I step out of the truck.
Her eyes meet mine across the fifteen feet of broken asphalt separating us, and everything in my chest does something it hasn't done in years.
"Ford Callahan." She says my name like she's tasting something bitter. "The man my father bought."
"Ms. Mancini." I extend my hand because my mother raised me with manners even if everything else went to hell. "I'm here to keep you safe."
She looks at my hand like I've offered her a snake. "You're here because you owe my father a favor. Let's not pretend this is anything other than what it is."
Direct. Furious beneath that controlled exterior. The kind of anger that burns cold instead of hot.
I drop my hand. "Fair enough. Can I take your bags?"
"I can carry my own bags." She moves past me toward the truck, and I catch the scent of something subtle beneath the airplane and tarmac smells. Lemon, maybe. Something clean.
I grab the door before she can reach for it. Not to be polite but because I need to check the interior. Verify nobody's tampered with it while I was distracted watching a woman walk toward me like a coming storm.
She notices. Of course she notices.
"Expecting company already?"
"Always expecting company." I gesture for her to get in. "It's how I've stayed alive this long."
Something flickers across her face. Not quite respect but something adjacent to it. She climbs into the passenger seat without further comment, settling her bags at her feet and clicking her seatbelt with the efficient movements of a woman who doesn't waste motion.
I round to the driver's side and start the engine.
For a full minute, neither of us speaks. I navigate the dirt access road back toward the main highway while she stares out the window at the marshland spreading out on either side of us. Spanish moss hangs from ancient oaks like gray ghosts. Egrets pick through the shallows.
"It's flatter than I expected," she finally says. "The coast here."
"Barrier island geography. Everything's low and wet until it isn't."
"How far to wherever you're planning to stash me?"
"Thirty minutes to the marina. Another ten by boat to somewhere more secure."
Her head turns sharply. "Boat?"
"Second Watch. Forty-two-foot sportfish. She'll be home for the next two weeks unless we need to relocate."
"You're putting me on a boat." Her voice carries an edge that wasn't there before. "In the water. Where anyone with a speedboat could?—"
"Where anyone with a speedboat would need to know exactly where to look, have the equipment to approach undetected, and get through me before reaching you." I merge onto the two-lane highway that winds toward Tidehaven proper. "Open water gives us options. Multiple exit routes. No fixed location for them to surveil. Your father's enemies know his properties, his safe houses, his network. They don't know a thirty-eight-year-old charter captain in a Carolina barrier island town."
She's quiet for a moment. Processing.
"You've done this before."
"Done what?"
"Made someone disappear."
I keep my eyes on the road. "Among other things."
"What other things?"
"Ms. Mancini?—"
