Chapter 22: The Ocala Woods

The iron scent of the shovel’s blade was the only thing keeping David from being sick as he dragged it through the Florida scrub. It wasn't just the humidity, which clung to his skin like a wet wool blanket, or the mosquitoes that had begun to feast on the salt behind his ears. It was the weight of the trunk in the bed of the truck, the silence of the woods, and the terrifying realization that he was no longer the kind of man who called the police when things went wrong.

He stopped thirty yards into the tree line, where the pines crowded close together and the saw palmettos grew thick enough to hide a wound in the earth. He planted the shovel. The ground was sandy, deceptive. It looked soft on the surface, but a few inches down, the roots of the live oaks braided together into a subterranean cage. 

David didn't start digging immediately. He leaned on the handle, his chest heaving, and looked back toward the rusted tailgate of his Ford F-150. The headlights were off, but the moon caught the chrome of the bumper, reflecting a pale, sickly light into the darkness. 

*Just a hole,* he told himself. *It’s just a relocation of soil.*

But every time he closed his eyes, he saw Miller’s face—those wide, unblinking eyes that seemed to demand an explanation David didn't have. He hadn't meant for it to go this far. Cypres Bend was supposed to be a fresh start, a place where local politics were fought over zoning permits and noise complaints, not blood and silence. 

He drove the shovel down. The *snick* of the blade cutting through a palmetto root echoed too loudly in the quiet. He paused, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Nothing moved. A cicada started up its shrill, electric whine in a nearby cypress, joined soon by a dozen others until the air vibrated with the sound. 

He dug. 

He dug until the sweat pooled in the small of his back and his dress shirt—the one Sarah had bought him for the fundraiser—was ruined, stuck to his skin with grit and salt. He dug until his palms blistered and the blisters popped, the raw skin stinging against the wooden handle. He focused on the mechanics: lift, turn, dump. Lift, turn, dump. He needed the hole deep. Deep enough to swallow the secrets of the last forty-eight hours. Deep enough that the shifting sands of Ocala would never surrender what he was about to put in it.

"You’re overthinking the angle," a voice said.

David jerked upright, the shovel slipping from his slick hands. He spun around, his boots sliding in the loose dirt. 

Elias was leaning against a pine tree ten feet away. He hadn't made a sound. He was dressed in his usual dark work clothes, looking entirely unaffected by the heat. He wasn't sweating. He wasn't breathing hard. He just looked... bored.

"Don't do that," David hissed, his voice cracking. "God, Elias. You nearly killed me."

"If I wanted you dead, David, you wouldn't have heard me speak." Elias stepped forward, the shadows peeling off him like old skin. He looked at the hole, then at the shovel lying in the dirt. "You're digging a grave, not a swimming pool. Straight walls. Otherwise, the edges collapse and you have to do the work twice."

"I know what I'm doing," David lied. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, leaving a smear of dark mud across his forehead.

"No, you don't. You're panicked. You're thinking about the 'why' instead of the 'how.' In this woods, the 'why' will get you eaten. The 'how' is what keeps the buzzards away." Elias reached down and picked up the shovel. He didn't hand it back. Instead, he took David’s place in the shallow pit.

David watched him work. Elias moved with a terrifying efficiency. There was no wasted motion, no frantic energy. He cut a perfect rectangle into the earth, the sand flying over his shoulder in rhythmic pulses. 

"The Sheriff asked about Miller today," David said, his voice dropping to a whisper even though there was no one for miles. "He saw the truck at the pier."

Elias didn't stop. He didn't even slow down. "Sheriff Miller is a man of habits. He asks questions because he likes the sound of his own authority. It doesn't mean he has answers. Did you give him any?"

"No. I told him the truck had been stolen or borrowed. I don't know if he bought it."

"It doesn't matter if he bought it. It only matters what he can prove." Elias stopped, the hole now waist-deep. He looked up at David, his eyes dark pits in the moonlight. "And he can't prove anything once this is finished. Go get the trunk."

David stood frozen. "Now?"

"No, David. Next Tuesday." Elias’s voice was like a razor. "Get it. Now."

David stumbled back toward the truck. The tailgate groaned as he lowered it. The trunk was heavy—black plastic, reinforced with duct tape around the seams. He’d bought it at a hardware store three towns over, paying in cash, keeping his head down. He shouldn't have been able to lift it alone, but adrenaline is a strange fuel. He hooked his fingers under the handles and hauled it to the edge of the bed. It hit the ground with a sickening, wet thud.

The smell hit him then. Even through the plastic and the tape, the scent of copper and something cloying, sweet, and wrong reached his nose. David doubled over, retching into the palmettos. 

"Focus," Elias commanded from the hole. 

David wiped his mouth, his eyes watering. He grabbed the handles and began to drag the trunk toward the grave. The plastic groaned against the limestone rocks and the roots. Every inch felt like a mile. Every snap of a twig under the trunk’s weight sounded like a gunshot. 

When he reached the edge, Elias reached up. Together, they lowered it. It didn't fit perfectly at first. Elias had to jump out and use the shovel to widen the head of the grave. 

*The head,* David thought. *I’m thinking about the head.*

"Cover it," Elias said, handing the shovel back.

"You’re not going to help with this part?"

"Sharing the labor is a courtesy. Sharing the guilt is a liability." Elias stepped back into the shadows, disappearing almost instantly. "Fill it. Pack it down. Then scatter the pine needles. If it looks like a grave, they’ll find a grave. If it looks like a forest floor, they’ll find nothing."

David began to shovel the dirt back in. It was easier this time. The weight was gone from his arms, transferred into the earth. But as the black plastic disappeared beneath the sand, the weight in his chest only grew. He thought about the Council meetings. He thought about the vision for Cypres Bend—the high-end boutiques, the marina, the "Gateway to the Ocala." It was all built on this, wasn't it? On things buried in the dark by men who were too tired to be good.

He worked for another hour, his muscles screaming. He followed Elias’s instructions to the letter. He packed the earth down with the back of the shovel until it was as hard as a floor. He dragged fallen branches over the site. He gathered armfuls of brown pine needles and scattered them until the rectangular shape vanished.

By the time he finished, the sky in the east was beginning to turn a bruised purple. The birds were waking up—mockingbirds and crows, their calls sharp and judging.

He walked back to the truck, his legs shaking. Elias was gone. There was no sign he had ever been there, except for the perfection of the burial. 

David climbed into the driver’s seat. He looked at his hands. They were ruined. The dirt was under his fingernails, ground into his pores. He reached for the ignition, but his hand stopped. 

On the passenger seat sat Miller’s phone. 

It was wrapped in a plastic baggie, the screen dark. He had intended to throw it into the river, but in the chaos of the night, he’d forgotten. 

Suddenly, the screen lit up. 

The glow was blinding in the dim cab. David stared at it, his heart stopping. 

*1 New Message: WHERE ARE YOU?*

The sender was listed only as "C-3."

David’s breath hitched. He knew that designation. It wasn't a name; it was a code used by the dredging company—the ones who had the contract for the new marina. The ones who had been "donating" to David’s campaign for three years.

He reached out, his finger hovering over the screen. He shouldn't look. He should take the phone, find a deep part of the St. Johns River, and let it sink into the muck. 

Instead, he swiped.

The message thread was long. It went back weeks. It detailled payments, locations, and something called "The Pale." 

*“Miller’s getting cold feet,”* one message read, dated four days ago. *“He’s talking about the soil samples from the north bend. Says the phosphorus levels are a red flag for the state. If he talks, the whole project dies.”*

The reply from Miller’s phone—or whoever had been using it—was cold: *“He won’t talk. I’ll bring him to the Bend tonight.”*

David felt the world tilt. Miller hadn’t been murdered because he was a threat to the town. He’d been murdered because he was a threat to a *contract*. And David had just spent the night burying the man who tried to blow the whistle.

A second message flashed on the screen, a follow-up from C-3.

*“Answer me. The Council wants the final report before the 8 AM meeting. Did you handle the witness or not?”*

David looked at the fresh grave in the woods, then at the phone in his hand. He realized with a sickening clarity that he wasn't the one in charge of Cypres Bend. He was just the man with the shovel.

He put the truck in gear and began the slow drive out of the woods, the branches clawing at the sides of the Ford like skeletal fingers. He had two hours to get home, shower the scent of death off his skin, and put on a suit.

As he reached the paved road, his own phone buzzed in his pocket. 

He pulled it out. It was a text from Sarah.

*“Coffee’s on. You’re up early. Big day today, Mr. Mayor. Let’s make history.”*

David gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white, his gaze fixed on the road ahead as the first sliver of the sun broke over the horizon, lighting the way back to a life that was now a lie.

He knew what he had to do. He had to walk into that meeting. He had to smile. He had to vote 'yes' on the marina. 

Because if he didn't, he knew exactly how deep the sand was in Ocala, and how easy it was to disappear beneath it. 

He drove past the town limits sign: *Cypres Bend – A Place to Grow.*

Underneath it, someone had spray-painted a single word in jagged, black letters: *RUN.*

David didn't run. He drove straight toward the center of town, the dead man’s phone burning a hole in the seat beside him. 

He reached the driveway of his home just as the morning light hit the windows. Sarah was in the kitchen; he could see her silhouette through the glass, moving gracefully, pouring juice, setting his world in order. 

He sat in the truck for a moment, staring at his hands. He took a deep breath, wiped the last of the woods from his brow, and opened the door.

He didn't see the dark SUV parked two blocks down, the driver watching him through a pair of binoculars. He didn't see the man pick up a radio and speak a single sentence.

"The Mayor is home. He’s got the mud on his boots. Proceed with Phase Two."