Fallon looked over, eyes green and steady. “You put those men away. It’s a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in them.” The truth felt like the only valuable thing he had to offer right now. “Just because they're in prison doesn’t mean they don’t have power. They could still have people on the outside. What I don’t understand is why a car would be looking at you.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Come on. You’re smart. Don’t pretend a vehicle that slowed enough to get a good look at you, or make a statement that you’re being watched, then take off, isn’t something. It was enough that you tried to remember the plate number. And then there’s that message that is too similar to what Simon, the asshole I put away, taunted me with. There’s just too much.”
She reached up and twisted her hair between her fingers. A tell that it worried her.
“I’ll make sure Mia pulls the text clean. If there’s anything tied to it, we’ll see it.”
She nodded like he’d given her a to-do list and not a promise. That was Fallon. Give her a thing to carry, and she’d carry it. Give her a town, and she’d carry that, too.
Down the dock, one of the Everglades Overwatch tour boats slid past the channel mouth, wake braiding behind it. Buddy watched the water settle and thought about names. Blue as an operation. Blue as a stamp. Blue as a company.
“You ever feel like the universe is unsubtle?” Fallon asked, mouth tipping without humor.
“Every day,” he said. He kept his hands where they were, didn’t reach for her because Keaton’s printout was still hot in his pocket, the word blue wouldn’t get out of his head, and the emotional rollercoaster of love, loss, and babies settled too deeply in his chest. “We’re going to be careful.”
“We?” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he said. “We.” For half a second, he tried to push her away. Tried to shove her out of his thoughts because of his past.
And he failed.
The we part just kept slipping out.
But maybe that was just his protective nature, not a man who wanted to start over or believed in second chances.
She bumped her shoulder lightly into his arm. Not much. Enough to say she’d heard him, and she’d hold him to it. Sunlight glinted off the water. The dock hummed underfoot. Inside, Fletcher shouted something about tea, and Baily laughed like the world wasn’t tilting, which was its own kind of anchor.
Fallon straightened first. “I need to check on the stage and where Fletcher wants to put it.”
“Alright.”
“You coming?”
“I’ll be up in a second,” he said.
She started toward the door, then paused and looked back. Whatever guarded thing he’d seen in her the first night at Massey’s wasn’t there now. In its place was something steadier. “Let me know when you’ve set up your tech person because I really can’t go without my phone right now,” she said. “And if you think of or learn anything knew about the girl.”
“I will.”
She went inside. The door swung once and thumped shut, and the smell of frying fish slipped out and faded.
Buddy stayed on the dock, hands on the rail, watching light scatter across water that refused to hold still. His head felt the same—thoughts breaking apart before they could form anything whole. The name sat heavy against his ribs—Blue Heron—and every time he turned it over, it was still wrong.
Too many blues.
Too fast.
Not a coincidence.
He breathed once, slow, the way he’d learned to do when the floor moved, and he needed it to stop. Then he pushed off the rail, squared his shoulders, and went back inside to lift the next box because he’d promised Fallon he could be part of “we”. He knew it wasn’t what she really wanted, and he was going to have to find a way to either settle the rollercoaster or get off the ride.
Without hurting her.
Chapter Six
