Page 35 of Locke

Crosby doesn’t react and I’m betting he’s heard some version of this his entire life.

Locke shakes her hand.“Nice to meet you.”

Birdie tilts her head slightly, studying Locke with discerning eyes.“Is that a Boston accent?”

Locke looks mildly surprised, which for him means one barely perceptible blink.“Yeah.”

Her face lights with joy.“I love Boston.Spent eight months there on a harbor infrastructure contract two years ago.Charlestown, mostly.”

Locke’s expression shifts, less closed than it was.“Charlestown’s a good neighborhood.”

“It really is.”She settles back with her drink.“I was staying in the North End though, which was either brilliant or stupid, depending on how you feel about never being able to find parking.”

“The parking’s always been a disaster.You learn to stop caring.”

“That’s what my neighbor told me.Retired longshoreman, seventy years old, had lived on the same block his entire life.”She smiles at the memory.“He told me parking in Boston was God’s way of keeping the weak out.”

Locke makes a sound that is almost—not quite, but almost—a laugh.

I notice it.Inoticethat I notice it.

“What were you doing in the harbor?”Locke asks.

“Risking life and limb,” Arch says gravely, and I can’t tell if he’s genuinely worried or reclaiming the conversation.

“Don’t be a drama king,” Birdie chides with a brief glance at Arch.“I’m a commercial saturation diver.Deep-water infrastructure work.”

“How deep?”Locke asks.

And there it is.A question.Voluntary, no hesitation, genuine curiosity moving through it.I file that away in the part of my brain that is always filing things about Locke Donovan.

“Depends on the contract,” Birdie says.“Harbor work is shallow by my standards.Fifty, sixty feet maybe.My offshore work runs two hundred plus.Gulf of Mexico mostly, oil and gas platforms.”She speaks about her job the way people describe their work when it stopped being remarkable to them a long time ago.

“And what exactly is saturation diving?”Locke asks.

“Oh, it’s the best kind,” she says, eyes lighting with passion.“It means you live in a pressurized chamber for weeks at a time, so your body stays at depth pressure.You eat there, sleep there, decompress there.You go down to work and come back to the chamber.You don’t see actual surface conditions for sometimes thirty days straight.”

The group is quiet for a beat.

“It’s insane,” Arch says.

Crosby nods.“Completely insane.”

“It is a little,” Birdie agrees pleasantly.

“And you chose this,” Locke says.Not judgmental.Just—processing.

“I did.”She smirks at him.“I like being somewhere most people aren’t.I like the quiet down there.And I’m genuinely good at it, which helps.”

“Seems pretty niche,” Locke observes.

“There are about three hundred and fifty saturation divers working commercially in the world right now.I like those odds.”

“Three hundred and fifty,” Locke repeats.

“Give or take.”

“Very impressive,” he says with genuine respect.