Page 74 of Presumed Dead

“He’s ten minutes out. He’ll be staged closer by Wednesday morning. He’s ready if you need him, Vale. He’ll be in the boat with you, on the dock with you, or in the truck behind you, depending on the configuration. You tell us what you need and you’ll have it.”

Ethan sat with that.

Graham coming meant the team had decided the operation might require the kind of medical capability you didn’t bring unless you thought you might need it. Graham was the man you put in a scene when somebody might bleed. The decision to stage him meant Ronan had run the math, and the math had not come out as cleanly as he’d wanted it to.

“Doyle won’t go quietly,” Ethan said.

“Doyle was a Navy boatswain who’s been running cargo for a man who burns assets. Doyle is going to do exactly what a man does when he hears the federal door come open, which is either run hard or fight hard. Graham’s for the fight option.”

“And Sloane?”

Ronan put both hands on the table and looked at him.

“Vale.”

“Yes.”

“Sloane Mercer’s marina is going to be a federal scene by Friday at the latest. There’s no version of this where her dock stays the marina she ran on Sunday morning. The boat that pulls Doyle off slip nine is going to be a Coast Guard boat, and it’s going to be there with sirens or without sirens depending on whether he comes quiet, but it’s going to be there. You knew that when you walked onto her dock. You knew it when she walked onto your boat.”

“I know.”

“I’m saying it out loud so you’re carrying the right thing when you walk back. You promised her two weeks. You may have four days. The conversation she’s expecting at two weeks may have to happen at day eight. You need to know what you’re going to say to her when the timeline jumps the gun. You need to know it now, not Thursday at four in the morning.”

Ethan thought about Sloane on the boardwalk that morning. Whatever is coming, I knew it was coming, and I kissed you anyway.

“I’ll know what to say.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll know what to say.”

Ronan nodded once. He picked up the menu and looked at it blankly. The operator part of the lunch was done, and they sat together for another fifteen minutes talking about ordinary things, because to leave straight off the hard piece would have been to advertise it to a room with a bar owner in it who already knew too much.

Margo stopped by. "Are you ready to order?"

“Yes, I'll have a cheeseburger. Vale, what about you?”

“I'll have the same and a salad for Sloane before I head back."

Margo nodded, a sly grin raising her lips into a smile that Sloane would have to deal with later.

"Got it." She strutted away, and Ethan hoped he could warn Sloane before Margo stepped inside her office.

"Ronan? Is Sloane safe?"

Ronan's stare was steady. "That will be up to you."

He walked back the long way.

The afternoon light was sharp and white off the Gulf.

He thought about Graham.

Graham was a corpsman who’d watched a girl die in Khost. Graham was a man who took a job seriously enough to ask whether anybody was going to bleed before he agreed to do it, and Graham was on the road now because Ronan had decided somebody might. Ethan accepted the weight of that with the gratitude an operator felt for a piece of medical capability moving into reach, and he also accepted the other thing it meant, which was that Ronan was no longer willing to assume Doyle would come quietly.

He thought about Sloane on her boardwalk.

He thought about her sentence. “That goes both ways, Ethan. Not just yours. Mine too.”