Read Chapter 15: Undercurrents

The morning air over Saint-Briac tasted of salt and diesel. Camille stood at the research station's workbench, her father's USB drive in her palm like a live grenade. The station's windows were still boarded where the police had finished their work, and the faint smell of solvent lingered from the fingerprint dust that coated every surface.

Yann came in from the back room, a cardboard box in his arms. He set it down and pulled out a thick folder, the edges dog-eared and stained with what looked like coffee.

"These are the recovery copies," he said. "The ones I kept at my apartment. Everything the thieves didn't find." He glanced at the USB in her hand. "Assuming what's on there is what I think it is."

She wanted to tell him everything. The threats. The debt collector. The fact that her father wasn't dead and had been watching her from the shadows. But the space between them had grown physical, charged, and she knew one wrong word would send him stepping back again.

Instead, she plugged the drive into his laptop.

The files opened in a cascade of spreadsheets, PDFs, and scanned documents. Camille stepped aside and let Yann scroll through them, his eyes widening as he flipped from one tab to the next. He pulled open his own recovery folder on the other half of the screen, then began cross-referencing dates and sample locations.

"You see this?" He pointed at a row in her father's spreadsheet. "Copper concentration at the outlet pipe, station C-4. Now look at mine."

His data showed the same sample site, same date, but the numbers were different: lower, within legal limits.

"Perrot's altered reports," Camille said. "He cleaned up the numbers before they went to the regional environmental agency."

Yann nodded slowly, scrolling further. "Your father's data starts where mine stops. He must have been monitoring the same discharge points. Independent verification." He looked up at her. "These two sets together prove contamination, delayed repairs, and deliberate falsification. Do you realize what we have here?"

"I realized it before I left Saint-Malo." The weight of the drive's copy—the original still in her bag, the key to the deposit box cold against her collarbone—made her chest tight. "I also realized someone else noticed I was there."

Yann's expression shifted. "What does that mean?"

She told him everything. The threatening text demanding she destroy the evidence. The way it had mentioned her mother.

Yann was quiet for a long moment, and she watched his jaw tighten. "Your mother's accident was on the water, wasn't it?"

"My father believes it wasn't an accident." The words came out more raw than she intended. "He wouldn't tell me more, only that he couldn't protect her from Keravel back then, and he wouldn't let the same thing happen to me."

"Camille." He said her name like it cost him something. "Why didn't you tell me about the threats? About Saint-Malo?"

"Because I didn't know if I could trust you to still be there when I got back." The admission hung between them. "That's not a commentary on you. It's a commentary on me."

Yann leaned against the workbench, arms crossed. Somewhere outside, a gull shrieked; the tide was going out.

"Then trust me now," he said. "Let me help. I have money from the grant. I've been saving for a research vessel."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Sell me the houseboat." The words came out in a rush. "Not at market value—I can't afford that. But enough to clear your debts, let the debt collector back off, and give you breathing room to decide what you actually want."

Something in her chest cracked open. "The houseboat isn't a research vessel, Yann."

"I'd convert it. There's space, and the mooring is protected from the worst of the winter swells. I could run monitoring trips from it every week instead of renting the motorboat." He held her gaze steady. "And you wouldn't have to sell it to a stranger. You could visit it whenever you want."

The offer was so reasonable that she almost hated him for it. It gave her an out, a clean escape from the debts, from the weight of the boat she'd inherited but didn't know how to keep. And it gave him something too: a way to stay close to her without asking her to stay.

She shook her head.

"Why not?" His voice was careful, but she caught the flicker of hurt in it.

"Because that's not the answer." She stepped to the laptop and pointed at the screen. "This is the answer. We present these findings to the local legal authorities—the gendarmerie, the environmental magistrate. Together. Co-author the report. Present a unified front they can't dismiss as either ecoterrorism or fabrication."

"Local authorities with jurisdiction over Keravel, who funds half the chamber of commerce and sits on the harbor commission?" Yann shook his head. "They'll bury it."

"Not if we make it public. Not if we have corroborating testimony."

"From who?"

Camille felt the phrase form on her tongue before she could stop it: *From my father.* She had told Yann only that Thomas was still alive in that brief, fractured conversation at the lighthouse. She had not told him that Thomas was in hiding, that Keravel believed him dead, or that his testimony would be the thread that pulled the entire conspiracy apart.

And now she realized: she still had one untold fact. The paper trail in her father's files—the original documents—named not just Keravel's holding company but Perrot personally, with his margin note authorizing the delayed repairs. It was evidence, watertight and damning. But to use it, she needed her father to come forward and validate the chain of custody. A witness in the flesh.

If he came forward, Keravel would realize he was alive. And whatever threat had driven him into hiding would come crashing down on both of them.

She looked at Yann. There was a pull between them, the same gravity she had felt on the cliff that morning she'd watched the sunrise with him, the moment before the phone had rung with the news of the break-in.

"From someone with firsthand knowledge," she said, choosing her words with care. "Someone whose identity I can't reveal yet."

Yann frowned. "That's not how legal processes work, and you know it."

"Maybe not. But it's how this one has to." She pushed her hair back from her face, feeling the gnawing edge of exhaustion. "I'm carrying the original documents, Yann. Not copies. The originals with Perrot's own handwriting in the margins. If I can find a way to get the right person to testify, these are the smoking gun."

"And if you can't find that person?"

She didn't answer. The question was a mirror, and she didn't want to look into it.

"We draft the report together," she said instead. "I co-author it. It gets filed with the magistrate. And before the deadline passes, I'll have my witness."

Yann studied her for a long time. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Okay. But if your witness doesn't appear by the time we're ready to file, we go public anyway. All of this, in the hands of the press."

"Deal."

She held out her hand. He took it, his palm warm and rough against hers, and the touch lingered a second longer than necessary before he let go.

That night, Camille sat on the deck of the houseboat, the original USB drive in her lap and the deposit box key around her neck. She still hadn't told Yann about her father being tracked to the lighthouse. She hadn't told him how close the danger was to Thomas's hiding place. And she hadn't told him the name of the witness she planned to bring forward.

In the distance, a phone began to ring—the station house landline, amplified across the water in the quiet of the evening. A moment later, her own phone buzzed in her pocket.

The screen showed an unknown number.

She opened the message: *You pulled the files. We know. Your mother knew too. So will the harbor master.*

A cold knot twisted in her stomach. The tide was coming in, and somewhere beneath the quiet surface of this small town, the current was already pulling her under.