Page 6 of The Captain
He closed the truck and leaned on the door. “You riding in?”
I looked at the water, at the way the horizon trembled like it was trying not to cry. I looked down the beach where Tamika had disappeared and thought about divergent paths and howchoices felt like small betrayals you only recognized when you were knee-deep in them.
“Go,” I said. “Get him on fluids. I’ll be right behind you.” I slid the cooler of samples into the cab. “If he crashes, call.”
Miguel’s eyes softened. We didn’t say the wordiflike a prayer. We said it like an equation. “Copy,” he said, and the truck growled away.
For a minute, the beach felt too big. I stood thigh-deep and breathed in and out and let the water kiss the inside of my knees. My shirt stuck to my skin.
When I closed my eyes, Miami rose behind them—the South Florida Rehab Center’s sharp-clean smell, the efficiency, the way the city’s chaos made me feel like anything could happen. I missed the noise. The way men there flirted like it was a sport I could win without trying, and the way I sometimes let them because it was easier than being alone.
Charleston wanted different things from me. It wanted patience. Politeness. It wanted me to sit pretty at tables where men saidcollaborativeandstakeholderandimpactin voices that made my teeth ache.
My phone buzzed. The screen showed a number with a military exchange. I let it go another round and then thumbedAccept, because avoiding a thing never starved it. It only made it hungrier.
“Dr. Allard,” a male voice said, crisp and pleasant like ice over a river. “Lieutenant Commander James Pincense. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“You have now,” I said, rolling my shoulders back. Salt cracked where fabric had dried and then gotten wet again. “What can I do for you, Commander?”
“We’re eager to coordinate schedules for next week’s training exercise to ensure we’re doing our part to reduce ecologicalimpact. There’s a window this afternoon for a pre-brief with our acoustic team. Are you available?”
I looked toward the horizon where the thrumming had finally faded beneath the hiss of the surf. “Are you operating today?”
“Not in the corridor nearest your position,” he said smoothly. “We adhere to all advisories.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
A beat of silence. Then, “I can send over the map.”
“You’ll send the map,” I said, “and you’ll keep your folks away from the shelf where we’ve had three strandings in fourteen days.”
“We’re in full compliance with?—”
“Compliance isn’t mercy,” I said. “It’s math.”
Another pause, longer this time. Somewhere high in a hotel room behind me, a woman laughed the way a woman laughs when she’s decided to be bad. The sound skittered down my back like a fingernail. I eased my legs wider against the pull of the tide. I had not been touched in weeks and my body was a live wire. It made everything feel larger: the sun on my throat, the drag of damp cotton over my chest, the way the ocean ate at the edges of my boots.
“We want to work with you, Dr. Allard,” Pincense said finally. “We’re on the same side.”
“We’re not,” I said, and surprised myself with how easily the truth came. “But we can stand on the same beach for a few minutes and pretend.”
He cleared his throat. “Fourteen hundred?”
“Send the map,” I repeated. “And the specs on your mid-frequency.”
“I’ll see what I can?—”
“You’ll send the specs.”
Another silence. “You’ll have them within the hour.”
The line clicked dead. I stared at the screen until it went dark, then slipped the phone back into the waterproof pouch clipped to my belt. I waded out another step and let a wave break against my thighs, sly and intimate.
In Miami, I’d had a lover who’d called mesirènewhen I came, like the ocean itself had crawled into bed with us. In Charleston I had the ocean and my work and a city that insisted on pretending its sins were old enough to be charming. I had a father who still spoke of steel and hulls like they were poems. I had a mother who sent me links to coastal cottages and saidmaybe, ma chérie, you could have a porch.
I had this: salt, heat, a heartbeat in my palm that lingered long after the animal was gone.
“Dr. Allard?” Becca’s voice again, behind me this time. She’d jogged back from the truck, hair escaping her cap, eyes shining with adrenaline and something soft. “They’re on the bridge. Fluids in. Vitals … not great, but he’s holding.”
