Then he looked at the dock railing. A fresh scrape on the metal, bright and clean against the weathered paint. “That’s new. I repainted this section last week.”
“Somebody hit her.” Margot’s voice was firm.
“I agree. Somebody hit her.” He stood. “And the gate was open, which means somebody used a code to get in before she got here.”
She looked down the path toward the service building. The building where the breaker panel was. The building where Caleb’s stolen keycard had swiped in one minute before the blackout. “Cass talked to us. About Caleb. About the keycard. About the sparkling water.”
“And now Cass is in the hospital.”
The implication hung between them. Evan fisted his hands. “We need to be careful.” He meant her, yet he said “we.”
“How? We’ve been discreet.”
“Small resort. Small town. Discreet has a shelf life.”
He looked at her. The morning light was on her face, and she looked tired, and steady anyway. The kitchen the night before came back to him, the way she’d told him about Rita, the way her voice had cracked on scared crying, and he wanted to tell her something he had no right to tell her.
He decided. “We take everything to Harker. All of it. The keycard log, the footage, Mick’s testimony, the shard, the sand. Enough that he can’t file a report and walk away.”
“And if he still won’t act?”
“Then we go to the state police. Or the insurance investigator. Or the local paper.” His voice was steady, but underneath it the fear was running like a current. Not for himself. For her. “Someone is watching, Margot. And I’m not going to let them get close to you.”
The words sat there between them. He hadn’t meant to say that last part. Or maybe he had.
She looked at him for a long moment. The breeze off the harbor moved her hair across her face, and she didn’t push it back.
They stood on the dock in the early light, the investigation pressing in from all sides, and for one breath the fear and the evidence and the missing ornaments all went quiet, and there was just this. Two people standing close enough to touch, choosing not to, and understanding that the choice itself was a kind of promise.
The breath held a moment longer than either of them expected. Neither moved to break it.
Then Margot’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen, and something in her face flattened.
“Harker.” She turned the phone so Evan could see it. A text, two lines, no greeting.Following up on the Whitley incident. Can take a statement day after tomorrow, 2 p.m., if you want to come by.
“Day after tomorrow,” Evan said.
“Day after tomorrow.” She slid the phone into her pocket. “A girl gets attacked at dawn, and he can fit us in day after tomorrow.”
Evan looked out at the water, where the tide was already pulling away from the gate. “Then we give him something he can’t put off.”
Chapter twenty-three
Counting the Seconds
Evancouldn’tstayinthe apartment.
The ceiling fan wobbled. The harbor sounds came through the open window, halyard and tide and the low groan of dock lines. Usually those sounds put him out in ten minutes. Not tonight.
The kitchen scene kept replaying. Margot’s voice cracking onscared crying.The way her hands had tightened around the cocoa mug when she talked about Rita. The knot he’d seen loosen behind her ribs when he’d told her that her name was the one that stayed.
And Lauren’s bell. He’d said that out loud.Lauren loved that bell.He’d given Margot a piece of himself he hadn’t given anyone in five years, and instead of flinching, she’d let the silence hold it. She’d sat there in that kitchen with her cocoa going cold and her gaze going soft, and she’d let him be sad without trying to fix it.
That was the thing. David had broken her trust, and Lauren’s death had broken his ability to trust himself, and somehow the two of them had ended up in a kitchen at midnight, holding broken things out to each other like shells on a beach.
He pulled on his boots and walked out into the dark.
His phone buzzed as he crossed the dock. A text from Margot.
