Slip Fourteen was blank.
He’d noticed the center console three days ago. No registration number, no name, no home port. The driver had tied off with a knot he didn’t recognize and walked toward the resort without looking back. Ray had mentioned it, too.
Now the boat was still there, and nobody had signed in.
He closed the binder and stepped outside. The morning was already warm.
Evan walked down to Slip Fourteen and crouched at the edge of the dock.
The boat was a twenty-foot Robalo. Clean hull, no barnacles, which meant it hadn’t been in salt water long. The scrape along the starboard gunwale was fresh, gel coat still white underneath. Inside the console, a coil of heavy-gauge cable sat on the passenger seat next to a portable battery pack. Not fishing gear. Not diving equipment.
The duffel bag from a couple of days ago was gone, but whoever owned this boat had left the cable and battery pack behind, pushed under the console.
The knot on the cleat was wrong. Not sloppy. Unfamiliar. He’d been tying boats to docks since he was twelve, and he knew every standard hitch used on the Carolina coast. This one looked like something from a different ocean.
He straightened up and looked toward the resort. The terrace was busy with expo setup. Caleb directing a crew. Vendors hauling boxes.
And the event planner. Margot. Standing at the edge of the pavilion with her clipboard, talking to the glass artist who looked like she was about to fire someone. Margot’s posture was different from yesterday. Chin higher. Shoulders set. Whatever had happened in that meeting, she’d come out swinging.
He watched her for a second longer than was useful. How she stood with her weight forward. The way she held her pen between two fingers, clicking it without looking, a nervous habit she probably didn’t know she had. The way the morning light caught the curve of her jaw when she turned to point at something.
He caught himself cataloging details. That was new. He hadn’t cataloged details about anyone in a very long time.
He put the compass back in his pocket and went to find the front desk manager.
Patty Oakes had been at the front desk for nine years and had the memory that made computers feel inadequate.
“Slip Fourteen?” She frowned at her screen. “No reservation. Could be a walk-in that didn’t check in properly. Happens during event weeks.”
“This person didn’t look like a tourist.”
“What did they look like?”
“Like someone who didn’t want to be remembered.”
Patty raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little dramatic, Evan.”
“Maybe. Can you check if any guest in the last two days matches a boat arrival?”
“Give me an hour. I’ve got early check-ins at ten.”
“Appreciate it.”
“You want me to call security?”
An unregistered boat the same week a hundred and seventy thousand dollars in glass was arriving. Could be coincidence. Could be something else. “You hear about the ornament collection?”
“Everybody’s heard about it. Elaine sent a memo.” Patty made air quotes. “‘Highest-value exhibition in resort history.’ Why?”
“Just thinking.”
“You think the boat is connected?”
“I think the timing is interesting. Don’t call security yet. Let me see what you find first.”
Patty gave him a look that said she thought he was overthinking it. He probably was.
The boardwalk was busy now. Vendors hauling carts, a photographer scouting angles near the pavilion, the faint hum of a generator being tested somewhere behind the stage.
