Page 49 of Everything You Hate
“I’m sorry, Dean.” The man on the other end sounds like he means it. “The wife saw the posts. The whole treasure thing. Says she doesn’t want the kids around metal detectors and drones. Not the trip we signed up for.”
I grip the phone. “We can adjust the route. Stay offshore. The north passage doesn’t get the foot traffic.”
“It’s not just the route.” He hesitates. “The island’s different. She says it feels like a circus right now. Old Salt’s was standing room last night. People asking where to dig. I don’t know, man. She’s nervous.”
Four days. Four thousand dollars. Booked six months ago.
“I understand.” I don’t. “Appreciate the heads-up.”
I hang up and stare at the water. Doug snores from his nest of life jackets. Captain mutters something about fuck me sideways and I don’t have the energy to correct him.
The marina is busy. Too busy for April. Three boats at the fuel dock. A group of tourists clustered around the information board, pointing at the north shore on the map. One of them has a metal detector propped against the rail. I haven’t seen a metal detector on this dock in twenty years.
I need coffee. Badly. The Driftwood’s two blocks up, but the walk takes me through Main Street, and Main Street is a museum of everything I don’t want to see.
A tour group outside Brine and Bean. Donna behind the counter, arms crossed, watching them through the window with the expression of a woman counting the minutes until they leave. A drone buzzing somewhere overhead—low, civilian grade, the kind you buy online and fly without a license. The sound sets my teeth on edge.
Old Salt’s has its doors propped open at eleven in the morning. The Salt never opens before three. Inside, every stool is taken. Whiskey Jim holds court behind the bar, arms spread wide, telling some version of the Old Salt legend to a crowd that’s leaning in like he’s dispensing gospel.
Fish Monroe stands at the far end, watching. He catches my eye through the open door and gives me a slow nod. The nod says: I see it too.
Patty Sue corners me halfway to the Driftwood. “Hon. You look like you swallowed a hornet.”
“Rough morning.”
“The Rosen charter?”
“You heard.”
“Everybody heard. Bev Castellano’s cousin works at the Tidewater front desk. The Rosens called to cancel their room this morning.” She pats my arm. “It’ll blow over. These things always do.”
“Will it?” I gesture at the street. A family in matching windbreakers crosses in front of us, the father consulting a mapon his phone. “Because this doesn’t feel like blowing over. This feels like the beginning of something.”
“It’s a story, Dean. Stories come and go.”
“Not this one. This one’s got eight million people behind it and a production company bankrolling it.” I step around her. “Thanks for the coffee, Patty Sue.”
The coffee doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I drink it standing at the counter while the diner fills around me, and every conversation within earshot is some variation of the same question: where do we start digging?
I walk back to the marina with the empty cup crushed in my fist.
The dock feels wrong. Too many people. Too many unfamiliar faces. A woman in a Patagonia vest asks me if I run tours to the north shore and I tell her no, we don’t, it’s private property, and she looks at me like I’ve personally denied her something she’s entitled to.
I’m elbow-deep in the port engine when I hear her footsteps on the dock.
I know it’s her before I look up. I know the sound of those boots now, which is its own kind of problem.
Scarlett stands at the edge of my slip with the journal under one arm and her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. No makeup. Dark circles under her eyes. She looks like she’s been up all night, and something in my chest twists at the sight of it.
“Hey.” Her voice is quiet. Careful.
I wipe my hands on a rag and don’t stand up. “Hey.”
“I need a favor.”
Of course she does. “What kind of favor?”
“I need you to take me to No Name Island.”
