"I'll keep Rhea monitoring that boat. Anything changes, I'll let you know." He pauses. "The woman. Is she going to be a problem?"
Sera's face flashes through my mind. The fury in her green eyes. The way she held her ground when I got close. Thevulnerable honesty in her voice when she talked about spending her whole life being defined by her last name.
"She's not what I expected."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got." I head for the stairs. "I'll check in again in forty-eight hours. Sooner if something develops."
"Ford." Cal's voice stops me at the door. "Watch yourself. Debts like this one have a way of costing more than you planned to pay."
I don't respond. There's nothing to say that he doesn't already know.
Sera is rightwhere I left her, shotgun across her lap, eyes fixed on the channel I took to reach the main waterway.
She lowers the weapon when she sees me approach in the tender.
"You're not dead."
"Disappointing, I'm sure." I tie off and climb aboard. "The boat's still there. Still watching. My contact is monitoring the situation."
"What contact?"
"The man I mentioned. Cal Hayes. Runs a security firm in Tidehaven. Good people, good resources. If things go sideways, they're our backup."
"And if things go sideways before your backup can reach us?"
I take the shotgun from her hands, checking the safety before returning it to the storage locker. "Then we run. Second Watchcan outpace most vessels her size, and I know these waters better than anyone who might be following."
Sera watches me secure the weapon. "You're not worried."
"I'm always worried. Worry keeps you alive. What I'm not is panicked." I straighten, facing her. "Two days in and we haven't been found. That's good. It means your father's play worked. No one connected him to me, which means no one's looking for you here."
"Yet."
"Yet," I agree. "But every day they don't find you is another day the trail gets colder. Another day the Veronis have to wonder if you're even still in the country. Uncertainty is a weapon, and right now we're holding it."
She considers this, arms crossed over her chest in a defensive posture I'm starting to recognize.
"We're going to be stuck on this boat together for another twelve days. I need to know there's an actual human being under all that tactical competence." She gestures vaguely at me. "Tell me something that matters to you for no strategic reason at all."
I think about deflecting. About keeping the walls up where they belong.
Instead I hear myself saying, "I collect old maps."
Her eyebrows rise.
"Nautical charts. Coast survey maps from the 1800s. Anything that shows how the shoreline has changed over time." I move to the cabin housing, pulling open a storage compartment and extracting a leather portfolio. "This is the barrier islands in 1847. Half of what's land now was open water then. Half of what was land is underwater."
Sera takes the portfolio carefully, unfolding the aged paper to examine the detailed rendering. Her fingers trace the coastline with the reverence of someone who understands fragile things.
"It's beautiful."
"It's a reminder that nothing stays the same. The coast is always moving, always changing. What looks permanent is just a moment in time."
She looks up at me, and something in her expression shifts. The defensive posture softens. The sharp edges smooth.
"I restore Renaissance altarpieces," she says quietly. "Four hundred years old, some of them. The paint cracking, the gold leaf flaking, the wood warping from centuries of humidity changes. Everyone looks at them and sees religious art. I look at them and see the brushstrokes. The mistakes the artist tried to fix. The human being behind the holy image."
