In Too Deep. Sharon Dunn

it that he couldn’t hurt the teenagers she cared so much about.

      Joseph disappeared around a bend. She stepped out and ran after him, not to confront him but to see what he was up to. Maybe he would lead her to Trevor. She knew she might be risking her own safety, but right now she could think only of Trevor and the other kids. If she witnessed anything shady with Joseph, she would leave and tell the police.

      Trevor had sounded so lost and filled with shame on the phone. At least the boy had taken her up on the offer she gave all the kids and called her before he did something destructive. She hoped she was right about him.

      Sierra’s tennis shoes padded over the rocks. She slowed as she rounded the curve. Up ahead was a structure everyone referred to as Old Boat, a thirty-five-foot recreational trawler that had been scuttled here years before. Kids came to this area to build bonfires and party.

      She didn’t see Joseph or Trevor anywhere.

      Half in the water and half on shore, the boat listed to one side, creaking as the waves bombarded it.

      Something rustled in the brush farther inland. She saw a flash of red. Trevor always wore a red coat. She darted toward where she’d seen movement. She could hear the noise of someone racing through the brush, back toward the road. Maybe Trevor had panicked standing in the dark waiting for her to pick him up. At least he was headed in the right direction.

      Her feet smacked the softer ground. She stepped into a clearing, about to call out Trevor’s name when she spotted a man, neither Joseph nor Trevor, kneeling over an open satchel. He held something in his hand.

      He looked like a businessman about to board a plane; he was definitely not dressed for the outdoors. Moonlight washed through the trees. He turned to look at her. She saw his face as he grimaced at her.

      Because the moment had become almost surreal, it took her a second to register that what he held in his hands was a brick of some kind of drug—cocaine, heroin? Moonlight reflected off the metal on the large face of the watch he wore. She cast her gaze downward and then took a step back. The entire satchel was filled with drugs.

      “Well, this is bad timing!” Rage tainted his words.

      Time seemed to slow down as the man stood up, pulled out a gun and aimed it at her. On instinct, she turned and sprinted back toward the road. A shot whizzed by her so close it hurt her eardrum. Her heart pounded out an intense beat as adrenaline surged through her, feeding her instinct to stay alive.

      Footsteps echoed behind her and then off to the side. Another shot zinged through the air. The man had positioned himself between her and the road. She sprinted deeper into the brush. She’d have to run parallel to the road until she could put some distance between herself and the shooter in order to get back to her car and escape.

      His footsteps never let up. She could hear him moving through the brush. She ran, willing her legs to pump harder, go faster.

      Then a shot came at her from behind, from a different direction. She caught a glimpse of a second man, his baseball hat just visible above the brush. A new wave of fear swept over her. Two men were shooting at her. She ran haphazardly, trying to stay close to the road but knowing that escape route was no good. She couldn’t shake the first shooter.

      She pivoted and headed back toward the shore. Another shot sounded through the night.

      A body crashed into her from the side, taking her to the ground. She lay on her stomach with the man on top of her.

      Terror gripped her as she tried to wiggle free of the man.

      “Could you be any noisier?” The man’s voice came out in a harsh whisper. “You sound like an elephant at a dance party.”

      She could hear the other two men moving through the brush. One shouted a command at the other.

      “Get off of me.”

      “I will. But you need to be quiet.” He took his knee off her.

      She flipped over. Joseph Anderson stared back at her and put his finger to his lips. Fear struck a new chord inside her. What was going on here?

      Joseph leaned close and whispered in her ear. “Come with me. I’ll get you out of here.”

      Her instinct was to pull away and to run. He had a gun. Was he involved with those other men? Did he intend to hurt her? Or was he a rival drug dealer and she’d been caught in some sort of turf war?

      She shook her head.

      The two shooters closed in on them.

      Sierra rose to her feet prepared to run away from Joseph. She’d take her chances on her own. She could follow the shoreline back into town or try to get to her car. She turned and sprinted.

      Joseph was right on her heels.

      He grabbed her from behind, spun her around and gripped her wrist so tightly she couldn’t get away. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

      Her heart pounded as she tried in vain to pull away. “What are you doing out here?”

      “I might ask you the same thing,” he said.

      He pulled her through the remainder of the brush down to the shore, where a motorboat waited in a cove. He lifted her up and put her in the boat. “You’ll thank me later.”

      She doubted that. She felt anger toward anyone who pushed drugs on kids. Drugs ruined lives. Was that what Joseph was up to?

      She moved to get out of the boat just as Joseph pulled the starter rope and the engine sputtered to life. The two shooters emerged through the brush. One, the man she’d seen with the drugs, looked right at her and then slipped back into the trees. The other man, the one wearing the baseball hat, lifted his gun. A red dot appeared on Sierra’s chest. She ducked down in the boat.

      Sierra had no choice. If she ran back on shore, she’d be shot for sure. She had to stay in Joseph’s boat.

      But just what did Joseph have in mind? Why had he kept her alive?

      Undercover DEA agent William Joseph Anderson glanced over his shoulder as a gunshot shattered the silence on the water.

      The woman he’d pulled out of the forest lay flat in the boat. What had she been doing out there, anyway? Certainly not going for a stroll on the beach. Her interference messed up his investigation. Were the two thugs after her because she’d betrayed them?

      Maybe she was trying to horn in on the drug activity.

      Whether she was innocent or guilty, it was clear she was under threat. Now that he’d saved her life, she might have valuable information she’d share out of gratitude and a desire to destroy the men who were after her. As long as he could get it without giving up who he really was. At all costs, he had to maintain his cover.

      Earlier in the day, Joseph had heard talk in the shop that a big drug distribution was about to go down at this spot. Other agents had traced a shipment out of Mexico headed to the northwest. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. He’d come out to this part of the shore not to interfere with the transaction, but to see if he could spot who the players were. Investigations like this took a long time. A lot of information had to be gathered, or they ran the risk of the big players slipping from their clutches.

      It was nothing to arrest the low-level dealers; most were kids just trying to support their own habit. DEA was after the big fish, whoever was behind this point of distribution. At best, they had blurry photos of him. Or pictures of the back of his head. His only identifying characteristics were that he dressed well and he often wore a large-faced gold watch.

      He revved the boat engine. When he glanced over his shoulder, the men on shore were still taking aim at them. He’d come in the boat because he could anchor it in a cove unnoticed and sneak up to the site where the transaction was supposed to happen. A car parked on an underutilized road would have called attention to itself.

      The fog enveloped them. To lessen the risk of hitting something, he clicked the boat down