Chapter 5
CAMILLE
Before I could tell him what I thought about men who summoned women at this hour, he added, “It’s important,” and hung up. Another map followed by text. A dot on the harbor like a pin through a butterfly.
Dominion Hall didn’t glow in the dark so much as absorb it.
The iron gates split without drama when the guard confirmed my name, his eyes flicking over the rescue decal on my windshield and the scrape on my knuckle with equal interest. The drive curved through live oaks and shadow, the lawn beading with dew that looked like a million tiny decisions waiting to be made.
Under the portico, the air felt cooler by design.
A man in a tailored suit opened my door with a nod and the ghost of a smile that said he’d seen women arrive here at worse hours for worse reasons.
I stepped into stone and hush, the interior cool settling over my skin like a command: quiet yourself.
I did not belong here.
I belonged in tide and sand and bodies that trusted me because I’d learned how to listen.
But I’d been asked to come—no, summoned—so I squared my shoulders, smoothed my damp skirt, and let myself be escorted down a hall lined with oil paintings that made storms look like something you could buy and frame.
Some sort of conference room was waiting, glass wall to the harbor, long table, screens asleep like beasts conserving strength.
Two uniforms stood when I entered. Pincense had that polished ease that read as helpful until you learned better. Beside him, Lieutenant Leanne McGuire—tight bun, steady gaze—gave me a nod. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Allard.”
“You insisted,” I said, and then stopped because the air shifted.
Two men stepped out from the far side of the room, not in uniform and not pretending to be anything other than what they were.
The first moved like a scout—quiet steps, quick eyes, a face people told things they shouldn’t.
Broad through the chest, coiled in the waist. Ryker Dane , my mind supplied even before Pincense said the name.
I’d heard of him. He wore simplicity like a choice: dark shirt, clean lines, the exact amount of watchfulness that said he was already measuring who could hurt whom and how fast.
The second did not move so much as exist. Atlas Dane, as I was told, was massive, beard thick and neat, presence like a tide you didn’t notice until you realized you were no longer standing where you thought you were.
Leader , my body decided before my brain did.
Not just for the size—though he had that in spades—but for the stillness that came from knowing he didn’t need to prove a single thing.
“Dr. Allard,” Pincense said, hand out. We’d never met in person, but I recognized him from an official photo I’d found online. “Lt. Cmdr. Pincense. This is Lt. McGuire. And Ryker and Atlas Dane—Dominion Hall is partnering for logistics.”
“Doctor,” Ryker said, voice low, watchful. A nod like a blade. He didn’t offer his hand. I didn’t offer mine.
“Dr. Allard,” Atlas said, deep as a church bell, the word doctor landing like an oath kept. He did offer his hand. It swallowed mine without pressure. The heat of him surprised me, a living thing under the expensive shirt.
“We’ll be brief,” Pincense promised, as if he understood what it cost to drag a woman out of bed before dawn for a meeting.
“Please,” I said, and took the chair with my back to the glass so I could see the harbor reflected rather than laid out behind me like a threat.
The screens blinked to life under McGuire’s thumb. The map spread out—a grid of tidy boxes stitched over water that refused to be sewn. Exercise corridors, buffer zones, “mitigation.” The legend in the corner offered the comfort of small clean words.
“Mid-frequency training window,” Pincense narrated softly. “We’ve layered ecological advisories: shelf edges, historic stranding zones?—”
“And then run corridors through them,” I said. “Color-coded so we don’t notice.”
Ryker’s mouth almost twitched. Atlas didn’t move at all, but when I shifted my focus I found his gaze already there, heavy as a hand. My skin tightened in response—annoyance, respect, something I wasn’t interested in naming at this ungodly hour of the morning.
“Our measures exceed compliance,” McGuire offered. “Power-down when sightings occur within?—”
“Sightings are luck,” I said. “Beaked whales don’t raise hands when they’re in a chop at dawn.
Your radius is courtesy math.” I tapped the shelf line with my nail.
“We’ve had three strandings in fourteen days right here.
Two sets of pulmonary hemorrhaging, one with inner ear lesions.
That’s not a coincidence. That’s a pattern.
I need a forty-eight-hour halt in this box, twelve hours snug to either tide. ”
“That’s a significant request,” Pincense said, careful, as if my tone might bruise.
“It’s a significant die-off,” I said.
“We can minimize—” McGuire began.
“Minimize isn’t mercy.” I felt the fatigue of the hour and decided to push it, anyway. “You’ll pause. You’ll stay out of the shelf while we stabilize. You’ll give me the real specs—source levels, duty cycle, beam pattern—and the private permit list.”
“Classified authorizations—” Pincense tried.
“Animals are dying on our beaches,” I said. “We can all be important later.”
Ryker leaned his hip against the credenza, arms loose, eyes sharp. “What do you need on the ground besides their pause?”
“Water,” I said dry, and Pincense laughed before he caught himself.
“Access. A quiet engine on standby. A radio channel that won’t jam when every volunteer with a GoPro decides they’re part of the team.
And a perimeter when we’re with an animal so I don’t have to peel fingers off the fluke while I’m trying to keep a blowhole clear. ”
Atlas shifted by an inch, which felt like a shift in weather. “We’ll give you all of that,” he said. “Boats. Channel. Gates. Perimeter.”
“I don’t need babysitters,” I said.
“That’s not what I said,” Atlas answered, even, and because he didn’t raise his voice I heard the scalpel under it. “This house can provide support for you to work without interference. Two men. Unmarked. Ears open. Hands down unless you say otherwise.”
“My incident command,” I said. “My rules.”
“Your incident command,” he agreed. “My men.”
Pincense, smoothing: “Dominion Hall has robust resources, and collaboration?—”
“We’re not collaborating,” I said. “We’re not a press release. We’re keeping animals from dying in front of children on a tourist beach.”
Ryker’s gaze flicked to the window, to the faint suggestion of dawn peeling over the harbor. “You’ll have the radio channel in an hour,” he said, looking back to me. “Boat keys if you want them. Crew if you don’t.”
“Specs,” I said to Pincense. “Unredacted.”
He spread his palms. “We’ll provide what’s accurate.”
“Good,” I said. “Accuracy is my favorite.”
For ten minutes we did the slow dance—timeline, buffers, corridors that had no business existing where whales tried to live.
McGuire took notes like they mattered, and I decided I liked her.
Pincense made promises that felt soft and thin, and I decided I’d hold him to every syllable.
Ryker found the holes in the logistics and plugged them efficiently, the way a man does who’s seen problems arrive before. Atlas cut when cutting was needed.
“Two men,” Atlas said again, not because I’d forgotten but because he wanted to put the words on the table where we could both look at them. “They’ll sit ten paces back unless you call them forward. They’ll step out of your eyeline if you lift your right hand as if you’re waving off a gnat.”
“You choreographed my hand,” I said.
“I choreographed the friction,” he replied. “So you don’t have to spend focus on anything that isn’t the animal.”
I hated that part of me warmed to the competence. “They don’t talk to my interns unless I tell them to,” I said. “And if someone lifts a phone while we’re moving a patient, they make that person’s day very inconvenient.”
Ryker’s mouth showed teeth for the first time—amused, not kind. “Consider their day ruined.”
“Private permits,” I reminded Pincense. “Today.”
Atlas’s gaze slid to him, slow and unblinking. “You heard the doctor.”
Pincense’s smile thinned and then returned as if he’d just remembered how. “Before evening tide,” he said. “Of course.”
We wrapped at 5:57, the three-minute mark feeling like a cliff. McGuire gathered printouts. Pincense extended a hand. I took it because I was done donating dignity for free today.
“Thank you for your time,” he said, as if time were a thing he had a cellar full of.
“Send the list,” I said. “And keep your people off my shelf.”
I turned, and Atlas was already moving to open the door.
He didn’t do it like a butler; he did it like a man who’d decided the room needed a new arrangement and this was the next logical step.
Ryker fell in step on my other side without crowding, and for a moment I had the disorienting sense of being escorted by weather systems—one hot, one cold, both capable of drowning you.
“Dr. Allard,” Atlas said quietly as we reached the hall, “if you say no to the detail, say it to me. I’ll stand them down.”
“And put them farther out where I can’t see them,” I said, not a question.
A beat of acknowledgment in his eyes. “You’ll be safer that way,” he said without apology.
“I’ll be honest,” I told him. “Novelty for the hour.”
His beard twitched—almost a smile. “Honesty is the cheapest luxury we can afford.”
Ryker’s phone vibrated. He checked the screen with a look that read a paragraph, then slid it away. “Portico,” he said. “We’ll walk you.”
I wanted to say I knew which way the door opened. I wanted to say I didn’t need men bracketed around me like parentheses. I let it go. The hour had its limits.