Flattening herself against the seat, she brought her weapon up. The flat-bottom was broadside to them now, maybe sixty yards out, the shooter repositioning for another attempt. She could see the rifle—semi-automatic, scoped, the kind of hardware a person didn't buy at a sporting goods store.
She fired twice. Controlled. Center mass on the shooter's position. The shots hit the console, and she saw fiberglass explode, but the shooter ducked. She couldn't tell if she'd tagged him.
A third round came back at them. This one hit the fan cage, the metallic clang ringing through the boat like a bell. Trent swore and cranked them left, driving the airboat into a stand of mangroves that swallowed them in green darkness. Branches scraped the hull. Leaves whipped across her face. The fan choked on vegetation and Trent eased off the throttle, letting them drift into cover.
"You hit?" he asked. Breathing hard. Eyes scanning the water through the gaps in the mangroves.
"No. You?"
"No." He wiped spray from his face. "But my boat's got a hole in it."
Through the mangroves, she could hear the flat-bottom's engine—still running, still close, the sound echoing off the water in a way that made distance hard to judge. She held her weapon up, sighting through the branches, waiting.
"They've got real firepower," she said. "That's not a hunting rifle."
"I noticed."
Another burst of engine noise. But it was moving away now—south, deeper into the channel, the sound thinning as distance opened between them. They were running. Not circling back for another pass.
Trent eased the airboat forward, pushing through the mangroves until they had a line of sight down the channel. The flat-bottom was a quarter mile out now, growing smaller, cutting through the water at full speed.
Dove lowered her weapon. "No registration numbers."
“A lot of boats around here that don’t have them.” Trent shielded his eyes against the morning glare, watching the boat shrink into the distance. "That was a fifteen-foot Mako Pro Skiff. Brand new, and it wasn’t the same one from the other night—I’d bet my life on it."
“Any chance that could be Karl’s?”
“He prefers a Carolina Skiff, but anything’s possible.”
They sat in the damaged airboat, drifting in the shallow water at the edge of the mangrove stand, listening to the flat-bottom's engine fade into nothing. The morning was bright and hot and absurdly beautiful—the sky a deep, cloudless blue, the water glittering, a great blue heron standing motionless on the far bank like none of this was its problem.
Dove's hands shook. Not from fear—from the adrenaline dump, the chemical crash that came after the shooting stopped and her body realized it wasn't dead. She'd lived through this cycle enough times to know it would pass. She holstered her weapon and pressed her palms flat against her thighs until the tremor eased.
Trent turned the airboat around and headed back.
The ride to Mallor's Landing was quiet except for the fan and the wind and the ugly sucking sound the hull made where the bullet had punched through. The hole was above the waterline, but barely. Trent kept their speed even and their course straight and didn't say a word the entire way back.
She could feel him thinking. Could feel the anger building in the set of his shoulders and the way he gripped the controls.
They pulled up to the dock and Dove saw two vehicles in the driveway—Buddy's truck and the black SUV that Sterling had backed into the driveway, nose out, ready to move, like he was still running CIA agency operations.
Buddy met them at the waterline, already assessing—the hole in the hull, the fiberglass splinters, the weapons in their hands. He didn't ask if they were okay. He looked at Dove, looked at Trent, and saw that they were standing, and that was enough for now.
“I take it they got away,” Buddy said.
“They were a little more prepared,” Dove said, stepping onto the dock. “Opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. We didn’t feel like dying today.”
"Direction?"
"South through the main channel. They're long gone."
“Maybe, but worth calling our contacts at the sheriff’s office. They can have whoever’s on patrol look out near the main access point.” Buddy turned, lifted his phone to his ear, and informed their contact of the situation.
Sterling appeared from behind Buddy's truck, moving toward them across the bridge with the careful, high-stepping gait of a man who was absolutely certain something with teeth was about to lunge at him from the water. His hand rested on his sidearm and his eyes darted between the moat and the dock and the moat again, like the gators were the bigger threat than whoever had just shot at his colleagues.
Dolly surfaced six feet from the bridge. Opened her mouth wide—that prehistoric display of teeth that said I see you, and I haven't decided if I like you yet—and Sterling stopped dead.
"She's not going to eat you," Dove said.
