Chapter 20: The Box Was Sand

We drove up the cliff road at eleven, and we did not drive alone.

Winnie took the wheel of her old pickup with her skillet on the seat and Eli's boat hook across her knees.

I rode in the middle.

Eli sat by the door with the photograph in his shirt pocket.

Behind us came the sheriff's patrol car, and behind that, nine pickups and a flatbed that I had not seen on the harbor road before.

Every fisherman I had served coffee to was driving one.

"I asked for volunteers," Winnie said. "I got the whole pier."

"I said alone," Eli said.

"He also said the girl pays. I don't hold with that."

The black car was across the top of the road, as she had said.

It rolled aside when it saw our line of headlights.

The lighthouse stood past it on its rocky point, white against a hard blue sky, with a gravel yard at its foot.

Carmine was standing in the yard with the sea at his back.

The lean man, one of Carmine's men, was at his right hand, and five more stood behind him.

Carmine did not look at the pickups.

"Dario," he said, as Eli stepped down. "I said alone."

"I know what you said."

"And the girl."

"She's here because I'm not leaving her behind."

Carmine's eyes moved to me.

There was no pleasantness in them now, none of the polish from the pier.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Left in the Sand, Found by the Sea from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.