Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Trent grabbed Dove's hand like it was his only lifeline. His only connection to anything real and safe. "Dawson." He kept his voice as level as he could. “What do you mean you got a call?”
Dawson's expression didn't shift. The man had one of those faces built for poker—wide, flat, unreadable when he wanted it to be. Right now, Trent suspected Dawson wanted it to be exactly the same way it had been a few years ago when he’d questioned him during a murder investigation.
That had not only been terrifying on so many levels, but Trent had learned that Dawson could be one scary ass cop.
"I'll tell you after I look inside,” Dawson said.
"That's my shed, and while I’m not going be any trouble or try to stop you because someone just trespassed—again—on my property. I think I have the right to know why.” Trent squeezed Dove’s hand.
“Let me do my job.” Dawson turned back to the door. Not unkindly, but with the kind of finality that said the conversation was over until he decided it wasn't.
Trent looked at Dove, who gave him the weakest of smiles.
Sterling and Buddy had moved further from the door. Buddy was tapping away on his cell, and Sterling had his to his ear.
Dawson pulled the door open and stepped inside.
The smell hit Trent first. He knew that scent.
Had lived it his entire life. Fresh blood and fat and the sharp, faintly sweet odor of green meat—that particular combination that had lived in Trent's bones from a lifetime of processing it.
It was mostly associated with the commercial side of this land and business.
The unglamorous reality of what it took to keep Mallor's Landing funded and breathing. It was a smell that, if he were on the other side of the property, would’ve been normal.
But not coming from this shed.
He leaned past Dawson's shoulder and his stomach dropped straight through the floor. Tears burned his eyes.
Two gators. Laid out on his workbench. Decent-sized animals—eight, maybe nine feet—already skinned, the hides peeled clean and hanging from the ceiling, the meat broken down and portioned with the kind of efficiency that took years to develop.
No FWC tags. No paperwork. Nothing but the raw evidence of a transaction that hadn't happened yet.
He’d killed many alligators over the course of his life. It was part of his job. Part of his business. He raised gators specifically for this reason—skins and meat to be sold. But there was a difference between wild gators and farm-raised ones.
His gaze stayed on the skins, moving from one to the next, and his pulse damn near stopped at the second skin.
He knew that animal.
Not by name—because that one never stayed long enough for him to get to know and contrary to popular belief, these creatures did have personalities.
But he had the markings. The slight broadening at the base of the skull, the particular distribution of the scute rows down the back, the old scar along the left flank that had been there since the gator had first sunned himself near the waterline.
This gator had been coming to the bay since Trent was in high school, drifting in and out of Mallor's Landing the way certain animals did when a place felt safe—taking nothing, threatening no one, just existing in the water with the permanence of something that had decided this patch of the Everglades suited him just fine.
He'd eaten more than a few of Trent's chicken quarters over the years—not by hand, but the ones that Trent laid out for the gators who found their way to this sanctuary and looked as though they could use a good meal.
"Those aren't mine." The words came out quieter than he intended. Not defensive. Just true. "I didn't do this. I swear this wasn’t me.”
Dawson turned to look at him. He studied Trent's face for a moment—long enough that he felt the weight of it, and that made him more than nervous. Dawson had come to town a few years ago—an ex-Navy SEAL and good friend of Fletcher Dane, Baily’s husband.
At first, Dawson made Trent nervous. Then again, anyone who carried a badge made Trent twitch.
But Dawson had grown on Trent.
“I believe you.” Dawson placed his hands on his hips and sighed. “But I can’t ignore what my eyes are seeing.”
"The people who just shot at us. They came out of this shed,” Dove screeched.
"I know that, too." Dawson nodded.
“How can you know that?” Trent's hands curled at his sides.
He stared at the second hide—at the scar along the flank—and tried to swallow the thing climbing up the back of his throat.
Grief, yes. But under the grief, quieter and more insidious, something that felt too much like rage.
The kind of rage that could destroy him if he wasn't careful.
“I got an anonymous tip about the same time Buddy texted me that you and Dove were being shot at,” Dawson said.
Gravel crunched in the driveway.
Trent glanced out the window. A Fish and Wildlife truck pulled up and parked at the edge of the yard, and Keaton Cole stepped out—all six feet of him.
He had a military bearing that twenty years in the field couldn't be shaken no matter how long he'd been out. He scanned the scene before his door was fully closed. He'd hadn’t grown up in the Glades, but he’d come to Calusa Cove the same way Dawson had—with Fletcher.
And Keaton had made this place his home in more ways than one.
“Let’s step outside.” Dawson waved his hand toward the door.
Dove rested her hand on Trent’s elbow as she gently guided him through the door.
He glanced down as his feet squished into the grass. He was still barefoot.
“Good morning.” Keaton looped his fingers in his belt.
“What brings you here?” Dove asked. Trent was grateful because his mouth was so dry he couldn’t form words.
“Someone called the FWC hotline claiming you're dealing gator skins and meat out on Mallor's Landing.” Keaton tilted his head. “I’m sorry, but I had to check it out.
“I find it interesting that Dawson got a similar tip the same morning two assholes were lurking around on my property and then shot at Dove and me.” Trent looped a protective arm around Dove, pulling her tight to his side. “I’ve got a bullet hole in my boat to prove it.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that there are two gators skinned and chopped in that shed,” Dawson said. “With no tags.”
“This is bullshit,” Dove muttered. “Trent didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve been with him for the last few days. Twenty-four-seven. What’s in that shed is fresh. No way could he have done that.”
"I'm not standing here accusing either of you of anything. I'm telling you what brought me to this property,” Dawson said.
"You've got cameras, right?” Keaton asked
“I do." Trent pulled out his phone. Opened the security app.
The feed was there—the equipment shed camera, live, showing the empty interior.
He scrolled back through the motion log.
"App didn't go off. No alerts." He turned the screen toward Keaton.
"Someone disabled it. Or knew how to move without triggering it.
" Which meant someone who'd done homework.
Someone who'd been here before or had information about the property layout.
The thought settled into him like cold water, spreading through his chest, finding every hollow place it could reach.
He felt a hand close around his elbow.
Dove turned him slightly away from the group, her voice dropping to somewhere between his ear and the morning air. "You need to tell them everything. The Hendersons. The photo. All of it."
He stared into her eyes. Her face was calm in the way it got when she was holding something back, managing the situation from the inside out.
"If you don't control this narrative right now," she said quietly, "someone else will. Someone like Stacey Wilkerson."
Dove was right. She was always right—especially at the moments he least wanted her to be.
He turned back, keeping his eyes level and said what he should have said the moment that envelope fell out of the newspaper.
He told them about the past. Not all of it, not every gray edge and justification he'd built around his younger choices, but the relevant bones—the animals he'd let Karl process on his land when he should have turned him away, the permits he'd put at risk, the years he'd spent putting distance between himself and those choices because he'd thought if he walked straight long enough, the crooked parts would no longer matter.
He told them about the Henderson's letter. The photograph. The threat.
Keaton planted his hands on his hips, looked down at the ground, and shook his head. Dawson crossed his arms, widened his stance, and just stared at Trent, gaze burning.
Trent swallowed. Hard. He’d been a cocky kid, and that cockiness had been born out of anger and grief. He’d carried it into adulthood. Fallon had come close to getting him to shake it. And he’d gotten rid of most of it the day he’d told Karl to fuck off.
Only, Trent had always been a loyal soul—still was to a certain extent. And Karl was a manipulator who’d used that to get what he wanted.
“Do you still have the letter from the Hendersons and the photo?” Dawson asked.
Trent nodded, his throat to dry to form words.
“Both are in the house,” Dove said. “I can get them for you, but we’d like copies.”
Dawson was quiet for a moment. He looked at Keaton. Some kind of conversation passed between them. They’d served together in the military and had nearly died together more than once. They had the kind of bond that didn’t require words half the time.
“Alright,” Dawson said finally. "I need you to understand—" He gestured toward the shed. "What's in that shed requires a report. There's no version of this where Keaton and I don't document it."