Sudden Second Chance (19 page)

Maybe he’d Google owls later and figure out what kind this one was. But he’d have to wait until tomorrow morning’s planned trip into Naples. He certainly couldn’t search the internet here. Mystic Glades was notorious for interfering with the signals of electronic equipment, and he’d long ago given up trying to surf the net on his laptop. Even the GPS in his pickup truck rarely worked out here. Which was another reason that prospective deputies weren’t keen on moving to the Glades.

Living life without internet was inconceivable to many, downright prehistoric to others. He was still in withdrawal himself. Snapping a picture of some crazy thing he’d come across in the swamp and texting it to his buddies back home or his family was so second nature that he still found himself pulling out his phone several times a week to do just that.

Until he remembered he was living in the land that time forgot.

He started down the path again, but he kept a close eye on his surroundings. While residents of this backwater town, including the children, understood the dangers and took them in stride, this was all new to him. He was still learning how to acclimate himself to the hostile environment so he didn’t become a gator snack or experience the painful, possibly poisonous bite of a snake. Cottonmouths and rattlers weren’t uncommon out here.

But it wasn’t reptiles or the slithering inhabitants of the Everglades that had him studying everything with a keener eye than usual.

Buddy’s outlandish stories about monsters and people disappearing in the swamp had obviously gotten to him just as it had the children. Because even though he knew that mournful, terrified-sounding screech had to have come from the owl, he couldn’t help a niggling doubt that kept running through his mind.

What if I’m wrong?

Copyright © 2016 by Lena Diaz

ISBN-13: 9781488005794

Sudden Second Chance

Copyright © 2016 by Carol Ericson

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