“I hope you’re right, honey,” he said gently.

She hated the compassion in his voice. She glanced over her shoulder at his set face. “Charisse is incapable of drug runnin’.”

Drake slipped his arm around her waist. “And her brother?”

Armande. He was a spoiled sulky boy who had grown into a spoiled sulky man. The only one he seemed to love was his sister. He could look past himself long enough to see her and for a few minutes get out of his very self-centered world. Saria honestly doubted if he was intelligent enough to pull off such an operation. Charisse had the brains, but she was too childlike in a lot of ways. Armande . . . She sighed. Armande was a selfish brat, but everyone liked him. He had charm when he wanted.

“How do you plan on findin’ out?”

“We’re going to follow them through the swamp to see where our drug smugglers go. Whoever is supplying is supplying to a local,” Elijah said.

“The swamp?” Saria echoed faintly. “Are you crazy? The swamp isn’t like your rain forest. Scent isn’t goin’ to do you much good if you sink into a marsh. Snakes, alligators, you name it, the hazards are everywhere.” She brought the boat around to the edge of the reeds. “Even gettin’ onto land at night is extremely dangerous.”

“That’s why we have a secret weapon,” Drake said.

She jumped onto the land, splashing a little in the reeds to tie up her boat. “What’s that?” She poured sarcasm into her voice.

“You. You’re going to guide us.”

“Now I know you’re crazy.”

“They’ll hear a boat, but you know how to move from one strip of land to the next and you probably know shortcuts.”

“You want to run through the swamps at night?” Saria looked around for a place to sit down. She was feeling a little faint. They had no idea what it was like to travel in the swamp. “The land is a bog. There are pockets of quicksand. There’s actually water under us with a thin layer of dirt and growth. You just don’ understand.” In agitation she ran her fingers through her hair, making it spiky and disheveled, but she didn’t care. She felt like yanking it out by the roots. They were all crazy.

“We’re well aware of that.”

“You can step through in places and just sink down. And have you ever heard of water moccasins? Because we have those too.”

“You hunt and trap and fish all through here. And you take photographs. You’ve been running wild in the swamp since you were a little girl, Saria,” Drake pointed out. “You can do this and you know it.”

“I can do it, but not guidin’ all of you. Drake, you can’t ask me to be responsible for six people. There are at least three places we’ll have to wade in reed-choked water where alligators are huntin’.”

“We have guns,” Joshua pointed out.

“Do you know where on an alligator you have to actually shoot to kill him? Do you have any idea how small the actual target on a gator is? It’s about the size of a quarter and you’d better not miss. All of you may be a big deal out in your own environments, but you’re amateurs here. Just the fact that you came up with this hare-brained scheme without first askin’ someone who knows the swamp shows you’re amateurs.”

All six men remained silent, watching her with steady, unblinking eyes. Cat’s eyes. Hunter’s eyes. They were unimpressed with her arguments. She sighed, giving up. She just shook her head, caught the rifle Drake threw to her and turned her back on them. Idiots. Even the youngest child in the swamp knew more than they did.

Shaking off her thoughts, she concentrated on listening. Insects hummed. Bullfrogs called back and forth. The rain kept falling steadily. She hunched her shoulders and blocked out everything but the rustles in the thick foliage. She knew exactly where to step, but she often crossed paths alligators used to slide into the water.

“Where to?”

“We need a clear view of Fenton’s Marsh and the best path to follow a boat heading toward the Mercier land,” Drake said. “The leaves are off the poppies and they’ll have harvested the opium. They’ll be destroying the evidence now.”

She wasn’t going to argue with him. But if by some miracle he was right, what did that mean? Because if dogs couldn’t sniff out the drugs, that would mean the killer would have access to whatever kept him from having a scent. It was virtually impossible for Charisse to be a killer. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She was clingy, and she drove everyone a little crazy with her eccentricities, but noone would ever say she wasn’t one of the most compassionate people around.

She pushed all thoughts of Charisse out of her head. She had to just stay focused on the safety of the men she was guiding. She should have told Drake to shove it. In the swamp, she was the leader—not him. She bit her lip and led the way. They were eerily silent, but she refused to glance over her shoulder to make sure they were keeping up. She set a brutal pace, skirting around poisonous brush, making certain to place each foot carefully on ground she knew was sound. As it was, the rain had soaked in, making the surface far spongier than normal.

Drake touched her shoulder and she stopped moving automatically. He moved in front of her, and held up his hand, his fingers spread wide. His men appeared to melt into the darkness. One moment she could see them and then they seemed to disappear. There was no sound, no rustling of leaves, no snapping of twigs, they simply were gone.