“I will.”
Calling Randall back, Hunter told him the dates and said, “I still have to make flight reservations.”
“Text me the flight number and when you land, we’ll pick you up. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“It’ll be good to see you.”
***
When they hung up, she went upstairs to the bedroom, threw the suitcases on the bed and packed. She rolled the single big suitcase downstairs, left it by the back door, and went online to book her flight. It was going to be a wonderful time, and Hunter felt more relaxed just thinking about it. Things would be so peaceful in Florida.
~~***~~
Thanks for reading The Empty Land, the third story in the Hunter Kincaid Mystery series. I hope you enjoyed it.
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***
Included 0n the following pages is an excerpt from TON TON, the 4th Hunter Kincaid novel, coming soon.
TON TON (Excerpt)
Chapter 1
The rusty freighter was twenty-four hours out of Port-de-Paix when the smugglers threw the first Haitian to the sharks.
Wails and desperate shouts came from the open cargo hold as the Haitians yelled up at the square of sunlight and tried to climb
out of the steaming, fetid reek of the ship’s interior.
Filthy bilge water was calf-deep, and with every movement of the ship it sloshed around their legs, carrying the urine and feces of three-hundred-twenty-four men, women, and children crammed into an area that, at normal capacity, might fit seventy-five. Heat, humidity, and the smell made the hold like a steam room drenched in sewage and diesel. When a crewman closed the hatch lid, people screamed as darkness added to their sense of suffocation.
During the next hours, several children and old ones slipped into unconsciousness. Those related or, simply near them helped to keep heads from sinking below the water’s surface.
A dozen people fought to push open the hold. Two large men finally succeeded and shoved the lid over the side, then scrambling onto the deck only to be knocked down by smugglers wielding wooden clubs. Others crawled out and the crewmen attacked immediately. Women who escaped the hold dropped to their knees, huddled together, and were not beaten.
The pilothouse door opened and a loud voice barked across the deck, “Enough!” Captain Jean Claude Villard was short, stocky, and very dark, even for a black man. His eyes were terrifying. The black irises were larger than normal by half, and he had no whites, only a dark, muddy brown color on the rest of the eyeball.
He turned his attention to the battered Haitians on the deck and told his men, “Leave the women to watch. Toss the other trash.” The crewmen drug two struggling males to the rear of the ship and tossed them over the gunwale, into the froth above the propellers.
One made it up to the surface, one did not, and the frothy bubbles turned pink. Another woman crawled from the hold, but a crewman grabbed a fistful of hair and drug her, kicking and crying, to the back, and flipped her over the railing like a sack of garbage. She screamed until she hit the water and went under, then bobbed to the surface like a cork.
There were not enough crewmen to work the ship and guard the hold, so others escaped the bowels of the ship as the vessel continued to sail. Each one was thrown overboard. In the next eleven hours the crewmen threw forty-six people into the sea. Twelve of them hit the propellers. By sundown the next day, they averaged three an hour, and by then the fins never left the wake of the ship...
***
Hunter Kincaid adjusted her bikini bottom and then jumped to a standing position in the Glastron boat, whooping, “I’ve got another one!” Her rod bent into a hard U as the line zipped off the Penn reel, and she arched her back, fighting to keep the tip high.
“How does she do that?” Randall Ishtee asked. “That’s the fourth one.”