"I'm not standing here accusing either of you of anything. I'm telling you what brought me to this property,” Dawson said.
"You've got cameras, right?” Keaton asked
“I do." Trent pulled out his phone. Opened the security app. The feed was there—the equipment shed camera, live, showing the empty interior. He scrolled back through the motion log. "App didn't go off. No alerts." He turned the screen toward Keaton. "Someone disabled it. Or knew how to move without triggering it." Which meant someone who'd done homework. Someone who'd been here before or had information about the property layout. The thought settled into him like cold water, spreading through his chest, finding every hollow place it could reach.
He felt a hand close around his elbow.
Dove turned him slightly away from the group, her voice dropping to somewhere between his ear and the morning air. "You need to tell them everything. The Hendersons. The photo. All of it."
He stared into her eyes. Her face was calm in the way it got when she was holding something back, managing the situation from the inside out.
"If you don't control this narrative right now," she said quietly, "someone else will. Someone like Stacey Wilkerson."
Dove was right. She was always right—especially at the moments he least wanted her to be.
He turned back, keeping his eyes level and said what he should have said the moment that envelope fell out of the newspaper. He told them about the past. Not all of it, not every gray edge and justification he'd built around his younger choices, but the relevant bones—the animals he'd let Karl process on his land when he should have turned him away, the permits he'd put at risk, the years he'd spent putting distance between himself and those choices because he'd thought if he walked straight long enough, the crooked parts would no longer matter.
He told them about the Henderson's letter. The photograph. The threat.
Keaton planted his hands on his hips, looked down at the ground, and shook his head. Dawson crossed his arms, widened his stance, and just stared at Trent, gaze burning.
Trent swallowed. Hard. He’d been a cocky kid, and that cockiness had been born out of anger and grief. He’d carried it into adulthood. Fallon had come close to getting him to shake it. And he’d gotten rid of most of it the day he’d told Karl to fuck off.
Only, Trent had always been a loyal soul—still was to a certain extent. And Karl was a manipulator who’d used that to get what he wanted.
“Do you still have the letter from the Hendersons and the photo?” Dawson asked.
Trent nodded, his throat to dry to form words.
“Both are in the house,” Dove said. “I can get them for you, but we’d like copies.”
Dawson was quiet for a moment. He looked at Keaton. Some kind of conversation passed between them. They’d served together in the military and had nearly died together more than once. They had the kind of bond that didn’t require words half the time.
“Alright,” Dawson said finally. "I need you to understand—" He gestured toward the shed. "What's in that shed requires a report. There's no version of this where Keaton and I don't document it."
“Does that mean you’re going to arrest me?” In his youth, Trent hadn’t ever been frightened of spending a night, or two, in the town lock-up. But now? It was utterly terrifying. Not because he was afraid of closed spaces. Or because he couldn’t hack a night in jail. But because he knew deep down he was better than that. And damn it, he didn’t want to disappoint his parents. It didn’t matter that they were no longer among the living, but what they would’ve thought of him and his life choices mattered more now than ever.
“No,” Dawson said quickly and definitely. “We have an eyewitness that someone was on your property this morning. You were shot at. Add in all the other strange happenings and some other matters we’ll get into once my office has looked into a few things, I don’t believe that’s necessary right now.” Dawson raised his hand when Trent opened his mouth. “I don’t want you saying one word about what went on here this morning.” Dawson turned to Keaton. “You good with that?”
“I can delay filing anything for a day. Maybe two.” Keaton nodded. “But if someone called this in, we have to be prepared that someone also tipped off Stacey Wilkerson.”
Trent groaned. “That woman is a menace. And she never checks her sources. Thanks to her, I was a suspect in a murder case.”
"That didn't last very long," Dawson said.
“Not an easy thing to forget,” Trent said softly. “Everything that's happening has to be connected. Karl. The Hendersons. Slade’s death. The limestone mining. The fact that the government wants to dig up my dad's body. Maybe even this Dutton guy. I just don’t know how or why.”
Buddy moved up beside Trent. “I’ve put Cullen on the payroll until we figure this out.”
“I’ve got some old contacts looking into it,” Sterling said. “Background checks on everyone. I'm even going to dive deeper into Dutton to see if his interests in limestone mining are something outside of campaign promises.”
“Someone in law enforcement leaked my dad’s name. Maybe it could've been this Dutton guy.” Trent looked at his boat. The hole in the fiberglass. His father's dock, where strangers had tied off a brand-new skiff and calmly walked onto his property and killed two animals that had done nothing wrong except exist in a place someone wanted to use against him.
“Give us a little time to do our jobs,” Dawson said.
"What about the meeting?" he asked.
“We’ll meet this afternoon,” Keaton said. "After we get a chance to process this shed."
