Strangers in the Night by Linda Howard, Lisa Litwack, Kazutomo Kawai, Photonica Page B

uneasy.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œOh, she keeps to herself, hardly ever comes to town. And old man Jones was strange, didn’t let anyone come around. Even the mail is delivered by boat, because there’s no road going out to the Jones place. The only way to get there is to hike in, or by the river.” Background established, shesettled into her explanation. “Now, if Thaniel was going fishing, the best fishing is downriver, not up. There’s no reason he’d be launching a boat from the Old Boggy ramp unless he was going upriver, and there’s nothing up there but the Jones place. He wouldn’t have the nerve unless he’d been drinking, because he’s so afraid of Delilah, so I think you need to go out there and make sure he’s not up to no good.”
    Jackson wondered how many sheriffs were bossed around by their dispatchers. He wondered just what the hell he was supposed to do, since Jo had just told him the only way to get to the Jones place was by boat. And he wondered, not for the first time, whether or not he was going to survive this damn blue moon.
    Well, until it killed him, he had a job to do. He assessed the situation and began solving the most immediate problems. “Call Frank at the Rescue Squad and tell him to meet me at the launch ramp on Old Boggy—”
    â€œYou don’t want one of the Rescue Squad boats,” Jo interrupted. “They’re too slow, and the guys are all helping with the cleanup at the tractor-trailer wreck out on the big highway, anyway. Icalled Charlotte Watkins. Her husband’s a bass fisherman—you know Jerry Watkins, don’t you?”
    â€œI’ve met both of them,” Jackson said.
    â€œHe’s got one of those real fast boats. He’s gone to Chattanooga on business, but Charlotte was going to hook up the boat and take it to the ramp. She should be there by the time you get there.”
    â€œOkay,” he said, “I’m on my way.” He pinched the top of his nose, between his eyebrows, feeling a headache beginning to form. He wished he could ignore Jo’s intuition, but it was too accurate for him to doubt her. “Send some backup as soon as someone comes available. And how in hell do I find the Jones place?”
    â€œJust go upriver, you can’t miss it. It’s about five miles up. The house is hard to see, it kind of blends in, but it’s dead ahead and you’ll think you’re going to run right into it, but then the river curves real sharp to the right and gets too shallow to go much farther. Oh, and be careful of the snags. Stay in the middle of the river.” She paused. “You
do
know how to drive a boat, don’t you?”
    â€œI’ll figure it out,” he said, and flipped the phone cover down to end the call. Let her stew for a while,wondering if she had made a bad mistake sending the sheriff out alone into a possibly dangerous situation, on a river he didn’t know and in a piece of powerful equipment he didn’t know how to operate. He’d driven a boat for the first time at the age of eleven, but Jo didn’t know that, and it would do her good to realize she wasn’t omnipotent.
    He didn’t use his lights or siren, but he did jam his boot down on the accelerator and keep it there. By his estimation he was at least fifteen minutes from Old Boggy Road, and he had no idea how far down the road the launch ramp was. In a powerful boat he could easily go sixty miles an hour, putting him at the Jones place in five minutes or less, once he was on the water. That meant it would take him at least twenty minutes to get there, probably longer. If Thaniel Vargas was up to no good, Jackson was afraid he would have plenty of time to accomplish it.
    He felt a surge of adrenaline, the surge every law enforcement officer felt when going into a potentially dangerous situation. He hoped he wouldn’t find anything out of the