“Definitely a trustworthy hottie. The kind you take home and introduce to your mama and use to piss off your snooty cousin.”
Skye might have snorted as they broke out into belly laughs. “That says a lot since you haven’t brought a man home since our junior year of college.”
“Don’t remind me. I should have known better than to bring a track athlete home. He could run away too fast.”
Skye shook her head as they remembered the day news got out that Karri brought home a boyfriend. Every person on the reservation within three miles had come to check him out. Which was really just a kind way of saying they’d tried to determine if he was good enough for Karri. They believed the right man wouldn’t run. This one had run—fast.
This was how the next four hours passed. They talked, told stories, and Skye listened to Karri lust after Agent Hottie.
It had been a couple of days since Skye’s photos leaked, so Trent thought it would be safe to go out this morning without hearing about them. He was wrong. Trent’s face was buried in his sketchbook as he listened to the knitting club at the table next to him at the Stomping Grounds Diner. He’d thought he’d slipped in late enough to miss the morning rush, but early enough to still grab breakfast. Apparently everyone in town had the same idea.
The knitting club was to his right. Gator and his crew were to his left. Behind him were Maggie and Gage Bell, having been run out of their house as it was fully occupied for some fall festival in Charleston. Their parents ran a bed and breakfast in their old family estate.
“Did you see those pictures of Skye Jessamine?” one of the knitters clucked with disapproval.
Edie Green Wecker, a childhood friend of the family who had moved back to Shadows Landing a couple of years ago after her Navy Seal husband had been killed, shook her head. “It’s horrible. Someone invaded that poor woman’s privacy and then probably sold the photos to every news source they could. How would you like it if someone took a picture of you in the shower and then spread it across the world?”
Edie cast him a quick glance, knowing Trent was so over this discussion. He couldn’t look on social media. He couldn’t turn on the television. He couldn’t go anywhere without talk of Skye, and each time his heart broke for her. He might be mad she’d had her lackey cast him off, but that didn’t mean she deserved this.
Skeeter leaned over to see around Trent and talk to the knitting club. “I swear I see her everywhere.”
The knitting club agreed and broke out into a debate with Skeeter, Turtle, and Gator about Skye and her relationship with Mason Hemming.
Edie stood up and quietly left the table to join Trent. “I assume you know everything?” Trent asked as he dropped his voice. People in town knew he’d built Skye’s table, but they didn’t know about her assistant flying out here and about the night they shared. Nondisclosure be damned, his family knew something personal had happened, he’d had to sign the NDA, and now Skye was texting him.
“I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. Now mine was taken from me, but yours is right there—”
“Right there if I just reach out and talk to her,” Trent said with a sigh. How many times did he have to hear it? Maybe it was finally time to suck it up and talk to her.
Edie shot from her chair and pointed out the window. “No, right there!”
“I’m exhausted,” Karri groaned as she parked the car a block from Main Street in Shadows Landing. “There’s this great diner up here. Let’s get something to eat, clean up a little, and then find Trent.”
Skye shoved the door open and grabbed her purse. “Great idea. I can’t see him like this. We’ve been in the car thirty-seven hours out of the past forty-eight. He’d run screaming for the hills.” Skye laced her hands above her head and stretched as they began walking toward Main Street. At least no one would recognize her looking like a travel weary hot mess.
“I told you the town was cute,” Karri said with a smile and suddenly looking even more relaxed than Skye had seen her recently. That was when reality hit Skye hard. Karri was her sister. Her ride and die, help you bury the body and give you an alibi bestie. It was her fault that Karri wasn’t relaxed and happy. She would do something about it. Skye didn’t know what, but she’d figure it out. Karri stopped walking and cocked her head. “Do you hear that chirping sound?”
Skye paused and listened. “It’s coming from up ahead. Is it a baby bird?”
Karri listened again. “Not one I’ve ever heard. It also isn’t coming from a tree. Maybe it fell out of the nest.”
Skye and Karri stepped forward as they scanned the palmetto-lined street. They’d just passed a nature area and were approaching the back of what looked like a government building when they heard something else.
“Now I hear something like that T-Rex in Jurassic Park.”
“Lots of guttural vibrato.” Skye paused and listened. “I still hear the chirping and now this rumbling.” Skye turned slowly as she scanned the area and froze. A giant alligator was moving toward them. It was clear it had come from the swamp area behind the town and was now sprinting across the grass behind Main Street buildings.
“Karri, do you run when an alligator is chasing you or play dead?” Skye asked in growing horror as she watched the gator advance steadily toward them.
“I know you’re not supposed to run with bears, right? Why?” Skye didn’t have to tell her as Karri turned as saw the gator.
“Screw it, we’re running!” Skye screamed as she grabbed Karri’s hand and sprinted for the diner.
“Help!” Karri yelled over and over as Skye kept her eyes on the large windows of the diner. She saw faces in them as they turned at the commotion. Someone could open the door, and then they’d fly through it and be safe.
An even larger and even louder alligator hissed as it clambered into the middle of Main Street between them and the diner, which changed everything.
“We’re surrounded,” Karri gasped as they slid to a stop and grabbed onto each other.
“Gator!” Trent yelled as he ran out of the diner door so fast Bubba snapped at him in surprise.
Gator, Turtle, and Skeeter were by his side in a second.
“This isn’t good,” Gator muttered. “That chirping is Big Bertha’s baby, and you can see her coming to the rescue. In fact, every gator around here will come at that sound, just like Bubba did. “Skeeter, you grab the ladies. Turtle, I need you to help me tackle Bertha. Trent, do you think you can get Bubba?”
“Yup,” Trent said with his heart in his throat. He could catch a gator with the best of them. What worried him was how close Bertha was to Skye and Karri.
“Go!” Gator yelled.
Skeeter took off like a shot. The distraction of him racing by Bubba made Bubba take his eyes off Trent just long enough and that’s when he jumped. Karri and Skye screamed but Trent couldn’t take his eyes off the ten foot, thousand pound gator underneath him. Bubba was feeling ornery today for sure. His tail whipped back and forth as Trent struggled to trap his head so that Bubba’s jaws wouldn’t take him out.
“We gotcha!” Trent heard a moment before Granger Fox, one of Trent’s best friends and the town’s sheriff, leapt on Bubba’s back. “Get his tail, Kord!” he ordered his deputy.