Read Chapter 8: The Mooring

The beach at low tide stretched flat and gray, the sky above it the color of a dirty oyster shell. Camille had walked the stretch a hundred times since returning, always keeping the houseboat in sight, always watching her footing on the slick rocks. This time, she saw the shape before she understood it—a dark curve against the pale sand, sleek and wrong, like something the sea had tried to swallow and failed.

Yann had offered to walk her back after the long dinner. She'd accepted without thinking, and now they stood side by side, the salt wind pulling at their jackets, neither of them speaking.

The dolphin lay on its side, one eye open and clouded. Fishing net wrapped its body in a cruel cocoon, monofilament cutting into the soft skin of its flank, the line so tight it had carved furrows deep enough to show pink flesh beneath. A small white tag, faded and chipped, was clipped to its dorsal fin.

"Shit," Yann said quietly. He crouched, not touching, just looking. His jaw tightened. "This is fresh. Hours, maybe."

Camille's stomach turned. "Isn't this your area? Shouldn't someone—"

"It is my area." He stood, brushing sand from his knees. "Which is why I'm going to tell you this off the record. The stranding network logs everything. But I've seen three like this in the last two months. Same pattern. Same type of net. This isn't accidental bycatch. This is gear that's been dumped deliberately. Old, heavy stuff that fishermen wouldn't lose by accident."

"Keravel," she said. It wasn't a question. The company name had been floating in her mind since Soizic mentioned it, since the drone, since the dumping vessel.

Yann glanced at her, surprised. "I was going to say that. How do you know about them?"

"Research station gossip travels." She deflected poorly, and they both knew it.

He didn't push. Instead, he turned back to the dolphin. "They run a shellfish operation out past Île Vierge. Industrial-scale. They've been expanding for years, and the water quality data around their leases has been getting worse. I've flagged it. My supervisor's flagged it. The regional directorate says there's no evidence." He laughed, bitter and short. "There's no evidence because no one's looking."

Camille stepped closer to the dolphin, the sand cold through her shoes. She looked at the tag again, a small oval of plastic with numbers printed on it. Something pricked at her memory. Not the tag itself—the pattern of it. The way it sat against the fin.

"Wait," she said. "Do you have the logbook on you?"

Yann blinked. "Why would I have—"

"I need to check something."

She was already moving, boots sinking into wet sand, back toward the houseboat where the tide lapped at its hull. Yann followed without argument, his longer stride closing the distance quickly.

On deck, she dropped to her knees at the hatch, pulled up the floorboard, and retrieved the logbook from its hidden compartment. The leather cover was soft with age, the pages swollen with sea air. She flipped through, past the algae surveys, past the map, until she found what she was looking for.

"Here." She turned the book toward Yann, pointing at a page from eleven years ago. Columns of dates, locations, and observations. In her father's tight, precise hand: *Delphinus delphis. Stranded, north of Keravel lease. Tag #0447-B. Net entanglement. Reported to stranding network. No follow-up.*

Yann read it twice. Then he took the book from her, careful, reverent, and compared the numbers to the dolphin on the beach.

"It's the same tag," he said slowly. "0447-B. Eleven years apart. Same species. Same location. Same type of entanglement."

"Which means," Camille said, "either it's a hell of a coincidence—"

"Or my father knew." He finished her thought, his voice rough. "He was tracking them. Not just algae. He was documenting the pattern, and he got as far as tagging numbers. This wasn't a man keeping notes out of curiosity. This was a man building a case."

Camille took the logbook back, hugging it to her chest. The morning light was strengthening now, burnishing the water to hammered metal. She thought about her father, alone on this boat, watching the coast for fifteen years. The debt. The fear Soizic described. The unfinished letter to Marianne.

"He must have found something specific," she said. "Something that would tie it all together. The blooms, the dumping, the dead animals."

"Keravel's records," Yann said. "If we could see their discharge logs, their disposal manifests—anything with dates matching the bloom events—we could build something. Real data. Hard facts."

"Getting those records would require a warrant, and a warrant requires evidence, and evidence requires—"

"Suspicion confirmed," Yann finished. "It's a closed loop."

The houseboat rocked gently, the morning quiet except for the cries of gulls and the distant hum of a fishing vessel. Camille looked past Yann, toward the beach, where the dolphin lay like a statement. Her father had seen this. He'd documented it. And it had cost him.

"Maybe the loop isn't closed," she said. "Companies like Keravel, they're not just polluting. They're managing a reputation. And reputation—" She paused, the old instinct surfacing. "Reputation can be leveraged."

Yann frowned. "What are you suggesting?"

Before she could answer, a voice called out from the dock.

"Camille Le Goff."

The man stood at the end of the gangplank, hands clasped behind his back. He was perhaps sixty, with a gray suit that was too formal for the quay and polished shoes that had no business anywhere near brine. He did not step onto the boat.

"Perrot," Yann said, his voice flat. "What do you want?"

Perrot smiled without warmth. "I'm here to speak with Mademoiselle Le Goff. It's a private matter."

"Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of—"

"Yann." Camille touched his arm. "It's fine."

She walked to the edge of the boat and looked down at the man. His face was leathery and careful, the face of someone who'd spent years not betraying anything.

"I understand you've been going through your father's things," Perrot said. "I wanted to offer my condolences. And a piece of advice."

"I don't need condolences from Keravel."

Perrot's smile didn't waver. "Your father owed us. Not a small sum, either. We've been patient. We're not known for our patience, Mademoiselle Le Goff."

"I'm aware of the debt." Her voice was steadier than she felt.

"Then you'll also be aware that we have legal options. But I'm not here to threaten you." He spread his hands. "I'm here to offer a path forward. Sign a release on the debt, and we'll consider the matter closed."

Camille laughed, short and sharp. "Release? What would you get out of that?"

Perrot's eyes flicked to the logbook still pressed against her chest. It was quick—barely a second—but she caught it.

"Clean resolution," he said. "Paperwork is messy. Debt can create complications for everyone involved."

"The only complication for you," Camille said slowly, "is if I keep looking into my father's business."

Perrot's smile thinned. At the same moment, she heard the soft whir behind her—not a gull, not wind. She turned to see a drone lifting off from behind a cluster of rocks near the old lighthouse, banking toward the research station before disappearing behind the dunes.

When she turned back, Perrot was already walking away.

"Two days," he called over his shoulder. "Then we file."

Yann stepped beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him through his jacket. "That was a threat."

"That was a confirmation." She looked down at the logbook, then out toward the empty sky where the drone had vanished. "He knew about the logbook. He didn't come to collect a debt. He came to make sure I stopped looking."

"Are you going to?"

Camille thought about the dolphin on the sand. The tag number matching her father's notes. The map that contradicted every official record. The debt collector's message threatening legal action on a timeline measured in days.

"No," she said. "I'm going to find out what he's so afraid of."