Quinn returned the smile. “So far. We’ll take it a step at a time.”

“Fair enough,” Price said.

“Edward would approve,” Ida Tucker said.

Quinn and Price exchanged glances. Both knew that, being dead, Edward Tucker didn’t have much in the way of legal standing. He couldn’t voice his legal opinions now.

At the same time, being dead, he couldn’t be harmed by the law.

45

Prentis, Florida, 1995

“Let me out of the damned car, Dwayne!”

Honey Carter was twenty and blond and beautiful. Dwayne was well aware that she resembled both his mother and Maude, reflecting his father’s taste in women.

Honey had something else in common with those two women. She didn’t love Dwayne, and never had.

She’d gone out with him a few times and then rebuffed him, called him a rich freak.

Well, she might as well have called him that. She’d made him feel that way.

What did she want? He was young and reasonably good looking. Rich, but how could she count that against him? And he carried a 3.9 grade point average at the University of South Florida. Higher education was a snap for him. Read the book (on or off his computer) in a single sitting, then relax and ace the course.

Not that he was going back. College bored the hell out of him. And some people began giving him odd looks, fearful looks, and avoided him. Rumors bloomed even if they couldn’t take root. Others on campus had found out who he was, and about the murder of his father and stepmother-to-be.

This last part actually attracted a certain kind of woman to him—as long as there were other people in the room. Rumors, rumors, rumors about him. Some of them must be true. And if he was rich, he was probably guilty. Wasn’t that the way it always worked?

This final attempt to save his and Honey’s relationship (at least as Dwayne saw it) wasn’t working out very well. They were in his car on dark and isolated Lagoon Road. It had seemed romantic to Dwayne, a perfect setting for reviving a love affair showing signs of strain.

Until the sun went down.

Now they were surrounded by darkness. He was amused. Honey was faced with the classic dilemma: stay and screw, or get out of the car and be in grave danger. He wanted to see how she’d deal with the problem.

She was pretending now, he was sure. Showing him she didn’t take that kind of treatment from anyone, male or female. But it was all a show.

He used the car’s lighter to fire up a cigarette, took a deep drag, and leaned his head back so he was staring up at the headliner, thinking about what he might do with the cigarette’s glowing ember.

“Do you really want to get out of the car here?” Dwayne asked.

Honey lost her focus on him, and suddenly realized how dark it had become.

“There are gators out there,” Dwayne said. “And python snakes.”

People in the area had kept pythons as pets until they got too big and dangerous. Then they set them loose in the swamp, where they thrived and multiplied. There had been state sponsored hunting seasons on the pythons. Many of the snakes were over twenty feet long. They were still out there. Now and then there were stories in the Florida papers. Along with photographs.

Honey, a journalism major, read the papers.

“Drive me goddamned home!” Honey demanded. There was a catch of fear in her throat.

Home was where she lived off campus, in an apartment with two other young women.

Dwayne had seen Honey walking off campus, near a coffee shop where he was going to search for her. Instead, there she was, striding along the sidewalk, alone. He’d pulled to the curb in front of her and opened the door on her side of the car. Honey didn’t like scenes. Dwayne made it clear to her that if she didn’t get in the car so they could go somewhere and talk reasonably, he would make a hell of a scene.

He wanted her to hurry because no one they knew was around to see her get in his car.

Not knowing better, she hurried.

Now no one knew Honey was here with Dwayne, on godforsaken Lagoon Road, in the deep, deep swamp. She suddenly understood the meaning of their aloneness. The realization of her vulnerability passed between them like electricity.

Something was going to happen here, tonight.

He moved toward her to hug her to him, as if to reassure her of her safety.

Her eyes widened and she slid away from his grasp. The door handle clicked and the dome light flashed on.

“The classic dilemma,” Dwayne said.

“You really want to give me that choice?” she asked, her door already open six inches.

The fear in her eyes made something tighten in the core of Dwayne. A coil of pure pleasure. How terrified she was!

But she was bluffing. He was sure of it.

He decided to call her bluff, and in a fashion she wouldn’t like. It was time for the stuck-up bitch to learn a lesson.

“I’m not giving you a choice,” he said. “I want you to go.”

She pushed the car door open wider, as if about to leave.

He had to hand it to her. She was going to take it to the wire.

He stared straight ahead, smiling. She was going to break, beg, give in completely to her terror.

But she didn’t.

The door opened wider, swung shut. And Honey was gone.

Dwayne sat stunned.

More balls than I thought.

He shut the passenger’s side door so there was no interior light. The car already was well off the road where it wouldn’t be noticed, and hardly anyone drove this road at night.

Nothing to do but go after the bitch.

She’d be a manageable bundle when he found her. He might hide and watch her awhile before rescuing her. Let fear dissolve what was left of her willpower. Then it would be her turn for a fate worse than death.

He got a flashlight out of the glove compartment, opened the driver’s side door, and slipped out of the car and into the black and fetid swamp.

Honey’s heart was fluttering irregularly, like something wild trying to escape the prison of her rib cage. She’d never been so frightened. She was breathing hard, making soft whimpering sounds, running, simply running through the night, splashing through shallow water, flailing away at branches scratching at her face. There were creatures around her, terrible creatures, that she could sense and sometimes hear.

She knew there must be another road running parallel to Lagoon, but she couldn’t think of one.

Then it came to her.

Yes, last summer, when she was helping Helga Ditweiller learn to drive.

What’s the name of that road? Cypress? South Road? Or is it just a number? Maybe—

She splashed through ankle-deep water and slammed head-on into a thick tree trunk.

And became part of the darkness of the swamp.

Dwayne took two steps into the swamp and his flashlight went dead.

Batteries. Damn it! I haven’t replaced the batteries in months.

He stopped and stood still, listening.

There were only the sounds of the swamp at night. Insects thrumming, larger things stirring, what might be the distant grunt of a gator.

“Honey!”

His call was unanswered.

Again.

Carefully, so he wouldn’t lose his bearings in the night, he back-stepped toward the road. He held the dead flashlight as if it was a club. He hated it when things got out of control like this, and it was no fault of his own.

Flashlight batteries aren’t made for this kind of climate. They go bad practically overnight.

Why did the damned bitch have to run into the swamp?