“A little more optimism, huh?” Darren said, not liking the frank nihilism of futility from a man who was helping him find a child. He asked Jim if they couldn’t pick up the pace, then leaned back to see if Marcus thought this was all looking right. Were they headed in the right direction? Marcus either didn’t hear him or was more nervous on a boat than Darren had realized. “Seriously,” Darren said, turning to the captain. “Not meaning to bust your balls, but could we kick it up a bit?”

“Heading into a cypress forest up here,” Jim said. “We race through there and bump up against one of the cypress knees shooting up out the water, and we’re liable to tear up this boat. Trust me when I say you don’t want to be stuck out here come sundown. They call it ‘spending a night in the Caddo Motel.’ You picked the quickest route, but a lot could go wrong between here and there.”

Behind him, Marcus made a sound, a hiccup of panic.

The sky hadn’t even grayed to the ashy purple of coming dusk. They had at least a couple of hours of light, Darren figured. He couldn’t understand the captain’s odd demeanor, the faint joy he seemed to be getting out of a dire situation of which he was not in control. The scraggly mustache made it hard to tell, but Darren thought the man might be smiling. He was about to tell the guy to quit fucking around and take this thing up to full speed when they entered the cypress forest. Jim actually slowed the engine to a near crawl, and he was smiling, Darren could see now. Beaming. “There she is.”

“My God,” Marcus whispered.

Inside the forest they were floating through, there was no sound beyond the tinkle of lake water against the sides of the boat, no world beyond Caddo Lake. Darren had never seen anything like it. Cypress trees, their trunks skirted so that they appeared like shy dancers at a church social, leaving enough space for God between them, enough space for Jim to snake his way through dozens of trees shooting up to a sky that was darkening after all, Darren thought. That or the canopy of Spanish moss hanging from the trees had steepled the forest, had put a roof over this holy sanctuary on water.

The three men rode in silence for what seemed like an eternity.