He brought the image closer. A fourth skin hung from the ceiling hook. And in the background, barely visible but unmistakable, Trent stood with his back to the camera, skinning knife in hand.
“Fuck.” He shoved back from the chair. It scraped across the linoleum and hit the counter. He was on his feet, pacing, hands locked behind his head, chest heaving. "Son of a bitch." He kicked the chair.
"What is it?"
He grabbed the newspaper and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and exploded into loose pages that floated to the floor.
Dove didn't flinch. She picked up the letter. The photograph. Studied both.
He should have fucking known that a few bad decisions would come back to haunt him. Fallon warned him. Baily had. too. Hell, Silas smacked him on the backside of his head more than once, all while giving him a lecture on what it would do to his mama.
"Is this real?" Dove asked.
He braced both hands on the counter, head down, pulling air into lungs that didn't want it.
His mother's voice echoed in his brain. Tell the truth. Even when it's ugly. Especially when it's ugly.
“Yes and no,” he said. "I did some shit when I was younger that I'm not proud of. Mostly, I let people do things, and I turned a blind eye.” He turned and looked at her. “If that gets out, I could lose my permits. I could lose everything and Fallon—she’d fucking kill me.”
“She knows about this?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s part of why she and I fought like cats and dogs while we were together and all through our friendship. She could tolerate some of the shady things I did because I mostly did good things for the Glades, but she couldn’t understand why I allowed Karl to do things I knew were illegal, and if he got caught, it wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t me doing it—I’d lose everything.”
Dove set the photo down. “So, Karl’s behind this?”
“It's always fucking Karl. And it's not the first time he's tried to hold it over my head.” A few years ago, when Dawson had brought Trent in for questioning during the Ring Finger murder case, Dawson warned him about covering for assholes like Karl, but Trent hadn’t listened. “Karl is the only person who knows about this, and I allowed him to use my land to do it himself. But Karl doesn’t do favors. He doesn’t lift a finger unless there’s something in it for him. So I have to ask, what are the Hendersons offering that made it worth handing over ammunition against the one person who could also prove that Karl had his own skeletons he wanted to keep buried?”
“You’ve got shit on Karl?”
“Nothing that I can prove, but I know some of the things he’s done. Only that's a two-way street, I don't think either one of us wants that shit storm.”
“This is blackmail and harassment. You need to take this to Dawson.” Dove inched closer, but Trent raised his hands.
“I can’t. Seriously, if I do that, he’s gonna have to call Keaton at Fish and Wildlife, and then there will be an investigation, and Mallor’s Landing will shut down. I can’t afford for that to happen. Not now.”
“You can’t let this go.”
“I don’t plan on it.” He let out a long breath. He just wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but selling to the Hendersons wasn’t the answer.
Chapter Eight
Dove pulled into the crushed shell parking lot at Mitchell's Marina and killed the engine of her truck. She sat there for a long moment, staring out at the sun beating down on the murky water, letting the salt breeze wash through the open window and carry away the stale recycled air from the Aegis office that still clung to her skin like a second shirt.
Eight hours of research. Eight hours staring at screens until her eyes felt like they'd been rolled in sand. Being still had never been a problem. She could lie on her belly, looking through a scope, doing overwatch all damn day. But going down the Google rabbit hole? That was pure hell. But it was what she signed up for, and it was better than some of the other jobs she could’ve taken when she’d left the military.
She'd started her morning looking into the Hendersons. Looking into employment records. Investments. Anything on the surface that might ping them as they pretended to be nice in the beginning.
Beau Henderson was a semi-retired real estate investor from Naples with a portfolio of vacation rentals scattered across Southwest Florida. His business history was clean—no lawsuits, no complaints with the Better Business Bureau, no disgruntled former partners crawling out of the woodwork to air grievances. He paid his taxes on time, donated to the local Rotary Club, and had a handicap of twelve at the Naples Grande Golf Club.
What did stick out was that Beau was supporting Garrett Dutton’s campaign. There was nothing about how Beau felt about mining, just a quiet nod in the politician’s direction. That didn’t necessarily mean a damn thing. Lots of people supported Dutton. A few of them resided in Calusa Cove. Didn’t mean they wanted to mess with Trent and Mallor’s Landing.
Emma Henderson was a former interior designer who now filled her days with charity boards, garden clubs, and a social calendar that required a personal assistant to manage. She'd chaired the Naples Winter Wine Festival's silent auction three years running and had been photographed at enough galas to wallpaper a small mansion.
Their financials were solid—wealthy in an understated way. No debt. No liens. No red flags.
On paper, they were exactly what they claimed to be. A well-off couple in their early fifties looking for a unique property in a charming small town where they could spend their golden years pretending to be country folk while still having access to a decent wine list.
But Mallor’s Landing wasn’t just any piece of property. It was a commercial alligator farm and a natural habitat. What on earth would they want with a business like that? It didn’t make sense.
