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The sand crunches underfoot as I sit down awkwardly, balancing two sagging plates. “Here. Saw you didn’t get anypotatoes or corn.” Her meat is nearly gone, so I crack open another crab, spearing the meat with my clean fork and putting it on her plate.

“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Pierce’s voice rings out over the waves.

Pierce and Charlie walk down the beach, hand in hand. Charlie glances at him from time to time with an expression so clearly vapid that I can’t help frowning.

“Pierce, glad you could join us.” I tip my chin up. “What’s she doing here?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss a crab boil, right, June?” Charlie smiles. “When Pierce told me you were having one, I begged to come along.”

June shifts uneasily next to me. Her knee rubs against my thigh as she repositions, sitting cross-legged on the sand.

She doesn’t like this either.

You learn a lot about a person after surviving with them.

June has good instincts.

“Well, help yourselves, folks. There’s plenty, thanks to these two.” Thompson points at the cooler full of steaming crab. “I’m Thompson, and that’s Thorne. You must be Pierce, but I reckon I don’t know your name.” He grins at Charlie, and she grins right back, not giving anything away.

Pierce’s body tightens as though Thompson has said something completely inappropriate.

“Didn’t think you were cleared to get more manpower on this, Dean,” he says, radiating a sort of killer calm that makes me sit up straighter.

“I thought we could use all the help we could get after how it shook out last night,” I tell him honestly.

If I trusted him, I might tell him that they’ve been privy to the unclassified basics from the start.

But I don’t.

I can practically feel the tension radiating from June, as if she also sees the barely contained violence that sweeps through Pierce. It’s there and gone so quick I can almost convince myself I imagined it.

I didn’t imagine it.

Pierce telegraphs instability, from the way he holds himself to the odd glint in his eyes. Thompson and Thorne both go fully relaxed, smiling at him in a way that doesn’t fool me at all.

They see it too.

Thorne steps closer to Pierce. “Are you here to eat?” he asks, his tone casual. His fists, however, are clenched at his sides.

He’s ready to fight if it comes to it.

“Of course we are,” Charlie says, her gaze tracking up to Thorne’s face. “Why else would we have come all the way out here? Right, Pierce?”

He laughs, and some of the tension dissipates from his body. “Right.”

June sags with an audible sigh of relief. I scooch my hand closer behind her, in case she needs a place to lean. In case she needs my support.

Or maybe I just want to touch her.

Thompson lets out an easy chuckle, and some of the crackling tension diffuses.

“Then grab a plate and load it up. Princess here was just about to tell us the story of her shipwreck before we go hunting for it tomorrow.”

“We’re coming along to help too, June,” Charlie’s eyes gleam in the firelight. “Pierce thought we could make a date out of it.” She bats her eyelashes up at him, and Thorne and I exchange a look.

June’s lower back meets the waiting support of my forearm, and she glances up at me. She’s worried for her friend, I can tell in the way she’s looking at me with her heart in her eyes.

That makes me feel like shit, because of all of us, Charlie is the least likely to need anyone’s help.