Safe Harbor Tide
When a midnight storm brings two starving runaway orphans to his flooded timber berth, a weary salvage broker must choose between his quiet gray-market empire and saving two young lives.
Fictional story. Depicts child labor exploitation, past grief, severe hypothermia, and mild peril. Contains no graphic violence or medical instruction.Chapter 1: The Tide Line
The salt rain over Blackwood Bay always smelled of cold engine oil and rotting cedar. At sixty-two, Gavin Vance knew every creak of the timber docks, every rusted bolt holding the harbor together, and every illegal debt owed along the estuary. For twenty years, since his daughter Clara drowned off the spit while he was away managing a salvage haul, Gavin had run the basin with cold, unyielding precision. He bought quiet title to dry docks, brokered unregistered cargo, and ensured that no one asked questions as long as his ledger balanced.
It was past midnight when the storm surged over the seawall. Gavin stood inside the shadowed berth of Pier Nine, his heavy oilskin coat drenched, holding an iron lantern. Beside him, Otis—his chief dock mechanic—pointed his flashlight down into the bilge of an abandoned lumber barge. Rain rattled against the corrugated iron roof like handfuls of gravel.