Beau bought biscuits from the counter at Nettie’s on the way out. I ate two before we hit the parking lot, said “thanks” with my mouth full, and meant it more than the word covered.
* * *
Captain Sunday was on his bench outside Nettie’s at dusk, doing what Captain Sunday always did: watching the marina with eyes that missed nothing and a pace that suggested the tide could wait.
“Evening, Captain.” Beau dropped onto the bench beside him. I stood at the railing, looking at the marsh going copper in the last light.
“Beau.” A nod. Then, after a long pause during which he appeared to be consulting the horizon: “Unfamiliar boat been tying up at the old fish house pier.”
Beau went still. Not tense. Present. “What kind?”
“Center-console. Twin outboards. Nice rig. Been there two, three nights running. Gone before first light.” Another pause. “Started Tuesday.”
Tuesday. Two days before the break-in on Reckoning.
“Anybody you recognize?” Beau asked.
“Nope. And that’s what I’m telling you.”
The warmth of the evening collapsed. My eyes found Beau’s. Neither of us said what we were both thinking because Captain Sunday was right there and some things you don’t put into the air for anyone to hear.
Beau walked me back to the marina. The cicadas were deafening, the humidity a second skin, and every shadow between the live oaks had a shape I didn’t trust.
“You need to move off the boat,” he said.
“I’ve been living on that boat for seven months.”
“And someone’s been watching you for at least a week. The regulator check is tomorrow morning. If your gear’s been compromised—” He stopped. Rephrased. “I’d feel better with you somewhere I can secure.”
I almost argued. The words were right there—I’ve handled worse, I don’t need a babysitter, I’ve been doing this alone since before you showed up with your paperwork and your jaw and your—
“Fine,” I said. “One night.”
* * *
It wasn’t one night.
Beau checked my primary regulator at oh-five-hundred the next morning, laid out on Reckoning’s deck with his tools in a neat row that made me want to mess up just one of them on principle. I watched his hands move through the inspection, systematic, thorough, each component checked twice. He got to the first stage and stopped.
His expression didn’t change. That was the tell. Everything about him went flat and controlled in a way that made the air feel different.
“The downstream seat’s been filed.” His voice was even. Quiet. “Maybe a millimeter. On the surface it would read normal. At depth, the valve would fail open. Free-flow. You’d burn through your air in minutes.”
I stood on the deck and heard the words and understood them and the marina went flat and distant around me, the sound dropping to a hum.
“If you’d dived with this—” he started.
“I know what would have happened.”
At sixty-two feet, with a free-flowing regulator draining my tank, I’d have had maybe four minutes before I ran out of air. Alone on a dive, no buddy, no backup, in a current that could push a body half a mile before anyone thought to look.
The morning was still beautiful. Pelicans diving in the channel. Shrimp boats rumbling out. Jasmine on the air. I stood in all of it and felt the distance between my life and the absence of it narrow to the width of a filed-down valve seat.
“Marley.” His voice again, closer. Not a command. Just my name, low and certain.
I looked at him. His jaw was set, his whole body rigid, and I could see the effort it was costing him to stand where he was instead of closing the distance between us.
“I’ll get my things,” I said.
