Chapter 16
The call came at six a.m.
Delaney was tangled in Float's sheets, warm and drowsy, when her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She reached for it without opening her eyes, expecting a compound update or maybe one of the old ladies checking in.
The voice on the other end made her blood go cold.
"This is Deputy Harris with the Taney County Sheriff's Department. We've had a report of a break-in at Ozark Light Photography Studio. The owner is listed as Delaney Cross—is that you, ma'am?"
She sat up so fast she nearly knocked Float off the bed.
"I'm on my way."
Float drove.
Delaney sat in the passenger seat of his truck, hands steady, face blank. She hadn't spoken since hanging up the phone. Hadn't cried. Hadn't screamed.
Float recognized that silence. It was the same silence he'd felt when he came back from his three-day float to find everything stolen. The kind of quiet that came before the explosion.
They pulled into the studio lot as the sun crested the hills, golden light painting a scene that made Float's hands tighten on the steering wheel.
Ozark Light was destroyed.
The windows were smashed. The door hung off its hinges. Even from the truck, he could see the damage inside—overturned furniture, scattered debris, the skeletal remains of equipment that used to be worth more than most people's cars.
"Stay here," he said.
Delaney was out of the truck before he finished the sentence.
She walked toward her studio like a woman approaching a grave. Float followed, one hand on the gun at his hip, scanning the lot for threats. The sheriff's deputy was taking statements from a neighbor—an older man in a bathrobe who kept gesturing toward his house.
The neighbor's security camera. That's how they'd known.
Float filed that information and focused on Delaney.
She stopped in the doorway, and he saw her shoulders go rigid.
"God."
The word came out broken.
He moved to stand beside her, and his stomach turned at what he saw.
They hadn't just broken in. They'd gutted the place.
Every piece of equipment was smashed. Light stands bent and twisted. Cameras crushed. Lenses scattered across the floor like broken teeth. The print archive—years of work, golden-hour magic captured on paper—had been pulled from storage and burned in a pile in the center of the room.
Ash. Everything she'd built, reduced to ash.
"They burned my prints." Delaney's voice was barely audible. "All of them. The engagements, the families, the—" She cut herself off, jaw clenching.
Float put a hand on her back. She didn't lean into the touch, but she didn't pull away either.
"We'll find them."
"I know who did this." Her voice had changed. The grief was still there, but something harder had crept in underneath. "Ellers is dead. Dunaway is dead. Which means Garvey sent his last enforcer."
"Shep Ingle." Float had seen the name in Delaney's files. The youngest of Garvey's crew. The one who handled the watching, the stalking, the physical intimidation. "This is his style."
"This is his message." Delaney stepped into the wreckage, glass crunching under her boots. "He wants me to know what happens when I don't cooperate. Wants me scared. Running."
She stopped in front of the consultation table—the same table where she'd found Garvey sitting that first night—and looked up at the wall.
"Float."
Her voice had gone flat. Deadly calm.
He followed her gaze and felt rage coil in his chest.
A surveillance camera was mounted on the wall. Small, professional, positioned to capture the entire room. The same kind of camera they'd found at rental properties across the Ozarks.
It was pointed directly at the chair where Garvey had threatened her.
"He's watching." Delaney's hands curled into fists. "Even now. Even here. He's watching."
She reached up and ripped the camera off the wall.
Wires sparked. Plaster crumbled. She didn't flinch.
The camera sat in her palm like a grenade. Small and sleek and mocking.
"Ma'am?" The deputy appeared in the doorway, notebook in hand. "I need to ask you some questions about—"
"Later." Delaney didn't look at him. "I'll come by the station later."
"Ma'am, this is an active crime scene—"
"I said later." She turned, and something in her expression made the deputy take a step back. "Right now, I need to handle this myself."
Float moved between them, his bulk filling the doorway. "She'll file a report this afternoon. Give her some space."
The deputy looked like he wanted to argue. Looked at Float's cut, at the murder in Delaney's eyes, and thought better of it.
"This afternoon," he said. "Station closes at five."
He retreated to his car. Float waited until the engine started and the cruiser pulled out of the lot before turning back to Delaney.
She was photographing the damage.
Of course she was. The borrowed camera was in her hands—she must have grabbed it from the truck—and she was moving through the wreckage like a combat photographer at the scene of an atrocity.
Click. The burned prints. Click. The smashed equipment. Click. The empty frames where her work used to hang.
"Delaney."
"I need to document this." Her voice was mechanical. Controlled. "Evidence. Insurance. Whatever comes next—I need proof of what they did."
Float let her work. Stood guard at the door and watched her process devastation the only way she knew how.
Ten minutes later, she lowered the camera and stood in the center of the destruction.
"He burned everything I made since I got out." Her voice cracked, just slightly, before hardening again. "Four years of proving I could create instead of document. Four years of golden hours and happy couples and families who trusted me to capture the best days of their lives."
She held up the surveillance camera, still clutched in her other hand.
"And he left this. So I'd know he was watching while they did it. So I'd understand that no matter where I go, no matter how far I run, he'll always be able to see me."
Float crossed to her and cupped her face in his hands. Her eyes were dry, but he could see the fury burning beneath the surface.
"He made a mistake," Float said quietly. "Ellers made a mistake when he threatened you. Dunaway made a mistake when he attacked the compound. And Ingle made a mistake when he destroyed your studio."
"What mistake?"
"They gave you something to aim at." Float kissed her forehead. "And now you're going to aim."
They drove back to the compound in heavy silence.
Delaney sat with the surveillance camera in her lap, turning it over and over in her hands. Float watched her from the corner of his eye, waiting for the breakdown that never came.
She wasn't falling apart. She was loading.
When they reached the compound, she went straight to the cabin and set up her laptop. The camera's serial numbers, the wiring pattern, the installation style—she documented everything with the precision of someone building a case.
Float found Cottonmouth and gave him the short version: Ozark Light destroyed, Ingle's signature all over it, surveillance camera left behind as a calling card.
"He's getting sloppy." Cottonmouth's expression was granite. "Or he wants us to come for him."
"Either way, he's going to get what he wants."
"Church at noon. Bring your woman—if she's got intel on Ingle's patterns, Still will want to hear it."
Float nodded and went back to the cabin.
Delaney was sitting on the bed, the surveillance camera in her hands, staring at it with an expression that made his blood run cold.
Not grief. Not fear.
Calculation.
"I know where he operates from." Her voice was calm. Deadly. "The photos I took at Brush Creek—there's a return address on the equipment cases. A rented house about forty minutes from here. If Ingle's following the same pattern as the other crews, that's where he stages operations."
"How sure are you?"
"Sure enough." She looked up at him, and the woman he saw wasn't the photographer who'd opened her studio door with fire in her eyes. This was the combat documentarian who'd spent four years in places that didn't exist.
"I'm going to return his camera," she said.
Float felt a smile curve his mouth. Savage. Proud.
"Yeah," he said. "You are."
Delaney stood, the camera still in her grip, and walked toward the door.
"Church at noon?"
"Church at noon. Still's going to want your intel."
She paused at the threshold, looking back at him with eyes that burned.
"Tell him I've got more than intel." She held up the surveillance camera. "I've got a message for Shep Ingle. And I'm going to deliver it personally."