The coffee in the thick ceramic mug was a cold, black mirror reflecting the tired fluorescent lights of the Bayou Belle Diner.
Ben stared into it, seeing not his own reflection but the splintered glass of Callie’s windshield and the deep, ugly gash of tire tracks tearing through the muddy shoulder of the old shipping route.
He’d sent her there. He’d given her the map, pointed her in the direction of the monster, and told her to be careful, as if the words were some kind of talisman against a two-ton truck with a ghost at the wheel.
Guilt was a physical thing, a hot coil tightening in his gut.
He hadn’t heard from her in hours. His calls went straight to a dead-end voicemail.
He’d driven the route himself an hour ago, heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs, but had found nothing.
No car, no wreckage, no Callie. Just the damning tracks leading into the dense, grasping maw of the swamp. It was as if the earth had swallowed her whole.
“You look like you’re trying to solve the world’s problems with that spoon, Sheriff.”
The voice was low and calm, with a faint, unplaceable accent that cut through the diner’s low hum. Ben looked up.
Dr. Lena Petrova stood by his booth, holding her own mug. The town’s new veterinarian.
She’d been in Cypress Creek for three months, a quiet enigma with sharp, intelligent eyes and an air of competence that seemed utterly out of place in a town that preferred its secrets buried deep.
“Just thinking,” he grunted, dropping the spoon with a clatter.
“Mind if I join you in your thinking?” She gestured to the worn vinyl seat opposite him. “The silence in my new place is… loud.”
Ben gave a curt nod, too exhausted to be polite or suspicious. She slid into the booth, her movements efficient and graceful.
She didn’t press him, just sipped her coffee, her gaze drifting around the near-empty diner. It was an outsider’s gaze—curious, analytical, missing the veil of history that colored the way everyone else saw this place.
To him, the diner was a map of his life: the booth in the corner where he’d had his first date, the counter where his father used to drink coffee with the old sheriff’s deputies, the faded patch on the wall where a dartboard used to hang.
To her, it was just a room.
“This town,” she said finally, her voice soft.
“It has a fever. I see it in the people. I see it in the animals they bring me—neglected, scared. There’s a sickness here that has nothing to do with parasites or viruses.”
Ben’s jaw tightened. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“No,” she agreed, her eyes meeting his. They were a startling shade of gray, like a stormy sky.
“But I know a man carrying a burden too heavy for one person when I see one. Whatever happened out there tonight, Sheriff, it’s eating you alive.”
The title felt like a mockery. Sheriff. He was supposed to protect people.
Instead, he’d fed Callie to the wolves. “I sent her out there,” he bit out, the words tasting like ash.
“An investigative journalist from New Orleans. She’s looking into a ten-year-old case. I gave her the damn location.”
“And you think you held the wheel of the truck that ran her down?” Lena’s question was sharp, precise, like a scalpel.
Ben flinched. “It’s my job to know the dangers. To anticipate them. I underestimated what they’re capable of.”
“Or maybe,” she said, leaning forward slightly, her quiet intensity a strange sort of comfort, “you’re just one man trying to drain a swamp with a teaspoon. You can’t carry the guilt for every drop of poison in the water, Ben.”
He looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time. She saw him.
Not the uniform, not the Sterling name that was practically carved into the town charter, but the man underneath, drowning.
And for a bleak, terrifying moment, he wanted to tell her everything.
***
The smell of antiseptic and woodsmoke filled the small cabin. Callie hissed as Nash dabbed a soaked cotton ball against the gash on her temple.
His touch was surprisingly gentle, a stark contrast to the primal force that had ripped her from the twisted metal of her car.
His large, calloused hands, which she’d imagined could snap a branch in two without effort, moved with a surgeon’s focus.
“Hold still,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the floorboards.
She was propped up on a worn sofa, a rough wool blanket draped over her shivering body. The cabin was a single room, spartan and ruthlessly clean.
A stone fireplace crackled in the corner, casting dancing shadows on the rough-hewn walls and on the planes of Nash’s face.
In the flickering firelight, the scars that crisscrossed his features seemed deeper, the shadows in his eyes more profound.
He’d carried her through the swamp like she weighed nothing, his boots sinking into the mud with a grim determination. He hadn’t spoken, his focus absolute, his body a shield against the oppressive darkness.
He called this place a refuge from “watchful eyes,” and she understood now. Out here, there was no law but the swamp’s, and his.
He finished cleaning the cut and began applying a butterfly bandage with painstaking care. His knuckles brushed her cheek, and a jolt, sharp and unwelcome, shot through her.
It wasn’t fear. It was something else, something terrifyingly alive that had no place in the middle of her own wreckage.
She was hyper-aware of him—the heat radiating from his body, the scent of rain and damp earth clinging to him, the sheer, intimidating breadth of his shoulders as he leaned over her.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
He grunted in response, his eyes never leaving his work. “They won’t find you here. Or the car. The swamp swallows things. They’ll think you just ran.”
“They tried to kill me, Nash.” The reality of it settled in her bones, a cold, heavy dread.
“I know.” He finally met her gaze, and the raw fury in his eyes stole her breath. It wasn’t the wild anger of a cornered animal; it was the cold, patient rage of a hunter.
“They did the same to her. Not with a truck. With whispers. With threats. They bled her dry long before she ever…” He trailed off, his jaw working.
“Hannah,” Callie said softly. It wasn’t a question.
He pulled back, his work finished, and moved to stoke the fire. He was all sharp angles and coiled tension, a man perpetually braced for a fight.
“Why are you doing this?” Callie asked, pushing herself up on her elbows. The movement sent a throb of pain through her ribs. “Risking everything for her story? For me?”
He didn’t turn around. He just stared into the flames, the poker held tight in his fist. “Because I made a promise. And because I failed her once. I won’t do it again.”
“You loved her,” Callie stated, the realization hitting her with the force of a physical blow.
It explained everything. The feral grief, the obsessive quest for a justice the town had denied, the fortress he’d built around himself.
He finally turned, his face a mask of old, unforgiving pain.
“I did more than love her. She was… the only part of this damned place that ever felt like home. She saw through the mud and the name. She just saw me.”
He walked to a small, hand-carved chest in the corner and lifted the lid. He pulled out a faded photograph, handling it with a reverence that made Callie’s throat ache.
He brought it over, not to her, but just held it, his thumb stroking the worn edge.
“I begged her to leave with me,” he said, his voice raw, stripped of all its earlier menace.
“The week before she died. I had a little money saved. Enough to get us started somewhere else. Anywhere else. A place where the name Devereaux didn’t own the air we breathed.”
He looked at Callie, his eyes hollowed out by a decade of regret.
“She was scared. They had their hooks in her family. She said she couldn’t run. She said she had to fight them from the inside. She was so damn brave.”
A bitter, broken sound escaped his throat. It wasn’t a laugh; it was the sound of a heart breaking all over again.
“My biggest regret,” he confessed, the words torn from him, “isn’t that I couldn’t save her. It’s that I didn’t just throw her over my shoulder and drag her out of this town, kicking and screaming if I had to. I let her stay. I let her fight alone. And they killed her for it.”
He placed the photograph on the small table beside Callie. It was a picture of a younger Nash, his face less scarred, his arm wrapped around a vibrant, laughing Hannah.
They were on the edge of the bayou, the sun in their eyes, and they looked… invincible. Happy.
Callie looked from the ghost in the photograph to the haunted man standing before her.
In that moment, the terrifying myth of Nash Devereaux, the swamp-dwelling monster, crumbled into dust. She saw only the man, gutted by grief and shackled by regret.
His darkness wasn’t malice; it was a black hole of loss, an agony so profound it had reshaped him into this creature of vengeance and shadow.
A profound, aching connection bloomed in her chest. She understood him.
Not the details, not the history, but the core of him. The part that had been shattered and was now fueled by a desperate, all-consuming need to make it right.
Without thinking, she reached out, her fingers closing over his wrist. His skin was warm, his pulse a steady, powerful beat beneath her touch.
He flinched but didn’t pull away. His gaze dropped to her hand, then rose to meet hers.
The space between them crackled, charged not with fear or violence, but with a sudden, searing understanding.
For the first time since the truck’s headlights had blinded her, Callie felt a flicker of something other than terror. It felt, impossibly, like hope.