The phantom heat of his mouth was still on mine, a ghost of a brand.
My fingers, wrapped tight around the worn leather of the steering wheel, still felt the rough texture of his jaw, the frantic pulse beating in his throat.
The argument, the accusation, the searing collision of our bodies in the woods—it all replayed in a dizzying, relentless loop.
Every time my car hit a pothole on the forgotten parish road, the jolt was a physical echo of him slamming me against the ancient cypress, his fury a mirror of my own.
He’d given me a breadcrumb, a single thread to pull in the tangled mess Hannah had left behind.
“The old Pelican Shipping route,” he’d rasped, his breath hot against my ear. “She was watching it. They don’t use the main waterways anymore. Too obvious.”
Now, I was following it.
Driving deeper into a part of the bayou that had been swallowed whole by time and nature. The asphalt had crumbled to gravel, which in turn was surrendering to encroaching mud and sawgrass.
The air hung thick and wet, smelling of decay and damp earth, the incessant thrum of cicadas a constant, high-strung hum against the silence.
This was Nash’s world, not mine. I felt like an intruder, my sensible sedan a profane intrusion in this wild, untamed place.
Ben’s voice, a calm and reasonable counterpoint in my memory, tried to cut through the noise.
“Stay away from him, Callie. He’s dangerous.” But Nash’s warning was the one that echoed loudest. “Ben’s safety is an illusion.”
The road ended abruptly at a pair of rusted, chain-link gates hanging askew from their hinges. A faded, peeling sign read PELICAN SHIPPING – NO TRESPASSING.
I killed the engine, the sudden quiet pressing in on me. For a long moment, I just sat there, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.
This was stupid. This was reckless.
This was exactly what Hannah would have done.
Slipping my phone from my pocket, I got out of the car. The humidity hit me like a physical blow.
I pushed through the gap in the gates, my boots squelching in the soft mud. The area opened into a clearing dominated by a long, dilapidated loading dock built over a stagnant finger of the swamp.
Everything was rotting. Wooden pallets sagged into piles of splinters, and rusted fifty-five-gallon drums lay on their sides like fallen soldiers, leaking a dark, viscous stain into the ground.
But Nash was right. This place wasn’t entirely abandoned.
I saw them immediately.
Fresh tire tracks, wide and deep, cut through the mud, far too recent to be from the long-dead shipping company. They led from the gate to the edge of the dock and back.
I followed the tracks, raising my phone to document everything.
The deep ruts in the earth. The scuff marks on the weathered planks of the dock where something heavy had been dragged.
I crouched down, snapping a picture of a discarded zip tie, the thick industrial kind. Near it, almost hidden in the grass, were strips of heavy-duty plastic wrap, the kind used to secure cargo on pallets.
A chill, entirely separate from the swamp’s dampness, snaked up my spine.
This was it. This was real. Not just town gossip and old family feuds.
This was a working smuggling route. Hannah had been onto something, and Nash… Nash had been helping her.
The thought was a disorienting lurch in my gut, rearranging everything I thought I knew.
I moved along the dock, the wood groaning under my weight.
I was so focused on the screen of my phone, framing a shot of the far bank where a small boat could easily have moored unseen, that I didn’t hear it at first.
It was a low rumble, a vibration I felt more in the soles of my feet than in my ears. I straightened up, scanning the oppressive wall of cypress and Spanish moss.
Nothing. The cicadas had gone silent.
Then the rumble grew into a definite engine sound. Deep. Throaty. A big engine.
It came from the road I’d just driven down. Headlights cut through the gloom, even in the middle of the day.
A truck. A massive, black pickup, lifted high on oversized tires, with a grille that looked like a snarling maw of chrome.
It moved without haste, turning slowly into the clearing, its presence an immediate and overwhelming threat.
My blood ran cold. I wasn’t supposed to be found.
I ducked behind a stack of rotting pallets, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I was sure the driver could hear it. I fumbled with my phone, trying to silence it, my thumb slipping on the slick screen.
The truck rolled to a stop, idling for a beat, its diesel engine a monstrous heartbeat in the sudden stillness.
It knew I was here. I could feel it.
The windows were tinted, a dark, impenetrable mirror reflecting the swamp back at me.
Then, with a gut-wrenching roar, the engine revved. It wasn’t leaving. It was coming for me.
Panic seized me.
I bolted, scrambling from behind the pallets and sprinting for my car. It was a stupid, instinctual flight. There was nowhere else to go.
The swamp was on three sides, and the truck blocked the only exit.
The truck lunged forward, eating up the ground between us with terrifying speed.
I wrenched my car door open, throwing myself inside, my hands shaking so badly I could barely fit the key in the ignition. The engine coughed to life just as the truck’s massive bumper filled my rearview mirror.
I slammed the car into drive and stomped on the accelerator. The tires spun in the mud, screaming, before finally catching.
My little sedan shot forward, fishtailing wildly as I wrestled with the wheel, trying to get back to the road.
The truck was right behind me, its engine a deafening roar. It filled my entire world.
I glanced in the mirror again and saw it swerve, its huge form looming, aiming not for my bumper, but for my rear quarter panel.
He was going to spin me.
The impact was a violent, metallic scream. My head snapped to the side, striking the window with a sickening crack.
The world became a nauseating, spinning blur of green and brown.
My car left the road, airborne for a split second before it crashed down into the ditch, the front end plowing into the muddy embankment with a final, shuddering crunch.
Silence. A ringing in my ears. The smell of leaking gasoline and swamp water.
Pain flared in my ribs, a sharp, stabbing breathlessness. I tried to move, but my seatbelt had locked tight, pinning me to the seat.
The driver’s side door was crumpled inwards, trapping my leg. Glass glittered across the dashboard like deadly confetti.
Through the spiderweb cracks in the windshield, I saw the black truck pause on the road above, a predator watching its downed prey.
It sat there for an eternity, then, with an indifferent puff of black exhaust, it reversed and drove away, its rumble fading back into the swamp’s oppressive quiet.
They weren’t going to kill me. Not here. They were just sending a message.
Tears of terror and pain blurred my vision.
I was trapped. Hurt. Alone.
I fumbled for my phone on the passenger seat, but my fingers were clumsy, shaking. A sob tore from my throat, raw and ragged.
A shadow fell over the shattered driver’s side window.
My head snapped up, a fresh wave of adrenaline and fear jolting through me. It was him. He’d come back.
But it wasn’t the truck driver. It was Nash.
His face was a mask of primal fury, his eyes blazing with an intensity that burned away everything else. He wasn’t looking at me with pity or concern.
He was looking at me with a rage so profound it seemed to shake the very air around us.
“Nash…” My voice was a broken whisper.
He didn’t speak. He simply acted.
His hand shot through the broken window and grabbed the top of the crumpled door frame. With a guttural roar, he wrenched it, muscles cording in his arms and neck.
Metal groaned, protested, and then tore with a final, agonized shriek as he ripped the door open just enough to get to me.
He leaned in, the cramped space of the car suddenly filled with his scent—pine and sweat and the wild, clean smell of the swamp.
He produced a knife from his belt and in one fluid motion, sliced through my jammed seatbelt. The strap fell away, and I slumped forward, groaning as my ribs screamed in protest.
“Don’t move,” he commanded, his voice a low growl.
His hands were on me then, surprisingly gentle as they moved over my arms, my torso, checking for injuries. His touch was electric, a stark contrast to the violence of the last few minutes.
When his fingers brushed the back of my head and came away slick with blood, his jaw tightened so hard a muscle jumped.
“How did you…?” I started, my mind reeling.
“No time,” he cut me off, his voice raw. “They’ll circle back. Or they’ll send someone else.”
Before I could process his words, he was unbuckling my boots, pulling them from my feet. Then he leaned in close, his arms sliding under my back and beneath my knees. “Hold on.”
He lifted me from the wreckage as if I weighed nothing, his strength a staggering, terrifying comfort. I cried out as the movement jarred my ribs, burying my face instinctively in the curve of his neck.
He held me tighter, his body a shield against the world. He didn’t carry me toward the road.
He turned and strode directly into the swamp, away from anything civilized.
“Where are you taking me?” I gasped, clutching his shirt. “We have to call Ben. The hospital…”
“No cops. No hospital,” he bit out, his pace never slowing as he navigated the treacherous terrain with an unnerving familiarity.
“The law in this town has watchful eyes and loose lips. You go to them, the Devereauxs will know you survived before the doctor even stitches you up. They’ll finish the job.”
He was moving deeper into the bayou, into a world of shadow and water and secrets.
The cypress trees closed in around us, their mossy branches blocking out the sky, swallowing the road and the wrecked car and the entire world I knew.
There was only the sound of his steady footsteps sloshing through the water, the pounding of his heart against my ear, and the terrifying, absolute certainty that I had just been saved by the most dangerous man I had ever met.