Chapter 7
Found you, ya bastard.
Audi. White. Missing four hubcaps. I squint in the sun, peering at the motel car park.
It’s fine. It’s all fine.
Except I can’t breathe. I rub my chest in soft circles. I’m not doing anything wrong, I tell myself. Chris wants a story, and I want a job.
I keep my head down as I creep across the lot, hands shoved in my pockets, shoulders forward, eyes down. Other than me, there’s only one woman in the lot, sitting at the circular table outside her door, smoking a cigarette and staring intently at her phone.
I walk past his Audi and pause. There’s something tucked under a windshield wiper. I glance over my shoulder and pluck it out. I hold it between my thumb and forefinger, blinking when I realize what it is.
A shark tooth.
I stare at it, rubbing my thumb over its serrated edges. I tuck it back under, snap a photo, and force myself to keep walking. Go, go, go, right to his door. It’s fine. It’s fine. I knock twice, then step back, darting a look at the woman with the cigarette who ignores me.
From behind the door, a muffled voice: “Who is it?”
I can feel him watching me through the peephole. Before I answer, he unlocks the door, and it swings open.
Chris Cooper. The cleanest man I’ve ever known. He’s stiff-backed and solemn with reddish-brown hair. Light blue plaid shirt, rolled up to the elbows. White lace-up shoes, clay-colored chinos. Black watch with a gold face that says Maserati.
I shake my head. In my town, everyone wears the same unspoken uniform—grimy hoodies with stained sleeves. Ten-year-old T-shirts in black, gray, or dark navy. Cargo shorts or torn jeans.
Nothing like this man and his casual opulence.
I look down at my own clothes. Jeans, tomato sauce stain on the left knee that never quite came out. Black hoodie.
“Melanie?” he asks, uncertain for once. “That you?”
“Was.”
He stares hard at the tomato sauce mark like he’s never seen a stain before, then raises his eyebrow when he notices the anglerfish tattoo on my right hand. “That new?”
“No.”
“Well, well.” He smiles. “What else have you been hiding?”
“Let me in, Chris.”
He opens the door a fraction wider, hovering in the doorway, staring at me with a faint trace of amusement.
I step inside, my left shoulder brushing his. He smells like soap and not the masculine ones Oliver marinated in, bourbon and leather and sandalwood. Chris smells faintly feminine, pears and peaches. He always looks freshly showered, well groomed, as bare-faced as an infant.
He looks harmless, but he’s not. Journalists never are. They don’t look at you. They look inside you. You’re not human to them. You’re a sack of secrets in meat.
Chris shuts the door with a loud bang that makes me want to hit him. I don’t like loud noises. I imagine others raised in violence feel it, too—the way our nervous systems flinch, riddled with bullet holes no one can see.
We close doors silently, keep our voices low, hold our drinks tight enough to crack the fucking glass. But people like Chris, they get to slam doors with no fear of retaliation. They get to live while the rest of us survive. Except now…I think of the tooth tucked under his windshield wiper.
Us. Them.
“Forgive me for asking…” he says, “but what on earth are you doing here?”
“I grew up in Kangaroo Bay. What are you doing here?”
His upper lip curls. “That place?” He really means, That shithole? But Chris Cooper doesn’t swear.
“How’s your story going?”
“What story?”
“Oh, we’re going to do this, are we? Bloody hell,” I say impatiently. “Your shark story. Bit light on the details, though…”
He frowns.
“Lemme guess,” I say. “The locals aren’t talking.”
He snorts. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“You don’t, either,” I say bluntly.
God, it’s quiet. The TV is off, the blinds drawn; there’s no electrical hum.
Nothing to shield us from the strangeness of this meeting.
He points to the table pressed against the back wall, and we sit down in silence.
He crosses his ankles, leans back, and I wipe filmy sweat from my palm onto my thigh.
He stares at my empty ring finger, pauses. “How’s Oliver?”
I tossed my engagement ring into the same drawer that holds my father’s newspaper articles. The drawer feels like a grave now. Sometimes I find myself rubbing my ring finger with my thumb, delighting at its emptiness.
“Great.”
His eyes travel pointedly to my ringless finger. “Let me guess,” he says, clicking his tongue, amused. “He dumped you after your on-air freak-out?”
“No, I left him before that. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“What made you do it?”
“Do what?”
He folds his arms across his chest. “Throw something at Joy Marriot. Allegedly.”
“I take a lot, Chris,” I tell him truthfully. “I take a lot until I can’t take any more.”
“Fair enough,” he says, and for the first time since I stepped inside, he looks at me with real interest. “Why her, though?”
“She’s ripping off her cancer charity. I can prove it.”
His face goes still, expression frozen between confusion and disbelief. Then his eyes widen and a lip curls back like a shark on the hunt. “So that’s why the studio’s keeping it quiet. Lucky for you.”
“And you,” I tell him. “Because you’re going to break the news.”
The studio called this morning. We’ve agreed to part ways, quietly. No termination, no lawsuit. Just a clean break. I won’t expose Joy, and they’ll make a brief LinkedIn announcement, wishing me well as I “pursue new opportunities.”
I agreed.
I won’t expose Joy.
Chris will.
There’s a small, almost invisible tension in his jaw, a flicker of anticipation in the way he leans forward. His voice is careful. Measured. Like he’s not desperate to know, like he hasn’t smelled the blood in the air. “Melanie, dear, would you like to tell me a bit more about that?”
“Not yet.” I pause. “And my real name is Minnow, by the way. Greenwood.”
His eyebrows lift instinctively, like he’s not sure if I’m joking. When he realizes I’m not, he laughs, but it’s hollow, reflexive. A laugh that says, Give me a second, I wasn’t ready for that.
“I reached out to a Greenwood about the attack,” he says thoughtfully. “The charter captain?”
“Heath,” I say unwillingly. “My brother.”
“He wasn’t very helpful.”
“Why should he be?”
“The other captain was. Talked my ear off, but wouldn’t let me quote him directly. Chatty fella, Luke Newton.”
“Luke’s a bit different from the rest of us.”
I don’t tell Chris I was there that night. I don’t want him sidetracked. I need him to follow my lead, not his.
He runs a hand through his brick hair, his silence thick and disapproving. “Okay…well, do you have any other massive surprises you feel like dropping while you’re at it?” He tilts his head, subtly, staring at my tattoo, like he’s reevaluating me, reevaluating everything. “Why the name change?”
“It’s not illegal to change your name.”
“No,” he agrees, eyes flicking up to mine. “But it’s curious.”
I gesture to his car, changing the subject. “What happened to your hubcaps?”
“I’ll find them.”
“They lost?”
“Like I said,” he says sternly, “I’ll find them.”
“These people…You don’t know what they’re like.”
“Then tell me.”
“Checked your car lately?”
“I don’t give a shit about the hubcaps,” he says tightly.
“I meant the tooth.”
“The what?”
I freeze. “You didn’t see the shark tooth under your windshield wiper?”
His mouth parts slightly, and there’s a pause where his brain is clearly replaying what I said. “Excuse me?”
“Go see.”
He gets to his feet and heads outside. Through a gap in the blinds, I catch a glimpse of him standing over his car windshield. A moment later, he’s back, agitated. Before he shuts the door, he peers outside, scanning the car park. “That wasn’t there this morning.”
“They don’t like people asking questions in Kangaroo Bay.”
“Why not?”
Because we have so damn much to hide.
“If you’re going to stay here,” I tell him, “you need to find somewhere else to rent, quick smart.”
He looks at the navy carpet, frowns. “Yeah,” he says, “all right.”
“Listen,” I say, leaning forward, “I’m a local, and I can tell you why there’s so many sharks around the bay.
There are higher rates of shark sightings and attacks in fishing towns.
Same with Sorrento, Angelsea, Coogee Beach.
” I list them off. “Coogee had two attacks in the last seven years. Why? ’Cause it’s a snapper town and the vibrations on the lines bring them in.
The tourists still come down, and some of them are so stupid they jump in the water, thinking it won’t be them. Then it is.”
Silence.
“That’s your shark story,” I continue. “But I’ve got a better one. Two, actually.”
He pauses, reluctant to let it go, but I’m telling him the truth. He can continue being stonewalled and threatened by the Kangaroo Bay locals, or he can pivot and take down Joy Marriot…and uncover an almost-thirty-year secret that will make national news.
“I can help you. But first—” I hesitate. “—you need to do something for me.”
“Such as?”
“I need an income. Writing blogs, copyediting, whatever.”
He leans against the wall, considers. “That depends.”
My blood pumps so hard, I hear it throbbing in my ears. “On?”
“Have you figured out how to spell accidentally yet?”
“For shit’s sake, Chris.”
“And what will you give me?”
“Joy,” I tell him. “And something else…something better.”
His eyes are fixed on my face, trying to read ahead, but even he couldn’t guess the bomb I’m about to drop.
“A name,” I say. “A name that will solve a thirty-year-old missing person case.”
He’s playing it cool, but I can see the eagerness in his eyes. “What makes you think they’ll talk to me?”
“They can’t,” I tell him. “They’re dead.”