42. Scarlet Sage
Scarlet Sage
The old maps disagree with one another.
One county survey sends the southern service road into open water. Another ends it beneath a stand of cypress trees that didn’t exist on the earlier drawing. My grandmother’s damaged correction curves between both versions before disappearing into the ruined edge of the scan.
For forty minutes, Roman and I cover the sheriff’s conference table with flood records, logging maps, and photographs taken before the town decided history should be easier to sell.
Wes stands behind my chair with one hand against my shoulder. He has been touching me since Myrtle called. It’s like he needs a physical reminder that I’m here.
I reach up and cover his fingers.
Roman shifts another survey beneath the lamp. “The flood of eighty-nine changed this channel.”
“It changed the public channel.” I trace an older blue line that runs behind the refrigeration annex. “The original waterway stayed deep enough for logging boats.”
Tom leans over the table. “Could anyone still use it?”
“Not with a boat larger than a skiff.”
“What about the road?”
I compare the photographs.
The surviving curve on my grandmother’s correction passes east of the annex before cutting south. The modern survey shows three abandoned maintenance tracks in that direction. Only one follows the old channel.
“This branch.”
Roman looks from my finger to the damaged scan. “Because the curve matches?”
“That, and the land rises here.” I point at the faint contour marks.
“My grandmother would have kept a release path above the normal flood line. A ritual route had to remain passable during summer season, when the water runs highest.”
Wes bends closer. “So this road reaches the site.”
“It reaches whatever she was trying to restore.”
Tom issues assignments.
Deputies will approach in two teams, one down the maintenance track and one by shallow-draft boat. The evidence unit remains behind until the location is secured. There will be no sirens and no lights once they leave the paved road.
Wes sets a protective vest on the table in front of me.
I look at it.
He looks back.
“I wore one at the annex.”
“You’re wearing one again.”
“My grandmother’s route probably doesn’t include gunfire.”
“Sullivan put cameras outside your house. I’m not relying on probably.”
Roman lifts the vest and opens it for me. “Arms up, love.”
“Traitor.” I obey anyway.
Roman eases the vest over my shoulders while Wes adjusts the straps. Their hands move around me with practiced cooperation, Roman keeping my hair clear while Wes checks the fit.
My body settles beneath their attention. Fear remains, but it doesn’t feel like I’m facing it alone.
Wes presses his mouth to my forehead. “You stay between us.”
“I remember.”
Roman fastens the final strap. “And if either of us tells you to move?”
“I move.”
Wes studies my face as though searching for resistance.
I touch his cheek. “I love you. I’m not going to make you fight me and whoever waits out there.”
His eyes close for one brief moment.
Roman’s hand slides around the back of my neck and draws all three of us together. “We come home as a pack,” he says.
The words follow us south.
The maintenance road barely qualifies as one. Palmettos scrape both sides of the sheriff’s SUV. Cypress roots buckle the earth beneath the tires, forcing us to slow through stretches where dark water reaches the wheel wells.
Tom’s lead vehicle stops half a mile from the location I marked. From there, we walk.
The deputies spread through the trees ahead of us. Wes keeps me behind his left shoulder while Roman stays at my back. Their scents surround me beneath the wet green smell of the swamp.
Mosquitoes whine near my ears, and mud pulls at my boots. The afternoon light fades beneath the canopy even though sunset is still hours away.
The deeper we travel, the darker the swamp becomes. There are no sounds of frogs or birds, only our footsteps and the slow movement of water between cypress knees.
Roman touches my elbow. “You feel that?”
“Yes.” An absence presses against my skin.
I wouldn’t call it magic exactly. But whatever it is, the air is thick with it.
The land has been disturbed recently. I stop near a patch of flattened maidenhair fern. “Someone brought equipment through here.”
Wes crouches without releasing my hand.
A narrow wheel track cuts through the mud, too small for a truck, too wide for a handcart.
“Utility vehicle,” he says.
Roman points at the cypress beside it. A strip of white thread is caught on the bark, the same thread used in the relief bundles.
Tom signals the deputies forward. We follow the track until it splits beside a flooded ditch. The left branch turns toward an old timber landing. The right disappears into thicker cypress.
Roman studies the mud. “Tire marks go left.”
I look at the water. My grandmother’s correction bends right. “Then the tire tracks are the wrong route.”
Wes turns toward me. “Why?”
“Because they’re obvious.” I point toward the left branch. “Someone drove through soft ground and left us a trail. My grandmother’s route was meant to survive floods, not advertise itself.”
Tom looks toward the deputies already moving to investigate the landing. “A diversion?”
“Maybe.” I crouch beside the right-hand trail.
Beneath the palmettos, a row of cypress knees rises through shallow water. Three close together, then a gap. The pattern repeats farther ahead.
My pulse accelerates. “This is it.”
Roman follows my gaze. “The marks on the correction.”
“They weren’t three cypress knees at one location. They were a trail marker.” My grandmother must have used the roots because floodwater could wash away paint, ribbons, and carved signs.
The cypresses remained. Three knees. A gap. Three more.
The pattern leads away from the vehicle tracks and into the water.
Tom recalls the deputies from the landing. One team remains, to secure the false route, while the rest move with us.
The water rises over my boots. Wes’s hand closes around my waist.
“I can walk.”
“I’m aware.” He lifts me over a submerged root anyway and sets me down on firmer ground.
Roman steps across behind us, keeping one hand on Wes’s shoulder until all three of us are steady.
The trail narrows.
White thread appears again, this time tied loosely around a branch. Farther ahead, dried marigold petals float against the current. Fresh markers. Someone wants part of this path followed too.
The realization reaches me too late.
A sharp hiss comes from the trees, and Wes slams me against his chest and turns his body over mine.
A dart strikes the trunk where my neck had been.
“Down!”
Deputies scatter behind the cypress trees.
Roman drops beside us, one arm shielding my head while Wes searches the trees.
Another hiss.
A deputy curses when a dart catches his sleeve. He tears it free before it reaches skin.
The tip glistens.
Sweetness cuts through the swamp air. GatorX.
“They’re dosing the path,” I say.
Wes draws his weapon, and movement flashes beyond the trees.
A motorcycle engine starts somewhere farther south.
Wes starts forward, then stops himself before I can reach for him. His eyes find mine. He chooses us first. “Stay close.”
Wes covers his face while keeping his body between me and the direction of the darts.
The wounded deputy is clean. The dart caught only fabric. No one has been exposed. Yet.
Tom sends two officers after the shooter while the rest tighten around us.
I look at the thread ahead. It no longer reads as a marker. It’s bait. “They know we found the route.”
Roman’s eyes narrow. “Or they expected someone eventually would.”
Wes scans the trees. “Can we reach the site another way?”
The water beside us moves against the natural current. There is a slight pull beneath the floating petals. I remember the older survey. The ceremonial path stayed above floodwater, but the release site sat where two channels met.
I turn toward the deeper water. “The route is not the trail.”
Wes looks at me. “What does that mean?”
“My grandmother marked where people entered, not where they walked.”
I point past the decoy thread toward a narrow break between the cypress trees. “The old channel curves behind this ridge. The site should be on the other side.”
Tom checks the map. “There is no road.”
“There wasn’t supposed to be.”
The distant motorcycle fades. Then another sound replaces it. A low mechanical hum rolls through the swamp. A generator. It’s close enough that I feel its vibration through the water.
Roman reaches for my hand. “Someone is still there.”
Wes’s alpha pushes against the air around us, fierce enough to cut through the contaminated sweetness. He looks toward the hidden channel, then at me. “We stop here until the second team reaches the water side.”
The command is reasonable. My instincts still scream that time is running out.
Before I can answer, Tom lifts his radio. “Water team, status?”
Static answers. One deputy checks his phone. Another tries hers.
Roman pulls out his own. “No signal,” he says.
Wes looks toward the trees. “Radios too.”
The generator hum deepens. Lights flare between the trees ahead, too white and bright for the swamp.
A woman cries out. The sound carries across the hidden channel and breaks off sharply.
Wes grips my waist.
Roman closes around my other side.
The release site is no longer an abandoned place on an old map. Someone is using it.