The ground squished beneath her rubber soles and the air smelled dank. Darkness was closing in, accompanied by a cacophony of foreign sounds. Though the ballpark wasn’t that far behind them, they might as well have been in a different world.
“Cayden, please, come here!” she called. “This isn’t funny!”
When he failed to answer, her blood ran cold.
Anything could’ve happened.
Brynn now trekked through sloppy mud, making her footing treacherous. The vegetation was dense, choked with brambles and vines.
“Cayden! Answer me!”
Still nothing.
If something happened to her son, Brynn wasn’t sure how she’d survive. Aside from a smattering of friends, she had no one. Prescandal, at the height of his fame, it’d seemed she and Mack were never alone. They’d been the golden couple everyone wanted to be with. Postscandal, she’d become a pariah. Assets frozen and beyond broke. If it hadn’t been for Mack outright owning his old family home, Brynn and Cayden wouldn’t even have a roof over their heads.
“Cayden!” Deeper and deeper into the now dark woods Brynn crept.
“Mommy...” His voice barely carried.
“Sweetie, call me again so I can find you!”
She heard her son, but also a low, guttural grunt.
Panic set in and the faster she tried reaching her son, the tougher time she had finding solid footing. Her feet and the hems of her maternity jeans were cold-soaked, yet her upper body was sticky with sweat. The stench of rotting leaves turned her stomach. The humidity was as unbearable as her storming pulse.
“I’m scared...”
“I know, angel.” She trudged forward. “Do I sound closer?”
“I don’t know.”
Foliage clawed at Brynn, making her every move torture. The grunt came again, filling her mind’s eye with horrific images of her baby boy clamped between an alligator’s jaws.
“Mommy, please hurry! It’s gonna eat me!”
Panic surged through Brynn, making her strong but stupid, chasing after her boy without a clue where to find him.
* * *
“THANKS FOR HELPING ME OUT.”
“Anytime, man. Looks like you’re going to have a great team.” Tristan Bartoni shook Jason’s hand. They’d been friends since Mrs. Fleck sat them next to each other in the second grade. A week later, he remembered with a chuckle, she’d separated them for talking too much.
“What’s caught your funny bone?” Jason hefted the last of the equipment into his truck bed. The vehicle had come along with his recent election win as Ruin Bayou Chief of Police. Not only was the rig equipped with flashing lights and a siren, but tires that could handle damn near any terrain—a good thing considering the whole town was practically a swamp. His wife and toddler son had already long since gone home.
“Just thinking how much trouble we used to get in. Hard to believe where we are now.”
Jason snorted. “Yeah. Back when we used to sit in detention every afternoon, who’d have thought we’d now be in charge?” He elbowed Tristan. “Well, me anyway. I don’t know what you fancy navy SEALs do.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tristan took out the keys to his own more modest black Ford pickup. “Just keep tellin’ yourself that. You might keep Ruin Bayou safe, but my jurisdiction’s the world.”
“Modest much?” Jason had climbed behind his wheel.
“Nah.” Tristan slipped his key into the ignition when he noticed the SUV the crabby pregnant woman had stood alongside was still parked at the far end of the lot, only with no one inside. She hadn’t chased after her kid on her own, had she? Mother Nature was a full-on raving bitch in these parts. “Hold up a minute. We might have a situation...”
* * *
CAYDEN LOVED HIS MOM A WHOLE, big bunch, but right now he wanted his dad. His mom said his dad died, but most times Cayden wasn’t even sure what that meant. All he really knew was that his dad was gone and ever since they left their house in St. Louis, all his mom ever did was cry.
Now he was stuck up in a tree and his big toe hurt really bad and he was pretty sure something giant was trying to eat him.
“Mommy!”
He barely heard her say, “I’m coming, sweetie!”
He usually hated it when his mom called him sweetie pie and stuff like he was a little kid, but out here, it was kind of nice, knowing how much she loved him. He worried once the baby came, she’d only love his new sister, then he’d be all alone.
Cayden started to cry, and he hated crying.
Crying was for stupid babies.
He called out for her again and again, but this time, heard nothing. Forever and ever he sat alone in the tree, until even his own breathing sounded scary.
“Cayden?” Who was that? Sounded like Coach Jason. “Mrs. Langtoine?” Was he coming to tell him he made the team?
Light bounced through the dark trees, making everything look waaaay more spookier. “Coach? I’m up here! All my bones are broke bad! And there’s an alligator trying to eat me!”
“You mean this guy?” Coach held up a loudmouthed frog.
“Guess it could’ve been him.”
Coach asked, “Where’s your mom?”
“Don’t know. I—I think she’s lost.”
* * *
FROM DEEP WITHIN THE WOODS, Brynn glanced over her shoulder and saw a light bobbing in the gloom. Not sure if her eyes were playing tricks on her, she did a double take. “Hello?”
A hulking figure emerged from the brush. “Mrs. Langtoine?”
“You...” The man she’d admired on the field for his knack for talking with the players and whom she’d later regretted snapping at for sharing his advice concerning her son had now come to her rescue. Relief sagging her shoulders, she cupped her hands to her belly.
He extended his hand. “High time for a formal introduction. Tristan Bartoni. Guess I owe you an apology. Seems letting your boy run off wasn’t such a great idea.”
“Brynn Langtoine. And actually, if I’d done as you suggested and left him alone instead of chasing him, he probably wouldn’t have gone so far.” The man’s fingers enveloped hers. His height and breadth made her feel all at once vulnerable, yet strangely safe. “Have you seen my son? I thought I had him, but this swamp got me all turned around. Sounds don’t carry right, and...” She shook her head. “I need to find Cayden. He’s all I have.”
“Understood.” Tristan punched numbers into an electronic gadget, then took a handheld radio from a side pocket in his cargo pants. Into the radio, he said, “I’ve got the mom. How’s it going with the boy?”
“Got him,” came a static-garbled voice.
Relief turned Brynn’s knees to rubber. When she nearly collapsed, her new friend was there to support her. “Whoa. We’ve had enough excitement for tonight.
“Copy that,” he said into his radio. “Meet up back at the trucks.” With the radio returned to its pocket, he again consulted his gadget. “You hauled ass through rough terrain.”
“Um, thanks, I guess.”