Free The Buried (The Apostles) by Shelley Coriell Page B

“Hop in.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Into the swamp. We’re searching for Lia Grant. Together .”
    The humid air had left her hair a riot of waves, and she jammed a wayward curl behind her right ear. Together wasn’t hard for her. She was a team player when she had to be, and Lia Grant needed the biggest team they could muster, and frankly, Hatch was on a winning team. She’d be an idiot not to ally herself with him. She hopped in the SUV. “Where to?”
    He reached into his pocket and took out a coin. “Call it in the air?”
    “Wait! You’re going to let a coin toss determine our course of direction, which could very well determine if a girl lives or dies?”
    Hatch fingered the coin. “Do you have a better plan?”
    “Surely there’s a more logical way to handle this. What does Agent MacGregor recommend?”
    An enigmatic smile tugged at Hatch’s mouth. “Like all of us on Park’s team, Jonny Mac understands the value of a good coin toss.” Hatch tossed the coin in the air. “Heads we go right, tails, left.”
    She snatched the coin in mid-air. Decades of tennis had done wonders for her hand/eye coordination. “I don’t think so.”
    Hatch swept his hands at the dense forest stretching out behind the bait shop. “Fine, Princess. Lead and I shall follow.”
    Grace cradled the coin in her palm. She’d already played the phone messages from Lia, listening for ambient sounds, ideally something like a jet plane, which could be tracked. But in all of the voicemails, she’d heard nothing but Lia’s increasingly desperate words.
    I’m in a bad place, a really bad place.
    A hand settled on her knee. Golden and steady. This was not her ex-husband but Hatch the Apostle. Hatch who was a master in a crisis situation. She ran her thumb over the face of the coin, and with quirked lips tossed it in the air. The coin spun and fell on the ground between them.
    “Left.” Hatch pocketed the coin and with a seriousness she’d never seen from him, climbed into the SUV and drove into the swamp.
    Grace rolled down her window and leaned out, squinting through the graying afternoon at the road and searching for wide tire tracks with a deep cross-hatch pattern. They inched along a road following a twisting creek lined with reeds and cattails. Raindrops pinged the roof and splattered her arms and hands. A wind blew across the reeds, whisking them in a symphony of brushes and hushes.
    “Liiiiia!” Hatch called. They waited. For a muffled cry. A tapping SOS. A low groan.
    Hush, hush , whispered the reeds.
    “Keep breathing, Lia, keep breathing.”
    Raindrops turned into a drizzle. Hatch flipped on the windshield wipers. Water puddled in the gutters on either side of the road.
    “Keep your head up, Lia. You’re strong, and you can beat this…this thing.”
    At a hairpin turn, Hatch slowed. “What’s that?” He pointed to a section of flattened reeds.
    Grace leaned out the window, shielding her eyes from the rain. “Gator slide. Too smooth to be man-made.”
    This land was filled with dangerous animals like gators and water moccasins and treacherous waterways.
    “What does she need to do to survive?” Hatch asked.
    Grace blinked then noticed a pain in her right fingertips. She’d wound them in the chain of her scattered pearl necklace. “If she runs into an alligator she needs to make noise. Same thing with a water moccasin.”
    “And…” The single word was low and slow.
    She loosed her fingers. “If she has to cross water, she needs to do it midday when the alligators aren’t as active. She can cover her exposed skin with mud to keep off ticks and jiggers. She needs to stay hydrated, drinking water from vines or collecting rainwater in leaves or her shirt.”
    “And…”
    “If she finds a beer can, she’s struck gold. It can be used to make noise and scare off predators, collect and boil water, and cut fronds for shelter.”
    His fingers intertwined with hers. A touch from the living. From the here