At the windows, a woman in a green dress pointed out at the pilings, where the two pelicans sat in silhouette against the harbor lights, patient as ushers. Somebody’s grandmother declared them good luck.
Margot let herself believe it for exactly one second, and then she checked the service door again, because luck was lovely and exits were better. At nine fifteen, she stepped onto the terrace for air.
The night was warm and still. Stars thick overhead, the harbor lights laid out on the water in long, liquid lines. The music followed her through the glass, muffled and golden, folding itself into the sound of the ocean working against the shore.
From the terrace she could see the pier. Dock lamps at intervals, each one wearing a halo of salt haze. The fireworks cabinet at the far end, a darker block against the dark. And Evan, a silhouette at the railing, motionless, watching the water.
She pulled out her phone to text him an emoji, just to watch the silhouette reach for its pocket.
The terrace door opened behind her.
Tessa. No camera up. No phone in filming position. Her face had gone pale under the string lights, and the change was so complete that for a second Margot didn’t recognize her.
“Margot.” One word, stripped of all its brightness.
“What is it?”
Tessa held out her phone. On the screen, the terrace camera feed, paused and timestamped twenty minutes ago. A figure in dark clothing moving fast along the dock path toward the marina. Head down. Purposeful.
Two heavy duffel bags, one on each shoulder, pulling the figure forward like ballast.
Margot’s grip tightened on the phone. She knew the geography of this resort. The dock path bent past the marina and ran out to exactly one place. The pier.
The peace of the evening cracked like dropped glass. Behind her, through the windows, the little girl in the red dress was still spinning, and two hundred people were still dancing under the chandeliers, and none of them could see what she was seeing.
She handed the phone back, pulled out her own, and called Evan. He picked up before the second ring finished. “Someone’s heading your way. Two bags. Dock path.”
“I see them.” His voice came back calm and tight, the Coast Guard voice. “End of the pier. Near the cabinet.”
“Don’t confront. I’m calling Harker.” She was moving for the terrace stairs.
Chapter forty-three
Solstice
Evanhadseenthefigure before Margot called.
A shape at the edge of the pier light, moving low, carrying weight. Two bags, heavy enough to change the gait. The shoulders rolled forward against the load. He had eased back into the shadow of a piling ten feet from the fireworks cabinet and gone still, arms loose.
Patient. Quiet. Let the geometry come to you.
The figure reached the cabinet and crouched. Set one bag down with a care that didn’t match the dark clothes and the hurry. Unzipped it. Reached inside and lifted something out with both hands.
The dock light caught it, and the object shimmered.
Glass.
His breath stopped in his chest.
The figure rose, half turned toward the light, and the face came out of the shadow.
Elaine Marston.
Dark clothing. Hair pulled severely back. The reading glasses gone, and with them, somehow, the whole architecture of the woman he’d deferred to for years. The polished manager who squared her folders into grids had been replaced by someone raw and cornered, a woman stripped down to one desperate idea.
She was holding an ornament. Deep blue, shot through with veins of gold that moved when the light did. Even from ten feet away, even in dock light, Lila’s hand was in every curve of it.
Solstice. The masterwork. A hundred and seventy thousand dollars of stolen glass, and the heart of it was hanging from Elaine’s fingers over the planks of a pier.
