Arresting Developments Read Free Page B

fascinating, and an amusing contrast to his dark blue dress pants and expensive-looking but thoroughly ruined dress shoes. Since his footprints were the only ones she’d found after she’d reached the plane crash site, he must be the pilot. And the lack of bodies in and around the plane reassured her that no one else had been onboard. No one had died.
    But based on how he was limping, she wasn’t sure that would hold true for long.
    His right leg seemed to be the one that he was favoring. From the rips in his pants, she assumed he’d been hurt during the crash and wasn’t just suffering from some kind of disability. Unfortunately, the smears of mud on his back and chest meant that he may have washed himself in one of the brackish pools of water near the plane. If he’d done the same to his injuries, he might have introduced some nasty bacteria into his system. People who got lost in the Glades tended to succumb to exposure or infection just as often as other causes. If he didn’t get medical attention soon, he might become one of those statistics.
    So far he was heading in the right direction, toward Mystic Glades. As long as he continued that way, he’d reach town before nightfall. Her former townspeople might not exactly welcome strangers, but they would never turn away someone in need. Whoever was running The Moon these days would have some kind of medicine or potion to treat him. Or maybe Freddie would drive him to the nearest hospital in her ancient Cadillac, assuming the thing was still running. Either way, the pilot would get the help he needed. There was no reason for Amber to let him see her. All she had to do was keep following him, and somehow steer him if he went off course.
    * * *
    S OMEONE WAS FOLLOWING HIM .
    Normally, Dex would have called out to whoever was hiding in the bushes, padding after him in the mud, keeping a good thirty or forty feet back, from what he could figure. But that was before he’d realized someone was trying to kill him. Knowing that had changed his perspective a hundred-eighty degrees.
    He couldn’t imagine his nemesis—whoever that might be—calculating the exact location where he might be when the wires in his Cessna burned through. There were too many variables for that. But it hadn’t exactly been a secret at the office that he was flying to Naples, and that he was going to then drive up to Mystic Glades. Maybe whoever wanted him six feet under had planted someone near Mystic Glades to finish him off if their plan failed and he didn’t crash. Or, in this case, if he did crash and the impact didn’t kill him.
    A faint crackling noise sounded behind him, like a twig breaking in half. He pretended not to notice and kept going. He needed to wait until he was near a larger clump of trees instead of just the small groupings he was passing now as he slogged through the marshy grasses. Then he’d catch his pursuer.
    Just thinking about someone hiding out here like a coward to attack him was pissing him off. That and this awful heat. He wiped sweat from his brow, surprised to find his hand wet enough to shake off droplets. When had it gotten this hot? Yeah, it was probably around noon, but still, the cooling marsh breezes had been comfortable an hour ago when he’d started on this trek. Now it was as if someone had turned the sun up twenty degrees and was trying to cook him.
    His shirt. That had to be it. Without his shirt to protect him from the sun, he was baking out here. Maybe he should sit in the shade for a few minutes and cool off. No, not with someone following him. He had to take care of that problem first. Then he’d sit and cool off.
    A group of trees about thirty feet ahead looked like the perfect place to catch his follower unaware. The trees suddenly wavered and shifted. What the...? He stopped, wiped more sweat from his brow and shook his head. He blinked a few times until the trees stopped dancing around. The heat. It had to be the heat. He idly leaned down