Salt Kiss novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Sable Key
Nolan finds Skye on her grandfather's dock, sunburned and unimpressed; the tide shuts the causeway and a truck pulls up at the gate.
The causeway to Sable Key was a strip of wet asphalt between two stretches of black marsh, and Nolan drove it with the sun low and orange behind him.
He had been given a key to Ford's truck and a map he did not need.
He had also been given a sentence he kept turning over.
Send someone I'd like.
The road ended at a rusted gate and a sand lane.
Past it stood a grey shack on stilts, a long wooden dock, and a shrimp boat with its name painted out.
A woman stood at the end of the dock with a gaff in her hand.
She was tall.
Her ash-blonde braid hung to her waist, her nose was sunburned and peeling, and she wore a man's red flannel over cutoffs.
She was not afraid of him.
She watched him walk the whole length of the boards.
"That's far enough," she said.
Nolan stopped.
"Ms. Pickett."
"Ford sent you."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Of course he did."
She leaned the gaff against a piling and crossed her arms.
"What did he promise you?"
"A job."
"He's given you a job."
"He's given me several."
Skye's grey-blue eyes went over him once, head to boots, and one eyebrow lifted.
"You've been upstairs," she said.
Nolan felt his ears go hot.
"I don't know what you mean."
"You walk like a man who's been very well looked after."
He had no answer.
She laughed, a low surprised sound, and looked suddenly younger.
"Oh, he did choose well," she said.
"What's your name?"
"Nolan Drayton."
"Nolan.
"I'm not coming back.
"You can tell him I said so, and you can sleep in the truck, and you'll be gone by morning."
"The tide," Nolan said.
She glanced at the water.
It was already over the lower rail, sliding toward the dock's pilings.
Behind him the causeway had gone from black to silver.
A foot of sea lay across it, with more coming.
"Damn it," Skye said.
"It's not even the spring tide."
"I can swim."
"You can drown.
"Sable Key doesn't care how big your shoulders are."
She picked up the gaff and turned on her heel.
"Come on.
"You can sleep on the porch.
"There's a pot of shrimp and grits, and I'm not going to eat all of it just because I'm angry."
The shack was a single warm room with a stove, a bunk, a table, and a wall of nets and brass buoys.
Everything in it was worn smooth by one family's hands.
Skye fed him at the table without asking a single question about Ford.
She asked about Moncks Corner, and the Army, and whether his mother knew how to cook.
He answered more than he meant to.
She was funny.
She said the Army had trained him to stand like a coat rack and she could hang a net on him.
She stole the last piece of cornbread off his plate and dared him to say anything.
He did not say anything.
He watched her lick butter off her thumb and had to look at the stove.
"You're blushing," she said.
"It's the stove."
"It's not that hot."
"It's a hot stove."
She grinned over her bowl, wide and sunburned, and said, "Ford said you'd be good at your job."
"Did he?"
"He didn't say you'd be good at this."
"At what?"
"Being looked at."
Her gaze lingered on his mouth.
Nolan set his spoon down very carefully.
Outside, the wind changed.
The shutters knocked once against the wall.
Skye tilted her head, listening, and then somewhere far down the sand lane, a sound came that did not belong to wind or water.
An engine, coming slow, with its lights off.
Skye was on her feet before the sound had finished.
"That isn't the tide," she said.
Through the window a pair of headlights flicked on at the end of the lane.
A truck rolled up to the gate.
Three men got out, and the one in front had a long dark ponytail and an anchor tattooed on his neck.
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