Page 1 of Accidental Bodyguard Summer

Chapter 1

Abby

“Okay, Carl, honest opinion. Does this footage make the reef look good?”

Carl the pelican, perched on the dock post he’s claimed as his office, tilts his head at my laptop screen and then goes back to preening his wing feathers like a colleague who’s already mentally checked out of the meeting.

“That’s fair. You’ve seen it live.”

I scroll through this morning’s dive footage anyway, because somebody on this dock has to have professional standards. Forty-two minutes of the north reef site, and it’s gorgeous. Staghorn coral that was rubble three years ago is throwing out new branches like it’s showing off. A loggerhead cruised past my camera at minute nineteen and looked directly into the lens, which is basically a celebrity endorsement. My grant committee is going to weep. I might frame a still for the cottage wall, right next to the whiteboard.

Sunbreak Harbor spreads out behind me in full June glory, all white boats and glittering water and the smell of diesel and salt and somebody grilling shrimp too early in the day. Six weeks I’ve been here, and I’m already planning how to never leave. Imean, I have to leave. The grant ends in August. But a girl can love a place irresponsibly for one summer.

“There you are.” Marnie leans out the takeout window of the Salty Bean, the coffee shop that shares the dock with the harbormaster’s office, and waves a cup at me. “Iced hibiscus, extra ice. And I need to tell you what Dennis did with the boat.”

Dennis is Marnie’s almost-ex-husband. The divorce has been “almost” for eleven months, which I know because Marnie updates me every morning like it’s the weather report.

“What did Dennis do with the boat,” I say, because I am invested now. That’s the thing nobody tells you about small towns. You show up for coffee, and within two weeks you’re emotionally shackled to a stranger’s marital dissolution and a boat namedSecond Wind.

“Renamed it.” Marnie’s face does something complicated. “Freedom.”

“He did not.”

“Stenciled and everything.”

“Marnie, that’s the most divorced thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Right?” She looks weirdly delighted. Eleven months of almost will do that to a person. “Anyway. Gus is looking for you. Something about Saturday.”

Gus, the harbormaster, is a barrel of a man in his seventies who runs this dock like a benevolent city-state, and he emerges from his office before I’ve even finished the tea.

“Marlowe. Saturday. You in or out?”

“Gus, I RSVP’d. I RSVP’d verbally, twice, and once by text with a turtle emoji, which is legally binding.”

“Checking. Kayla asked.” He tucks his thumbs in his belt, gruff as a piling, and absolutely delighted underneath it, because his granddaughter has adopted me and everyone knows adoption goes through Kayla. “She’s playing left defender now. Coach says she’s got instincts.”

“She took out two forwards last game like a tiny golden-retriever bouncer. She’s a wall, Gus. She’s the whole harbor seawall in shin guards.”

“That’s what I said.” He nods at my laptop. “Reef behaving?”

“Reef’s showing off. Come by the booth at the festival next month, I’ll have prints.”

“If there’s turtles in ’em, Doreen’d have bought three.” He stumps back toward his office, then pauses. “Orange slices.”

“Already on the list. I know my role in this ecosystem.”

So I confirm orange slices, and I trade Marnie a muffin from my bag for the iced tea, and I tell Carl to hold my calls, and honestly? This is the whole problem with Sunbreak Harbor. It makes you feel like the world is a friendly place.

Six weeks ago I didn’t know any of these people existed. Now I know that Marnie’s mediator smells like cough drops, that Gus keeps a photo of his late wife Doreen’s prize snapper over the radio, that Kayla wants to be a marine biologist or a monster truck driver, whichever certifies first. My grad school advisor used to say I’d never survive fieldwork because I “collect people like barnacles.” Joke’s on him. Barnacles are filter feeders, ecologically essential, and fully capable of finishing a dissertation.

Which is probably why it takes me until minute thirty-one of the footage to understand what I’m looking at.

I almost skip it. That’s the part that will keep me up later.

Minute thirty-one is the far edge of the study site, past the last of my marker stakes, where the reef shelf drops off toward the channel. The visibility gets milky out there and there’snothing to count, so my thumb is already on the fast-forward when a shape resolves out of the blue.

A hull. Mid-size fishing boat, sitting where no fishing boat has business sitting, dead center over the protected zone. And below it, sinking through the water column in a slow ugly cascade, is—stuff. Crates. Drums. Something wrapped in what looks like tarp, strapped tight, dropping past my camera’s field of view toward the reef shelf.