere to his left, the noise of something large moving through undergrowth. He jerked his torch beam around, but saw nothing in the dense knot of bushes covering the low mound.
    Jenner pushed forward faster now, and behind him he heard the quiet splash of something slipping into the water.
    He didn’t wait to see what it was, just kept going, heading toward the hammock. The water was deeper now, sometimes reaching his knees; he splashed through it loudly, hoping the commotion would drive away anything that might find him interesting.
    Now the hammock loomed over him, a hulking black shadow, a ghost ship at anchor. He shone the torch ahead and saw that the banks rounded up to a solid wall of undergrowth, a dense tangle of vegetation that blocked any sight of the interior, the tree canopy overhead thick and dark. But he could see the signal clearly now, and it was bright.
    How had they made their way to the island to set up the signal? Boat, airboat? A swamp buggy seemed unlikely—he doubted Weiss’s contacts would do anything that flashy if they were, in fact, illegals. Or that expensive. Beyond the bushes, toward the far side of the island, Jenner could make out a slough or a small channel, standing water probably deep enough for a canoe or an outboard.
    Nearing the hammock, he saw small gaps in the thick mesh of plants that surrounded it, areas of exposed mud where some animal had slid off into the water.
    Jenner was close enough now to see that the signal was a bicycle safety light, its strap Velcroed to a thin tree trunk. He grabbed the trunk with relief, and tried to pull himself up to land. But he slipped, and struggled for a second on the steep incline, his waders smearing across the slick mud as he fought to drag himself onto the drier land. He rolled up onto the edge of the hammock, swinging the bag across his chest and into the bushes.
    He lay there panting, chest heaving, sweaty and filthy.
    And then he smelled it, that familiar stench, the nauseatingly sweet fog rolling in under the reek of brackish mud and swamp grass.
    No. Weiss hadn’t been lying about the bodies.

C HAPTER 20
    J enner stood in the mud, peering into the hammock as he tried not to slip back down into the sedge. Tangled undergrowth pressed all the way to the banks, the entire island packed tight as a bird’s nest. In an hour or so, the dawn light would help, but he couldn’t keep his footing on the bank until then.
    From the water behind him, he heard soft splashing, and in the gloom, he imagined a huge water moccasin writhing through the saw grass, coming at him like a heat-seeking missile.
    Time to go in.
    There was a tentative spatter of rain, then a thick mist of tiny droplets ticked at the leaves and branches near him. The sound swelled quickly to a rattling roar, the drops striking him hard, flowing down his face, washing the mud from his skin. He held his face up, then his hands, the raindrops pressing into his palms like cold, tiny fingers.
    Off to the east, lightning flared the sky purple, each flash illuminating the endless expanse of marsh, the grass garish green-yellow, the naked trunks bleached white, the slate-gray water shirred silver by the driving rain.
    Jenner leaned over to get the bicycle light, then thought better of it; fingerprints. He turned slightly, stretched his right leg out into the undergrowth, then wedged himself into the thicket, pushing between two slender trees, the branches poking and scraping as he eased forward, crushing the plants at his feet.
    Within a couple of yards, the vegetation thinned, and he moved more easily. A