The second boat, smarter, slowed down, navigating the trickier channels with a smaller spotlight. They were closing on him again. Wallace knew he couldn't outrun them here.
He reached the end of the navigable channel, where the marsh turned into impassable swamp. He had seconds. He killed the engine, grabbed the Pelican case, and leaped over the side of the skiff into waist-deep, freezing mud and water.
"We have him," a voice barked, much closer now. "Fan out. Check the banks."
Chapter Two: The Weight of the Ouroboros
The beam of the tactical flashlight swept past Wallace's face one more time before moving on, illuminating a stand of cypress trees further down the bank. He let out the breath he’d been holding in a shaky gasp, a cloud of vapor in the cold night air. The man in the water, one of the two from the second pursuit boat, was moving parallel to the bank, searching.
Wallace knew the marshlands of Seabrook better than the back of his hand; he'd mapped them extensively using drone LIDAR data for a hydrology study three years ago. He knew the hidden paths and the deep channels that opened up during high tide. The tide was high now.
He risked a slow, careful look at his surroundings. He was in a small, slightly elevated patch of muddy ground, maybe six feet wide, covered in tough marsh grasses and prickly thistles. A dense wall of vegetation offered flimsy cover.
He heard the man splash again, about twenty yards away. The other pursuer was still back near the boat, likely trying to pull the skiff higher onto the bank to secure it.
Now or never.
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