Chapter 2
The bruise on Kristen's jaw throbbed every time she smiled.
She smiled anyway, handing change to Mrs. Patterson and recommending the live shrimp over the frozen squid for flounder fishing.
Sixteen years of working this counter—first alongside her mother, then alone—had taught her that customers didn't want to see your problems. They wanted bait, cold drinks, and someone who knew which spots were producing.
"The point's been hot this week," she said, her voice steady despite the ache radiating up her cheekbone. "Early morning, incoming tide. Charlie Morrison pulled a twenty-inch flounder out there yesterday."
Mrs. Patterson thanked her and headed out with her bucket of shrimp, and Kristen let the smile drop. The bell over the door chimed—a sound that used to mean business, that now made her stomach clench with dread.
Just tourists. A young couple in matching visors who wanted directions to the public boat ramp.
She gave them directions, sold them sunscreen they'd forgotten, and watched them leave with the easy carelessness of people whose biggest problem was finding a parking spot. Must be nice.
The clock above the register read 2:55. Three hours until closing. Three hours of watching the parking lot, waiting for the black SUV that had shown up three times in the past two weeks.
Tyler had been gone for sixteen days now.
Her brother had vanished the same night Ray Dillard had given her this bruise—a "reminder," he'd called it, about payment schedules and family obligations.
Tyler had seen what happened, had watched from the stockroom doorway as Dillard's fist connected with her jaw, and by morning he was gone.
No note. No explanation. Just an empty apartment and a gambling debt that had somehow become her problem.
Forty-five thousand dollars.
The number lived in her head like a tumor, growing every time she did the math.
The shop cleared maybe three thousand a month after expenses, four in peak season.
She had eleven thousand in savings—emergency money she'd scraped together over years of sixteen-hour days.
The rest might as well have been forty-five million.
The bell chimed again.
Kristen's hands went still on the counter.
Two men walked in, and she recognized them both. Dillard—the one who'd hit her—with his boxer's build and broken nose and hands that knew exactly how to hurt. Beside him, a younger guy she'd seen once before. Lean, hungry, with the eager energy of someone trying to prove himself.
The couple browsing the fishing rod display suddenly remembered somewhere else they needed to be. They left without buying anything, not meeting Kristen's eyes as they passed.
She didn't blame them. She'd have done the same thing, once.
"Ms. Avery." Dillard smiled like they were old friends. Like he hadn't left finger-shaped bruises on her face two weeks ago. "How's business?"
"What do you want?"
"Friendly visit." He wandered toward the counter, picking up a package of hooks and examining them like he gave a damn about fishing. "Mr. Birch wanted me to check in. See if you've had any thoughts about our arrangement."
"There's no arrangement. Tyler owes you money. Tyler's not here."
"See, that's the thing." Dillard set down the hooks and leaned against the counter, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something expensive that didn't match his dead eyes. "Tyler owed us money. Past tense. He ran, which means the debt transferred. Family obligation."
"That's not how debts work."
"It's how our debts work." The younger man spoke up, circling toward the door like he was checking for witnesses. "You inherited this place from your mama, right? Family assets, family obligations. Same principle."
Kristen's fingers found the fishing knife she kept under the register. Not that she'd use it—not yet, not with two of them and no witnesses—but the weight of it helped her think.
"I don't have forty-five thousand dollars."
"No." Dillard's smile widened. "But you have this."
He gestured around the shop—the weathered walls, the hand-painted signs her mother had made, the rows of tackle and bait tanks and cold cases full of drinks.
Two generations of Avery women had built this place from nothing.
Shore Thing wasn't just a business; it was proof that they could survive without anyone's help.
Now these men wanted to take it because Tyler couldn't stay away from poker tables.
"Sign over the deed, we're square." Dillard pulled a folded document from his jacket—already prepared, because they'd known this was coming. "Mr. Birch has a buyer lined up. Some developer wants to put condos on the waterfront. You walk away clean, no more visits, everybody's happy."
"Everybody except me."
"You'd rather we collect another way?" Dillard's voice dropped, losing the friendly pretense. "Because that can be arranged. Your brother thought he could run—how's that working out for him? You think you're tougher than Tyler?"
The younger man laughed. Kristen didn't flinch.
"I'm not signing anything."
Dillard studied her for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes. She'd surprised him. Women were supposed to fold—that was his experience, probably. Cry, beg, give up everything to make the scary men go away.
Kristen had been the only adult in her family since she was nineteen years old. She'd bailed Tyler out of drunk tanks, covered his bad investments, cleaned up messes that would have broken weaker people. Folding wasn't in her vocabulary.
"You've got until the end of the month." Dillard straightened, tucking the document back in his jacket. "That's twelve days. Interest keeps running—fifty-one thousand now, sixty by the deadline. After that, Mr. Birch stops being patient."
"And then what?"
"Then we have a different conversation." He headed for the door, the younger man falling into step beside him. At the threshold, Dillard paused. "Nice place you've got here. Lot of wood. Old wiring. Things like that... accidents happen."
They left.
Kristen stood frozen behind the counter, knife still gripped in her hand, heart pounding against her ribs.
The shop felt different now—smaller, more fragile.
All that weathered wood and old wiring, decades of memories soaked into every beam, and these men talked about burning it like they were discussing the weather.
She made herself breathe. In. Out. The way she'd learned when Tyler's problems first started landing at her door, when she'd realized no one was coming to help.
The afternoon stretched on, empty and quiet. A few more customers trickled in—regulars who noticed the bruise and didn't ask, tourists who didn't notice anything—but Kristen moved through the transactions on autopilot. Smile. Recommend the live shrimp. Make change. Watch the parking lot.
At five-thirty, she locked the door early for the first time in three years.
The shop settled around her, familiar creaks and hums she'd known since childhood. The bait tanks bubbling. The old refrigerator case humming. The way the floor dipped near the window where water damage had warped the boards before her mother fixed them.
Her mother would have known what to do. Irene Avery had been iron wrapped in flannel—soft when she needed to be, unbending when it mattered.
She'd built this place from a card table and a cooler full of minnows, turned it into something that mattered to the whole community.
Died three years ago without ever seeing her son's gambling problem, without ever knowing the trouble that was coming.
Maybe that was a mercy.
Kristen sank onto the stool behind the register and pressed her palms against the worn wood of the counter. This was her inheritance. Her identity. The one stable thing in a life defined by cleaning up other people's disasters.
Tyler's face flashed through her mind—that boyish smile he used to escape consequences, the promises he never kept. She'd loved him despite everything, protected him when she should have let him fail. And now his failures were finally going to destroy the one thing she'd built for herself.
Twelve days. Fifty-one thousand dollars, climbing toward sixty.
She didn't have the money. She didn't have Tyler. She didn't have anyone.
What she had was a fishing knife, a shop full of bait, and sixteen years of solving problems alone.
The sun dropped toward the tree line, painting the water gold and pink through the shop's salt-streaked windows.
Kristen watched it sink, mind turning over options she'd already rejected a dozen times.
Loans she couldn't qualify for. Police who'd tell her gambling debts were civil matters.
Friends who didn't have that kind of money.
There had to be something. Some angle she wasn't seeing, some way to fight back that didn't end with her shop in ashes and her face looking worse than Tyler's last bad bet.
The water turned from gold to gray. The bait tanks bubbled their endless rhythm.
And Kristen sat behind the counter her mother built, trying to figure out how to save a business her brother was destroying from a hundred miles away.