The Buried (The Apostles) (7 page)

“Remember that stranger abduction last summer in Orlando?”

“Wasn’t that the eight-year-old girl in the princess costume?”

Grace nodded. “Orlando police called in one of the FBI’s foremost missing and endangered child specialists, an agent from Parker Lord’s team. He wrapped up the case in sixteen hours. He was also involved in the hunt last month in northern Nevada for that old blind Vietnam veteran who was captured by the Broadcaster Butcher.”

“Sounds like the kind of man we need on our side. If you can get him here, I’ll make you friendship bracelets for life.” The lieutenant tried to smile, but it came across as a grimace. “Do you know him?”

Grace took a deep breath. She could do this. For Lia. “I’m acquainted with one of Parker Lord’s team members who is in town this week.”

The lieutenant did an about-face. “You have an in with Parker Lord’s team?”

And an out. Breathe in, two, three. Breathe out, two, three. Damn, she was never this agitated. “Yes.”

Y
ou really live on a stinkin’ boat?”

Hatch ducked into the cabin and tossed the steaming, crumpled newspaper onto the galley table. “Yep,” Hatch said to Alex, who filed in behind him.

On their way from the cemetery, Hatch had stopped at one of the oyster bars that squatted along the bay and picked up lunch: a dozen oysters, bakers with blue crab and artichokes, and a pair of fried amberjack filets. He’d told the waitress to throw in some fried greens. Kids needed vegetables, didn’t they? Hatch swiped a hand down his face. He didn’t know what the hell kids needed. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, other than keeping this kid, his kid, out of trouble. He owed that to Alex. Among other things. He’d help out with finances, Alex’s education, and issues with the authorities. Maybe he’d drop by a few times a year and check up on the family. He could even take Alex and his kid brothers out for a sail, maybe drop a few lines and snag a few fish, like a favorite uncle.

As for the day-to-day stuff, it wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t. Hatch had a job that kept him on the road ninety percent of the time. More than that, in his job he worked with some severely broken people, and many of them had grown up with mothers and fathers lacking serious parenting skills. Alex was screwed up enough without adding a father who knew nothing about raising a kid.

Hatch opened the fridge. Damn, he could go for a longneck. He grabbed two bottled waters and tossed them on the galley table.

Behind him, Alex jumped and stumbled back from the shelf near the top berth. “It’s alive!”

Hatch pointed to the shelf and then to Alex. “Alex, Herman. Herman, Alex,” he said by way of introduction.

The kid poked at a crab scooting across a knobby sea sponge. “Herman is such a lame name for a hermit crab. Really original.”

“His full name is Herman Melville, The Fourth.”

Alex squatted so he was eye level with the crab. “Like the whale dick writer dude?”

Hatch swallowed a chuckle. “That’s one way to look at Herman Melville.” Hatch pointed to the dozens of books behind the glass case, which included
Moby Dick
. “You know about Captain Ahab’s epic sea voyage?”

Alex shrugged.

“Feel free to take the book with you.”

“Feel free to shut the fuck up.”

Hatch’s fist tightened. If he’d said that to his old man, he would have been knocked across the cabin. He shook his fingers. Nope, not going to happen in his world.

He sat at the table and tore open the newspaper. Buttery, garlicky steam poured out. Alex slumped onto the bench across from him and dug into the pile of seafood. Hatch had gained ten pounds during his last stint in Apalachicola. Oysters and shrimp. Biscuits slathered in honey. Fish so fresh it jumped in the frying pan. A decade ago when
No Regrets
had been anchored in the bay, he’d drop a line, snagging snappers and flounder the minute his hook hit the water. Within fifteen minutes he’d have them in a pan on his galley stove sizzling with butter. Grace would be at the table with two glasses of wine. And a smile.

At one point that was all he’d needed to live. A few fish, wine, and Grace.

He wondered what “business” she had at the sheriff’s station. To the untrained eye, she looked calm and in control, classic Grace, but Hatch was a student of faces, of minute movements, of words not spoken. Earlier today Grace Courtemanche had been anything but calm. She’d smoothed the pearls at her neck one too many times, and if he hadn’t been so slammed by the sight of her, he would have taken great delight in watching Grace be anything but graceful. But this little side trip to Cypress Bend wasn’t about Grace. He had enough on his plate with his son.

He tapped a fisted hand against his chin, wondering what families talked about at the kitchen table. “You like to fish?” Hatch asked.

“Nope.”

“Play video games?”

“Nope.”

“What do you and your buddies do?”

“Hang out.” Alex continued to inhale food.

Boys ate a lot. What else did they do? Hatch recalled his early teens. Back then he had one thing on his mind. “You got a girl?”

Alex snorted. “Like I’d tell you.”

Hatch turned in the direction of Sydney Harbor.
Do you see me, Great Aunt Piper Jane? I’m trying. I’m really, really trying.

Hatch and Alex finished the meal in silence, and when Hatch went topside with the keys to the borrowed SUV, Alex followed. Instead of stomping down the dock, the boy plopped onto a deck chair. He toed a coiled rope.

“You and the hot chick in the pearls, were you really married?” Alex asked.

Hatch knew the boy was stalling for time, not because he wanted to spend time with his father but because he wanted to avoid going home to a granny who was tired and cranky, and two twin brothers who terrorized him. “Ten weeks.” Hatch sunk onto a bait bucket. He’d give the boy a few more minutes’ break.

“What happened?”

“Respiratory problems. She couldn’t breathe in my world. I couldn’t breathe in hers.”

“So why’d you marry her?”

Because when you were having the best sex of your life, who cared about respiratory failure? But he and the spawn were hardly ready for a father-son chat about birds and bees. Hatch leaned on the bucket and grinned. “I love girls in pearls.”

Alex’s forehead creased and he nodded slowly. What was going on in his crazy teenage head? Was he thinking about Grace? About his own hot chick?

Alex dug his toe into the coil of rope. “I had a boat once. Little dory skiff. Found it swamped out near Alligator Point.”

Finally, something they could talk about. “You have to do much work to her?”

“Little bit of splintering on the bow. Borrowed a sander from a neighbor and got it sealed. Wasn’t pretty, but she was great on the water.”

“Get in any good fishing?”

“A few nice redfish. Did some oyster tonging, too. Used to take her all around the bay until Granny found out. Took it from me. Said it was too dangerous. Pissed me off.”

“Your granny worries about you.” Hatch was no profiler like his teammate Hayden Reed, but Hatch had had no trouble reading Alex’s Granny. When he met with her earlier in the day, it was clear she was a tired old woman single-handedly raising a set of rambunctious twins and a thirteen-year-old boy who was mad at the world.

Alex kicked at the rope. “What the fuck do you know?”

Hatch jabbed at the flop of hair hanging across his forehead. “Apparently not a whole hell of a lot.” Which meant it was time to go, but he owed this kid the truth. He leaned toward the boy and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m not going to bullshit you, Alex. I haven’t been around a single day in your thirteen years on this planet. As a matter of fact, until yesterday, I never knew you existed.”

“Don’t you go bad-mouthing my momma.”

Hatch raised both hands. “I’m not blaming your momma for anything. She had reasons for what she did and didn’t do, and it’s not my place to pass judgment on her, but I am going to come clean with you, because you deserve it.”

Alex’s lip curled.

“I’m not father material, Alex. The truth is I’m not even family material. Just ask the hot chick in pearls.” Hatch stood. He needed to move, to get the wind in his hair. “But your granny called me in here because she needed help. She said you needed help. And I want to help. I owe it to you, today and in the future.”

“We don’t need nothing from you.” The chip on Alex’s shoulder was back, blocking out the sun. “So why don’t you take your stinkin’ boat and your stinkin’ crab and stinkin’ leave.” Alex kicked the rope and stormed off the boat toward the parking lot.

“That’s the goal, pal, that’s the goal,” Hatch said to the wind. He’d come clean with the kid. His work, his lifestyle—hell, his history—were not conducive to caring for a teenage boy. And this boy had rightly recognized he’d be better off without Hatch. Smart, smart kid.

In the borrowed SUV, Hatch took Alex home, and by the time he got back to
No Regrets
, he was ready for that icy cold beer. The all-night sail had left him tired. Bullshit. The one-two punch of Alex and Grace had knocked the wind from his sails.

He grabbed a longneck from the galley, paused, and grabbed another. Topside, a briny breeze skipped across the deck while he polished off the first beer. Clouds were moving in, taking off the sharp edge of the late afternoon sun. He tucked the beer in a cup holder, settled back for a nap, and threw a cap over his face. Before he could start counting sheep, footsteps clattered on the dock, and his boat dipped.

“Beer’s in the fridge below,” Hatch said to his cap.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.”

He bolted up. The glass bottle slipped from the cup holder, hit the deck and shattered. Another mess. Kind of par for the course with him and Grace. He couldn’t force a smile. Alex had tested him and taken his last thread of patience. “What are you doing here, Grace?”

“I need an Apostle.”

T
he first drop splattered Grace’s right shoulder. Another hit her left cheek. Thunder rolled across the sky, shoving the clouds—and rain—closer to Cypress Point.

“We’re on our way, Lia, and we’re going to find you.” Grace threaded her way through dozens of cars pulling into the parking lot of Don and Dar’s Bait Shop. A news crew from a Tallahassee television station was preparing for a live feed, and volunteers outfitted with swamp waders, lights, and shovels were checking in and picking up maps. Thanks to Hatch’s teammate Agent Jon MacGregor, a full-scale, state-of-the-art, best-of-the-best search-and-rescue effort was underway.

At the command station she found Lieutenant Lang, who handed her a sheet of paper with cross-hatch marks. “CSU found these tracks in an old oil spill in the parking lot where Rhonda Belo saw Lia Grant talking to the person driving the white truck.”

Grace grabbed it, thrusting the paper in the air like a trophy. Finally, they had something.

Her smile faltered as Hatch hopped out of an SUV. She had no problem with him being here. He was responsible for getting Agent MacGregor on board and was certainly good in crisis situations, but she took issue with the hard glare he leveled at her.

His fingers clawed around her upper arm. “Don’t you dare move until we talk.”

“I don’t need to take orders from you, as this is not your jurisdiction or your case.” She tried to jerk away, but his grip tightened.

“’Fraid it is, Princess. You asked for help from the SCIU.”

“Which would be Agent Jon MacGregor. I do believe that’s the person I’ll be answering to.”

Hatch held up his cell phone. “Grace meet Jonny Mac. Jonny Mac meet Grace.”

“Afternoon, Grace,” a deep voice came from the cell phone’s speaker. “I’ll need to talk with you in a minute, but Hatch and I need to get the ground crew rolling. He’s my eyes and ears and hands and feet.”

And one of those golden hands was on her arm. “Of course,” she said. “Let me know what you need me to do.”

Hatch turned the phone off speaker, but before he spoke to Agent MacGregor, he mouthed,
Don’t move.
With the phone at his ear, he plowed through the growing crowd of searchers.

There were times Grace felt Hatch wasn’t of this world. He was a free spirit moving in a universe not of man. He was air and light, sun and heat. This afternoon was not one of those times. Today Hatch was solid, steely, in command. And he was an FBI agent from a renowned special unit with a vast number of resources at his golden fingertips. Grace might not need Hatch in her life, but until Agent MacGregor arrived, Lia did.

Another raindrop plopped onto her head. Wind tugged at her hair.

Hatch stepped onto a stump, and the crowd fell silent. “We’re concentrating the search in a three-mile square area covering all of Cypress Point. We’ll divide and conquer by land and waterways. In teams of two you will…”

Grace shook her head in amazement. Hatch was no longer the lazy, sun-baked sailing instructor who’d charmed his way into her bed and heart. Right now he was action and power.

When Hatch finished giving orders, he handed her his phone and she gave Agent MacGregor a rundown of the past twenty-four hours. When she finished, she joined Hatch and Lieutenant Lang at the check-in station where Hatch was asking, “Did you get the helicopter?”

“I made the request,” Lieutenant Lang answered. “But I’m still waiting on the authorization.”

“No worries,” Hatch said. “I see something better has arrived.”

Before Hatch could explain, a battered gold pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot, accompanied by annoyingly familiar bellows. Behind the truck on a flatbed trailer squatted a four-wheeled ATV, and in the truck bed were dogs, at least a half dozen of them: blue speckled ones, red speckled ones, black and tans, solid reds, all with thumping tails and enormous, droopy ears.

Grace pictured Allegheny Blue at the shack. Probably dreaming of bacon.

The driver, an older man with a long, grizzled beard, unloaded the quad from the trailer. He tipped his cap. “Hey there, Agent Hatcher. You got the little gal’s scent ready? We need to get the old girl on the ground before the rain moves in.”

Hatch picked up a T-shirt sealed in a plastic bag from the check-in table. “The roommate said Lia Grant always slept in it.”

“Should do right fine.” The hunter took the T-shirt and held it under the nose of one of the brownish-red dogs. “Here you go, Ida Red. Time to hunt.”

The red bone hound’s ears curled up and forward. Her nose flared and quivered, a shiver shaking her head and body. This was an animal doing what it was born to do, lived to do, loved to do. The hunter lowered the tailgate with a clank. Ida Red’s nose hit the ground before her feet, and the other dogs followed.

Grace wanted to raise her hands in the air and shout,
Finally!
They were doing something to find Lia Grant.

A burst of wind sliced through the parking lot, rattling the tent. As the bay of hounds tapered off, the huddle of men and women in the parking lot broke, moving swiftly. Hatch, on the other hand, moseyed to her side, his gait slow and easy, but there was nothing conciliatory in his eyes. “You should have told me.” His mouth and jaw barely moved as he spoke.

She tried to ease away, but he moved with her. “Told you what?”

“Hmmmmm, where should I start?” With his free hand, he jammed a finger in the air. “One, you received threats from a convicted felon. Two, you received nine phone calls from a girl presumably buried alive. And three, as we speak, a forensic team is sifting through dirt in your backyard looking for human bones.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Oh, Princess. Dear, dear Princess.” He moved closer, a big, graceful, golden cat. He stopped a hairsbreadth from touching her, but the heat of his skin warmed her, nipping at the chill that had set in yesterday with Lia’s phone calls. When he spoke, his breath fanned her face in a low, rumbling half-purr, half-growl. “You have been and always will be my business.”

The words, the closeness, so Hatch. For a moment, she considered sinking into his strength and warmth, which proved how deeply rattled she was by the past twenty-four hours.

Hatch didn’t seem to notice the crazy thoughts flitting around her brain. He grabbed her elbow and led her toward a sheriff’s department SUV.

“I’m not going home.” Her boots dug into the damp earth.

Hatch opened the SUV’s passenger door. “I wouldn’t dare suggest it.”

“I’m involved in this.”

“That’s obvious.” He pointed to the seat. “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 and now. Damn he was good. She squeezed back.

Hatch nudged the car down the road, calling, “Liiiiiia!”

They followed winding side roads until blocked by bogs or creeks or stands of pines or cypress. All the while, Hatch scoured the slow-moving countryside, every muscle in his arms tensed. Just as the sun dipped, her phone dinged, signaling an incoming text. Grace grabbed her phone. Letters and words scrolled across the screen.

“Ida Red just found Lia Grant.”

Grace ducked under the crime scene tape stretched across a wedge of earth near an old apiary, Hatch at her side, his hand at the small of her back. Here, among stands of tupelo trees and bee boxes, a hound named Ida Red had spotted up on a freshly turned pile of soil, and below that soil, searchers uncovered a wooden box.

An angry buzz rose from the bees as Grace and Hatch hurried past the boxes, the din much like the thrum building in Grace’s chest. When they reached the lip of a gaping hole in the earth, Hatch tried to shield her from the sight, but she sidestepped his hands. She needed to see for herself.

Below her in a wooden box that reeked of urine and swamp water was a young woman. She wore a pair of navy blue pants, a white shirt, a purple smock, white sneakers, and a large button that read:
How Can I help YOU?

Breathe in, two, three. Breathe out, two, three.

With the exhale, Grace tried to push out the anger. She tried to relieve the weight of injustice and atrocity pressing down on her lungs.

Lia Grant was dead.

Outrage rushed through her veins and capillaries, heated her limbs.

Why, Grace, why didn’t you answer your phone?

Something hotter and thicker expanded, threatening to melt her from the inside out. This was the wrong ending. She was supposed to find the girl. Lia Grant was supposed to win. Hatch’s hand curled around her waist. Was he holding her steady? Himself? The entire world, which was spinning in insanity?

Lieutenant Lang joined them. She shifted from one foot to another, bits of earth falling into that gaping hole, which felt as big as the wound in Grace’s chest.

“What is it, Lieutenant Lang?” Hatch asked, not releasing his hold on her.

“Lia’s parents just arrived.” A grimace twisted her mouth. “How the hell am I going to explain…this?”

“I’ll do it,” Hatch said.

Gone was the golden glow of his skin and amused glint in his eyes. No flash of dimple, no cocky set to his jaw. She couldn’t imagine what he would say to Lia’s parents. Not only was the Grants’ daughter dead, she’d died a painful, gruesome death. What would he say if the parents asked to see their daughter’s body? What if they wanted to know about their daughter’s final words, her final moments on this earth? Would Hatch tell them about the phone calls to Grace? Of Lia’s pleading, of her desperation and terror?

Hatch gave her waist a squeeze. “I got this one.”

Lieutenant Lang didn’t argue because Hatch’s tone wouldn’t let her. In the fight against evil, everyone had a role. Hatch, with his honeyed voice and sweet words, was meant to talk and comfort, and for that she was grateful.

As for her role?

Help me, Grace. Help me…

Grief and horror collided with anger so hard, a physical jolt rocked Grace’s chest. She smoothed the string of pearls at her neck. When they found the evil that did this, she’d make sure the only phones he’d ever touch again would be the ones behind the bars of a maximum security prison.

All around her, the machine of death investigation buzzed. The rain continued to pour. Sheriff’s deputies set up tents and lights to combat the approaching night. A photographer snapped photos. Crime scene techs measured and took samples. The medical examiner took field stats on Lia Grant’s lifeless body.