Chapter 6
H ayes leaned against the weathered railing, eyes fixed on the yard’s edge where the land gave way to the dense sprawl of the Florida Everglades.
Beyond the cypress trees, the swamp shimmered beneath the weight of the afternoon sun.
Golden light filtered through the branches, casting long, flickering shadows across the clearing.
An owl called in the distance—low and haunting—blending with the hum of insects and the gentle rustle of wind-stirred foliage.
The air carried that distinct Everglades musk—earthly, damp, alive with secrets.
On the other side of the deck, Dawson stood near the grill, casually munching on a handful of fries, while Buddy and Chloe sat at the round table cluttered with case files.
A few papers fluttered in the breeze, held down by a water bottle and a half-empty cup of coffee.
Chloe had her head bent over the paperwork, lips pursed in concentration, while Buddy looked like he was still trying to make peace with the fact that she was even there.
He hadn’t been thrilled about involving her—or the rest of Hayes’s team—but Dawson had talked him down, and eventually Buddy had relented.
Hayes kept his gaze outward, his thoughts inward, going over the limited details they had—none of them helpful.
The victim, believed to be twenty-six-year-old Deanna Wilkerson, had been missing for nearly a month.
Her ex-boyfriend had reported it. They didn’t have a positive ID yet, but the signs pointed to her.
The body had been found inside the charred remains of the Crab Shack.
The fire had started in the kitchen, intentionally.
An accelerant had been used, but the burn had been clean, controlled, suggesting the arsonist had experience or training.
Whoever had set it knew what they were doing.
And then there was the missing ring finger. A signature move, maybe. Or a message.
Buddy and Dawson both believed the scene had been staged. Hayes wasn’t exactly a homicide expert but, based on what he’d seen, he agreed.
The only thing they knew for certain was that Dewey Hale had reported the fire.
Now it was just a waiting game—days, maybe a week, before forensics came back. The idea that they had to sit on their hands for that long made Hayes restless in a way he couldn’t quite explain.
“I don’t like it when you go all quiet like this,” Dawson said, crossing his arms and glaring at Hayes. “You remember that rest stop in California? We legit left you behind because you hadn’t said a single word in days. We drove for twenty minutes before we realized we left you behind.”
Hayes snorted. “Only because you wouldn’t do an illegal U-turn.
” Still, he wasn’t surprised. Silence came naturally to him—too naturally.
He’d grown up in a household where kids had been expected to stay quiet unless spoken to, where noise had been seen as defiance.
That mindset had followed him into adulthood.
The military only reinforced it—observe first, speak later.
It was second nature now to hang back, read the room, and say nothing until he was sure his words mattered.
“You can’t be serious?” Chloe glanced up from the file in her hands. “First, sometimes I can’t get the man to shut up, and second, you didn’t know he wasn’t in the car? How is that even possible?”
“Haven’t you ever watched him try to work through a problem?” Dawson said, shaking his head. “It’s like he can’t think and talk at the same time. Like walking and chewing gum—but with his brain. It’s the strangest thing, especially because he’s one of the smartest men I know.”
Hayes had heard variations of that comment for years, and he’d long since stopped defending himself.
Growing up, he’d learned that drawing attention was never a good idea.
But being an identical twin in their insular community had made that impossible.
From the time he could walk, he and Max had been magnets for stares, whispers, and knowing nods.
On Sundays, the pastor had often pulled them to the front of the congregation—not out of affection, but as a living example of the sermon.
“God’s mystery in flesh,” he’d say, pointing them out to the entire room. “Twins: a divine riddle.”
They were treated as unique, but not always in a flattering way.
In their faith, twins represented dichotomy—light and dark, good and evil, masculine and feminine.
That symbolism might have been easier to digest if he and Max had looked different, but they hadn’t.
They were mirror images, indistinguishable to almost everyone, and that had driven them both mad.
Their religion mandated uniformity—same haircut, same clothes, same shoes—no individuality allowed.
But being an identical replica of someone else meant Hayes could never disappear, no matter how much he tried.
Ironically, in a community where standing out was discouraged, he’d stood out simply because no one could ever tell if he was Max or Hayes.
And that kind of attention made his skin crawl.
As he’d gotten older, he’d turned inward. During his first year in the Navy, he’d earned the nickname “The Chameleon” because he could blend into any environment, vanish into the background, and go completely unnoticed—until he chose not to be. It became his greatest asset, especially as a sniper.
He picked up his chocolate milkshake, slipped the straw between his lips, and took a long pull. Thick, rich, and cold—nothing beat ice cream when your head was too full.
“Come on, man. You’re making me nuts.” Dawson raised his hands and slapped them to his thighs. “I hate it when you get like this. I can’t tell what you’re thinking, but I can feel your brain spinning a million miles an hour.”
“It’s not working all that fast, but it is processing the information.” Hayes sighed, tossing his empty milkshake cup in the trash. Sometimes, he wondered if he’d started drinking them because he’d thought they would bring him insight into Ken—and Ken’s secrets.
But all they’d done was expand his waistline and require him to go to the gym more.
“And?” Dawson glared.
“Three things bother me.” Hayes lifted his hand and wiggled three fingers. “First one is when Dewey called it in, he didn’t mention to my captain that he’d seen someone lurking around Crab Shack a few hours before the fire.”
Buddy raised his hand. “Bear told me that he cut Dewey off to sound the siren and get the trucks rolling, and that the second Dawson rolled up to the scene, he filled him in faster than a speeding bullet. However, that raises an issue for me. Why didn’t Dewey call 9-1-1?”
“A lot of people in this town don’t.” Dawson bent over, opened the small cooler pushed up against the side of the small home, and pulled out a bottle of water.
“We don’t have the resources to man our own call center, so it goes to county and while calls are quickly shuffled out to the appropriate places, like my department, or the fire station, if a citizen has me on speed dial, they might call me first, knowing I’ll answer. ”
“What if you don’t?” Chloe asked. “You have a life, and you can’t answer all the time.”
“The good citizens of Calusa Cove don’t ring me at three in the morning.
Not unless they know I’m on patrol.” Dawson shrugged.
“We’re a small town. We do things a little backward, and I’m constantly telling people to call 9-1-1 because if they don’t get me on that first try, they’ve wasted precious seconds, but now we’ve digressed.
” He waved his water at Hayes. “Keep going.”
“The second thing that’s bugging me is the location of the body,” Hayes said.
“That section of the building was practically untouched by the fire. The door was left slightly ajar—almost as if it were inviting someone to look inside. I called Jenson, and he confirmed they found fire-retardant coating on the closet door and in parts of the room where the body was discovered—but not in the kitchen. That’s where they found traces of accelerant.
It was used deliberately—enough to burn hot and fast, but not deep. Controlled. Purposeful.”
Hayes rubbed his temples. He’d worn a lot of hats in the Navy, but his primary roles on the SEAL team had been as a sniper and a medic. An unusual pairing, maybe—but those were the skills he’d excelled at.
This kind of thing—piecing together patterns, analyzing crime scenes—wasn’t his arena.
People had assumed he’d go into emergency medicine after his discharge and become an EMT or paramedic. It made sense on paper. But Hayes hadn’t wanted that. He’d craved something familiar, but not identical.
And truth be told, he liked running toward danger. Always had.
“I’ve got the report right here,” Chloe said, waving a sheet of paper in the air.
“That move could’ve backfired on our killer—especially if Dewey hadn’t happened to walk by when he did.
Fire retardant doesn’t stop flames, it. It just slows them down.
And the kicker is, we don’t even know when that coating was applied. ”
“I didn’t know Old Man Tomey well,” Dawson said. “But he was a cheap old bastard, and that building was days away from being shut down before he died. If not because of building code violations that he never fixed, it would have been by the health department.”
“That brings me to the third thing that doesn’t sit right,” Hayes said with a nod. “You believe this is the eighth murder linked to the Ring Finger Killer over the past thirty-five years. Out of those eight, how many were essentially handed to you?”
Buddy narrowed his eyes. “You’ll have to be more specific.”