“No.” His voice stayed level. “That’s someone who planned every step.”
She turned the shard, so it caught the light. A tiny rainbow flickered across the workbench, a stripe of color between the socket set and the varnish can.
“Who knew the resort well enough to pull this off?” she asked.
“That’s the question.”
“The police should know about this.”
“They will. But Harker’s the only detective the county’s got, and he’s spread across three towns.” Evan looked at her. “If we want answers, we’re going to have to do some of the legwork ourselves.”
We.
They sat on the dock with their feet over the water, finishing their coffee. The resort was waking up behind them. Margot could hear the kitchen staff, the clink of breakfast service, the distant whir of a vacuum. A heron stood in the shallows near the far pilings, perfectly still.
“Elaine told me to stay out of it,” Margot said.
“You mentioned that.”
“I can’t. If this falls apart, I’m the one holding the bag. Again.” The last word came out sharper than she intended.
He didn’t ask about the “again.” He just waited. She was starting to understand that about him. He didn’t push. He left space, resting his forearms on his knees. It was the opposite of David, who had filled every silence with charm and reassurance until there was no room left for the truth.
“I had a business partner once.” She hadn’t planned to say it. But something about sitting on a dock at dawn with a man who made silence feel safe had loosened the thing she’d been holding. “He left me holding worse than this. I rebuilt from nothing. I’m not going to stand on the sidelines and watch it happen again.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he looked at the glass. “I know this resort. The layout, the corridors, the dock schedules, the tides. If someone used the marina to move those ornaments, I’ll find the trail.”
“And I know the vendors. The contracts, the schedules, who has access to what. If someone on the inside set this up, it’ll show in the logistics.”
“So, we’re doing this.” She heard herself say it before she’d fully decided.
But the words settled into place.
The first thing that had settled into place since the lights went out.
“We’re doing this.”
Evan extended his hand. To shake on it. A deal.
She took it. His grip was the same as the stairwell. Warm. Rough. Steady.
This time, he held on a beat longer. Long enough for his thumb to shift against the back of her hand, a movement so small it might have been involuntary.
It wasn’t.
She let go first. Again. But she noticed that he didn’t seem to want her to. And she noticed that she didn’t want to either, which was new, and frightening, and warm. “Where do we start?”
“The keycard logs. Somebody accessed the service corridor during the blackout. The display case reader lost power, but the corridor has its own reader on a separate circuit.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I installed it three years ago when supplies kept disappearing from storage.”
She stared at him. Then she smiled. A real one. The first since the lights went out. “All right, Mr. Cole. Let’s go pull some records.”
Chapter sixteen
Black Water
