Page 1 of The Sentinel

1

CLAIRE

Istepped off the plane in Charleston with salt air already clawing its way into my lungs, thick and damp like a wet rag slapped across my face.

Folly Beach Pier had blown sky-high, and the buzz hadn’t died—it’d only gotten louder and sharper, a jagged itch I couldn’t scratch from my shitty Brooklyn apartment. I’d come for the story. The real one. Not the sanitized “security job gone wrong” crap the locals swallowed like sweet tea. I could smell the lie from a thousand miles away, and it stank worse than the East River in July.

The Uber dropped me at the pier’s edge just as dusk bled into the Lowcountry sky, all bruised purples and smoldering oranges—a sunset that’d make a postcard weep.

But I wasn’t here for the view. I slung my battered leather satchel over my shoulder, recorder in hand, and trudged onto Folly Beach, shoes sinking into sand that felt too soft, too yielding compared to New York City’sconcrete spine. Back home, the ground fought you—here, it just gave up.

The pier—or what was left of it—stretched ahead like a corpse half-submerged in the Atlantic. Blackened stumps of wood jutted from the waves, charred and splintered, clawing at the sky like broken fingers. The air reeked of old smoke, a sour tang that clung to my throat. Beyond the ruins, the ocean rolled in lazy and relentless, waves crashing against the pylons with a hollow groan. The sound echoed like a warning I didn’t want to hear.

I’d seen destruction before. Collapsed warehouses in the Bronx, subway fires spitting ash into Midtown. But this was different. Charleston wore its wounds quieter. Like it was embarrassed to bleed.

The beach stretched wide and flat around me, dunes tufted with sea oats swaying in the humid breeze. To my left, pastel bungalows lined the shorefront—pink, mint, baby blue—cute enough to make me gag, their porches sagging under the weight of too many summers. To my right, a rickety boardwalk snaked toward a cluster of bars and crab shacks, neon signs flickering “Open” in the fading light, their buzz drowned by the tide’s low growl.

It was too damn peaceful. Too pretty for an explosion that’d ripped a landmark apart.

Back in New York, chaos left scars—graffiti on blast sites, cops barking through megaphones, yellow tape snapping in the wind. Here, the locals milled around like nothing had happened, flip-flops slapping pavement, their voices a slow, syrupy drawl I could barely parse. A couple of sunburned tourists snapped photos of the wreckage, like it was some quaint roadside attraction, not a crime scene begging to be cracked open.

I hated it. The quiet. The calm. It was a lie, and I knew it.

The story was here, buried under the sand and the salt, pulsing like a heartbeat I could feel in my bones. I’d spent weeks chasing whispers—grainy 911 calls, a boat spotted fleeing the blast, a name no one would say out loud: Dominion Hall.

My producer, Diego Gil, had told me to play it safe, to “keep my distance” from whatever I found.

Fat chance. Safe didn’t win Ambies. Safe didn’t dig up the truth that’d been eating at me since I lost my old mentor to a story I’d pushed him into—a story that ended with his car wrapped around a Jersey overpass and me staring at his byline on my desk, wondering what I’d missed.

I wouldn’t miss this. I wouldn’t let anyone else I cared about get hurt.

I stepped closer to the pier’s edge, my recorder clicking on with a soft hum. The tide lapped at the broken pylons, dark water swirling around jagged wood, and I squinted into the haze. Something moved—a flicker in the wreckage, maybe a crab scuttling over ash, maybe nothing. But my pulse kicked up anyway, a familiar thud against my ribs.

This wasn’t just a story. It was a war, and I’d walked right into it—jet-lagged, half-starved, and too stubborn to care.

“Seen anything worth a headline out there?” a voice drawled behind me, low and smooth, cutting through the ocean’s murmur like a blade.

I froze, thumb hovering over the recorder’s stop button. The hairs on my neck prickled, and I turned slow, deliberate, like I wasn’t already coiled tight as a spring.

He stood ten feet back, leaning against a weathered lamppost, arms crossed over a chest that looked carved from granite. Tall, broad, with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes—blue, piercing eyes that pinned me like a butterfly to a board. His hair was sandy blond, tousled by the breeze like the surfer boy he could play on TV, and his faded Nirvana tee clung to him just enough to hint at muscle I didn’t want to notice.

He was too pretty to be harmless, too still to be casual.

“Depends,” I said, keeping my tone flat, New York City steel sharpening the edges. “You got something worth saying?”

His grin widened, but it was sharp, predatory, like he’d scented blood and liked it. “Just a friendly tip, darlin’. You’re poking at ghosts out here. Might not like what you wake up.”

Darlin’. The word grated, dripping with that Southern charm I’d already decided I despised. But his voice—low, rough, like gravel under tires—hit me somewhere I didn’t expect, stirring the tension already simmering in my gut.

I squared my shoulders, stepping closer, sand crunching under my feet. “Ghosts don’t blow up piers. People do. And I’m betting you know more than you’re letting on.”

He didn’t flinch, didn’t move, just tilted his head, studying me like I was a puzzle he hadn’t decided to solve—or break. “You’re a long way from home, Dixon. Charleston’s not kind to strangers who like to dig deep.”

My breath hitched. He knew my name. Not just some barfly tossing lines—he’d been waiting for me.

The air thickened, heavy with salt and something darker, and my fingers tightened around the recorder tillmy knuckles ached. I could smell it now, stronger than ever—the story, the truth, the war.

It was right here, staring me down with a smirk I wanted to wipe off his face.

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