Page 37 of The Captain
She’d gotten here early, just in time to see the end of it—the mother’s screams, the slap, the girl being dragged away. Her gaze locked on mine, a mix of confusion and something else—concern, maybe, or recognition of the rawness I couldn’t hide.
Monster.
I stood there, water dripping, my chest heaving, unable to move, the weight of the moment pinning me to the sand.
15
The woman and the little girl checked to make sure they weren’t being followed. They weren’t related, and the girl was just small for her age, almost thirteen.
The same man who’d given them instructions the night before appeared from behind a weathered porta potty. He held out a grocery bag and the woman snatched it, greedily.
“You were never here,” the man said.
The woman and the girl both laughed.
“Easiest money we ever made,” the teen said, snatching the bag from her accomplice and looking inside.
The woman snatched it back. “Got anymore work?”
“I’ll be in touch. Your tickets to Tampa are waiting in your inbox.”
The woman and the girl walked away and the man tasked by The Vanguard to exploit weakness, grinned. The two actors would be dead before dinner.
And the Danes … they were the next course on the menu.
16
CAMILLE
Isaw the end before I understood the beginning.
A mother’s scream tore the morning open—high, ragged, the kind of sound that makes people turn even if they don’t want to see. A little blonde girl, ankle-deep in the wash. Jacob in the surf, dripping, stunned, a handprint blooming red across his cheek. The woman yanked the child up the sand like she was hauling anchor and threw words that burned on contact—monster, creep, pedophile—each one a flung stone.
My body moved before my brain did. Down the dune, sand giving under my boots, heat already climbing, gulls lifting like gossip. Jacob’s gaze found mine. Fury, confusion, and shame lit behind his eyes.
“It isn’t what it looked like,” he said, voice raw, palms up like a man facing a gun.
I stopped three paces short, the tide licking my toes. My pulse made a drum out of my throat. The night before roared up at me—the tent, my body opening for him, the wordbreathein his mouth like a sacrament—then slammed against the sight ofa woman dragging a girl away and calling him words that sour every room they touch.
“Camille—” He took a step, checked himself. “She was in a rip. I pulled her out. That’s all. I swear to God.”
“Don’t,” I said. I heard how it sounded, like a command I gave on a beach when an eager volunteer reached for a fluke without asking.
Don’tis a tool.Don’tis a wall.
He flinched. “I’m telling you the truth.”
The truth. My father’s voice ran under mine: a conclusion faster than the facts is a kind of superstition. The words tried to be enough. They weren’t.
Because the facts I had weren’t facts at all. I didn’t know his last name. I didn’t know where he lived. I didn’t know who he fought for when it wasn’t my body or my cause. I knew the way he said my name right and the way his hands knew my body better than men who’d had months to learn it. I knew he could put three men on a deck on the ground without breaking a sweat. I knew the ocean liked him. None of that would help me, if I was wrong.
The mother’s voice kept echoing in the bones of the beach. People had started to look and then look away, the way they do when shame enters a scene. The wind pushed damp hair into my mouth. I tasted salt and bitterness.
“I don’t know you,” I said. It came out quiet and hurt, not clever. “I don’t know you at all.”
He opened his hands wider, like he could hold the whole mess between his palms and keep it from touching me. “I know. You will. Ask me anything.”
My mouth filled with questions—What’s your last name, where did you sleep last night, why did that woman hit you—but the only one that climbed my tongue was a stupid, small thing.Can I trust you?I swallowed it until it hurt.
