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Granted, his mother had moved them to Miel his senior year of high school, so it wasn’t as though he’d been around unnoticed for years, but it had often felt that way.
    After his father’s death, his mother had hopped from town to town as often as she’d changed men. The last one, a trucker with a bad temper and a heavy drinking problem—both of which he’d taken out on Tanner—had brought them to Miel.
    And that’s where his mother died—holding a bottle of booze and the trucker long gone.
    Disgusted that he’d lapsed back into childhood angst and stupidity, he pulled off his boots and lay back across the four-poster bed. He wanted to get an early start tracking in the morning, and it was already close to midnight. If he had any sense left at all, he’d call it a night and turn in.
    He stood back up to shed his jeans and shirt, and that’s when he heard a noise outside.
    Immediately, he flicked off the lamp next to the bed and slipped up next to the window again. The noise had come from outside, but he couldn’t tell which direction. The patio lights extended only so far into the massive backyard of the plantation, so his field of view was limited. He was just about to decide it was the normal night sounds of swamp creatures when he saw something moving right where the patio lights faded away.
    Whatever it was, it was big. And he knew of nothing that big that belonged directly behind the house at this time of night.
    He grabbed his pistol from the nightstand and rushed into the hallway to bang on Josie’s door. She opened it a couple of seconds later, with a towel wrapped around her and water dripping from her head.
    “What in the world—”
    “There’s something in the backyard, just outside the light. I’m going to sneak out the front door and around the house. I need you to lock the door behind me. Do you have a gun?”
    Her eyes widened. “Yes, of course.”
    “Get it and hurry up,” he said before running down the stairs to the front door.
    He heard Josie rushing down the stairs behind him as he slipped out the front door. The hedges across the front lawn provided some cover for him until he was clear of the front porch lights. At the end of the hedges, he slipped quietly across the yard to the barn, which stretched the length of the side of the house, and into the backyard.
    It was pitch-black on the backside of the barn. A tiny glow from the moon broke through the dark clouds, but it made only shadows visible and even then, at a distance of ten feet or less, he’d be right on top of whatever was out there before he even knew what it was. Not the best of situations, but it was the one he had.
    He inched down the side of the barn, pistol held up near his shoulder, ready to fire, and then drew up short at the sound of dead grass crunching around the side of the barn. Clenching his pistol with both hands, he eased up to the edge of the barn and then spun around the side, gun leveled.

Chapter Four
    Josie locked the door behind Tanner and ran upstairs. She grabbed her pistol from the nightstand and checked to make sure it was loaded and ready to fire, then grabbed sweat pants and a shirt and threw them on. She snagged her tennis shoes on the way out of her bedroom, not even bothering with socks.
    Socks weren’t necessary for shooting a vandal or a swamp monster.
    She pulled on her shoes with one hand while unlocking the door with the other. Then, gripping her pistol, she eased out the door and silently drew it closed behind her. Following the same path Tanner had taken earlier, she edged along the hedges and around the side of the barn. Pausing for a moment, she listened to see if she could pinpoint Tanner’s position, but no sound reached her.
    She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then crept down the side of the barn. At the end of the barn she paused again and stiffened as she heard the crackle of dead grass around the corner. Her heart pounded in her chest and despite the chilly