Page 21 of The Captain
The yacht powered on, the water stretching endless before us.
I didn’t know what Dominion Hall was, or what they wanted, or why Caleb hadn’t told me he’d been here.
I didn’t know if Camille was a one-night mistake or something more dangerous.
But for now, I’d watch, I’d listen, and I’d wait for the punchline. Because when it came, I’d be ready.
9
CAMILLE
Islipped my phone back into the dry bag and waved the tripod guy toward his car. Up the access path, the stranding network’s white F-150 sat where Tamika had parked it, key in the magnet box under the bumper. I loaded the throw bag and towels, climbed in, and pointed the truck toward the yard.
I didn’t take the bridge. The straight shot would have shoved me past tour boats and shiny Navy silhouettes pretending to nap. I needed the back roads that smelled like creosote, river mud, and old steel. Even there, my fingers drummed the wheel, a nervous metronome I couldn’t quiet.
In my head, the day pulled in two rough loops—the dolphin on our table, breathing too fast, and the Kogia’s coin-black eye in the swash, asking a question the ocean wouldn’t answer. There wasn’t enough of me to be everywhere at once, and that truth sat behind my ribs like a fist.
Miami had taught me to triage with a smile. Charleston wanted a curtsy.
At a red light, I thumbed open the email I’d ignored on the beach, the one with the subject line that sounded like a grocery list.
Interim Authorization List.
Pincense’s people loved a label that told you nothing while it told you everything.
The PDF loaded slow. Salt left a faint halo on the glass where I’d swiped with wet hands. The first page was garbage—blurred stamps, chunks of black where nouns should live. But the second page was lazy work. Someone had redacted in a hurry.
Typhon Acoustic Research, LLC — equipment evaluation; coastal shelf corridor C; authorization window 0600–2000; subcontractor: Arcturus Marine Services.
Below that, smaller, as if the font itself knew it was a footnote pretending it wasn’t:Vendor: Allard Atlantic Fabrication (Charleston).
My father’s yard.
The place that smelled like the first years we survived here. The place that taught me how to read a man’s hands before I trusted his smile.
Heat flared under my skin, clean and ugly. I shut my eyes for one breath, then I turned toward the water.
Allard Atlantic sat like a low hymn where the river bent—steel buildings the color of storms, a forest of masts and cranes, sparks flaring under corrugated eaves. The hand-painted ALLARD ATLANTIC FABRICATION sign still leaned a little, because my father insisted a straight line was suspicious in a town that liked its pride crooked. Palmettos shuddered in the heat. A forklift beeped, backing. A grinder screamed, showering orange.
Memory rose like a tide.
The first time I held a welding rod while Papa’s big hands shadowed mine. The first time I watched a hull rise out of flatsteel like a vertebra, and realized men could build their own animals if you gave them heat and patience enough. The first time I cried behind the rack of acetylene tanks because a boy from school called my mother’s accent “funny,” and Papa said, in French, that funny is what people call a thing when they don’t know how to love it yet.
I pulled in near the office, crooked again, because straight felt like a lie.
The yard dog—Mousse, ancient and dignified—lumbered out from under a skiff on blocks and thumped his tail once, then twice, then decided I was worth rising for. He pressed his muzzle into my thigh, and I rubbed the grizzle between his eyes until he groaned.
“You old man,” I said, and my voice softened without my permission.
“Only one old man here, and he’s in his office pretending numbers don’t bore him,” someone called. Eli Greiner, foreman, baseball cap older than some of his tools, cheeks dusted with steel grit. “You tell him I said so.”
“I will.” I hesitated. “Eli—did Arcturus pick up anything here this month?”
His eyebrows did a slow, distrustful dance toward each other. “Arcturus … The blue van? Jenkins driving? Or the other one—contractor with the polished loafers who smells like hotel soap?”
“Hotel soap,” I said.
Eli scratched his jaw. “Picked two crates last week. Lucas handled it. Ask him.” His eyes sharpened, reading the tension I couldn’t hide. “You need me to pull the yard logs?”
