Chapter 10 #2
The room was silent. The frogs had stopped singing, or maybe she just couldn't hear them anymore. The ceiling fan turned in lazy circles. The darkness pressed in close, thick and heavy, like it was trying to swallow her whole.
Trent's arms were still around her, but she could feel him trembling. Not with cold. With the effort of holding in whatever he was feeling—grief for her, fear about his father's grave, the weight of too much bad news landing all at once.
"Dove." His voice cracked on her name.
She couldn't respond. If she opened her mouth, she didn't know what would come out—words or screams or nothing at all.
She pulled away from him. Gently, but deliberately. Swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for her clothes.
"I need to get up." She found her jeans and stepped into them. The denim was rough against her bare legs. Real. Tangible. Something to focus on besides the howling void that had opened up in her chest. "I have to go identify the body."
"Dove—"
"It's procedure." She located her shirt near the window and pulled it over her head. The fabric smelled like Trent's house—cypress and coffee and something green and alive. "Next of kin makes the positive ID. That’s my mother or me, and I’m not doing that to my mom.”
"You don't have to go right now. It's four in the morning. He said there was no rush."
"I need to do something." She was looking for her boots now, scanning the dark floor, grateful for the task. Grateful for something to do with her hands and her eyes that wasn't thinking about her uncle's body on a slab. "I can't just sit here."
"Dove, stop."
She found one boot near the closet. Where the hell was the other one?
"Just stop for a second."
"I can't." She dropped to her knees, looking under the bed. There. The other boot, kicked halfway to the wall. She grabbed it, shoved her foot inside. "If I stop, I'll think, and if I think—"
"Then think." Trent was beside her now, kneeling on the floor in the dark, his hands closing over hers. "Feel it. Let it hurt."
"I don’t want to.”
"You need to.”
"You don't understand." She tried to pull her hands free, but he held on. "I can't afford to fall apart. If I start, I won't stop. I know myself. I know how this goes. When my team died, I fell so far down that hole that I almost didn't climb back out. I can't do that again. I won't survive it."
"This is different."
"How?" The word came out sharp. Bitter. "How is this different? Someone I loved is dead. Someone I was supposed to protect—"
"You weren't supposed to protect him. He was a U.S. Marshal. He knew the risks. He'd been doing this job since before you were born."
"And I should have seen this coming." She was shaking now, tremors running through her body that she couldn't control. “I should’ve known this wasn’t just a social visit. It didn’t add up. I should’ve pushed, but I didn’t, and now he's—" Her voice broke.
Cracked right down the middle like ice too thin to hold weight.
She clamped her mouth shut, jaw tight, teeth grinding together so hard her head ached. The tears were there. They burned behind her eyes, pressing against her lids like water against a dam. But she wouldn't let them fall. Couldn't let them fall. Because if she started crying now, she'd never stop.
"Hey." Trent's hands released hers, and then his palms cupped her face, warm and rough, tilting her head up until she had no choice but to look at him.
His eyes were dark in the dim room, but she could see the pain in them. For her. With her. The kind of pain that came from watching someone you cared about suffer and not being able to fix it.
"Walking around not dealing with this doesn't make it go away," he said quietly.
"Trust me. I know. I spent twenty years not dealing with my father's death, and all it did was turn me into someone I didn't like very much.
Angry. Closed off. Pushing away anyone who tried to get close.
" His thumbs stroked her cheekbones, the touch unbearably gentle.
"Don't do that to yourself. Don't do what I did. "
"I don't know how to do anything else."
"Then let me help you." He pulled her forward, wrapped his arms around her, tucked her head under his chin.
She heard his heartbeat, steady and strong.
She could feel the warmth of him seeping into her cold skin.
"You don't have to fall apart completely.
You don't have to lose yourself. Just...
let yourself feel it. For one minute. Let it be real. "
She wanted to argue. Wanted to push him away and stand up and keep moving, keep doing, keep functioning like the good little soldier she'd trained herself to be.
But she was so tired.
Tired of being strong. Tired of holding everything together. Tired of pretending fine was even in her vocabulary.
She let out a breath.
And something cracked.
Not all the way. Not completely. But enough. Enough that she stopped fighting his embrace. Enough that she let her forehead drop against his chest. Enough that the tears she'd been holding back spilled over, hot and silent, soaking into his bare skin.
She didn't sob. Didn't make a sound. Just let the tears fall while Trent held her, one hand stroking her hair, the other pressed flat against her back like he could hold her shattered pieces together through sheer force of will.
They stayed like that for a long time. Long enough for the darkness outside the window to soften, the first gray hints of dawn crept toward the horizon. Long enough for the tears to slow, then stop. Long enough for Dove to feel like maybe—maybe—she could breathe again.
Then she pulled back.
Wiped her face with the heels of her hands. "I have to go," she said. "I have to do this."
He studied her for a long moment. Whatever he saw in her face, he didn't argue.
"Okay," he said. "But I'm coming with you."
"You don't have to—"
"I'm coming with you." His voice left no room for debate. "You're not doing this alone."
She could have fought him. Could have insisted she was fine, that she didn't need a babysitter, that she'd been handling her own shit long before Trent Mallor had come into her life.
But the truth was, she didn't want to do this alone. The thought of walking into that morgue by herself, looking down at her uncle's body with no one beside her—it made the cold knot in her stomach tighten until she could barely breathe.
"Okay," she said quietly.
They drifted through the motions of getting ready in silence.
Clothes. Shoes. Teeth brushed, faces washed, and hair pulled back—the small rituals of preparing to face a day that had already broken before it began.
Outside the window, the sky had lightened to a pale gray, the sun still hidden below the horizon but making its presence known.
Downstairs, Trent headed for the kitchen. "I'll make coffee. Something to eat for the road. You need to put something in your stomach before we drive an hour and a half."
Dove nodded. Her appetite was nonexistent—the thought of food made her vaguely nauseous—but she knew he was right. Operating on empty never ended well.
"I'll go start the truck," she said, grabbing the keys from the hook by the door.
She stepped out onto the porch, and the humidity wrapped around her like a wet blanket. The air was thick and heavy, the kind that settled into your lungs and stayed there. The moat had come alive with tails thrashing about. Damn things knew it was close to feeding time.
She crossed the bridge as quickly as she could, ignoring the water rippling beneath her, and headed for her truck parked near the equipment shed.
That's when she saw it.
At first, her brain didn't register what she was looking at. The shape was wrong. Too big. Too twisted. Something massive on the ground near the fence line, on the wrong side of the moat. An area that should have been empty.
She stopped walking.
Squinted through the gray light.
Then it moved.
Coils. Thick as a man's thigh. Mottled brown and tan, patterned like dead leaves, like camouflage designed by something ancient and patient and hungry. The body shifted, muscles rippling beneath the scales, and Dove's stomach dropped as she finally understood what she was seeing.
A python. Massive. Easily fifteen feet, maybe more. A Burmese, from the markings—one of the invasive giants that had been strangling the Everglades for decades, eating everything in their path, breeding faster than wildlife officials could cull them.
And wrapped in its coils, thrashing weakly, desperately, was one of Trent's smaller gators.
Three feet long. Maybe four. Still young. Still vulnerable. Its jaws snapped at the air, tail whipping uselessly, stubby legs scrabbling for purchase that didn't exist. The python's coils tightened with each exhale, patient and relentless, squeezing the life out of its prey one breath at a time.
Dove had seen death before. Had caused it, more times than she could count. But there was something about this—the slow, inexorable crush of it, the way the gator's struggles were growing weaker with each passing second—that made her throat close up.
"Trent!" Her voice cut through the quiet morning like a gunshot. “Get out here, now!”