Dead Wrecked (Cold Case Psychic #45)

PROLOGUE

Tennyson

Twelve-year-old Tennyson Grimm sat quietly at his desk near the back of the classroom as his friends and classmates whooped and hollered while the final seconds of the school year ticked away.

Ten’s decidedly non-celebratory demeanor didn’t come from the report card tucked neatly into his backpack—he knew he’d gotten a mix of As and Bs—but from the fact that starting on Sunday, Ten was off to spend the next eight weeks at Coyote River Vacation Bible Camp.

Timmy Jefferson, the boy who sat in the seat in front of Ten, was going to spend a month in Dallas, Texas with his grandparents who spoiled him rotten.

Timmy would get to eat all the pizza and enchiladas his little heart desired, not to mention all the new toys he’d come home with.

Cindy Henderson’s family was loading up their Winnebago and were going to drive west to visit Yellowstone National Park.

She was hoping to see grizzly bears and wolves, black wolves, specifically.

Then there was Milton Peters, who was going to spend the entire summer on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Ten knew envy was one of the seven deadly sins, but even so, he was still envious of his friends’ summer vacation plans.

Both sets of Ten’s grandparents lived in rest homes and had not spoiled him one single day of his life.

His parents would never rent a motor home and drive west to see Old Faithful and herds of bison that roamed freely.

Last and certainly not least, Ten could never imagine himself winging east on a plane to Massachusetts.

No, it would be eight torturous weeks of bible camp.

Instead of splashing in the Atlantic Ocean, Ten would be memorizing passages from the four gospels; passages that he would then need to recite aloud in front of the other campers.

There would be campfires in the evening, but no s’mores to be had, instead there would be a sing-a-long with favorites like “The Old Rugged Cross” and, of course, “Kumbaya.”

There was no use in complaining, Ten knew he was going to camp come hell or high water, which was exactly what happened the summer before.

Kansas had been hit with torrential rains which lasted for three days.

When the deluge finally stopped, the Coyote River began to rise.

The camp had flooded. Thankfully, no one had been hurt, but the campgrounds had turned into a giant mud puddle and the last week of activities had been canceled, which had been the highlight of the entire summer for Tennyson.

He knew that lightning rarely struck twice, but there was a little part of him that hoped something cataclysmic, but not biblical, would make Ten’s stay at the camp shorter than anticipated.

When the bell rang, his classmates bolted from the door.

He could hear the slap of sneakers in the corridor.

Teachers, who usually threatened detention for kids who ran in the halls, wore carefree looks.

Ten’s teacher, Mrs. Phillips, was going on a road trip to Niagara Falls with her new husband.

She’d said they were going to roll the windows down and sing their favorite songs, eat their weight in cotton candy and enjoy watching water sluice over the falls at the rate of 750,000 gallons per second.

What his teacher hadn’t told the class was that she and her husband were hoping to get pregnant on their vacation.

Ten didn’t know how he knew that little factoid, but he did.

Ten wanted to see that someday, Niagara Falls, not his teacher making a baby.

He also wanted to see Yellowstone National Park, Dallas, Texas, and Cape Cod.

Milton had told Ten there were great white sharks in the waters off the Cape and that the movie Jaws, which Ten had not been allowed to see last summer when it was shown at the park on the Fourth of July, was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard, which was a small island off the Massachusetts coast. He’d like to see a shark someday and reach out and touch its sandpaper-like skin.

Maybe find one of its teeth on the beach, like Milton had done last summer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

There was no way his parents would ever take him to those locales, unless, of course, there was some kind of church activity being hosted.

Traveling for church meetings was boring.

Church came first, and then if there was time, maybe his parents would take him to get pizza or to see a local attraction.

The last time he’d been to Severance, Kansas, Ten had been able to see a rodeo, at least the first ten minutes of it, after that, they were off to the next tent meeting where his parents would try to coax people into joining the Union Chapel Baptist Church.

Thus far, Ten’s travels had been courtesy of the church.

What would it be like to travel the world on his own?

Being able to hop in a car, roll the windows down and rock out to The Backstreet Boys instead of gospel music.

Maybe there would be a handsome husband and some cute kids in the car with them, who sang the wrong words to songs and needed to stop every twenty minutes to use the bathroom.

Ten sighed as he trudged up his driveway. It was a sweet dream, one of the sweetest he’d ever spun for himself. One that he would hold close to his heart and would do everything in his power to make come true someday.

Someday soon.