The Buried (The Apostles)

by Shelley Coriell

  “Big area?” Hatch asked.

  “Couple hundred acres.”

  Even with the roar of the outboard, he heard the excitement in her voice. “What?”

  “One of Lamar’s old hunting buddies keeps his dogs on a floating pen in that area. Janis heard the dogs right before she was dragged from the boat. We find the dogs, we’ll find the girl.”

  Within fifteen minutes, Grace had them racing down the Apalachicola River and onto Bremen’s Bayou, a slow-moving waterway surrounded by cypress and oak dripping with Spanish moss. His light glided over cypress roots reaching up from the water like fingerless hands. The trees hung low over the water, and branches scratched the side of the boat. And some of the branches—

  “Broken!” Grace said on a fast breath. “The wood’s still damp at the break. Someone’s had a boat back in here recently.”

  She inched the boat through the tangle of branches. His light landed on a flattened bush and a pair of crushed white trumpet-like flowers. He fanned the light higher. “Drag marks. Too wide for a gator.”

  Grace jammed the boat into the bank. He launched himself over the side, his feet sinking into swampy earth. Swatting brush, he chased the drag marks into the knot of blue-black shrubs and trees. Vines reached for his hands and legs. A ropy length of moss wrapped around his neck, and he yanked. Something snarled. Something else hissed. And still he ran.

  The brush gave way to marsh. Mud sucked at his feet. His shins. His knees.

  On the other side of the bog, he spotted the earthen mound.

  He tore up the rise. Something sharp sliced into his right foot. Shoe. He’d lost a shoe.

  At the mound, he fell to his knees and clawed the earth. “Janis!” he called. “It’s Hatch. I’m here.”

  No banging. No choking gasp.

  He scraped harder, faster, sandy soil flying. His finger scraped against something flat and cold. He tugged, and a rock came free. With the flat rock he shoveled earth.

  Something crashed through the marshy grass and fell next to him. Another set of hands.

  “Spotted three boats coming this way.” Grace jammed her hands in the dirt and shoveled.

  His rock hit wood. Someone let loose a cry. Grace? Him? Janis?

  More sandy soil flew through the air. He unearthed one corner. Another. With two feet of wood exposed, he banged the rock at the joint along the top. The wood split. He grabbed the broken lengths of wood and yanked, every muscle in his body straining. Nails screeched, the wood splintered, and half of the top board broke off, exposing a pale, dark-haired young woman.

  In the weak glow of the moon, the young woman was stone still. Not even her chest moved. Grace jammed her fingers against her neck. “No pulse, but she’s still warm.”

  Hatch reached under the woman’s shoulders and heaved her from the grave. He dropped to his knees beside the girl, settled his mouth on hers, and breathed.

  * * *

  Allegheny Blue hobbled down the porch steps and rested his head on Grace’s thigh, a line of drool sliding onto her mud-caked sandal. She scrubbed the old dog’s head and matched her breathing to his, slow and steady.

  Breathing. An act so mundane and engrained that most people weren’t aware of doing it until they couldn’t.

  Janis Jaffee, a twenty-three-year-old jogger from Carrabelle, was breathing, but not on her own. She was surrounded by a team of doctors and machines at the Cypress Bend Medical Center helping her fight for her life. Relief mingled with joy and exhaustion as Grace walked up the porch steps.

  Hatch locked the SUV, but instead of climbing the steps he walked to the side of her shack, his movements slow and labored, as if weighed down by the mud caking his body. He toed off one shoe and peeled off his shirt. He slipped the gun from the holster at his back and set it on the porch along with his long shorts. Standing only in a pair of boxers, Hatch reached for the hose bib.

  “You can shower inside,” Grace said. “A little bit of mud won’t hurt this place.”

  Hatch cranked the spigot, and a frothy arc burst from the hose. Hatch stared, as if mesmerized by the rushing water. Was he thinking of the inky waters they’d traveled in their hunt for a girl buried alive? The sweat running down his face as he pulled the girl from her grave? Or other waters that would take him away from the horror of the night? He lifted the hose over his head and closed his eyes, sighing as a river of mud sluiced down his chest and legs to the pebbly ground. Or maybe he was just a tired, dirty guy who wanted to clean up after a long day’s work.

  At one time she’d accused Hatch of being a lazy, sun-loving drifter. Never again. Tonight she’d seen a man so intense, so consumed with his work, that at one point she was sure that all that existed in his world was one young woman. And now he needed to scrub his mind and body of the ordeal. She didn’t blame him. He’d been in deep.

  She slipped out of her muddy flats, went inside for a bar of soap and towel, and joined him on the side of the house. She reached for the hose. His eyes flew open, but he didn’t object. Time to help Hatch wash away the mud and horror.

  She handed him the soap and ran the water along his back.

  In the halo of the porch light, Hatch lathered up, scrubbing his head and torso so hard his golden skin turned pink. She ran the arc of water along the hills and valleys of his body. And still he scrubbed.

  At last she took the soap from his hand. “It’s gone, Hatch. All gone.” Dirt and sand had sunk back into the earth. His chest rose and fell in a long, soundless sigh, and a tremor rocked his body.

  “Now go inside and warm up under the shower,” she said.

  “Your turn.” Hatch reached for the hose, but she held it out of his reach.

  “I can do it.”

  Hatch laughed. “Yep, Grace, we’ve already determined you’re capable of single-handedly taking over the world.” He unclenched the hose from her hand and took the soap. “But I’ve had a hell of a night. Humor a guy, okay?”

  She slipped out of her linen shell and trousers and tossed them on the porch.

  Hatch lifted the hose, and cool water poured over her shoulders and neck. The dried mud and sweat pinching her skin softened and disappeared. The steady stream massaged the stiffness between her shoulder blades and soothed the scratches on her arms and legs. Hatch slid the soap along her arms and back, chasing away the stench of the swamp clogging her nose and thickening in her throat. When there was nothing left, she raised her face to the sky and breathed deeply.

  Hatch turned off the water and she opened her eyes. He stood before her, his breath as slow and steady as her own. A few hours ago he’d sent her heart thundering and breath racing on a boat called No Regrets. And she’d ended it. This time she wanted forever, a concept well off his navigational charts.

  His arm loped around her shoulder. “Come on, Grace. You’re beat, I’m beat, and ol’ Blue looks pretty beat, too.” The dog had lumped their clothes into a single pile on the porch and curled on top in a ball.

  Inside the house, she filled Blue’s water bowl and food dish, including his customary slice of crumbled bacon. When she set the bowl on the floor, he nosed it and looked up at her. “You are not getting another slice of bacon.”

  He yawned and rested his head on her foot. The old dog was exhausted. So was she. The roller coaster that had taken her from terror to bone-deep fear to guarded relief had left her physically spent. She wanted nothing more than to sink into a warm, clean bed and wake up to sunshine and news that Janis was breathing on her own.

  In the bedroom she found Hatch sprawled across her bed, his face smashed into a pillow and not a stitch of clothing on. Still no tan lines, she noticed with a tired smile.

  She toweled her hair, slipped out of her wet bra and panties, and pulled a worn pair of boxers and a T-shirt from her dresser.

  “I’m not sleeping on the settee tonight,” he told the pillow.

  She sunk on the bed. “I know.”

  “And I’m not going to ravish your exquisite body.”

/>   She stretched out next to him, close but not touching. “I know that, too.”

  A few miles away Janis Jaffee lay in a hospital bed, air moving in and out of her lungs. Thanks to Hatch. Thanks to her. She just needed to be next to him, close enough to hear him breathe.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Portsmouth, Ohio

  The handwritten sign in the front window of Florie’s Café read: Pie today! Chocolate Silk, Banana Coconut Cream, Triple Berry. On this sunny Sunday morning, Tucker hoped someone at the diner would also serve him the names of two dead bodies found in Collier’s Holler.

  Tucker had called the diner owner yesterday, who confirmed that last Monday the diner had served plenty of huckleberry pie and white chocolate mousse pie with pomegranates. Finding the restaurant where his victims had eaten their last meal was a long shot, and finding a waitress who remembered them and their order was an even longer shot, but it was his only shot.

  “Let me get Linda for you,” the owner said when he introduced himself. “She works the morning and lunch shifts on Mondays. She’s a real people person, never forgets a face.”

  Unfortunately, the bodies found in Collier’s Holler had no faces. Grandpa and Grandma’s killer had purposefully destroyed their faces and fingertips because he didn’t want them identified. Logic told him once he discovered the victims’ names, the killer wouldn’t be far behind.

  “What can I do to help?” Linda asked when he told her about his investigation.

  “We’re looking for an older couple in their sixties. He’s five foot ten, and she’s five two.” Tucker went on to describe their weight, hair, and clothes.

  “That describes half my customers.” The waitress tapped her pen against her cheek. “You don’t have a picture, do you?”

  “Not that you’d want to see, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re right off the main highway,” the waitress continued. “And we get so many people through here, families on vacation, truckers, salesmen. It’s possible they came through here, and if they did, I waited on them.”

  “He ordered a half-pound bacon cheddar burger and sweet potato fries. She had Caesar salad with chicken, bread stick. Both had pie.” He didn’t bother checking his notes. Given the dearth of information and evidence, he’d memorized what little he had. “She had the white chocolate mousse with pomegranates, and he had the huckleberry—”

  Linda’s finger shot through the air in an excited jab. “—with a triple scoop of vanilla.”

  He held his breath. Come on, universe, give him a yes, even one measly maybe.

  “Sure, I remember them now. First-time customers. He had quite the sweet tooth and the belly to prove it. His wife tried to talk him out of the ice cream, and he patted his stomach, saying there’d just be more of him to love. Cutest little couple. They had these little matching fanny packs. Does it sound like the people you’re looking for?”

  “Yes.” Yes. Yes. Finally. “Do you remember their names, maybe from a credit card or personal check?”

  She tapped faster. “I think they paid with cash. Yes, I’m sure they did because as he was paying, he ordered a chocolate cream pie to go, and she put up a bit of a fuss about it. Worried about his cholesterol.”

  “Anything memorable about them? Accents? Jewelry? Sports teams on T-shirts?” Questions of a man desperate enough to turn to pie to jumpstart this investigation.

  “Nothing stands out.”

  Windows ran across the front of the diner, overlooking the angled parking spaces. “Did you by any chance notice what kind of car they drove?”

  “No.”

  “Did they mention why they were in town or where they were going?”

  “I’m pretty sure they were just passing through. I think they were on vacation.”

  “Did they say where they were headed?”

  “South, I think. He said it had been a cold winter and he was looking forward to sunshine.”

  “Do you remember a city or state? Where they came from or where they were going?”

  Her mouth puckered in concentration. “Honestly, they talked mostly about their grandkids. Real proud of them. She said one of the granddaughters was heading off to some dolphin camp this summer. The kid was gaga over dolphins and wanted to be a marine biologist. He talked about his grandson, the star player on his high school’s baseball team. The boy got a scholarship to some community college.”

  “Did you get a school name, camp name, even a city?” Anything.

  “No.”

  The two letters connected with a one-two punch.

  The waitress must have noticed his distress. She chewed the tip of her pen. “I’m sorry, detective.”

  “Me too.” He’d had high hopes for pie. Hell, pie had been his only hope. He handed her his business card and told her to call him at anytime, day or night, if she remembered anything.

  Back in his cruiser, he jammed his keys in the ignition but didn’t start the car. What now? Would he be forced to wait until someone reported the couple missing? Would his boss put the hammer on him for coming up with a whole hell of a lot of nothing? He turned the key. There was a grocery store on the corner, and he hoped they had a few Wild Turkeys in stock.

  He was backing out of the parking space when he heard, “Wait, Detective Holt! Wait!” The waitress ran, waving at him. “I have something for you.” She reached the window and handed him a flat box. “It’s triple berry. You look like you could use a good pie.”

  Pie. He wanted a killer, and she gave him pie. His chest jiggled. His job was in the crapper, and his ex was trying to take his kids. He wanted Wild Turkey. And he got pie. Hilarious. So fucking hilarious. He laughed so hard, his hands shook too hard to take the pie. The waitress stared at him and swatted at a pair of bees who were clearly more interested than him in triple berry pie.

  He finally calmed down enough to thank her and take the pie. The waitress stood rooted at his window, staring. Yeah, he was fucked up. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she held up her hand, her eyes growing wide. “A name,” she said around a toothy smile. “I have a name. The Hornets!”

  “Excuse me?”

  She motioned to the bees buzzing around the pie. “The name of their grandson’s high school baseball team. I specifically remember him saying they were called the Hornets and his grandson, the boy who received the baseball scholarship to a community college, was called the Stinger.”

  * * *

  Grace lay on her side, her head resting on the palm of her bent arm. Mid-morning sun sifted through the muslin curtains of her bedroom and set Hatch’s golden hair on fire. He was magnificent, like one of the nude bronzes from the Renaissance. And last night he’d been magnificent, too. With words and then his bare hands, he’d lifted a terrified woman from her grave.

  Last night they’d won.

  See that, Daddy? Another win.

  And this one counted like no other. Unlike Lia Grant, they’d saved Janis Jaffee. A feather-light joy fanned out from her chest and danced its way to the tips of her toes. Not only had they saved the young woman, they’d learned from Janis Jaffee that the abductor had been a woman. Grace still couldn’t get her mind wrapped around that.

  Next to her, Hatch stretched his arms over his head, smacked his lips, and creaked open one eye. He blinked and groaned. “Please tell me I didn’t sleep through the best night of sex of my life,” he said around a yawn.

  She laughed. “There was no sex.”

  He ran a finger along her arm, a grin sliding onto his lips. “We can change that if you like.”

  She gave his finger a playful smack. Hatch loved to tease and play, and after last night’s triumphant search for Janis, she didn’t begrudge him his good mood.

  “I don’t like,” she said, although the thought of spending the morning in bed with Hatch would bring her to a whole new level of happy. He loved just like he lived, full out with a dash of mirth, mischief, and magic. Like she’d ever forget the magic of those hands. She cleared her throat an
d prayed she wasn’t blushing.“And neither do you.” She rolled off her side of the bed, the air cooling her heated skin. “Because this morning you need to call the owner of the Clip & Curl and set a time to meet about Alex.”

  Hatch sunk onto his pillow. The easygoing grin gave way to a scowl, and anything sweet and fun about the morning slid away on golden dust motes. Cramming both hands into the sides of his hair, he scrubbed, as if coaxing his brain cells to rise and shine.

  It was disconcerting, seeing Hatch, who oozed with so much easy confidence it bordered on cockiness, struggle with anything, especially a person. He knew he needed to help his son, but he was at a loss at how to do it, which floored her. The answer was so easy for her to see and, in theory, easy for a man of Hatch’s skill. He needed to do what he did best: talk. Last night Hatch’s words had pulled a girl from death’s door, and within minutes he’d managed to build a bridge strong enough and long enough for them to rescue her. This morning Hatch needed to talk with the shop owner and Alex, and they needed to come up with a plan to hold Alex accountable for his actions and to keep him from making more bad choices.

  A cloudy mixture of dread and resignation darkened Hatch’s summer blue eyes as he grabbed his phone from the nightstand. She settled a hand on his arm and squeezed.

  Like Hatch, she didn’t have the luxury of lying in bed. She had too much to do. She dressed, set a pot of coffee brewing, and opened the back door to let out Blue.

  The dog poked his nose out the door, sniffed, and plunked onto the floor.

  “What?” Grace ran a bare toe along his back. “No morning dig?” Every morning for the past three months the dog had plodded off the porch, sometimes digging in her yard and other times heading deeper into the woods, but always digging.

  Blue lowered his huge head onto his paws.

  “Are you okay?” She bent and looked at his paws. No swelling. No new split pads. His tail gave a happy thump as he drooled on her hand. She flung off the slime. “I have more important things to worry about today.”