My charts on his walls. My ginger beer in his fridge. The grill I’d cleaned and covered because that’s what you did when a place was yours.
I pressed my fingers to the compass at my throat. The silver was warm from my skin.
Seven months ago I’d pulled into this marina running on fumes and stubbornness, and the only thing I’d trusted was my own research. Now my research was vindicated. The wreck was real, the man inside that boathouse had stood between me and rifles without flinching — and I was sitting out here, armored up, because a deputy had said four words in the wrong order.
The old voice said run. It always said run. It had kept me safe and alone and right about everyone who’d ever let me down.
But tonight my hands still felt the way his body had trembled under mine. I could still hear his voice saying I’ve got you, certain and low and meaning it. And I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay in a way that terrified me more than the cartel, more than the contract — more than the morning I’d read a conference program in Houston and realized my name had been erased.
Staying meant trusting. Trusting meant someone could hurt me in the one place I’d stopped protecting.
The creek moved beneath my feet. A night heron called from the shallows, sharp and solitary, then went quiet.
I stayed on the dock. I didn’t go to Reckoning. I didn’t go inside.
Not yet.
Chapter Six
Beau
SHE WAS ALREADY ONthe dock when I came out.
Ponytail pulled high, wetsuit unzipped to her waist, tank top underneath. She was loading the secondary camera housing into the gear crate with quiet focus, each movement mapped before dawn. She didn't need help. She wasn't asking for any.
"Morning," I said.
"Morning." She didn't look up.
The space between us had weight to it. Yesterday she'd been in my kitchen with her charts covering every surface, her laugh landing in my chest before I could brace for it. This morning she moved around me with careful margins, offering the kind of professional courtesy you'd give a colleague you hadn't chosen.
The ground had shifted at The Bridge yesterday. I'd watched it happen in real time. Her face going still while Ty talked, the smile afterward that didn't sit right on her mouth. She'd said she was fine. She wasn't fine. I hadn't pushed, because pushing Marley when she'd pulled back accomplished about as much as telling the creek to run backward.
The tide always turned. I was counting on that.
I loaded the backup gear onto Reckoning without asking. She noticed, didn't object. That silence told me more than anything she'd said in twelve hours.
We cast off at oh-six-thirty. The morning was already warm, humidity sitting heavy on the water, the marsh bright under a sky that hadn't decided between haze and clarity. She stood at the helm with her hair tucked under a cap, compass at her throat, and steered us toward the heritage zone markers without glancing my direction. I sat on the gunwale and watched the wake and let her have the quiet that looked like the only thing holding her together.
* * *
Cal called at oh-six-forty-five.
I took it at the stern, out of earshot of the helm. Marley was running the channel, eyes forward, shoulders set.
"Federal team's wheels up from Charleston," Cal said. "ETA Tidehaven around fourteen hundred. Coast Guard cutter's repositioning to the heritage zone, should be on station by noon."
"That's eight hours from now."
"Copy. Which is why you're calling me at sunrise." Cal's voice carried the dry weight of a man who'd been running ops long enough to know that the gap between backup arriving and trouble arriving was where everything went sideways. "Rhea's been on with the federal liaison since oh-four-hundred. Site protection order's filed. Dr. Heyward's research designation is in the packet."
Her name. Her designation. Her work on the record. I looked across the deck at her. She was checking the regulator assembly with that total absorption she brought to everything worth doing.
"The documentation dive needs to happen this morning," I said. "Before the feds arrive. She needs to be the one on record completing the survey."
"Agreed. You're going with her."
"That wasn't a question."
