She closed her eyes as the wind whipped her hair out from under the visor, then peeked up between the two plywood boards. The space was empty. Just as she’d known it would be. All that remained were a few grains of sand.

* * *

Late at night the wind whips into a frenzy. Palm fronds slap against darkened windows, hammocks whip inside out, birds huddle in their shivering nests. And down in the far depths of Little River, a little boat quivers. A current prods the boat with persistent fingers until it dislodges from its protective tangle of barnacle-covered rope and sunken crab traps. The boat lifts from its resting place at the bottom and rises through thirty feet of brackish water until it breaks the surface for the first time in forty years.

After bobbing on the surface, sending ripples across the river in all directions like a gong, the boat begins to drift slowly but surely toward the shore. Finally it comes to rest in a patch of needle rushes along the water’s edge, one side pressed against a dock piling. For a moment all is still.

Then out of the inky dark sky comes the sound of pounding wings. A brown pelican lands on the end of the dock and tucks its wings into its sides. Small brown eyes scan the dock and with a quick shudder, the bird lowers its head and deposits clean fish bones onto the old wooden boards, still warm from the day’s heat. The bird’s gaze rests on the little boat as it sways on the surface of the water. It tilts its head, then in a quick flap of wings and water droplets, the bird takes flight. The bones remain, bleached white and sharp as pins, and the boat presses a little farther into the shore.

Part Two
Soar

Five

Justin Roby sat at his desk staring at the computer screen, bleary eyed and in need of a shave. He’d been scanning various social media pages for hours now, searching for tips on a string of car burglaries that had been happening in town, but he’d yet to find anything of substance. Justin knew most of the guys responsible for three-quarters of the crime in Sugar Bend, and he also knew they had secret social media accounts where they traded information about who was out of town, who just bought a new computer, who tended to leave car doors unlocked at night.

Many of the older officers at the precinct rolled their eyes anytime Justin pulled up Instagram or Snapchat, but he didn’t care. All he needed was one good crime he could solve and they’d all look at him differently. He’d no longer be the rookie fresh out of the academy but a full-fledged and, most of all, capable officer.

The coffee on his desk was cold enough to grow ice crystals on the inside, so he tossed the Styrofoam cup in his wastebasket and made the trek down the hall to the kitchen in the back. The precinct was quiet this time of the morning, with a couple more hours to go on the graveyard shift before the next shift arrived, ready to patrol the streets of Sugar Bend, this small town four miles north of the Gulf. By then Justin would be buried in his bed at home, his head under the pillow and blackout shades securely drawn.