Page 178 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

Deputies will approach in two teams, one down the maintenance track and one by shallow-draft boat. The evidence unit remains behind until the location is secured. There will be no sirens and no lights once they leave the paved road.

Wes sets a protective vest on the table in front of me.

I look at it.

He looks back.

“I wore one at the annex.”

“You’re wearing one again.”

“My grandmother’s route probably doesn’t include gunfire.”

“Sullivan put cameras outside your house. I’m not relying on probably.”

Roman lifts the vest and opens it for me. “Arms up, love.”

“Traitor.” I obey anyway.

Roman eases the vest over my shoulders while Wes adjusts the straps. Their hands move around me with practiced cooperation, Roman keeping my hair clear while Wes checks the fit.

My body settles beneath their attention. Fear remains, but it doesn’t feel like I’m facing it alone.

Wes presses his mouth to my forehead. “You stay between us.”

“I remember.”

Roman fastens the final strap. “And if either of us tells you to move?”

“I move.”

Wes studies my face as though searching for resistance.

I touch his cheek. “I love you. I’m not going to make you fight me and whoever waits out there.”

His eyes close for one brief moment.

Roman’s hand slides around the back of my neck and draws all three of us together. “We come home as a pack,” he says.

The words follow us south.

The maintenance road barely qualifies as one. Palmettos scrape both sides of the sheriff’s SUV. Cypress roots buckle the earth beneath the tires, forcing us to slow through stretches where dark water reaches the wheel wells.

Tom’s lead vehicle stops half a mile from the location I marked. From there, we walk.

The deputies spread through the trees ahead of us. Wes keeps me behind his left shoulder while Roman stays at my back. Their scents surround me beneath the wet green smell of the swamp.

Mosquitoes whine near my ears, and mud pulls at my boots. The afternoon light fades beneath the canopy even though sunset is still hours away.

The deeper we travel, the darker the swamp becomes. There are no sounds of frogs or birds, only our footsteps and the slow movement of water between cypress knees.

Roman touches my elbow. “You feel that?”

“Yes.” An absence presses against my skin.

I wouldn’t call it magic exactly. But whatever it is, the air is thick with it.

The land has been disturbed recently. I stop near a patch of flattened maidenhair fern. “Someone brought equipment through here.”