Read Chapter 9: The Leak

Camille's laptop glowed on the small table in the houseboat's cabin, casting pale blue light across her face. She'd been at it for three hours, cycling through names, dates, and corporate structures, building something from nothing but patience and the kind of ruthless curiosity she'd perfected in pitch rooms on Rue de Rivoli.

Élodie Marchand was twenty-nine, a junior logistics coordinator at a shipping firm in Le Havre, and had recently moved to Brest for a relationship that had since soured. Her Instagram was set to private, but her tagged photos told the story: a coworker's birthday party, a weekend in Quimper, a screenshot of a ferry schedule to Ouessant with the caption *"finally getting out of here."* She'd complained about her boss twice, liked three posts about ocean pollution, and followed exactly one account related to Keravel Maritime—a regional fishing news outlet that had covered their port expansion.

Camille built the profile slowly, deliberately. Facebook first, then LinkedIn. A profile photo cropped from a stock image of a woman with brown hair and a neutral smile. Work history that placed Élodie at a complementary angle to Keravel's supply chain—nothing direct, just plausible adjacency. A comment on the fishing news outlet's page: *"Interesting piece. I work in logistics on this coast and see things like this daily."*

The Keravel employee she targeted was a man named Hervé Le Guen, listed as a senior operations manager on the company website. His LinkedIn was a graveyard of self-congratulatory posts about efficiency metrics and sustainability initiatives. His email followed a predictable pattern: first initial, last name, year of hiring.

Élodie reached out at 11:47 PM, when overworked operations managers were most likely to check their messages casually, phone in one hand, television remote in the other.

*"Monsieur Le Guen—I came across your profile while researching career paths in coastal logistics. I'm considering a move from Le Havre and wondered if you might have ten minutes to share your perspective on the industry in Brittany? I'd be grateful for any insight."*

Camille's finger hovered over the send button. She thought of Perrot's face on the dock, the way he'd said *"all debts come due eventually."* She thought of the dead dolphin, the tag still attached. She clicked send.

---

The reply came at 7:12 AM, the way Camille had predicted it would. Le Guen, eager to lecture, had proposed a video call during his lunch break.

"There's an empathy gap in men who manage logistics operations at mid-sized coastal companies," she'd told Yann when she explained the plan over coffee that morning. "Their wives stopped listening to them years ago. A young woman who seems genuinely interested in their career trajectory? They'll talk for an hour."

Yann had listened in silence, his hands wrapped around his mug. He'd helped her find the dolphin tag data, he'd shared his team's research, but this—this felt different. She saw it in the way his jaw tightened when she described the fake profile, the careful construction of a digital ghost.

"You're uncomfortable," she said.

"I'm just—" He set the mug down. "This is online manipulation, Camille. You're building a fiction designed to exploit someone's vanity and extract information he hasn't agreed to share."

"Perrot already agreed to share terms. He'd sell my father's boat out from under me by Friday, and his company has been killing dolphins since before I could swim. I'm not asking you to approve. I'm telling you what I'm doing."

"And if he finds out? If Le Guen tells someone at Keravel that a woman from Paris was fishing for internal information?"

"Then I deal with it." She'd closed her laptop, the gesture final. "This is the only way I can get what we need before Friday."

Yann had stood, his chair scraping against the deck. "We. You keep saying we, but you're making decisions alone and asking me to stand by while you cross lines I've spent my career refusing to cross."

"Your career refused to cross lines, and look what happened to Your father's research in this bay. Sixteen years of record-breaking blooms, and the official response is a shrug." She'd softened her voice then, the ache of it starting to show. "I'm not asking you to lie to anyone. I'm asking you to let me try."

He'd left without another word, the houseboat's door swinging shut with a hollow clatter.

---

The video call with Le Guen lasted forty-one minutes. Camille sat in the cabin with a neutral maritime-themed backdrop downloaded from a stock site, wearing a plain blue blouse she'd borrowed from a rack at the local Emmaüs. Élodie Marchand was curious, a little overwhelmed, deeply appreciative of Le Guen's insights into the operational complexities of channel management.

Did Le Guen know about the environmental certification Keravel had recently received? He absolutely did, and he could explain it in exhaustive detail if Élodie had questions. Did she have questions?

She had one. A carefully planted seed, watered with feigned hesitation.

"I've heard some things about algae monitoring on the north coast," Élodie said, gesturing vaguely toward her muted screen. "That some companies are working with researchers to track bloom patterns. It sounded important. Is that something Keravel does?"

Le Guen's face changed. It was subtle—a flicker of something guarded that smoothed into professional reassurance. "We partner with local institutions where appropriate. But most of what people hear about blooms is journalists dramatizing normal coastal cycles."

"That makes sense," Camille said, keeping her voice light. "Though I read that some of the blooms are happening near—"

The name. The infrastructure. She'd laid another piece of bait: *pumping stations.*

He took it. Not fully, but enough. He leaned toward his camera, elbows on the desk, and said the words that made Camille's hand go cold on her mouse: "If you ever hear anyone talking about our discharge management protocols, you should understand that our system is designed around a simple principle. We shift material to where the environment can handle it naturally. The blooms aren't a problem here. They're a solution."

He checked his watch. "I should get back. But if you're serious about coastal logistics, send me your CV. We're always looking for the right kind of people."

---

Camille sat still for a long moment after the call ended. Then she opened her notes and wrote:

*Territorial discharge strategy. Blooms as deliberate ecological redistribution.*

She typed *not the bay* and stared at it.

The theory consolidated in her mind, snapping into focus like a lens. Keravel wasn't polluting the bay directly—that would be traceable, culpable. Instead, they surged effluent through pipelines at precise points along the coast, timed to current patterns that carried the material away from their infrastructure and into natural doldrums, where nutrients pooled and blooms hatched. The blooms were a decoy. A cover. The official records blamed agricultural runoff and warming waters; Keravel's system kept the true source invisible.

Her father had mapped it. He'd spent fifteen years tracking the pattern, and he'd paid for it with a mountain of debt designed to suffocate his investigation legally. And now his daughter had confirmed, in her own way, what he'd suspected.

She grabbed her phone. Yann's name was at the top of her recent calls, but the message window showed nothing since the silence had begun. She texted him anyway.

*I got something. He basically admitted it. The blooms are intentional. Please call me.*

Three dots appeared immediately. Then stopped. Then appeared again.

*I'm at the research station. I need time. What you did today—I can't pretend it was okay just because you got something useful.*

Camille stared at the screen until it dimmed. The cold between them wasn't just physical distance. It was a division in how they each believed the truth could be reached.

On her desk, her father's logbook lay open to his final entry. *I know what the bay is hiding. I know not the bay.*

The phone buzzed. She grabbed it.

Not Yann. A number she didn't recognize. The message read:

*Miss Le Goff. This is Hervé Le Guen, Keravel Maritime. Your colleague Perrot mentioned your family name. I'd ask why a logistics coordinator from Le Havre is so interested in bloom patterns, but I suspect you already know. The question is whether you understand what your father didn't. He owed us the truth. Now you do too. I'd recommend you visit our headquarters tomorrow. Bring the logbook.*