She wrote something down. Fast, hard strokes. He could hear the pen from six feet away.
“You notice a lot of things,” she said without looking up.
“It’s a small marina. Not much else to do.”
She looked up. Held his gaze. “That’s not true and we both know it.”
The pavilion was full of people. Caleb adjusting lights, Tessa filming, Pete theoretically guarding.
For a second, the room narrowed to the two of them and six feet of warm salt air.
“I can put a padlock on the closet tonight,” he said, because talking about padlocks was easier than whatever was happening across those six feet. “I’ve got a spare in the dock shed.”
“You’d do that?”
“It’s a padlock. Not a favor.” He didn’t add that the spare was old, the shackle worn soft from a decade of salt air, or that a padlock only worked if the hasp it hung from was solid. The hasp on that closet door was screwed into forty-year-old trim. He made a note to replace it. Later. After the walk-through.
She almost smiled. The real kind, not the professional one she used on vendors. He could tell the difference now. That was another thing that unsettled him.
“All right then. I’ll add you to the security walk-through. Tomorrow morning, seven o’clock.”
He hadn’t volunteered for anything at this resort in five years. “Seven o’clock.”
He walked back into the sunlight. Halfway down the boardwalk he stopped and looked at the pavilion. The ornaments glowed through the open walls, visible from the terrace, the lawn, and the guest slips. Including Slip Fourteen.
The Robalo was still there. Still tied with the wrong knot.
He looked at the boat. Then at the pavilion. Then at the utility closet door, propped open in the heat.
He went to get the padlock.
The service corridor was dim and cool after the glare off the water, the overhead lights still on their daytime setting. Halfway down it, near the staff door to the back of house, a kid in a resort polo was going through his pockets. Front, back, front again. Then crouching to check the floor along the baseboard, the way you do when you’ve already looked once and didn’t believe it.
Evan knew him by sight. One of the new seasonal hires. Derek, maybe. He’d been hauling chairs for Caleb earlier.
“Lose something?”
The kid straightened up fast, the way the young ones did when a staffer they didn’t know spoke to them. “No. I mean. Dropped something. I’ll find it.” He patted the lanyard at his hip, then stopped himself, like he’d realized the gesture gave something away. “It’s fine. Thanks.”
Evan looked at him a second longer than the moment called for. The kid’s ears had gone red. Not the face of someone who’d dropped a pen.
But it wasn’t his business, and he had a closet to lock before morning. “Check the storage room,” he said. “Things end up there.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” The kid went the other way, still patting his pockets.
Evan filed it away without deciding to, the same way he filed a knot tied wrong or a slip that didn’t match the log. Then he let it go and kept walking.
And he went to get it now, before he could think too hard about the fact that the first thing he’d wanted to do was go back and tell Margot he’d see her in the morning.
Chapter ten
Sight Lines
Thepavilionwasempty,and the ornaments belonged to the silence.
Caleb stood at the far end of the display case, adjusting the LED strip on the third ornament from the left. A pale green sphere with copper flecks suspended inside it. The light was washing out the copper at this angle. He shifted the strip two degrees. The copper caught fire. The green deepened to forest.
That was the difference between good décor and great décor. Two degrees.
