The River’s Secret

The River’s Secret A Sophie Quinn FBI Mystery Thriller Book 1 Georgia Wagner Text Copyright © 2023 Georgia Wagner Publisher: Greenfield Press Ltd The right of Georgia Wagner to be identified as author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. The book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. ‘The River’s Secret’ is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, and events or locations is entirely coincidental. Table of Contents Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Epilogue Also by Georgia Wagner Also by Georgia Wagner Want to know more? About the Author Prologue She was about to die, and yet Sophie wondered if this was what it felt like to be born. Cold. Wet. Dark. Wanting nothing more than to scream at the injustice of it all. She churned the cold, murky bayou’s nighttime waters as she struggled to keep her mouth above the waterline. Gasping for air, she fought the drag of the cold chain locked around her left ankle, gouging into her ankle. She’d been warm less than five minutes ago, before her murderer had stolen her jacket and shoved her into the Louisiana marsh’s nearly stagnant river. Now the moonlit chill of the dark water and the breathless exertion of her efforts not to drown robbed her of even the chance to scream. Flailing about, her palm slapped metal and with a sudden pull, Sophie grabbed the edge of the lonely airboat the killer had used to bring her out here and took a deep breath as she blinked the water from her eyes. Her auburn hair was plastered along with her blouse to her back. Her hair tie had come out in the struggle, and locks of rich brown clung between her shoulder blades and across her arms. The dim red of a cigar flared over her. A shadowed figure standing in the airboat shook his head, blowing out a puff of smoke as he pulled it from his lips. “Key?” the man asked. His voice held the graveled decay of a thousand previous cigars and the callous indifference of nearly a dozen other murders. “Find the key and one goes free.” The same words he’d said before shoving them in the water. “I’m a fair man. One key. One free. And one for me.” “Please,” Sophie answered, gasping, splashing about, water droplets dripping from her lips as the liquid churned under her chin. “My name is Sophie Quinn!” her voice rose in volume as her body buoyed. She struggled not to swallow the turgid liquid. There was a lot in a name. Empathy, for one. But this man didn't seem particularly empathic. She added, with another gasp, still kicking, still struggling, “My sister is Molly! Please! You don’t have to do this.” She tried to keep her voice steady, to not let in the fear or the bayou’s nighttime chill, but the Cajun in her voice was creeping back. Despite years of trying to suppress it, for the stage… for a television audience, it came back in the bayou. “Please,” she repeated, lowering her voice, trying to draw in the man’s attention by the drop in volume. Some killers could only do what they did because they didn’t see the people they attacked as real, they didn’t see them as people with names and hopes and lives of their own. Confronting him on this inconvenient fact could be the leverage she needed. She didn’t expect him to let her or her sister go, but if he hesitated—if he made a mistake—she and Molly might be able to get away. The figure replaced his cigar, folding his arms and letting the shotgun in his off-hand perch in the crook of his elbow. He didn’t reply. About to speak again, Sophie felt a jerk on her leg. The manacle bit her ankle as the chain tried to yank her underwater, and she instinctively gripped the airboat to keep from being pulled below. Molly. Taking a deep breath, Sophie let go of the airboat. The water deafened her and set her long hair spiraling out again. With a couple quick strokes, Sophie put enough slack in the chain and no longer felt the pull, though, she heard the clinking rumble of it through the water. Blinking, Sophie tried to use the meager moonlight to see through the murk around her. Her eyes traced the links down to the floor of the river, where they passed through the ring of a heavy anchor, abruptly turned, and began to rise again. On the other end was her sister, Molly, bound to the same chain by the opposite end; without enough length for both of them to reach the surface, if one of them could breathe, the other was at the bottom. They alternated, taking turns breaching the surface for another gulp of oxygen. But with each pass, the burning in Sophie’s arms grew, her lungs became more desperate for the night air, and the chain binding the two sisters seemed to grow heavier. Sophie tried to refocus, fighting the muscles seizing in her