17. Tess
Tess
Keys clattered beneath Tess’s fingertips while the window unit pushed its tired drone through the back office.
A weather-beaten charter binder lay open beside the laptop, its pages swollen at the corners from years of salt air and damp hands.
She dragged one finger down a column of crew hours, stopped at the next figure, and typed it into the payroll sheet.
The Honors broadcast would be live by now in Miami.
She hesitated over a faded number. She checked it again, entered the figure, then pushed the binder higher on the desk as if more paper could block the thought. Camden had climbed into Marcus’s SUV that morning. He had left the marina while the machine carried him back to the cameras.
Finish the column.
The office door opened, bringing a gust of coastal wind and fryer grease with it. Sully crossed the room with a grease-spotted cardboard carton in one hand and a chilled soda can in the other. He stopped beside her chair and tipped his chin toward the binders crowding the desk.
“Move that one before I grease up your payroll.”
Tess slid the nearest binder toward the laptop. “Corner’s clear. Put it there.”
He set the carton beside the keyboard and the can next to it. Condensation gathered beneath the aluminum and crept toward a stack of receipts. Tess pulled the receipts out of range and returned her finger to the manifest.
“You’re running on empty, Tess. Put this food in your stomach before the grease turns to glue.”
“Appreciate the drop, Sully.” She cracked the tab.
Carbonation hissed in the quiet office, and the first swallow cut through the fried-salt smell hanging over the desk.
She set the can down and found the line she had lost. “But these winter ledgers need to balance. I clear this column tonight, and we have a wide-open runway for the spring bait inventory.”
Sully looked at the spreadsheet, then at the untouched carton. “How much of that stack is left?”
“Enough that tomorrow gets ugly if I leave it sitting.”
“Tomorrow’s already ugly. It’s a marina.”
A laugh almost escaped her, but the next payroll line was waiting.
Tess traced the inked hours and entered another figure.
The work made sense in a way the rest of the day did not.
A charter ran six hours; someone got paid six hours.
A fuel delivery cost what the invoice said it cost. Spring bait orders could not pretend to be one thing on camera and another thing in private.
Sully pulled the carton closer to her elbow. “Food first. Numbers after.”
“The numbers are paying for the food.”
“The numbers will still be there after you chew.”
Tess lifted the lid. Fried shrimp sat inside, still hot enough to send up pepper, batter, and salt. She took one, bit through the coating, and kept her eyes on the spreadsheet while she chewed.
“You planning to supervise dinner now?” she asked.
“Considering it.”
She ran her thumb along the frayed binder edge. She opened to the next page and scanned the charter dates. Beyond the office walls, ropes pulled against cleats and water moved beneath the pilings. Sully trusted her with these books, these bills, these orders.
Miami did not get to take that, too.
She typed the next number. Sully nudged the soda closer when her hand drifted past it.
“Drink.”
“I just did.”
“Do it again.”
Tess gave him a look, but she lifted the can and took another swallow. The metal was chilled and slick against her palm. She returned it to the desk and wiped the damp ring from the wood.
Sully nodded toward the monitor. “Spreadsheet survives the night.”
“So does the spring order if I finish this.”
“It survives that too.”
“You suddenly become an accountant?”
“No. I became the guy who owns the fuel pumps you forgot I still have to chain.”
That pulled her attention off the screen. Sully had shifted toward the door, one hand near the knob while the other pointed at the carton.
“Eat the rest. I’m going to lock down the main pumps.”
“I can finish this column before you’re back.”
“You can finish chewing before I’m back.”
Tess glanced at the spreadsheet. Three rows remained in the current section. Her fingers hovered above the keys as Sully pulled the door open a few inches.
He looked over his shoulder at her.
“Soon as I finish, you’re climbing into the passenger seat of my truck.”
Tess pulled her hands away from the keyboard before Sully could repeat himself. She closed the logbook, gathered the loose receipts into one stack, and tapped their frayed edges against the desk. One receipt slipped sideways. She caught it with her thumb and squared the stack again.
Sully stayed in the doorway instead of leaving for the pumps. “Take the carton with you when we leave.”
“I’m not leaving the office yet.” Tess set the receipts beside the binder and reached for the next pile. “You said you had fuel lines to secure.”
“Staring a hole through that monitor isn’t fooling anyone, Tess.” His gaze traveled from the untouched shrimp to the spreadsheet. “Save the manager routine for the charter captains. If you need to throw the deadbolt and rip this room apart after I walk out, do it.”
The top receipt shifted again when Tess pressed the stack down. She tamped the entire stack against the desk until every corner lined up. Numbers behaved when someone bothered to put them where they belonged.
“Tears don’t cover the diesel bill, Sully.” She slid the receipts beneath the logbook. “Winter inventory still needs financing, and I’m not spending the night mourning a quarterback who chose an apparel launch over his own child.”
Sully rested one hand on the doorknob. “Ten minutes isn’t surrender.”
“Go chain your pumps.”
“You always this pleasant when somebody feeds you?”
“You hired me for accuracy, not charm.”
That earned a grunt from him. Sully opened the door, and the office air shifted as the marina slipped through the gap—salt, fuel, water moving against pilings somewhere beyond the walls.
He paused with one boot over the threshold. “Fine. Just watch that you don’t keep that door shut so long you forget how to open it again. Ten minutes, Tess. Shut your eyes. Let the numbers survive without you.”
“I’ll consider your deeply moving management advice.”
“Liar.”
The door swung closed behind him. The latch caught, and the outside noises thinned until the window unit reclaimed the room with its steady mechanical hum.
Tess stayed where she was.
The carton sat open beside her laptop, a patch of grease soaking through the bottom. Condensation from the soda can had left a damp ring near the keyboard, and one abandoned shrimp rested against the folded edge of the carton as if Sully expected her to follow orders after he left.
She looked back at the spreadsheet.
The cursor blinked in the next empty cell.
This morning, Camden had stood in the marina dirt with taped ribs and torn hands. For one stupid stretch of time, she had believed all of it meant something. The hull scraping. The storm. The blood on his palms. The way he had stepped between her and the cameras.
Then Marcus had opened an SUV door.
“Because I agreed to leave.”
Camden’s voice returned with brutal clarity.
Tess picked up the receipt stack and tapped it against the desk again, though the edges were already straight. He had agreed. No struggle. No stand in the gravel. When the machine demanded him back, he had climbed inside.
The spreadsheet waited.
She placed the receipts beside the logbook, moved the carton away from the keyboard, and rested her hands on the desk.
You surrendered in the gravel today, Camden. My ledger is officially closed.
The office door slammed into the wall hard enough to make the soda can rattle on the desk.
Tess jerked her hands away from the keyboard. Sully came through the doorway with his phone raised in one hand, his shirt damp along the collar and his face flushed from the docks. Coastal humidity flooded in behind him and chased the chill from her bare forearms.
“What happened?”
“Move the laptop.”
He crossed the room before she could answer and threw his keys onto the desk. They struck beside the closed logbook, bounced once, and landed against the carton. Tess shoved the laptop back from the edge.
“Sully, what happened to the pumps?”
His phone screen glowed with notification banners stacked on top of each other. He barely glanced at it before reaching across the counter for the television remote.
Tess pushed her chair back. “Did a line rupture?”
“Forget the lines for a second.”
He bumped the stack of receipts she had spent the last ten minutes forcing into order.
Paper scattered across the floor.
One invoice skidded beneath the desk. Another landed face-down near Sully’s boot. He stepped over both without breaking stride.
Seeing him ignore the paper stopped her more effectively than his entrance had.
Sully noticed messes. He complained when Briggs left invoices under a toolbox. He could spot an unsigned fuel slip from across the office and lecture a charter captain about it until the man surrendered just to escape him.
Now half the paperwork lay on the floor, and he didn’t bend for a single sheet.
Something happened.
Tess rose from the chair. “Are the fuel lines compromised?”
Sully pointed the remote at the television. The screen flared to life with a broadcast graphic, followed instantly by a burst of arena noise.
She stared at him instead of the screen.
“What notifications?”
“Give it a second.”
“No. Tell me why you came through that door like the fuel dock was on fire.”
“The fuel dock is fine.”
“Then what isn’t?”
Sully jabbed the volume button. The office filled with overlapping crowd noise, a commentator talking too fast to make sense of, and the thin buzz of a live feed trying to settle.
Tess looked at the fallen receipts.
The page under the desk could wait.
The fact that she was leaving it there bothered her almost as much as Sully’s face.