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.
“I got this!” Edie called out before a nearly finished knitted scarf was wrapped around Bubba’s jaws and a tablecloth from the diner was shoved over his eyes.
Only then could Trent look up to see if Skye was safe.
She was going to die. She was sure of it. She could see the headlines now: America’s Sweetheart Eaten by Alligators. The door to the diner burst open and suddenly Trent was there with a man who looked to be as large as the gators surrounding them.
Then a skinny man shot forward,