He’d had it in his pocket the night of the boat parade, too. The night everything changed.
The squall had rolled in fast. Radio chatter went from routine to urgent. His own voice on the Coast Guard channel, calling for all vessels to return to dock. The overloaded boat ignored the recall signal.
He’d watched it hit the sandbar. Then the screaming. Black water. Broken Christmas bulbs floating like strange, sharp confetti.
He had pulled four people out that night.
Four.
Not five.
He picked up the brush and went back to the rust.
Around midday, the sound check started. A wall of bass rattled the hardware on every boat in the harbor. A coffee mug on the dock shed windowsill vibrated to the edge and fell. Evan caught it without looking.
He stood, wiped his hands on his jeans, and watched the main stage from a distance. The event planner stood at the base of the stage, talking fast into her headset, clipboard tucked under her arm. Phone in one hand, pen in the other.
She moved as if she were running out of time. A gust caught the edge of a banner and she reached up to grab it without breaking stride. Didn’t get it. Kept walking. He watched the way her shoulders stayed tight even when she wasn’t talking to anyone, like she was bracing for the next problem before it arrived.
She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear without slowing down, brown, cut to the shoulder. A small, impatient gesture. He noticed it the way he noticed weather patterns, automatically, without deciding to.
He recognized that tightness in her. He’d worn it himself once. Before the boat parade. Before he’d stopped trying to hold everything together and let most of it go.
Ray’s voice echoed in the back of his mind.Remind you of anyone?
He turned back toward the dock shed. Cleats to finish. Bilge pump to rebuild. No good reason to stand around watching a stranger.
Except she wasn’t quite a stranger anymore. He’d caught her name from a vendor that morning. Margot. It sat in his mind like a stone in a shoe, small and impossible to ignore.
He was reaching for the bilge pump housing when he heard the engine. Low and steady, idling into the marina from the south channel. Wrong direction for a charter return. Wrong time of day for a delivery.
Evan set down the wrench and stepped outside.
A twenty-foot center console was easing into the guest slip at the far end of the dock. No registration numbers visible. The hull was clean but unmarked. The driver cut the engine and sat for a long moment without moving, like someone deciding whether to stay or go.
Then the figure climbed out, tied off with a knot Evan didn’t recognize, and walked toward the resort without looking back. Average height, baseball cap pulled low, duffel bag over one shoulder. Nothing remarkable. That was what bothered him.
Something about it didn’t sit right. He couldn’t say what.
Soon enough.
Chapter three
Both of Us
MargotarrivedatElaineMarston’s office at six fifty-five with a coffee in one hand and a growing list of questions in the other. The text from the night before still sat unanswered in her mind.
Elaine’s office smelled like espresso and fresh printer paper. The blinds were angled to block the morning sun, but a thin stripe of light cut across the desk like a blade. Margot took the chair opposite the desk and wrapped both hands around her coffee. Whatever this meeting was about, it apparently couldn’t wait until normal business hours.
At exactly seven o’clock, Elaine arrived, reading glasses in one hand and a stack of folders in the other. She crossed behind the desk and arranged them in a precise grid, each folder aligned with the next like tiles.
“You’re early,” Elaine said.
“Seven is early. Six fifty-five is on time.”
Elaine gave her a look that might have been approval. Hard to tell with Elaine. The woman ran at exactly sixty-eight degrees: precisely warm, never hot, never cold.
“How’s setup?”
