Juno had moved from the café to a narrow table beside the yacht's gangway. She'd borrowed a power lead from the crew and put a folded napkin under the black drive to keep it off the damp metal. Her bags stood between her chair and the rail.
Cal stopped before coming down the last few steps. She was editing the ceremony.
Adrian stood on the little screen, paper shaking in his hand. Cal couldn't hear the words from here. He knew them anyway. I want to come into a room and you look up.
Juno moved an edge of the sound, played a few seconds, put it back where it had been. She had a bottle of water beside her and hadn't opened it. When she saw Cal, she closed the lid halfway, shading the screen rather than hiding it.
“I gave them the copy,” he said.
She nodded.
“And told them I left it running.”
Her eyes moved toward his phone. “What did they say?”
“They want more from me.”
He stood beside the table until she pushed a chair out with her foot.
“Adrian's asked me to do something,” she said.
“No.”
She opened a message and put the phone on the table between them. Adrian wanted the wedding film shown at the farewell gathering. He also wanted to give a recorded response to the public scene, with Juno filming it. He would pay her directly for the work.
“He wants the thing taken down,” Cal said.
“He asked. I said it was already out.”
“He's trying to buy you.”
“He might be.”
She left the message there. It contained no threat. Cal knew that didn't make it harmless.
“You saw him go into that room.”
“Yes.”
“You know what might have happened.”
“Yes.”
He turned the phone so its screen went dark. “We can leave. Give the police the bags, get in the car. I can get the key from my room.”
She didn't answer immediately. She looked past him toward the hotel, then at the little laptop with the wedding still waiting on it.
“I don't want to get in your car,” she said.
He sat back.
“Not like that. Not with you deciding where we're going because something's gone wrong. I can get myself home.”
“Then do that.”
She put both hands on the closed edge of the computer and looked at them. Her nails were cut short; one had split at the corner and caught a little black thread from her shirt.
“I want to ask him,” she said.
“The police can ask him.”
“I know.”
She opened the laptop again. Adrian's face returned, too close to the lens because he'd leaned toward Lena halfway through his vow. Juno backed the picture up to where the man stood waiting to begin.
“That's him,” she said. “The man saying that. And the man telling you to get Gideon upstairs. I want him in front of me, answering.”
Cal watched her hand on the trackpad. She didn't play the vow.
“For your film.”
“Yes.”
“Even after this morning.”
“Especially now.”
She seemed to hear how that sounded. She closed the little gap between the computer and the table, flattening the screen so the reflection stopped.
“I know what he might be. I don't want to go into a room with him. I'm not doing a private interview upstairs. He can sit where the guests are, and answer what I ask. If he won't, I can film him not answering.”
“You think you can make him stay in the frame.”
“No. I think I can ask a question without somebody telling me afterwards it was theirs.”
She took the little microphone out of her bag, checked the cable and wound it loosely around her hand again. It was work she knew how to do. Cal felt the pull of it before he could form another objection.
“You already have a film with your name on it.”
“I have what I put out. I want to know what comes after that.”
She didn't look proud. She looked as though she was trying to hold the shape of something she hadn't made yet. He had stood in rooms with that same look, certain that if he got the next person in front of a camera everything spent getting there would be worth it.
His phone lit on the table. Another message asking him to contact Quinn. He read it and set it face up instead of hiding it.
“I need to pay you,” he said.
Juno let the microphone rest beside the computer. “We did this.”
“No conditions.”
He opened the business account. The balance was still large enough to change the way he breathed when he looked at it. He selected her saved payment details from the invoices and entered 18,400. Before confirming, he checked the date the bank displayed.
Monday.
He showed it to her. “Next business day. It won't be in your account now.”
She read the amount and the last part of the account number. “That's right.”
He confirmed the instruction and waited until the acknowledgment appeared. Then he sent it to her. No file request went with it.
She took her phone up and checked the message. For a while she said nothing.
“Thank you,” she said at last.
He nodded. She put the phone down and went back to the microphone.
A hotel employee came along the dock carrying A and B in their padded cases. He stopped at the table and asked Juno to check the bodies against a list. She opened each case, looked at the serial labels and signed.
“The fixed one's staying,” the employee said. “And the laptop. Anything else goes through the manager.”
“The unused card packet?” she asked.
He gave her the packet from his pocket. Cal saw it, the same one he'd looked under this morning. Not the used wallet. The recordings were still in her bags.
The man took the signed sheet and went back up the dock, leaving the two empty cameras with Juno.
Juno opened B's case and put the camera on the table. Cal reached to turn the monitor away from the light, stopped, and let her do it.
“When?” he asked.
“The wedding film at one. Response after it. I've asked for the full inventory handover at the shore office at two, after the session. I'm sending the exact work location as well. If they need me before, they know where I am.”
She showed him the message she'd sent to the investigator. It had her name, the yacht berth, the proposed office time and a list of media. Cal watched her add that the material would stay intact.
“They may come now,” he said.
“Then I'll give them what they need.”
“And stop?”
“If I have to.”
She put the phone away before he could ask her to say something more reassuring.
The captain came down the gangway with a bundle of cable over one shoulder. He recognized them from the site visit and asked where they wanted the screen. Juno got up and went to him. Cal followed, carrying A's case because it was beside his feet.
The boat was still tied to the dock. Crew were moving chairs in the salon, not preparing to go anywhere. A guest in sunglasses stood near the rail, smoking with the air of a person who had found the last permitted place to do it.
“We stay here,” Juno told the captain. “I'm only doing the public session. Not a tender trip or something in a cabin.”
He looked at her, then at Cal. “We're booked here.”
“I know. If someone changes it, I need to know. I won't do that.”
He put the cable down. “Tell me before you stop. Don't have someone pack the screen while people are using the passage.”
She nodded. The crew continued moving chairs.
At the salon entrance she stopped and looked through the space. She moved one chair, then another, making a clear view of the seat where Adrian would speak. The gangway remained visible through the open side door. Cal could see the service glazing beyond the little passage, broken into panes by the frames he'd noticed on Friday.
Juno put B against her shoulder. She found the height she wanted, held it a moment, lowered it.
“Where would you put me?” Cal asked.
She looked at him. “Are you staying?”
He looked back toward the dock. He could take A and go to Quinn. He could leave Juno with her own film, her bags, the man she'd chosen to question. He had told her what he knew. He had paid what he owed, or at least made the instruction that would do it tomorrow.
He wanted Adrian's defense recorded properly. He wanted to hear what the man would say when Juno asked about the room. He wanted not to be outside with everyone else waiting for somebody to send a little piece of it through.
“I'll stay,” he said.
“Then there. The other side. You'll get his face when he looks away from me.”
He went to the place she pointed. He could see it: a man turning from one camera and finding another, with the wedding guests beyond both. Cal set A's case on a chair. He didn't open it yet.
He sent Lena the times she had asked for: public film at one, response afterwards, proposed source handover at the shore office at two. He added that Juno would leave by the open gangway, then asked if Lena could still bring the car. He watched for a reply.
Juno's phone rang. Adrian. She let Cal see the name before answering.
“Public,” she said after listening. “Same as I wrote. And I decide what I ask.”
She listened again. Cal could not hear the man's answer.
“All right. After the film.”
She ended the call. Her hand shook slightly when she put the phone down. She noticed Cal seeing it and left the hand where it was instead of hiding it.
“You can still leave,” he said.
“I know.”
She opened the camera case and took the microphone out of its little pocket. Cal watched her connect it, test it, then pull the cable free and do it again because it hadn't seated properly the first time.