For CameronRex and Chairman Liao.

      Always an inspiration!

      CONTENTS

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 12

      CHAPTER 13

      CHAPTER 14

      CHAPTER 15

      CHAPTER 16

      CHAPTER 17

      CHAPTER 18

      CHAPTER 19

      CHAPTER 20

      CHAPTER 21

      CHAPTER 22

      CHAPTER 23

      CHAPTER 24

      CHAPTER 25

      CHAPTER 26

      CHAPTER 27

      CHAPTER 28

      CHAPTER 29

      CHAPTER 30

      CHAPTER 31

      CHAPTER 32

      CHAPTER 33

      CHAPTER 34

      CHAPTER 35

      CHAPTER 36

      CHAPTER 37

      CHAPTER 38

      CHAPTER 39

      CHAPTER 40

      CHAPTER 41

      CHAPTER 42

      EPILOGUE

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Love and thanks to Jill Marie Landis,

       friend and fabulous writer.

      Your encouragement, input and partially

       successful attempts to teach me how to “be” as well as “do” helped me reach my goals for A COLD DAY IN HELL!

      1

      Pointe Judah, Louisiana

       Late November

      They never should have been there.

      “Stop walking. Now. Stand still, dammit!” Aaron Moggeridge shouted at the retreating back of Sonny DeAngelo.

      “Sonny,” Aaron yelled. “I’m out of rope with my mom. If she finds out about this, I’m toast. She’ll kick me out of the house.”

      “Yeah, yeah,” Sonny said. “I got a lot more worries with my uncle. How would you like to have Angel trying to straighten you out? And Eileen’s too soft to quit on you. Shit, come on, will ya?”

      Aaron pulled a foot out of the sucky mud and stomped it down on a white cypress stump. “We’re lost,” he pointed out. At least Sonny had quit walking away. “Do you know which way to the bayou?”

      Bayou Nezpique had been behind them when Sonny had insisted on striking out into swampy ground, but who knew where it was now? “You don’t have a clue, do you? I told you fooling around in swamps was a bad idea. Why did you really want to get into this stuff? And don’t give me that ecosystem crap again.”

      Sonny turned around and retraced his steps, smacking his sodden sneakers through a thin layer of brown water covered with frothing scum into the bottom sludge. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

      “You’re like a stupid kid,” Aaron said. “Jumpin’ in puddles. I’m calling for help. It’s getting dark, Sonny. You want to be out here in the dark? It’ll get colder and it could rain buckets. Where’d you think all this water came from? It’s almost December and we’re getting a helluva lot of rain.” He reached for his cell phone and started punching in numbers. He was scared. Sonny was a city kid, a New Yorker; he didn’t know shit about a Louisiana swamp.

      “C’mon,” Sonny said. He poked at Aaron’s cell, messing up the number. “If we call home like a couple of scared girls, we’re done for.”

      “Look around,” Aaron said, raising his arms. “We don’t know where we are. It’s gonna get dark. This isn’t Brooklyn, it’s a swamp. Y’know what kind of stuff hangs out in swamps?”

      “Pretty much what hangs out in parts of Brooklyn.”

      Sonny kept his head shaved and oiled but the shadow of his thick black hair always showed. It came to a point in the middle, in front. His eyes pissed Aaron off. They looked innocent. Big, brown and soft, and they lied. Sonny DeAngelo was the toughest kid he had ever met. Sonny was seventeen and Aaron would be before long, but most of the time Aaron felt like Sonny was years older.

      “Okay,” Sonny said, his voice dropping. “I’m an ass, just like you say. But we’re in it now and we gotta get out, so quit panicking and start working with me.”

      “Shit!”

      “Shit, what now?”

      “I know this place. I’ve lived here all my life and I know where I don’t go. This is a big don’t go. But I let you talk me into it. You don’t get to tell me to work with you, because you don’t know jack shit. You work with me, ballhead.”

      Sonny grinned. “Sure thing.” He posed like a scarecrow with its head on one side, and his thin black sweater hung from his arms and body. His flat belly showed above the black pants that hung on his hip bones. He pointed one long forefinger. “I do know where we are. I didn’t tell you in case you chickened out, but there’s a guy I want to get a look at.”

      What Sonny had just said didn’t compute for Aaron. He shook his head.

      “I’m not making this up,” Sonny said. “We got to that busted dock and I knew we had to come this—”

      “What guy?” Aaron asked. “What guy, Sonny? You didn’t say anything about looking for a guy.”

      “He lives around here. The bartender at Buzzard’s Wet Bar told me about him.”

      “Buzz’s? You were at Buzz’s?”

      Sonny shrugged. “I just wanted to see what it was like in there.”

      “If someone squeals on you, Angel’s going to take you apart. It’s gonna be ugly.” Aaron made a circle, searching for something familiar, anything that would steer them out of there.

      “We gotta concentrate,” Sonny said. “That broken dock where I stopped? Back there on the bayou? That was the marker for us to head into the trees. His place is around here and we’re going to stumble right over it any second now.”

      “Liar,” Aaron said. “Ecosystems.”

      “They said I wouldn’t do it,” Sonny said. “I’m gonna show them. Wait till I prove it to them tomorrow. There’s no such thing as voodoo. Or a root doctor.”

      Aaron moaned. “A root doctor? You’re off your head. If one of those guys was around here—and he isn’t—I sure as hell wouldn’t be stopping by for a visit. I’m calling Matt Boudreaux.”

      “The police