He pulled his phone from his pocket and clicked on the flashlight. “I’ll give you a five-minute head start, Bryce. Then I’m coming after you. You better hope I don’t find you.”

Bryce still couldn’t believe he was doing this. It was dark and she could barely see her way around. She could just imagine herself falling into quicksand or wandering back into the swamp. And what about those animals that came out at night? But five minutes were five minutes and she would take it. It would be a run for her life. With her hands still tied behind her back, she turned and took off running.

* * *

“YES, THAT’S HIM,” Jack Blackmon said, pointing to the likeness of the man on the flyer. “I would never have rented him a boat had I known he intended to hurt someone, especially Bryce.”

“Did he say where he intended to go?” Sawyer asked the man.

Jack shook his head. “No. He said he was going fishing, and that was all he said. He’s supposed to have my boat back to me by morning. Claimed he would be doing night fishing.”

At that moment, a black car pulled up and two men got out. Kaegan recognized one of the men as the FBI agent he’d seen earlier. Sawyer walked off toward the men and Kaegan strained his ears to hear. One of the men said, “We picked up a couple a half hour ago who were trying to charge something with Bryce Witherspoon’s credit card. They claim Jeremy Skinner planned to take Ms. Witherspoon to some island he saw one day in the swamp and bury her alive.”

Goose bumps began forming on Kaegan’s arms at the same time the beeper on his watch went off. That was the second time tonight it had done that. “Damn!”

Everyone glanced over at him. “I know where they’ve taken her,” he said, rushing over to Sawyer. “The alert has gone off twice tonight on my watch. I got a feeling the bastard has taken her to Eagle Bend Inlet.”

Sawyer turned to Jack Blackmon and quickly said, “We need to use one of your boats.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

BRYCE RAN UNTIL she couldn’t run any more. She ran so much at one point she was convinced she was running around in circles and that eventually she would run right back into Jeremy. She still didn’t know where she was and hadn’t seen anything familiar. But then it was blue-black dark and she could barely see her own hands. Hands that were still tied. She was at a disadvantage and he knew it.

Then there were the sounds of the night. Eerie sounds, and she didn’t want to think about what animals were making them or the possibility she could step on a snake or alligator at any moment. The thought that she was being hunted down like an animal made her want to scream, but screaming would alert Jeremy to where she was, and she had to keep moving. She couldn’t let him find her. How long would he look for her? Would he stop then start up in the morning when he had more light? She had to believe people were looking for her. Kaegan would know something was wrong when she hadn’t shown up for dinner.