Hearts Beneath Black Water
Beneath the moss, beneath the guns, beneath the black water…
beats the truth of their hearts.
Savannah, 1880. Joseph “Tru” McCormack never intended to return home. A year at law school in New York promised him a different life, far from the shadow of his family’s lawman legacy. But when duty calls him back to Georgia, Tru finds himself entangled once more in the past—hauling freight, repairing fences, and crossing paths with the one woman he thought he’d left behind.
Beth Roundtree has changed since their childhood quarrels. Lovely, sharp, and fiercely loyal, she carries her own burden: doubts about the wealth her father built after a long-ago robbery that nearly cost him his life. When whispers of betrayal resurface, Beth finds herself torn between loyalty to her father and the unsettling attraction rekindling between her and Tru.
But danger is closing in. Escaped convict Carl Rowe has returned to Savannah, driven by vengeance and secrets buried in black water. As Tru and Beth are hunted through swamps and shadows, their survival—and their hearts—depend on trust, courage, and a love strong enough to withstand the truth.
Where secrets drown and danger stalks, only love can keep them afloat.
Excerpt
Taken from Chapter One:
Chapter One
The train wheels groaned and clanked over the steel tracks, each jolt sending a dull ache through Carl Rowe’s ribs. He shifted his heavy frame against the rough boards, searching for comfort he would not find. Shackles cut at his ankles, the chain clinking with every movement, padlocked to the iron ring set in the floor.
It was a long road back to Savannah. Back to prison.
The worst of his wounds had closed, leaving only bruises and a soreness that flared with each bump. By some stroke of fortune, no bones had broken. He flexed his arm—thick with muscle, still strong—and took a measure of comfort in it. He would need that strength again. A man like him always did.
Inside prison, a fight was never far. They sparked from nothing—a look held too long, a shoulder brushed in passing, a drink spilled, or simply because another man wanted to test you. This last one had started over a spoon.
Carl had known it was coming. The new inmate had been watching him since the day he arrived, two weeks back. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, and quick to gather hangers-on. Carl had been inside eight years and never built much of a following, but he had learned something better: how to survive.
It happened at supper. A spoon gone missing, one left between them. Maybe it had fallen. Maybe someone had pocketed it. Didn’t matter. They both reached at once. Their eyes locked, and before either touched the handle, the table went over in a storm of fists and shouts.
Carl’s knuckles remembered the rest. Quick on his feet, he landed the first blow, ducked another, and clamped the man in a headlock. But then hands seized him—men he thought were allies—pinning his arms while others struck with fists, tin plates, and chair legs.
Carl fought like a cornered bull. He shook them off, drove his boot into the big man’s gut, and turned on his betrayers. Two punches and they were done. Then it was back to the man who started it all. Carl dragged him into another chokehold, and when the fight went out of him, Carl wasn’t finished. He slammed the man’s head into the table until his face was pulp.
The hall erupted again. Fists and boots rained down, chairs splintered across his back. Carl only felt the rage, striking and striking until the floor was littered with the beaten. When the guards stormed in, most scattered. Carl did not. He still had his enemy in his grasp, pounding him until the billy clubs rained down.
It took half a dozen blows before he fell, and even then, the darkness came slow.
The prison nurse had taken one look and shaken her head. Milledgeville, she said. The state hospital. Maximum security. Carl had known it before. Five long years he’d spent there before Savannah’s Brown Farm claimed him. This time, he barely remembered the ride—his eyes swollen shut, his body half-dead, drifting in and out while the train screamed north. It was a miracle he survived.
Two months had passed. The swelling was gone, the ribs mostly healed, and now he was being carried back to Savannah in chains.
For all its iron bars and the stink of disinfectant, Carl would miss Milledgeville. The nurses had treated him more kindly than anyone had in years. Even chained to a bed and left to a bedpan, he’d felt almost human. One nurse in particular had lingered by his side on the night shift. When the guard nodded off, she would talk with him, even hold his hand. Carl liked her, though he never said it.
The food had been better, too. Even the guards seemed more human there.
The train jolted again, iron biting at his ankles. Carl shifted, the Georgia pines sliding past in a blur of green and shadow. Savannah waited at the end of this road, with its red-brick walls and hard-eyed men.
And with them, his enemies.
The two guards assigned to Carl spoke in low voices as the train carried them south, their talk mostly of hunting, fishing, and women. One was thin and weathered with age; the other, in his early twenties, wore a handlebar mustache and carried himself with a cocky air. Carl had noticed it earlier, when the younger man escorted him to the car. The guard pushed out his chest and lifted his chin, trying to look sure of himself. Carl had seen that kind of display before. It usually meant the man was nervous. The thought made him smile.
Other than the occasional glance from the younger guard, they paid him little attention. Their voices barely rose above the steady clatter of the train, and Carl was content with the silence. He did not mind having no one to talk to; he had already grown used to long stretches alone after time spent in solitary for fighting.
Carl had never avoided trouble. More often than not, he brought it on himself. Like many men in his position, he blamed others for his temper and the way his life had turned out. His childhood gave him reason enough. His father had been arrested before Carl was old enough to remember him. His mother made do waiting tables and taking up with any man who had a little money to spare. Most left her battered and owing more than before.
When Carl was ten, he came home from school to find her lying dead on the floor. The man she had been with for only a week had decided to leave, taking with him her money, her wedding ring, and her life.
After that, Carl went from one home to another, never staying long. His temper was too much for those who tried to help. An orphanage took him in once, but he ran when the other children mocked him for being big and slow. He had never tolerated being laughed at.
By thirteen, he was already spending time in jail. His first real sentence came when he tried to steal a bottle of wine from a mercantile. The shopkeeper blocked the door, and Carl struck him with a broom until the man was left in bed for days. Carl told himself it would not have happened if the man had not stood in his way. But when the fellow cursed him as “stupid,” Carl kept beating him until the police pulled him off. That cost him two years behind bars.
Afterward, he tried to straighten out more than once, but he could not keep steady work. He never took well to orders or to working with others. It was because he had trusted a partner that he now found himself on a train, headed back to a prison camp for robbery.
They had left the hospital early that morning in a prison wagon, then transferred Carl onto the train like livestock. The sun was already high and scorching, and though the railcar had plenty of windows, the air that moved through them never seemed to reach the floor where he was shackled. Carl figured the ride home would last well into the night; the trip up had taken hours, and he doubted this one would be shorter. He leaned his head against the wall, letting himself drift, only half-aware of the guards nearby.
Somewhere between waking and sleep, he felt the train begin to slow. At first he thought they might be stopping for water. He hoped they would at least let him stretch his legs, maybe even give him a drink.
When the train finally ground to a halt, the door slid open and a conductor appeared, urgency written across his face.
“What’s wrong?” the older guard called.
“Fire in the next car,” the conductor answered quickly. “It started in the hotbox. We’re getting everyone off.” Before more could be asked, he was gone, running toward the engine.
The older guard leaned out the door. “Lord Almighty,” he shouted back. “The next car’s blazing, and the one ahead of it’s near burned through. Unlock them shackles—we got to move!”
The younger guard began patting his shirt pocket, then his trousers, his face blanching. “Do you have the key?” His voice cracked.
“No, I don’t!” the older man snapped. “You carry all the keys!”
Smoke was already thickening along the ceiling, and the heat pressed in heavy. Carl tugged himself as far from the wall as the chains allowed, panic rising.
“Hurry up!” he barked. “I’m about to roast in here!”
“What about the key to the leg irons?” the guard yelled, as he reached for the shotgun and held it.
The younger guard looked helplessly at the older, who nodded. “Do it! He’ll cook if you don’t.”
With fumbling hands, the younger guard pulled a key from his belt and freed Carl’s right leg. But when he yanked the key from the lock, it slipped from his grip and clattered to the floor. The guard stooped, grabbed it, and thrust it back. Just then, a sharp crack split the air as flames punched through the wooden wall. The smell of burning wood and hot oil filled the car, stinging Carl’s lungs. He shot the young guard a glare that said plain as words: don’t you fail me now.
Shaking, the guard managed to work the key into the lock, and at last the other shackle fell free.
“Now my hands!” Carl shouted, thrusting his bound wrists forward.
The guard took one arm, and the older one with the shotgun took the other—just as Carl had hoped. The instant his hands came free, Carl let go of the younger guard but clamped down on the older. With all his weight—two hundred and forty pounds—he jerked back hard and spun, slamming the man against the burning car. The shotgun slipped from his grasp and tumbled to the ground.
The younger guard lunged for Carl’s legs, only to be met with a crushing knee to the face. He tumbled back, clutching his nose. The older guard reached for the shotgun, but Carl shoved him aside with little effort. The younger man scrambled up again, trying to grab the weapon, but Carl smashed his head against the steel wall of the car.
The old guard came at him once more, but Carl tossed him away like a rag. The young one staggered back into the fight, only to catch a heavy fist across his already broken nose. A blow to the gut folded him where he stood, and he crumpled, finished.
The older guard steadied himself for another rush, but froze when the muzzle of the twelve-gauge pressed against his face. His hands went up slow.
“Unlock my hands,” Carl ordered. “And don’t try anything foolish.”
“I—I don’t have the key,” the man stammered.
“Get it!”
“I don’t know where it is. I think—”
“Find it, or I’ll blow your head clean off.” Carl’s teeth clenched as he leveled his stare.
The old guard cast about, scanning the ground in panic, then shrugged helplessly.
Carl turned his glare on the younger man, who lay groaning. “Where’s the key?”
“It slipped… when we fought,” the youth muttered.
Carl’s eyes swept the smoke-filled yard. Near the blazing car’s wheels, the glint of metal caught his eye. “There!” he barked, pointing. “Get it!”
“But—it’s on fire! Too hot!” the old man protested.
“Get the key, or I’ll throw you in after it.”
With his boot, the guard raked the key out from under the car, snatched it up, and freed Carl’s wrists. Carl rubbed at the raw marks, scanning his surroundings. A man from another car was already hurrying over, and others were watching. Soon there would be a crowd.
“Where are we?” Carl demanded.
“Near Millen’s Junction… old ‘79,’” the guard stammered.
“How far from Savannah?”
The guard looked upward as though the sky held the answer. “Seventy-nine miles. That’s why they call it 79.”