Fifteen minutes later, Jenner still hadn’t found her. He was getting desperate. Where was she? The effort of forcing his way deeper into the swamp had been exhausting; sweat pouring down his face, his mouth parched and bitter, sunk to his chest in muddy water, nothing to drink.

He pressed forward. He felt the full burden of his fatigue now; when he shouted for Deb, his voice cracked and broke from the strain.

Light swung through the undergrowth, the brilliant white beam of a spotlight, diffracting through the maze of pale trunks and branches, the mangroves a shifting kaleidoscope of silver roots and black shadows. Now Jenner heard the low throb of the airboat as it came nearer.

He pulled up against the edge of the stream, in among the roots. The sound was louder now, the light brighter. The spotlight operator was moving it slowly, sending the beam through the mesh of mangroves, trying to pick him out.

Jenner lay against the roots, gasping, smelling the black fetid swamp mud, feeling moisture—sweat, water, he couldn’t tell—trickling down his face.

It hadn’t taken them long to turn around and come back to look for Deb and Jenner. He was exhausted now, his muscles burning, his joints on fire, his sodden clothes weighing a ton. He didn’t know how much farther he could go.

The light moved past him, and as the airboat moved forward, he saw his channel through the mangrove forest taper and die two hundred yards upstream, the dense curtain of trunks and leaves sealing off his escape.

Deb must have taken the tributary on the far side of the river.

To reach her, Jenner would have to make his way back toward the dock, somehow get past the airboat, swim across the river, and head back up the tributary on the other side.

Impossible.