Dove answered on the second ring. "Trent? What?—"
“How far away are you?” he asked, cutting her off.
“Truthfully, not far.”
“ETA?”
"Six minutes from the gate. Why?”
"Someone's on my property." He kept his voice low, barely above a whisper. “Turn your lights off when you come down the road to my house."
“Pedal to the metal.”
He almost smiled. "Gate's open. I'm on foot, east side, near the cypress stand. Find me before you do anything stupid."
"That's my line."
He hung up.
Six minutes. Better than eighteen. But still too long to just wait. And then there was the question of why she was so close with the only answer being that she was on her way to see him. That meant she was breaking their agreement of keeping things in the friend zone.
Again.
He’d deal with that later.
Trent shifted. He'd been walking this property since he could walk at all. Every tree, every dip, every patch of soft ground that would suck at your boots—he knew them all. He circled wide, staying in the shadow of the cypress stand that bordered the eastern edge of the moat, keeping the figures in sight.
They'd stopped near the old dock, the one his father had built for fishing and his mother had used for watching sunsets. The one that Trent couldn't take down or replace, even though he'd built a new one last year.
One of the intruders crouched at the water's edge while the other stood watch, flashlight beam scanning in regular sweeps.
If it was fucking Karl, Trent might toss him in the moat and let him fend off the gators one by one.
Trent found a position behind a thick cypress trunk and settled in to watch.
The figures were talking, voices too low to make out words. The one crouching had something in his hands—a bag, but Trent couldn’t be sure. It looked like he was reaching his hand into the bag every so often and bending over, but again, Trent couldn’t tell. Maybe they were leaving gator food to keep them occupied, which was the most logical explanation—but they were going about it all wrong.
Four minutes passed. Maybe five.
Then he heard it—the soft squish of footsteps in the wet ground approaching from behind. Moving carefully, but not carefully enough.
Trent didn't turn. "You walk like a city girl, not a combat sniper."
"Yeah, well, when I don't want to get shot by a trigger-happy snake wrangler, I announce myself." Dove materialized out of the darkness beside him, dropping to one knee. Her weapon already drawn. "Jesus, why is the air always so thick out here? Smells like a monkey's ass."
"It's called nature. You've spent too many nights in the jungle not to know the difference."
"Not sure what's worse. That or dry fucking desert." She peered around the trunk, assessing. "Two of them?"
"That I've seen."
"Armed?"
"Unknown. They haven't drawn on the gators yet, so either they're stupid or they're packing something that makes them confident. One of them is carrying something. It could be gator food, which is really dumb because that could get them killed if they don't know what they're doing.”
"I'm surprised you haven't lost a limb," Dove said softly. "Plan?"
"Dawson's maybe twelve minutes out. We wait, let him come in from the road, box them against the water."
