His father bowed his head. His shoulders dropped in a way that looked like twenty years of weight shifting, not lifting—just moving to a different place on the same body that had been carrying it all this time. His dad wiped one cheek. Then the other.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
The Everglades breathed around them, patient and dark and completely indifferent to the fact that a dead man was sitting on a porch drinking tequila with the son he'd left behind.
Chapter Twenty-One
Twelve steps from the refrigerator to the hallway door. Six steps from the table to the sink. Five steps from the sink to the edge of the family room.
Dove had counted them enough times to know. But the worst part wasn’t the waiting. Or not knowing whether they were in danger. It was the fact that she couldn’t sit still, and that made her want to snag her Glock and shoot something. She needed to expend some unwanted energy.
"You're making me dizzy," Lach said.
“Do you think I care?” She turned at the hallway and came back. Paused, then made her way to the sink.
Through the kitchen window, the porch light threw a pale circle over father and son with a bottle of tequila between them. Trent's shoulders remained unnaturally still. The back of his father's head reminded her of a maniquin. Both men barely moved—as if their conversation required them to remain motionless.
“What the hell are they talking about out there?” she asked.
“Probably—”
“It was a rhetorical question,” she said to Easton as she pulled out her phone and opened the text string with Buddy, Sterling, and Cullen, read the last three messages.
All clear.
Nothing moving.
Property quiet.
None of that necessarily meant anything good. Quiet was just the the pause before impact. Nothing was moving, just the snake coiled in the grass waiting to strike. And all clear just meant whoever was out there lurking in the shadows hadn’t been seen yet. She knew this drill all too well. Nothing was ever what it seemed.
She shoved the phone back in her pocket and headed toward the family room.
“Could you please just sit down for five minutes?” Easton asked.
She stopped, spun on her heels, and looked across the kitchen at him with what she suspected wasn’t her most charitable expression. "You want to tell me what's actually happening out there? Because from where I'm standing, all I see are two strangers and one of them is a dead man.” She spread her hands. "You'll have to forgive me if I'm not immediately comforted."
Lach and Easton exchanged a look.
“Jack wanted to tell his son,” Lach said. “So, we’re doing this on his terms.”
"He's had twenty years to tell it. I’d say he’s a little too late. Not to mention, my uncle died protecting him, so I’d say I’m owed the courtesy.”
“I know this is hard for you, but let them have their moment,” Easton said. “And then we’ll fill you in on everything.”
“Right, because I’m supposed to trust you.” She turned back to the window. The two figures on the porch hadn't moved. Trent's hand lifted, set his glass down, lifted again. The other man said something she couldn't hear, and Trent went still in that particular way he had when something landed somewhere deep.
Trent needed her. Or maybe she needed him. She had no idea, and it no longer mattered. She started for the door, but before she made it to the threshold, it opened.
Trent filled the frame, the porch light at his back, his expression serious, but there was a softness to it. "Come outside.” His words were soft, gentle, even. But they did nothing to settle the tornado swirling in her gut.
She grabbed her glass off the counter and walked past Trent through the door without a word. Her pulse raced. Her breath was ragged. And her mind filled with a million questions that she had no answers to.
The night air assailed her skin in that heavy, wet way it did on the edge of the Everglades. She crossed to the table, picked up the bottle of tequila, and poured two fingers into her glass with the focus of someone who needed something to do with their hands. Then she dropped into the nearest chair.
Trent pulled his chair across the porch and sat down next to her. She appreciated the gesture.
Jack watched her, and she looked right back at him because she'd stared down worse things than a dead man drinking tequila on a porch surrounded by gators that she now considered her friends.
