Chapter 14: Remo's POV

Remo's POV

I told her I was checking the north buoy.

It was the first lie I had told her since the boathouse, and it sat badly in my mouth.

She was in the loft with her father's drafting set open on the cot, tracing a line on a sheet I couldn't read.

"Take one of the crew," she said. "Don't go alone."

I said I would.

I took the skiff and went alone.

The lake was flat and cold, and the engine was the only sound for four miles.

I did not go to the buoy.

I went across to the Delmonte dock, where the white launch was tied up.

The camera man sat on the stern, eating a sandwich.

He saw me coming and stood up.

I stepped onto his boat without asking and took the camera out of his lap.

I thumbed the card out into my palm.

"That's private property," he said.

"So is her face."

He looked at my hands.

They are not small, and they have never been gentle, and he sat back down.

I put the card in my pocket and the camera back in his lap.

Then I walked up the dock toward the house.

Nobody stopped me.

That was the first thing that bothered me.

Four men stood on the lawn in good coats, and not one of them moved toward the dock.

At the end of the long pier an old man sat in a folding chair with a fishing rod.

Fiora's father.

He wore a canvas hat and a cardigan, and he could have passed for somebody's grandfather at a church picnic.

"Captain Salerno," he said, without turning. "Sit. The bench is dry."

"I'll stand."

"You always do." He cast the line out. "Forty seconds."

My shoulders locked.

"My daughter's friends have a good ear for gossip," he said. "A crewman talks to a cousin, and a cousin talks to a driver."

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