Calm Before the Storm

The six men sat around the dulling fire under the dock, too preoccupied with their discussion to maintain the blaze.

Visibly separate from the others, another sat silently. Compared to the scruff, tattoos and leather jackets of the men, he wore a simple flannel accompanied by a baby face. The eagerness in his face was obvious as he followed the conversation. “Ean,” one called at him.

Ean snapped to meet the harsh eyes of Beau. He scratched at his beard before speaking. Beau knew that something was about to go down. If he could help it, they wouldn’t be able to tack endangerment of a minor onto the end of his charges. “Get lost.” Confusion clouded Ean’s eyes, and he stuttered in an attempt to respond. Then, he saw the fire in Beau’s expression when he made no move to get up. “I told you to get lost, now leave!”

Ean jumped up from his lawn chair and hurried to his car, no longer pausing. A moment later, the men still sitting by the fire could hear rubber burning on the asphalt.

“Now, gentlemen, we have some planning to do.”

-

“Shai, I’m home!” Beau called into the house as he shrugged off his leather jacket. Shai called back in recognition from the living room as he moved into the kitchen.

“You were out kind of late tonight. Where were you?” Beau stopped as his sister questioned his whereabouts again.

“Jeff kept me at work late again to lock up. No big deal,” he shrugged as he came into the living room. Shai was perched on the couch, the TV on in the background, and papers strewn across the coffee table in front of her. It was almost midnight, but she was still working on homework. Beau knew he should be working too, but no one kept tabs on his schoolwork consistently so he didn’t think it mattered that much. And he could always blame it on senioritis whenever Shai did ask why she never saw him doing work.

Shai didn’t look up from her work as she nodded vaguely in response to Beau’s excuse. He continued to watch her. No way in hell was he going to tell her what was really going on when he vanished for a few hours after school some days. Shai didn’t need any of that to disrupt her life. Unlike Beau, she knew exactly what she was going to do with her life. After high school was med school, then off to Detroit for an internship. Her life was set on course, and Beau knew she didn’t deserve to be uprooted.

He kept quiet. For now, the work excuse was satisfactory. Despite this, he knew that Shai would catch on quickly, and one day she would question his excuses further.

But Beau was glad that today was not that day. “Did Sam say what time he was going to be home?”

Shai looked up at her brother and shook her head. “He came home for an hour after I got home from school, and he said that he had some paperwork to do, but he didn’t give a time.”

Beau nodded as he glanced out the window that viewed the front lawn. He knew Sam had an idea of what was going on. Sam was sheriff—and his step dad—so he knew almost everything when it came to Beau and Shai.

He had seen Beau one night as he was leaving the wharf, well after it was closed for the night, over a month ago. Sam had been passing by in his cop car, scanning his surroundings. He was sheriff, but he was still patrolling on the graveyard shift. Beau had ducked behind his car, peeking up just enough to watch him roll by. Sam had seen him move, though, and soon a flashlight was shining on Beau’s car. He squinted through the light, and he knew Sam knew. But the flashlight snapped off and the car kept going.

Sam hadn’t said a word about it to him since.

He sighed and told his sister that he was going to bed. As he headed up the stairs, he heard Shai reply with a quiet, “Goodnight.”