Chapter One

      Dex looked out the cockpit window of his Cessna Corvalis at the vast wasteland of the Everglades racing below him at 190 knots. The monotony of sand-colored saw grass went on for miles, broken only by occasional muddy canals and vast islands of mangled cypress, their roots sticking out of the brackish water like giant knobby knees. If the Glades were anything like the marshes back home in Saint Augustine, he didn’t know how anyone could stand the rotten-egg stink of rotting vegetation enough to want to visit for very long, let alone live there.

      “I don’t get it, Jake.” He held his cell phone to his ear while he looked out the windows. “You worked your butt off to convince me to front the money to create Lassiter and Young Private Investigations. But just a few months after leaving everyone you know—including me—and setting up shop in Naples, you’re ready to close the doors. For what—this swamp full of smelly plants and more alligators per capita than people? Can’t you get Faye to move instead of you moving to Mystic Glades?”

      He maneuvered the stick and dipped the wing, veering from his flight plan for a bird’s-eye view of the town that had been at the center of their recent investigation but was now going to be his friend’s new home. Unless Dex could talk him out of it.

      “Hold it,” Jake said. “What do you mean ‘this’ swamp? Aren’t you still in north Florida?”

      “I was. But then you called last week to tell me that you and the former target of our first and only case were an item and that you were quitting. I left my billion-dollar enterprise on the brink of ruin with people I barely trust so I could talk you out of this foolishness.”

      Jake snorted. “Don’t give me that. Lassiter Enterprises runs so smoothly no one will even notice that you’re gone. More than likely, you’re using me as an excuse to hide from the latest girlfriend you dumped. Who is it this time? That intellectual property rights attorney you introduced me to last Christmas? Didn’t you date her for several months? I thought you two were getting serious. Veronica something-or-other?”

      “You wound me deeply to imply that I would use our friendship as an excuse to avoid my commitment issues.”

      “Uh-huh. What’s the name of the woman you’re running from this time?”

      “Mallory. I think she wants to kill me.”

      “They usually do. Dex? Exactly where are you?”

      He tapped the touch screen of the GPS navigation system. “Good question. My state-of-the-art airplane isn’t acting so state-of-the-art right now. It’s blinking like a caution light on steroids.” The screen went dark. “What the...?” He rapped the glass with his fist.

      “Tell me you aren’t flying over Mystic Glades,” Jake said.

      Dex looked out the side window. “As a matter of fact, I think I am. And it doesn’t