"I know."
"But it'll be on paper," she said. "And paper's what I do."
They watched it together in the chart room, with the door shut, Octavia and Dex and Silvino, on Dex's laptop. Camera nine was a high wide angle from a pole on the fuel dock, gray and grainy under the pier lights, with a timestamp burned into the upper left corner. At 23:04:12 a tall figure in a white shirt climbed onto the crane pedestal on the Coriolis's foredeck and took the controls. A smaller figure in a dark jacket, with no hat, walked to the bulwark and caught the tender's bow line as it was thrown up from below. No tagline on the stern. Nobody else on deck. At 23:06 the tender rose out of the water, dripping, swinging very gently, and the boom began to slew inboard, and the tender's stern kissed the bulwark, bounced, kissed it again harder, and the tall figure at the controls put one hand to his face and rubbed his eyes, and in that second the boom kept slewing, too fast, and the tender swung, and the bridle went taut at an angle it was never meant to take, and at 23:09:41 the forward lifting point let go.
There was no sound. That was almost the worst of it. The bow dropped and swung, silently, and the small figure was simply gone behind the white bulk of the hull, and the tall figure came down off the pedestal so fast that he seemed to fall, and then he was on his knees on the deck, and then he was on his feet and running aft, waving both arms, and lights came on all along the crew portholes, one after another, like a string of firecrackers going off.
Dex stopped it. Nobody said anything for a while.
"Play it again," Octavia said. "From 23:04. Slower."
She watched it three times. Then she closed the laptop and sat with her hand on the lid.
"Kemble is going to tell me this is the marina's property and it doesn't need to be seen," she said to Dex. "And that the hardware failed regardless of who was operating. And that I should sign the authorization now and let the flag sort out the paperwork once the boat's in Antigua."
"Is he wrong?" Dex asked. He asked it honestly. That was why she had hired him. "The shackle did fail. The pin wasn't moused. Would it have held with Lachlan driving?"