Chapter 9
CAMILLE
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 flat steel 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?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Let me talk to my father first.”
The office door stuck like it always had.
I leaned my shoulder into it, and the wood sighed for me the way certain men did when I walked into a room I wasn’t supposed to own.
Inside: a desk that had been his in Paris and then here, lamplight warm, fans battling the heat in that hopeless Southern way, a wall of framed photos—ships, a French child with missing front teeth hugging a coil of rope as if it were a stuffed bear, my mother in a white sundress laughing into wind.
“Ma fille,” Papa said, rising before I could knock. “You found me.”
He came around the desk and I went into him like I always did.
His arms were big as the beams he loved, his beard softer than it looked, his shirt smelling like diesel and cedar.
He was getting older. I pretended not to notice except when I did.
He held me a second longer than usual and let go like a man who had taught himself not to squeeze.
“You are salt and sun and trouble,” he said, looking me over. “This shirt is not dry. How many animals did you lift before breakfast?”
“One,” I said.
He gestured to a chair. “You have time to drink water you did not get from a creek?”
“No,” I said, automatic, and then “Yes,” because my mother would scold me if I didn’t.
I sat. He poured. I drank. The water went down like truth.
“How long is this assignment?” he asked, neutral, which was how he asked if I was staying without daring to say the word. “Three months? Six?”
“Three on paper,” I said. “Maybe six, if I play it right.” I centered the glass. “NOAA seconded me to launch a grant pilot—deploy the nearshore hydrophone array and train the rehab crew on the new ‘quiet skiff’ procedures. I was in Charleston weeks before any animals washed up.”
He nodded, cautious delight tucked under worry. “Your mother is very happy you’re back in Charleston. She keeps finding excuses to drive past your bungalow—says the porch swing suits you—and pretends it’s on her way.”
“I know.” It came out softer than I meant. “I’m glad to be close. For now.”
“And Miami?” he asked, tentative. Do you miss it? was what he meant. Do you miss the life you made there?
“I miss it every day,” I said, honestly. “But the work is here for now.” I slid my phone onto his desk. “I didn’t come to talk about Miami.”
“I know.” He leaned against the desk, palms braced, eyes on me with that particular Allard patience I’d inherited and turned into a weapon. “You came because you are angry. I know you, Camille.”
“And because I need your help.” I flipped the phone, the PDF already waiting. He bent, the hair on his forearms catching the light like wire.
Typhon. Arcturus. Allard Atlantic.
I watched the words land.
He inhaled once, slow. “That is the Navy list,” he said, not a question.
“An ‘interim authorization list,’” I said, because accuracy kept me from throwing things. “Somebody redacted it in a hurry. Not well enough.”
He tapped the screen over Arcturus. “This one I know. They placed three orders in the last quarter. Housings, mounts, and a fairing. Typhon is not familiar.”
“You’re on a Navy authorization list as a vendor connected to Typhon,” I said. “If you tell me Allard Atlantic has nothing to do with whatever they’re testing in our shelf, I’ll put that in my pocket and carry it like a prayer. But I need you to be sure.”
Papa straightened. He crossed to the filing cabinet that creaked like a ship in a swell and pulled the top drawer, thumbing through manila as if pages were ribs he could count.
Eli had once joked Lucas Allard could find a paper trail in a hurricane.
It was true. He had learned, somewhere between Le Havre and Charleston, that trust was something you backed up with carbon copy.
“Arcturus,” he murmured. “Arcturus … Voilà.”
He carried two thin folders to the desk. “You will not photograph,” he said, gently but in that voice that had made dock managers fold.
“I won’t,” I said.
He laid out the invoices.
Purchase Order 8746: custom stainless housings, marine-grade, “instrumentation” as the purpose. Purchase Order 8759: quick-release deck mounts, removable. Purchase Order 8771: fairing— an ugly word for something meant to make water behave.
None of it illegal. All of it the kind of work that let a small yard pay health insurance for men with bad backs who kept showing up, anyway.
Each had a delivery signature. J. Kellerman. I didn’t like the cursive. It felt like a man who would compliment your dress while he stole your wallet.
“Who is Kellerman?” I asked.
“Manager for Arcturus,” Papa said. “Smiles too much. His shoes do not scuff. He wears a watch that costs more than my car and tells me, with modesty, that it is a gift from his wife.”
“Did he say what went in the housings?” I asked.
“He said ‘survey gear’ and ‘proprietary.’” Papa met my gaze straight on.
“He did not ask me to sign anything that put a finger on my mouth. If he had, I would have called you before using a pen. He brought cut sheets with dimensions and tolerances, tight as a banker’s heart.
Eli cut to the millimeter. I checked every weld myself. ”
“Fairings,” I said. “Housings. Quick-release mounts. That’s a quiet deck for equipment that doesn’t want to be seen.”
“It is also a quiet deck for research that wants to be clean,” he said.
“You think they’re scientists?” I asked, sharper than I meant.
“I think they are men who put work on our table,” he said. “When I asked for a DUNS number, they gave it. When I asked for payment terms, they honored them. When we delivered, they said thank you without pretending we were servants. That makes them rarer than you might think.”
I swallowed once. The heat had cooled since the PDF opened. Now something colder moved. “Typhon,” I said, tapping the line, the shaky redaction. “Any contact under that name?”
He shook his head. “Not to me. Does this name stand on your beach when you are moving animals?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe it hides behind men who do.”
He reached across the desk and put his thumb on the edge of the invoice, the way he used to put his thumb on a splinter I brought him so he could pull it clean. “Ma puce,” he said, voice softer, “what do you need from me that is not a defense of my choices?”
I hated that my throat went tight. I pushed the contractor tag I’d tucked into my tank across the desk instead—plastic, stamped with a logo that made my skin crawl.
“I cut this out of our pen seam this morning. Arcturus is on your ledger. This company is on a Navy authorization list. Someone is running noise in a box they told me was quiet. Somewhere between here and my creek is a line that connects all of that. I need to find it.”
He ran his thumb over the plastic, thinking. “This was tied to your pen?”
“Knotted into a snarl of monofilament,” I said. “Exactly where a careless hand would snag it.”
He turned the tag end over end like a worry stone. “Eli!” he bellowed without looking away. “Bring me the gate logs for last week and the camera stills from Tuesday night.”
Eli materialized from nowhere and everywhere. “Got ’em.”
Papa flipped the printouts.
“Cumberland Logistics,” Papa said.
“And Cumberland is?” I asked.
“A broker,” Papa said. “Not always dirty. Often messy.”
“Messy ruins animals the same as dirty,” I said.
Papa’s hand went back to the tag like he couldn’t help it. “If this was dropped by careless men, the camera at the river gate might have their faces,” he said, almost to himself. “We catch the tide there, you know, in images. People do not look up. They look only where they are going.”
“Can I have copies?” I asked.
“You may have eyes,” he said. “You may not have the originals. I will keep those where they do not get lost.”
“Papa—”
He raised his brows. “You taught me chain of custody is a religion,” he said. “Do not blaspheme in my office.”
Despite myself, my mouth tilted. He must’ve seen the relief because he exhaled like a man who’d been holding a wrench too tight and finally put it down.
“You are angry with the Navy,” he said, adjusting the papers into a neat pile so he wouldn’t reach for me instead.
“And maybe you should be. But listen to me with both ears. This city will sell you contractor sins as uniforms. Sometimes it is true. Sometimes it is not. The boat that takes a whale’s language from him is built by a man who thinks he is making a weatherproof box for a scientist who wants to listen to fish.
The line from one to the other—” He pulled taut an imaginary thread between thumb and forefinger. “—is this. Tension. And money.”
“Are you defending them?” I asked. The question hurt me. I asked it, anyway.
He shook his head, slow, like he was easing a valve.
“Non. I am reminding you that a conclusion that arrives faster than the facts is a kind of superstition.” His mouth softened.
“The Navy has been good to me, Camille. Good to us. NAVSEA was the contract that brought your mother and me here. I built my first American hull with their spec book open and a dictionary beside it. They paid on time when no one else did. When the banks looked at my accent and saw risk, the purchase orders said capacity.” He tapped the invoices.
“Do not make an enemy because it feels righteous. Make one because the data says you must.”
I stared at the tag on his desk until it blurred. A conclusion faster than the facts. The line landed where it needed to—somewhere tight behind my breastbone. In the space it made, a voice slipped in uninvited, low and rough at my ear: Breathe .
Jacob.
Steady hands, a command that wasn’t a command, the way my body had answered before my mouth did. Heat flickered, then settled into something cooler, more useful. I could be sharp without letting anger steer. I had to be.
“You think I’m wrong,” I said, not quite a challenge.
“I think you are dangerous when you are certain,” he said, and his eyes crinkled because he loved that about me, even when it frightened him. “Be certain of the right thing. The sea is not a courtroom—it is a system. Many hands touch a mistake before it reaches your beach.”
I let out a breath. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll slow down. I’ll prove it before I burn it.”
“Bon.” He lifted his chin toward the door. “Go save what you can save today.”
Outside, the yard’s heat curled around me, and the river turned its lazy, dangerous face toward the harbor.
I set my palms on the wheel and did the smallest obedient thing a stubborn woman can do: I breathed. Once, twice, slow. Then I turned the key and pointed myself back toward the animals who needed hands, not conclusions.