I was about to talk myself into leaving when movement caught my peripheral vision.
Two figures coming off the floating gangway at a deliberate pace. Dark clothes, no flashlights. They moved with purpose,not hurrying, not casual either, the gait of people who had a destination and preferred not to be seen reaching it. I tracked them across the lot to a rigid inflatable tied at the transient slip. No running lights. Outboard already trimmed for a fast departure.
The taller one carried a waterproof document case. The shorter one glanced back toward Reckoning's slip, then stepped aboard.
They were gone in ninety seconds. Engine noise fading south toward the Intracoastal.
I pulled my phone and called Cal.
"Registration numbers," he said, because he answered his phone at twenty-three hundred the same way he answered it at oh-eight-hundred. No pleasantries, no wasted words.
"SC-4471-MF. White rigid inflatable, center console, twin Yamaha two-fifties. Two passengers, one carrying a waterproof document case." I was already out of the truck and walking toward her slip. "They came off her boat."
"You're at the marina."
"Professional due diligence."
A pause long enough that I could hear him recalibrating. "I'll run the registration. Don't board yet."
I waited at the edge of Reckoning's slip and looked at the cabin cruiser under the pier light. The companionway hatch sat slightly ajar. It had been dogged shut when I'd left that afternoon—I'd checked, because I checked everything, because twelve years in the Teams made certain habits permanent even when they were no longer needed.
Damn.
I stepped back, called it in to the Sheriff's non-emergency line, and waited.
BY SEVEN THE NEXT MORNINGI was on Reckoning's deck, and Marley Heyward was planted three feet from me with her arms folded and an expression that could've stripped varnish off a hull.
The marina was running through its morning sequence—the same one it had run every day since before I could tie a bowline. Engine noise carried flat across the water as the shrimpers headed out. The humidity was already brutal, and the planking under my boots held yesterday's sun like a grudge.
She'd dressed in a hurry: cutoff shorts, a faded tank top that read TEXAS A&M OCEANOGRAPHY in cracked lettering, her braid twisted up and held in place by what appeared to be a pencil. No shoes. The compass necklace sat against her collarbone, and I watched her fingers find it and press before she caught herself and dropped her hand.
The tank top left her arms bare, and the sun had done its work on her skin—golden brown, the faint white line of a scar on her right hand. She was close enough that I could see the pulse point at her throat, the rise and fall of her breathing.
The cabin told the story. Her charts had been pulled from the nav station and spread across the galley table. Sonar printouts shuffled out of sequence. The dive log was open to a page she hadn't left it on; I could tell because the current entry was three pages past where the binding naturally fell. Her laptop sat untouched in its case, but the file drawer under the console had been pried and the archival maps pulled and re-stacked.
Nothing taken. Everything photographed. The corner of a sonar printout still showed the pressure crease where someone had held it flat under a phone camera.
"They copied your research," I said.
"I can see that." Her jaw was set. The shakiness lived underneath the surface if you knew where to look: the rigid line of her shoulders, the controlled breathing, how she wasstanding slightly too still for a woman who hadn't stood still once during our entire exchange yesterday. Rattled, and furious about showing it, and channeling every bit of both into the hard set of her jaw. "When?"
"Last night. Around twenty-three hundred. Two people, no running lights, headed south on the Intracoastal."
"And you know this because you were—"
"At the marina."
Her eyes narrowed. "At eleven at night."
"Couldn't sleep."
She held the look for three full seconds. I held hers. The morning sun came through the companionway and caught the side of her face, and those honey-brown eyes went close to gold in the light. The freckles across her nose were darker than yesterday—sunburn layering on sunburn. Her lips were parted, slightly chapped from salt, and the heat between us had nothing to do with the temperature. She looked exhausted and fierce, and I forgot what I'd been about to say.
"Did you get a plate number?"
"Registration number. Already running."
I called Cal from the railing and put it on speaker. His voice came through flat and factual: the registration traced to a shell company based out of Miami. The shell company had connections flagged in three federal databases—drug money, weapons procurement, and maritime asset recovery. The cartel kind, not the academic kind.
