As Rausch and I approach the three-mile mark, we hear the low grumble of an alligator growling nearby. Following the sound, I swivel around to catch a flash of two shining eyes at the water’s surface just before submerging. Typically, gators offer very little in way of real danger to kayakers, so we ignore it and press on a bit further until we paddle up to an obvious fork in the river. Rausch stops his kayak and holds up a fist, bringing me to a halt as well.

“I think this is where the Givens folks lost track of their kids.” For some reason, his voice is little more than a whisper, as if voicing his guess too loudly would send the river into a frothing maelstrom. “They said it was around a fork with a sharp bend.” With his spotlight, he points to the eastern branch. I shine my own light down the narrow canal and can just make out what looks like a sharp right hand turn about a hundred yards up ahead. “Looks like a bend to me,” Rausch adds.

“Looks that way,” I agree, before the two of us turn our kayaks and follow the new path around the bend. We drift down the small branch, making occasional stops every dozen or so yards so that I can shine the spotlight along both embankments. Here and there, more shiny eyes blink back at us from the intertwined tree roots stretching their way into the cool water. Several strange cries called out into the night—the frantic shrieks of birds warning away predators from their nests.

While I visually scan the surroundings, Rausch brings a bullhorn up to his lips and shouts into it. “Jake! Ellie Givens!” His voice rumbles from the device along with an electronic warble. “Cody Caldwell! Your parents are worried for your safety! If you are able, please let us know where you are!”

He brings the megaphone down and listens while I continue my visual sweep. After a few moments, Rausch brings the bullhorn back to his lips and takes a deep breath to speak again just as something red catches my eyes from eastern bank.

“Wait a sec,” I say, paddling toward shore. When I’m close enough, I leap from my kayak in knee-deep water, wrestling with a tangle of swamp grass and cattails that have nearly overrun the shore. A moment later, the bright red hull of an overturned three-person canoe is revealed.

“Well, I’ll be,” Rausch says as he paddles toward me.

When he gets close enough, he slips from his boat and helps me turn the canoe over. Three life jackets and a backpack float underneath it, but there are no signs of the kids.

“That’s a good thing,” the FWC man says. “It’d be a lot worse if they were here.”

“True, but I’d feel a whole lot better if this thing wasn’t turned over to begin with,” I say. “And if they hadn’t left a backpack behind. Something must have happened. These canoes are hard to flip…especially considering the weight and height of the children.”

I tug the canoe up onto shore. Rausch recovers the pack and life vests and drops them inside the boat while I shine the spotlight along the river bank. As I searched for footprints and broken twigs, the FWC officer rummages through the backpack.

“Looks like it definitely belongs to the Givenses alright,” he says, holding up a dead cell phone. Moisture glistens off its fog-filled screen, and I’m pretty sure a dump truck full of rice won’t be able save it from the water damage inside.

I look back at Rausch with a grimace. The situation is getting more tenuous with each passing moment. At this time of night, finding tracks, if there are any, will be next to impossible. And that is the good news. The other possibility is far worse. There is the very real possibility they never even made it to shore at all, and were swept along the current, their bodies now somewhere slowly decomposing downstream. I’m not quite ready to voice that possibility just yet though and continue moving the spotlight from side to side, peering past the dense vegetation.

“I’m going to radio base camp,” Rausch says. He’s about to trigger his mic when Arnold lets out a startled chittering before leaping from the kayak and scurrying up my leg and onto my shoulder. “What’s with him?”

I motion for Rausch to be quiet and listen. Besides the ever-present trickle of water running over the moss-covered rocks of the creek, the forest around us is abuzz with a symphony of fauna. Crickets chirp. Mosquitoes whip past our ears, despite the stogy between my teeth blowing out smoke like a Dickensian smokestack. Frogs and toads belch out to one another with their mating calls. Somewhere in the distance, another owl cries out into the night.

“I’m not sure what I’m…”

I raise my hand and clinch it into a fist, stopping the larger man from speaking any further. Then he hears it too. The whump-whump of rotor blades just south of them. Our eyes drift upwards, scanning what they can of the night sky through the dense foliage. The sound grows louder, drawing closer until finally it seems practically on top of them.

“It’s just the sheriff chopper,” the officer says. “Probably returning to refuel.”

I shake my head. “It’s too powerful. The engine is deeper than the one we saw earlier.” Whump-whump-whump. I crouch down, motioning for my companion to do the same. “Plus, there is more than one of them.”

Rausch looks from me to the sky. He seems skeptical, but he does what he’s told, crouching beside me and raising an ear to the sky for a better listen. A few moments later, a dark blur streaks past them overhead, followed by two others, moving in the direction of base camp. Three helicopters in all and they aren’t using any running lights either. They’d been blacker than a witch’s hat as they’d flown past.

“I’ve suddenly got a very bad feeling about this,” I say, absently stroking behind Arnold’s ears.

“Those were military choppers.” Rausch continues staring off into the sky even though the helicopters are now far from sight.

“And they were black.”

“What are black military choppers doing out here?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, now isn’t it?”

Rausch lets out a breath. “Think it’s a coincidence?”

“Sure,” I say. “About as likely as me being a Chinese circus acrobat named Pedro.”

Once I’m confident the choppers aren’t turning around, I stand to my feet, pull my kayak further up on shore, and retrieve my rifle.

“Come on,” I growl. “I have a feeling we need to find those kids and fast.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 6