Missing in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law #5)(30)

Maryse jumped off the couch. “I’m not grounded.”

Mildred shook her head. “No way. There’s only one road that leads to that pond and it’s a dead end. You have nowhere to go if the FBI catches sight of you.”

“There’s a path about a mile from the end. I can pull off on it and hide the truck with some brush in case anyone passes by.”

“Oh no,” Helena said. “I’m not walking a mile unless there’s blackberry cobbler in it for me.”

“You get me something that helps this investigation,” Maryse said, “and I’ll buy you a slice.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“Done. Whoohoo! Blackberry cobbler.”

Mildred gave them both a look of dismay. “I don’t know which one of you is worse.”

Instantly, Maryse sobered. “You’re not going to tell Luc, are you?”

“Not unless he asks me directly. I’m not about to voluntarily unleash that can of worms.”

“Thank God,” Maryse muttered.

“But I won’t lie for you, either. So you either get in and out without incident, or you better get a speech prepared.”

“Don’t worry,” Maryse said. “We will be incident-free.”

Mildred raised her eyebrows, clearly not convinced that anything involving Helena could be incident-free.

For that matter, neither was she.

[page]###

Colt eased the game warden boat around a sharp left turn in the bayou, scanning ahead for other boats, particularly any occupied by Ross and company. He would have preferred to take his own boat, but Jadyn had pointed out that using her equipment made the contractor thing look more legitimate. She had a pad of paper with drawings of different sections of the swamps that she’d been reworking. The cover story was that Colt was helping her remap the area since Jadyn didn’t know it well and the existing set of maps hadn’t been updated since the last hurricane, which had shifted things significantly.

The channel they traveled was about half a mile from Boudreaux’s Pond, where Colt hoped Ross would remain stationed with his team rather than wandering around the area. It made logical sense to check the camps surrounding the pond first. And technically, everything was official with the contractor job, but Colt knew they’d catch hell if Ross caught them nearby.

As he directed the boat toward the middle of the bayou, he was pleased to see a clear stretch about a mile long. The occasional fisherman was probably tucked away out of sight under the cypress trees that hung over the water, but he couldn’t think of a single reason Ross would be lurking under a canopy of tree limbs. If he was on the channels, he’d most likely be in the middle, in plain sight, which meant that so far, they were in the clear.

“Maryse said we couldn’t cover all the camps in one day,” Jadyn said as Colt directed the boat toward a dilapidated dock.

“She’s right. We’ll need another half day to cover them all. But I’m hoping we find something today and seeing the rest isn’t necessary.”

Jadyn nodded. “I hope so too. Who’s camp is this?”

Colt grimaced. “Old Man Humphrey’s. Can’t you tell by the ten nonworking refrigerators scattered in the weeds in front of it? He must have settled for appliances since he couldn’t get automobiles down here.”

Jadyn smiled. “One day, when things are right again, I’m going to drive out to Old Man Humphrey’s house just to see what all the complaining is about. And if I feel like being insulted a bit, I might even knock on the door and strike up a conversation.”

“You’ve got to really be lacking in company to seek out Humphrey.” He drew the boat up to the dock and Jadyn reached for a post.

“It’s not that,” she said as she tied off the post. “I just figure I can do my job better if I know what I’m working with. I’ve met a lot of people since I’ve been here, but some of the old-timers are almost hermits. I figure I’m going to have to go to them for any exposure.”

“Exposure is a good choice of word. God only knows what you may get spending time with the recluses I can think of. And you definitely want to announce yourself from the property line. Most of them think shooting first and asking later is their constitutional right.”

“Maybe I need to talk to you about getting a bulletproof vest,” she said as she stepped onto the wobbly dock.

“It’s probably not the worst idea.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone has been here recently,” she said as they pushed their way through the overgrown brush toward the camp.

“No, at least not from this direction.”

“Is there a road running behind it?”

“Yeah, about half a mile away from this camp. The gap gets a little wider the farther down the bayou you go.”

“A half mile is definitely doable, even with a hostage.”

“Ten miles is doable with a hostage as long as you’ve got a gun on them and there’s no witnesses around.”

Jadyn sighed. “You know, normally I am the most based-in-reality person I know, but just this once, I wish I could have that ‘glass half-full’ mentality.”

Colt nodded. He understood exactly what Jadyn was saying, but he also knew it was useless to wish for things that could never happen. Some people liked to think that law enforcement work made people—from the positive person’s point of view—jaded. But he knew better. If he and Jadyn hadn’t already been grounded in reality, neither of them would have been drawn to the work in the first place. Statistics didn’t lie. There was always a chance a bad situation could turn out fine, but in law enforcement, you had to be geared to accept that it often didn’t.