Chapter 2
The stern drive was fighting her.
Dana lay on her back on the creeper with her shoulders wedged under the transom of a forty-foot lobster boat, both hands inside the housing, and her right forearm pressed against the manifold hard enough to feel yesterday's heat through the metal.
The lower unit had a busted shift cable and a seal that was weeping gear lube in a slow, steady drip that had already put a dark stain on her collarbone.
Above her, the hull blocked the late-afternoon light and turned her world into grease, rust, and the smell of old zinc anodes.
She liked it down here. Under a boat, the problems were mechanical. You could find them, name them, fix them. Nobody lied to you about what was broken.
"Dana." That was Marco, her one remaining full-time guy, calling from the shop door. "Somebody out front."
"Busy."
"They're wearing ties."
She closed her eyes. Nobody wore a tie to a marine repair shop unless they were selling something, serving something, or about to waste her time in a way that required looking professional while they did it.
She wiped her hands on the rag from her back pocket, slid out from under the transom, and stood up in the one working lift bay that was Prescott Marine's entire operation since the economy had decided small waterfront shops were a luxury.
The other bay had a cracked foundation and a lift that hadn't passed inspection in two years.
The parts room behind it was organized the way her father had left it — every gasket, every impeller, every zinc in its bin, labeled in his handwriting that she couldn't bring herself to replace.
The receiving dock out back faced the harbor and took deliveries three times a week from the marine suppliers up the coast. It wasn't much.
It was hers in every way except the paperwork.
She walked through the shop wiping her hands and stepped into the front office, where two men stood looking at the work orders pinned to her corkboard like they were reading a restaurant menu.
The first one was compact, tanned, wearing a sport coat that cost more than her monthly parts order. Mid-thirties, smile already loaded. The second was bigger, quieter, standing by the door with his hands folded — the kind of man whose job was to be in the room, not to talk.
"Ms. Prescott?" Sport Coat said.
"It's not my name. I run the shop. What do you need?"
The smile didn't waver. "We represent a logistics company looking to partner with established marine businesses along the coast. Storage and redistribution — inventory that needs a clean receiving point and a trusted name attached to the paperwork.
Steady income, minimal effort on your end.
You'd barely notice the stock moving through. "
Dana looked at him. She'd been on this waterfront since she was twelve years old, handing her father wrenches and learning which customers paid and which ones had stories.
She'd run Prescott Marine's floor for six years and its books for four, and she knew exactly what inventory that needs a clean receiving point meant.
"What kind of stock?"
"Machine parts. Tools. Electronics. Commercial-grade equipment moving between suppliers and end buyers. All you'd need to do is receive, log, and release. We handle the rest."
"And the paperwork says it came through Prescott Marine."
"The paperwork says it was handled by a business with a sixty-year reputation on this harbor." The smile widened. "That reputation has value, Ms. — I'm sorry, what should I call you?"
"You can call me the woman who's about to tell you no."
She pulled the rag from her pocket and worked at the gear lube under her nails while she watched his face adjust. It was a small adjustment — the smile thinning, the eyes going flat for just a second before the warmth came back. A man used to hearing no, but not used to it sticking.
"The compensation is significant. Monthly retainer plus per-shipment fees. Enough to fix that second bay, hire more crew, upgrade your lifts."
"You walked in here, looked at my shop, and figured I was desperate enough to let you run hot freight through my receiving dock because my foundation's cracked.
" Dana tossed the rag onto the counter. "I've been watching trucks unload on this waterfront since I was a kid.
I know what clean freight looks like. Yours isn't it. "
The quiet one by the door shifted his weight. Not a threat — not yet. Just a reminder that he was there.
Sport Coat held up both hands, palms out, the universal gesture of a man pretending to surrender. "I think there's a misunderstanding about the nature of—"
"There's no misunderstanding. You need a shop with a name people trust to make your stock look legitimate. Mine's not for sale."
"Everyone's is, eventually."
He said it light. Conversational. Like he was commenting on the weather or the price of diesel. But the words landed different from the smile, and Dana felt the hair on her arms lift under the grease.
"We're done," she said.
Sport Coat studied her for a three-count, then produced a card from his jacket and set it on the counter. Plain white, a phone number, no name. "In case you reconsider."
"I won't."
He nodded once, turned, and walked out. The quiet one followed without a word.
Through the office window she watched them cross the gravel lot to a black SUV that was too clean for the waterfront, too expensive for the neighborhood, and parked in the spot where the fishermen usually left their trucks.
The SUV pulled out and turned toward the coast road, and she stood there watching until it disappeared past the fuel docks.
Marco appeared in the shop doorway, a socket wrench in one hand and a look on his face that said he'd been listening.
"What was that about?"
"Nothing good." Dana picked up the card, looked at it, and dropped it in the desk drawer. Not the trash — she wasn't stupid. If whoever these people were came back, she'd want to know who she was dealing with. "They want to use the dock to move freight. I said no."
"The kind of no that sticks?"
She thought about the way Sport Coat had said everyone's is, eventually. The way his smile hadn't reached his eyes at any point during the conversation. The way the quiet one had shifted by the door — not to intimidate, but to catalogue. Like he was measuring the room. The exits. Her.
"Ask me tomorrow," she said.
She went back to the stern drive.
The lobster boat belonged to Cal Henning, who'd fished out of Sable Harbor for thirty years and treated his engine the way most men treated a vending machine — put fuel in, expect it to work, act shocked when it didn't. The shift cable was shot and the seal needed replacing, but the real problem was deeper.
The gimbal bearing was going, and if she didn't catch it now, Cal would be dead in the water by November with a seized-up drive and a repair bill three times what this one cost.
She pulled the lower unit, drained the lube, and got the bearing housing open.
It was bad — pitted, rough, the kind of wear that said the boat had been running hard on neglect for a season and a half.
She added a bearing replacement to the work order, sourced the part from her father's bins, and started the rebuild.
The light outside the bay door went from afternoon gold to evening gray.
Marco finished his jobs and stuck his head in to say he was leaving.
She waved him off without looking up. The harbor sounds filtered in through the open door — halyards clinking, the low diesel throb of a dragger coming in late, gulls arguing over something on the fish pier.
Her phone buzzed. A text from old Mr. Prescott: How's the Henning boat?
Getting there, she typed back. Go eat dinner, Ray.
Ray Prescott was seventy-two and hadn't turned a wrench in three years, but he still called every day and came by twice a week to sit in the office and pretend he was checking the books.
His name was on the door, his license was on the wall, and his hands shook too much to hold a socket wrench steady.
Dana ran his shop the way he'd taught her to run it — fix what's broke, charge fair, get the boats back on the water.
She owed him that much. She owed her father's memory that much.
She worked until the stern drive was back together, the shift cable replaced, the seal seated, the bearing rebuilt and packed.
She tested the action twice, ran the motor on the stand, listened to it catch and settle into the smooth idle that meant everything was where it was supposed to be.
The sound was the closest thing she had to satisfaction — an engine running right because she'd put her hands on it and made it right.
It was full dark when she lowered the bay door and locked up.
The harbor spread out in front of her, black water and dock lights and the red blink of the channel marker at the breakwater's end.
The air smelled like low tide and diesel, and somewhere out past the point the Atlantic was working against the rocks in the steady rhythm that never stopped, never changed, never gave a damn about anything that happened on shore.
She stood in the gravel lot and looked at the empty spot where the black SUV had been parked.
The pitch had been too polished. The man too comfortable with her refusal, like he'd expected it and already had the next move planned.
The quiet one hadn't been muscle — he'd been inventory.
Counting the doors. Measuring the dock. Noting what the shop had and what it was worth as a piece of someone else's operation.
Dana pulled her keys out and walked to her truck. She had four boats on the board tomorrow and a parts order to place before the supplier closed. Whatever those men wanted from Prescott Marine, they'd have to want it from somebody who wasn't selling.
She started the engine, pulled out of the lot, and left the waterfront behind her with the harbor lights shrinking in the mirror and the feeling between her shoulders that she'd been measured for something she hadn't agreed to.