"I can rent a car when we get there," she continued. "You've got enough on your plate between the pythons, the hearing, and?—"
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
"I'm serious. I know you need to get back. Not to mention now more than ever, I think you need to talk to Buddy and Dawson about what the Hendersons are holding over your head.”
“I don’t disagree with you about the latter.” He reached across the cab and took her hand. His palm was rough. Calloused from years of handling animals and tools and everything this land demanded of a man who'd chosen to live on the edge of it. He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips against her knuckles. Warm. Firm. The kind of kiss that wasn't about romance but about something sturdier. “But for now, I’m not going anywhere," he said. "We check your uncle's place, we see what we see, and we head back. It's not that far. One thing at a time.”
"The hearing?—"
"Isn't until tomorrow night. We have time." He set her hand down on the console but didn't let go. His thumb traced a slow circle on the inside of her wrist, right over the pulse point, and she wondered if he could feel how fast her heart was beating. How hard the rage pushed against the walls she'd built around it.
She turned back to the window and watched the landscape change. The Everglades gave way to suburbs, the sawgrass replaced by strip malls, gas stations, and housing developments that all looked the same—stucco boxes in shades of beige and salmon, red-tile roofs baking under a sun that didn't care about grief or murder or the fact that the world was supposed to stop when someone she loved was taken from it.
The world never stopped. That was one of the first things the Army had taught her. People died, and the world kept spinning. The sun kept rising, and somewhere, someone was eating breakfast and laughing at something stupid on their phone while her whole life burned down around her.
Slade's condo was in a quiet development off Federal Highway—a two-story townhouse with a small yard and a one-car garage, the kind of place a single man with a government salary and simple tastes would choose. Nothing flashy. Nothing drew attention. He'd always been like that. Understated. Practical. A man who’d kept his head down and his eyes open and survived thirty years in federal law enforcement by never making himself a target.
Until someone made him one anyway.
Trent pulled into the driveway and killed the engine.
The front entrance was visible from the driveway—a simple wooden door, painted dark blue, with a brass knocker shaped like an anchor that Slade had thought was hilarious for reasons he'd never adequately explained.
“Shit. The door’s ajar,” she said softly.
Not open, not closed. Just slightly off—a half-inch gap between the door and the frame that might have looked like carelessness to someone who didn't know Aaron Slade.
The uncle she knew locked every door, checked every window, and set the alarm before he left the house to check the mail. Thirty years of protecting people who were being hunted had made security reflexive—something his body did without his brain having to give the order, the same way Dove's body still cleared corners and checked sight lines every time she walked into a room.
Trent lifted his center console and pulled out his Glock.
She lifted hers from its ankle holster and shifted. The grief and the rage and the exhaustion—all of it got shoved into a compartment and sealed shut. What replaced it was clean. Sharp. The focus of a woman who'd spent years looking through a scope at a world reduced to distances and angles.
"Stay behind me," she said, pulling her own weapon from the holster at her hip. "Do exactly what I say. Clear?"
“Would it be in poor taste to say you talking to me like that turns me on?”
“Such a pig.”
“Again, I'm a man.” But Trent didn’t argue. Didn't posture. Didn't remind her that he was capable and armed and had been handling dangerous situations since before she'd finished basic training. He just fell in behind her, and she loved him a little for that. For knowing when to lead and when to follow. For understanding that this was her world, the same way the moat and the gators and the pythons were his.
They moved to the door. Weapon up, Dove pressed her back against the wall beside the frame and nudged open the door with her boot. The door swung inward on silent hinges. The gap between door and frame widened, revealing a sliver of hallway, then a wall, then—destruction.
Sucking in a deep, controlled breath, she ignored her racing pulse. She entered fast, weapon sweeping left, right, up. Trent shadowed her, his footsteps light for a man his size. They began to move through the house the way she'd been trained to clear a structure—room by room, corner by corner, each space checked and declared before moving to the next.
Living room. Clear. But the couch had been flipped onto its back, cushions slashed, stuffing spilling across the floor like foam guts. The coffee table was upside down, and one leg snapped off. Books were pulled from the shelves and scattered—a lamp shattered on the hardwood.
Kitchen. Clear. Drawers were yanked out and dumped. Canisters of flour and sugar swept off the counter and cracked open on the tile. The contents of the refrigerator were untouched—whoever had done this wasn't looking for anything that would be hidden in a jar of pickles.
Guest bedroom. Clear. Mattress pulled off the frame, box spring sliced open. Closet emptied, clothes in a heap.
Bathroom. Clear. Medicine cabinet open, contents on the floor, but nothing taken, as far as she could tell.
Master bedroom. Clear. Same treatment—mattress gutted, closet ransacked, dresser drawers turned out.
They reached the office last. The door was open, and Dove stopped through the doorway, her weapon lowering as the tactical part of her brain yielded to the investigative part.
The room looked like a paper bomb had gone off. File cabinet drawers pulled out and upended, their contents scattered across every surface. Manila folders everywhere—on the desk, the floor, the chair, draped over the computer monitor like tan flags of surrender. Papers fanned out in overlapping layers so thick you couldn't see the carpet beneath them.
