Trent exhaled. His mind and body finally registered the kind of danger he’d been in, like it always did after he’d encountered something that wasn’t considered a routine pithing or gator confrontation. His pulse hitched. His breath caught in his throat. His hands even trembled. He shook them and blew out a long breath.
He lifted his leg, which throbbed where the python had squeezed, a dull ache that would probably turn into a spectacular bruise by afternoon. He rolled his foot, giving it a good stretch before putting it back on solid ground. His shoulder hurt from the fall.
He looked up at the porch.
Dove stood behind the screen door, the Glock still in her hand, still at her side, her face pale but composed. The morning light caught her blond hair, turning it almost white, and for a second she looked less like a woman and more like a ghost—something caught between this world and the next, not quite committed to either.
"You can come down now," he called.
"No, thank you. I’m good right here.”
He laughed. He couldn't help it. After everything—the phone call, the news about Slade, the tears on the bedroom floor, a fifteen-foot python trying to make a meal of his gator and squeezing his leg—the woman who could drop a target at a thousand yards was standing on his porch refusing to come down because there might be reptiles.
"It's not funny," Dove said. But there was something in her voice. Not humor, exactly. More like the echo of humor. The memory of what laughing felt like, preserved somewhere beneath all the grief and shock and exhaustion.
"It's a little funny."
"You almost died."
"I did not almost die."
"The snake was wrapped around your leg,” she said.
"I had it under control."
"You were on the ground."
"Temporarily. Part of the process."
She stared at him through the screen, her expression balanced and unreadable. “I don’t know if I want to strangle you or kiss you.”
“I’d prefer the kiss, and I’ll be up in a second to get it.” He figured that was about right for the two of them on any given day. He turned back to the dead python, pulling a breath of thick morning air into his lungs, tasting the musk and blood and the green of the Everglades waking up around him. The bruise on his leg pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Normal morning at Mallor's Landing. Just another…shit.
Slight movement near the tree line, low to the ground, where the tall grass met the fence.
His eyes narrowed, tracking the motion. A ripple through the grass. Then another. Different direction. Then a third, further down the fence, sliding along the base of a cypress trunk.
More snakes.
Not as big as the one he'd just killed. Eight, maybe ten feet. But unmistakable—that distinctive lateral undulation, the mottled pattern catching the early light as they moved through the undergrowth. He counted them, his jaw tightening with each one.
One near the fence post. Another along the drainage ditch. A third coiled at the base of the equipment shed. A fourth disappeared into the grass near the south bank.
Four. At least four.
His blood went cold.
He hadn't seen a python on his property in years. He was constantly looking for them. Looking for nests nearby. Clearing them out when he found them. But the last time he saw one slithering on his land was about six years ago.
Something was wrong for this many to be gathering.
He collected the bolt stunner, the pithing tool, and the air gun, leaving the dead python where it lay. He’d feed it to the gators later once things settled down. He walked back toward the porch with a calm he didn't entirely feel, his gaze scanning the perimeter, counting threats, calculating distances between the snakes and the moat.
"We've got a problem," he said, setting the tools on the porch step.
Dove's eyes sharpened. “Worse than the one you just handled?”
"More pythons. At least four that I can see. Maybe more I can't." He ran a hand through his hair. "I need to call Fish and Wildlife. Actually, I'll call Fallon directly, and she’ll call her boss, Keaton Cole. I can't deal with this many on my own, and if even one of them gets into the moat..." He shook his head. "A python that size could easily take one of my smaller gators. And if they get into the breeding area, it'll be a massacre. But the bigger gators could easily deal with the pythons, but it would be an all-out battlefield and a messy one.”
