Page 11 of Secrets in Calusa Cove

“What is she doing here?” someone asked. “Isn’t she the witch?”

“I can’t believe she came back,” another person whispered. “Lock your doors. Hide your guns. No one’s safe.”

She swallowed. Did everyone think she was going to go on some killing rampage?

“Well, well, well.” Silas stood in front of her with a shit-eating grin. “Who let the riffraff back in?”

“Silas,” she managed to croak out with a smile. She held her head high, something her father always told her to do when people looked down at her. She should be used to that in this town.

Victor McCain had always been an “odd duck.” He’d been considered—by most—to be the kind of person one should shy away from. Not because he’d been dangerous but because he’d been different.

When she’d been very young, she’d had no idea what that meant.

By the time she’d turned ten—after her mom passed—she’d understood quite well that her dad was indeed a little left of normal. But he was her dad. He made her pancakes every Saturday and Sunday morning. He took her fishing. He taught her how to shoot a gun. How to skin a snake. How to remove a gator from the yard. More importantly, he’d taught her how to care for herself in all the areas that mattered.

Most of his life lessons might have been considered unconventional, but to her, they’d just been a father and daughter spending time together.

“What are you doing in Calusa Cove?” Silas inched closer. His light-blue eyes bore into her like a cattle prod. He’d aged over the last sixteen years. His hair and beard had turned white. He’d put on a few pounds and looked a little rougher around the edges.

Now, he was a man someone should shy away from. As a small child, she’d cowered around Silas. For some reason, he’d reminded her of a pirate. A scary one. And he’d constantly picked on her father, getting in his face about his run-down old shack and saying it was no place to raise a child. The fact that her old home was now a vegetable and fruit stand both broke her heart and made her insanely happy.

Now, she wasn’t sure she could see that falling-down structure if she had to. There would have been too many memories. Both good and bad.

“I’m here for the same reason everyone else standing in this line is.” She puffed out her chest and held his steely gaze.

As hard as it was to believe, this had once been a man she’d held her faith in. She’d trusted him, even though her father had hated him—and her dad hated no one. But Silas had been the only one in this town who’d believed her story outside of Trip. He’d believed in what she might have seen. He’d asked her questions about it without judging, even offering to go out into the swamps to look at what her father had thought he’d found.

Silas had been kind. Caring. Gentle. Very different from the scary pirate of her childhood.

She’d seen a side of him that had taken her by surprise.

However, the more she’d talked about what she’d seen and what happened, the faster Silas had changed his tune. It hadn’t mattered that he’d been kind about it.

Are you sure you saw something? Or is that what your father told you he saw before he took you out there in the dark of night? You know how your father liked his stories…how his memory played tricks on him. Maybe what you recall is what he filled your brain with. You did have a concussion. It could’ve been an accident. You have to consider that.

Maybe Silas hadn’t believed she’d had anything to do with her father’s disappearance, but it turned out he’d never actually believed her, which had destroyed her faith in Silas.

“You came back to join the hunt for pythons?” Silas looked her up and down as he sucked on a toothpick. He leaned a little closer. “One baby gator doesn’t make you a hunter, little girl.”

“You don’t know a thing about what I’ve been up to for the last sixteen years.”

He arched a brow. “You’re not cut out for this kind of thing. Go back to wherever you came from.” He leaned closer. “You shouldn’t have come back. It’s been a long time, little girl, and the way you left this town only perpetuated the… rumors.”

“People repeating BS lies is what perpetuates them.” She swallowed her pulse. She’d never forget the night Ken had shown up at her doorstep in Virginia. She’d known the town had kept gossiping about what they believed had happened out in the swamp, but she hadn’t expected Silas to be leading the charge.

Nor had she expected Ken to beg her to stop running. To stop hiding. To face everything head-on. To go home and deal with the fallout. But she couldn’t. Ken should have understood that Calusa Cove was too small a town for that. Regardless of the lack of evidence, the people had made up their minds.

She had killed her father.

Ken had told her she was making a mistake. That she’d be running from this for the rest of her life. Then, he’d said the unthinkable. He’d told her those who loved her wondered if she knew something—was keeping secrets. After that statement, she’d told Ken to get out and that she never wanted to see him again. That she’d never loved him.

She’d never heard from Ken again.

Or anyone from Calusa Cove. Not even Baily.

The seed of doubt had been planted, and there was nothing she could do about it.

“Or maybe you make the good people of Calusa Cove nervous. You know what they say about your mama’s people…that they practiced witchcraft.” Silas arched a brow.

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