Chapter 13: The Warrant

"Under the step," I whispered. "Now."

Lachlan stood in the middle of the slip with the floodlight crawling across the water toward him.

"I will not hide behind you."

"I'm not asking you to hide. I'm asking you to stay alive for ten minutes."

"That is the same thing."

"What do you want, Lachlan?"

He went still.

Then he said, very quietly, "To stand next to you."

"Tonight, I need you under the ledge. Next time you stand next to me. I swear."

His jaw worked.

He sank under the stone step with his hair floating behind him, and the water closed over his head.

I grabbed my fleece and my boots, and I ran to the bell.

It was my grandmother's brass ship's bell, bolted to a post on the dock.

I pulled the rope with both hands.

It rang across the whole cove.

Porch lights came on along the dock road, one after another.

By the time Garrick's men reached my gate, thirty people stood on the planks in coats and slippers.

The crab men had come.

The woman from the ice house had come, with her baby on her hip.

A man I'd sold ferry tickets to for six years stood in front with his arms folded.

The sheriff stopped at the edge of the crowd.

He was a heavy man with a wet mustache, and he did not look happy to see so many witnesses.

"Marnie Dunphy," he said. "I have a warrant to search this property."

"For what?"

"Read it to her, Sheriff," Garrick called from behind him, in his kind, carrying voice. "It's all in there."

The sheriff cleared his throat.

"Four merman scales, the property of Moss Tide Yard, taken from the yard's safe on Tuesday night."

He looked up.

"Also one merman, sold as lot thirty-one."

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