The center-console pulled alongside at thirty feet. Close enough that I could see the man at the bow clearly. Dark hair, weathered face, military bearing. He stood with a rifle across his chest, wearing it with the ease of someone who’d carried weapons long enough that they were furniture.
Beau positioned himself between me and the other boat. He didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t raise his voice. He stood on the deck of my thirty-two-foot cabin cruiser, feet planted, shoulders square, and looked at three armed men with an expression that communicated, with absolute clarity, that approaching any closer would be the last interesting decision they made.
My hands were shaking. Not for me.
For him. Standing there, exposed, a wall of composure and scar tissue between me and people who would kill for what I’d just found. The cold dread that moved through my body wasn’t about the cartel. It was about him. About what it would cost to lose him.
The thought landed in my bloodstream before it reached my brain. I couldn’t breathe around it.
The standoff lasted ninety seconds. The man at the bow studied Beau, studied me, studied Reckoning. His expression calculated, adjusted, and arrived at a conclusion. He said something in Spanish to the helmsman. The center-console’sengines revved, and they pulled away south, the wake rocking us hard enough that I grabbed the console.
Cal’s voice crackled through: “Rhea’s got Coast Guard and federal maritime on the line. Stay on the water, stay visible, head straight for the marina.”
Beau’s hand found mine. He squeezed once, hard, and didn’t let go until we were tied up at the slip.
I GRILLED THE SHRIMP.
It felt absurd, an hour after three armed men had stared us down on open water, to be standing on Beau’s dock with a charcoal grill and a bag of shrimp and hot sauce. But my hands needed occupation that wasn’t shaking. He was on the phone with Cal running tactical options, the sun was going down over the marsh in streaks of copper and violet, and we hadn’t eaten since the peaches on the boat that morning.
I’d found the grill under the dock stairs the second day I’d moved in. Cleaned it, bought charcoal from the hardware store on Main, and hadn’t mentioned it because some things you just did when a space became yours to care for. The same way I’d started keeping the counter clear of my printouts after meals. The same way I hung his forgotten towel on the railing and scrubbed the salt off Reckoning’s console every evening before the minerals could set.
Small things. The kind of care you gave someone when words weren’t enough and you weren’t ready for the ones that would be.
I seasoned the shrimp with Old Bay and laid them on the grate. The smell was immediate and good, smoke and spice rising into the evening air. Beau came outside still talking to Cal, and when he saw me at the grill his whole expression shifted,tender in a way I wasn’t braced for. I handed him a plate when he hung up.
We ate on the dock with our feet over the water. The shrimp were charred at the edges, perfect with the hot sauce, and I licked Old Bay off my thumb and watched the egrets working the shallows in the fading light.
“You need to stay off the water.” His voice was careful. “Until federal shows up and locks the site down.”
I froze midway to a shrimp.
“No.”
“Marley—”
“If I’m not on that wreck tomorrow, they strip it tonight. You know that.”
“And if they come back with more than three—”
“Then we deal with it. Together. The way we’ve dealt with everything.”
“This isn’t a tampered regulator. These are people with rifles.”
“I noticed. I was there.” I set my plate down. “You want to bench me.”
“I want to keep you alive.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.” I pushed a breath out. The old heat was climbing my throat, the same heat I’d felt every time someone with authority told me to step back from my own work for my own good. “I didn’t spend every dollar I have to find that wreck and then give it to someone else because it got dangerous. Dangerous is the whole point. If it weren’t dangerous, some university lab would’ve found it a decade ago.”
His jaw tightened. The muscle at his temple jumped.
“I’m going back on the water tomorrow,” I said. “You can come with me or you can watch me go alone. But I’m going.”
We stared at each other across the remains of dinner. The creek moved beneath us. A night heron called from somewhere in the marsh, sharp and solitary.
He didn’t answer. He picked up his plate and took it inside, and I heard water running in the kitchen. I’d pushed too hard, or he had, or we’d both been right and that was the problem with two stubborn people who cared about the same thing from different angles.
I cleaned the grill. Scraped the grate, closed the vents, covered it. A five-minute task that gave me ten minutes of not having to figure out what I was feeling.
