Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Dove leaned against the counter, mug in hand, and watched as Trent made eggs.
It was such a normal thing to do—cracking shells against the rim of a cast-iron skillet, the butter sizzling, the smell of coffee filling the kitchen alongside the early morning light—that Dove almost forgot they were living inside a disaster.
Almost forgot that her uncle was dead. That someone had planted pythons on this property.
That a blackmail note was sitting in an upstairs drawer.
And the man standing barefoot at the stove had just had sex with her like the world was ending.
She moved to the table, sat with her legs pulled up beneath her, wearing his shirt again, her hands wrapped around a mug that was too hot, but she didn't care.
The heat felt good. Everything about this kitchen felt good—the old linoleum, the gurgling coffee maker, the way the light came through the window above the sink and caught the steam rising from the skillet in slow, lazy curls.
Trent slid a plate in front of her. Scrambled eggs, toast, and a handful of strawberries.
He sat across from her with his own plate, fresh coffee, and for a few minutes, they ate in the kind of silence that didn't need filling.
Forks scraping. Mugs lifted and set down.
The gators grumbling in the moat outside like a low, constant engine that never shut off.
Then Trent set his fork down. “We need to talk about something."
She looked up. He was staring at his coffee, his thumb tracing the rim of the mug, and there was something on his face she didn't see often—uncertainty.
This man walked into gator-infested water without flinching, but whatever he was about to say had him fidgeting like a kid called to the principal's office.
"This morning," he said. “I didn’t use a condom. I didn’t even think about it. I should’ve, and I’m sorry.”
Her heart dropped to the bottom of her toes and then flew back to her throat.
“I didn’t realize that until just now.” She lifted her gaze, catching his, and the conversation that needed to happen—the one about timing and responsibility and what it meant and what they were going to do about it—hovered between them like something fragile balanced on an edge.
Dove opened her mouth to say something—anything—but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something outside.
Movement. Through the kitchen window, past the moat, near the equipment shed. A figure, low and fast, slipping out through the side door. Then a second figure behind the first. He closed the shed door and moved swiftly across the property toward the mangrove near the waterline.
She jumped to her feet. “We’ve got company, and not the good kind.”
He pushed his chair back, turning his head. “Motherfucker.” His bare feet hit the linoleum, and he crossed the kitchen in three strides. He grabbed his Glock from the top of the refrigerator and racked the slide.
Dove was right behind him, snagging her weapon, which she’d placed on the counter by the door when she’d come downstairs this morning. She had it in her hand and her feet in her boots in seconds.
"Out the back," he said. "They're moving toward the south dock." Trent didn’t bother with boots, which she thought was crazy, but she wasn’t about to argue. Not now.
They went through the screen door fast. Dove's gaze locked on the two figures now visible between the cypress trees. They'd cleared the large trees and were making for the waterline where a flat-bottom boat was tied to the old dock—the one Trent's father had built.
The boat looked new. Clean. Shiney. Like this was its maiden voyage.
The morning air was thick and hot—tasted like mud mixed with cypress bark.
The gators in the moat sensed the commotion—heads turning, bodies repositioning, Dolly letting out a low bellow that vibrated in Dove's sternum.
She ignored all of it. Her focus narrowed the way it always did when the switch flipped—peripheral noise gone, vision sharp, every detail registering and cataloging in real time.
The two figures reached the dock. One of them jumped into the boat while the other untied the line. Both were dressed in dark clothing with long sleeves, hats pulled low, and gloves. No faces visible from this distance.
“I’m not letting them get away this time.” Trent veered toward his airboat, tied on the south side of the dock where the water opened into the river. “Come on.”
She scurried down the wooden planks, through the tall weeds, and raced up to the other dock.
Trent hopped into his boat, hit the blower, and the big fan roared to life with a sound that scattered every bird within a hundred yards. Dove quickly untied the lines from the cleats and landed in the seat beside him, one hand on the rail, the other holding her weapon against her thigh.
The intruders pulled away from the old dock, its outboard churning white water as it swung south into the channel.
Trent dropped the throttle and the airboat surged forward, skimming across the shallow water with a force that pressed Dove back in her seat.
Wind ripped at her hair, her shirt—his shirt—and she had to squint against the spray.
The sawgrass blurred on both sides, a green wall rushing past, and ahead of them, the flat-bottom picked up speed.
She pulled her phone from the pocket of Trent's shorts—the only thing she'd managed to grab besides the gun—and shot Buddy a quick text about what had transpired.
Seconds later, he responded that he was en route.
The channel widened. The flat-bottom had maybe two hundred yards on them, but the airboat was faster in the shallows and Trent knew these waterways the way she knew a rifle—by instinct, by memory, by the kind of intimacy that came from a lifetime of paying attention.
He cut through a gap in the sawgrass that shaved fifty yards off the distance, the hull skimming over water so shallow she could see the mud bottom flashing beneath them.
A hundred yards. She could make out details now—the boat was a center console skiff, clean lines, the outboard gleaming. Not the kind of vessel that belonged to poachers or local troublemakers who'd lifted it from a dock.
Eighty yards and closing.
The flat-bottom cut hard to the left.
“Shit,” Trent muttered as the skiff whipped around, engine howling, and the passenger rose from behind the console with something long and black braced against his shoulder.
"Down!" Trent wrenched the airboat right, the hull tilting as the fan screamed at full power.
The first shot cracked across the water like a whip. It punched through the fiberglass hull of the airboat two feet to Dove's left, leaving a hole the size of a quarter and sending splinters spraying across her bare legs.
A second shot split the air where Dove's head had been a half second earlier, and she felt the heat of it pass—or imagined she did, which was close enough.
Flattening herself against the seat, she brought her weapon up. The flat-bottom was broadside to them now, maybe sixty yards out, the shooter repositioning for another attempt. She could see the rifle—semi-automatic, scoped, the kind of hardware a person didn't buy at a sporting goods store.
She fired twice. Controlled. Center mass on the shooter's position. The shots hit the console, and she saw fiberglass explode, but the shooter ducked. She couldn't tell if she'd tagged him.
A third round came back at them. This one hit the fan cage, the metallic clang ringing through the boat like a bell.
Trent swore and cranked them left, driving the airboat into a stand of mangroves that swallowed them in green darkness.
Branches scraped the hull. Leaves whipped across her face.
The fan choked on vegetation and Trent eased off the throttle, letting them drift into cover.
"You hit?" he asked. Breathing hard. Eyes scanning the water through the gaps in the mangroves.
"No. You?"
"No." He wiped spray from his face. "But my boat's got a hole in it."
Through the mangroves, she could hear the flat-bottom's engine—still running, still close, the sound echoing off the water in a way that made distance hard to judge. She held her weapon up, sighting through the branches, waiting.
"They've got real firepower," she said. "That's not a hunting rifle."
"I noticed."
Another burst of engine noise. But it was moving away now—south, deeper into the channel, the sound thinning as distance opened between them. They were running. Not circling back for another pass.
Trent eased the airboat forward, pushing through the mangroves until they had a line of sight down the channel. The flat-bottom was a quarter mile out now, growing smaller, cutting through the water at full speed.
Dove lowered her weapon. "No registration numbers."
“A lot of boats around here that don’t have them.” Trent shielded his eyes against the morning glare, watching the boat shrink into the distance. "That was a fifteen-foot Mako Pro Skiff. Brand new, and it wasn’t the same one from the other night—I’d bet my life on it."
“Any chance that could be Karl’s?”
“He prefers a Carolina Skiff, but anything’s possible.”
They sat in the damaged airboat, drifting in the shallow water at the edge of the mangrove stand, listening to the flat-bottom's engine fade into nothing.
The morning was bright and hot and absurdly beautiful—the sky a deep, cloudless blue, the water glittering, a great blue heron standing motionless on the far bank like none of this was its problem.
Dove's hands shook. Not from fear—from the adrenaline dump, the chemical crash that came after the shooting stopped and her body realized it wasn't dead.
She'd lived through this cycle enough times to know it would pass.
She holstered her weapon and pressed her palms flat against her thighs until the tremor eased.
Trent turned the airboat around and headed back.
The ride to Mallor's Landing was quiet except for the fan and the wind and the ugly sucking sound the hull made where the bullet had punched through. The hole was above the waterline, but barely. Trent kept their speed even and their course straight and didn't say a word the entire way back.
She could feel him thinking. Could feel the anger building in the set of his shoulders and the way he gripped the controls.
They pulled up to the dock and Dove saw two vehicles in the driveway—Buddy's truck and the black SUV that Sterling had backed into the driveway, nose out, ready to move, like he was still running CIA agency operations.
Buddy met them at the waterline, already assessing—the hole in the hull, the fiberglass splinters, the weapons in their hands. He didn't ask if they were okay. He looked at Dove, looked at Trent, and saw that they were standing, and that was enough for now.
“I take it they got away,” Buddy said.
“They were a little more prepared,” Dove said, stepping onto the dock. “Opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. We didn’t feel like dying today.”
"Direction?"
"South through the main channel. They're long gone."
“Maybe, but worth calling our contacts at the sheriff’s office. They can have whoever’s on patrol look out near the main access point.” Buddy turned, lifted his phone to his ear, and informed their contact of the situation.
Sterling appeared from behind Buddy's truck, moving toward them across the bridge with the careful, high-stepping gait of a man who was absolutely certain something with teeth was about to lunge at him from the water.
His hand rested on his sidearm and his eyes darted between the moat and the dock and the moat again, like the gators were the bigger threat than whoever had just shot at his colleagues.
Dolly surfaced six feet from the bridge. Opened her mouth wide—that prehistoric display of teeth that said I see you, and I haven't decided if I like you yet—and Sterling stopped dead.
"She's not going to eat you," Dove said.
"You don't know that."
“I’ve crossed that moat a dozen times, and I still have all my limbs. You’ll be fine.”
"That ditch might as well be loaded with C4." Sterling skirted the far edge of the bridge, giving Dolly the widest berth the narrow crossing allowed, and Dove stifled a laugh.
The four of them regrouped on the path between the house and the equipment shed. Buddy examined the shed—door closed, no visible damage, no sign of forced entry from the outside.
"I saw them come out of the shed," Dove said.
“And you didn’t go inside?” Buddy asked.
“I wasn’t letting another intruder get away,” Trent said. “I still don’t know what they were doing on my property the last time, so maybe we’ll find a clue this time.” He reached for the handle.
Buddy and Sterling flanked him, weapons drawn. Dove took a position to the right, covering the tree line out of habit.
Trent's fingers closed around the handle.
Gravel crunched behind them. All four of them turned.
Dawson's cruiser rolled down the driveway, lights off. He parked behind Buddy's truck and stepped out, one hand on his belt, his gaze sweeping the property like he did every time he walked into a scene, whether he was on duty or not.
"Don't open that door," he called across the yard. His voice carried the authority of a man who wasn't making a suggestion. He walked toward them at a brisk pace. "Nobody goes in there without me."
Trent's hand hovered on the handle. "You're twenty feet away. What's the big deal?
“I’m not going to say it again," Dawson said, closing the distance.
“Someone came on my property again.” Trent stepped back.
Dawson reached them and positioned himself in front of the shed door. “I got a call about something happening here at Mallor’s Landing, and it didn’t have anything to do with intruders,” Dawson said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Trent asked.
“We’ll get to that in a second. For now, everyone is going to back up and let me do my job. Got it?”
Trent nodded.
Dove didn’t like it. Something about this didn’t settle right. Not after what had just happened. She inched closer to Trent. She had no choice but to let Dawson take over.