She crept toward the cypress trees, following Snooze’s wailing. The brush was thick and with a thunderstorm building overhead, the moon was hidden completely. The only light was the thin beam from her flashlight, and it wasn’t enough to see a very large patch. At the edge of the trees, she called for Snooze and he let off three shrill barks. She frowned and chambered a round, then inched into the woods, pistol in firing position.

Snooze’s barks grew louder—more insistent—and she could tell he wasn’t far away. She moved faster now, worried that the old hound had come across an alligator. Snooze was no match for an angry gator. Even on land they could really move. She burst into a clearing, gun leveled and ready to fire. Snooze stood at the far edge of the clearing, barking at a thick set of brush. As soon as she moved forward, the brush shook as if something large had moved it and then she heard the sound of retreating steps.

She commanded Snooze to stay put, but in keeping with everyone else in her family, he completely ignored her and launched into the brush in pursuit. Yelling at him to stop, Marina bolted through the brush, tripped over a tree root, and slammed into the ground.

“I’m going to kill you, Snooze!” she yelled as she rubbed her angry back.

Thunder boomed overhead and it started to rain. Actually, it was more of a monsoon as only Louisiana can produce in the blink of an eye. The hard Louisiana mud beneath her got wet and slick within seconds, and between her back and the growing mudhole, she struggled to push herself up. When she finally got into a somewhat upright position, a spotlight hit her right in the face and she threw up her arm to block the light, almost falling again.

“Don’t move!” a man’s voice commanded, and just like magic, the rain stopped.

“I’m hardly going anywhere now that I’m blind,” Marina said. “Either shoot me or get that light out of my face.”

He chuckled and the light dropped down to the ground, illuminating the area surrounding the mudhole.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”

She looked up and saw a man with longish dark brown hair and green eyes smiling at her. A man she was certain she’d never seen before. She glanced down and realized he had a gun holstered at his side and her pulse jumped. Twice in one week was at least once too many times to think you were going to be serial killed. Her pistol was somewhere on the ground, but there was no way she’d be able to grab it and shoot him before he could shoot her. And with her back now protesting loudly, there was no way she was going to outrun him either.

“Who did you think I was?” she asked. Maybe if he’d been looking to serial kill someone else, he’d just continue on his merry way. And she could grab her purse and relocate out of Last Chance as soon as she could find her keys.