Page 3 of Jonah’s Lure

Miguel thought about it the way he always did—not slowly, but with the deliberateness that separated what he knew from what he assumed before he spoke. It was one of the qualities Angus had come to rely on.

“Hardworking, from what I’ve seen. He came up through the fleet—worked the boats for years before he moved to the dockside. I’ve seen him at harbor board meetings a couple of times. Pays attention. Asks the right questions.” He paused. “His sister, Clara, she handles the business end. Accounts, buyer contracts, licensing. People in town know her name better than his.”

Angus nodded. “Let’s go.”

* * *

They took Angus’s truck to Holt Marine and Cold Storage, four minutes north along the harbor road. The facility sat at the far end of the working waterfront—corrugated metal buildings, a cold-storage unit with its own loading dock, two fuel pumps for the fleet, and a dock office at the water’s edge with salt-filmed windows that looked out over the bay. The Holt Marine sign ran along the roofline in blue and white, the letters faded at the edges from years of weather. Lobster traps were stacked along the east wall, head high, banded and waiting for the season.

Frank Holt stood at the entrance to the dock office.

He was a big man—broad through the shoulders, thickset, the build of someone whose body had organized itself around physical work over decades and hadn’t seen a reason to reconfigure. He still wore his work slicker, unzipped now, with a heavy thermal underneath. He stood with his arms crossed and his jaw set, watching the truck pull in. When Angus and Miguel got out he tracked them across the parking lot with a focused look, as if he’d been waiting longer than his patience allowed and was done pretending otherwise.

His eyes went to Angus’s badge and stayed there.

Something shifted in his face. Not relief—Frank Holt didn’t look like a man who arrived at relief easily, and it was too early for it besides. What shifted was something quieter than that. A man who looked as though he’d been managing a private fear for two days and had just run out of room to keep it private. The moment when a situation stops being something you might still resolve on your own and becomes something that requires other people.

Angus had seen that look before. It lived in parking lots, on front porches, in the doorways of hospitals, and on the faces of people who had just realized that whatever they’d been hoping wasn’t true, was.

“Sheriff.” Frank’s voice came out level. It cost him to keep it that way. “I want to know where my son is.”

Behind him, through the salt-filmed window of the dock office, a young woman stood at a desk watching them. She hadn’t moved. Her hands were flat on the desk surface, and her eyes were steady in a way that suggested considerable effort.

Clara Holt. Angus recognized the composure of someone holding herself together for the benefit of a parent who was barely holding himself together.

“Mr. Holt,” Angus said. “Let’s go inside.”

Chapter Two

The dock office smelled of coffee, brine and the particular staleness of a room that was heated just enough and no more. A metal desk ran along the back wall, stacked with manifests, tide charts, and a radio handset resting in its cradle. A whiteboard above it tracked the fleet—boat names, crew numbers, departure times marked in blue marker, return times still blank. A coatrack near the door held two slickers and a set of overalls. Everything had a purpose. Nothing extra.

Frank Holt took the chair behind the desk without seeming to notice he’d done so. It was the chair of a man who sat there every day and couldn’t stop being that man, even now. He pressed both palms to the desktop and looked at Angus the way someone looks at a person they’re deciding whether to trust.

Clara Holt remained standing. She’d moved from the window when they came in and positioned herself to Frank’s left, slightly back—close enough to be present, far enough to give him room. She was in her mid-twenties, dark-haired, her father’s jaw softened into something more patient. She held a mug of coffee she wasn’t drinking and watched Angus with an attention different from her father’s. Frank was looking for reassurance. Clara was looking for information.

Miguel took out his notebook. Angus stayed on his feet.

“Tell me about Friday,” Angus said.

Frank drew a slow breath. “Jonah left the dock at five thirty. Same as always. I watched him go to his truck. That was the last time I saw him.” He paused. “I didn’t think anything of it. Why would I?”

“Did you speak to him before he left?”

A brief hesitation. “In passing. I had a call with a buyer up in Rockland. I told him I’d go over the weekend schedule on Monday morning.” He looked at his hands. “He said fine. That was it.”

Angus let the silence linger for a moment. “Was that typical? Keeping the schedule discussion until Monday?”

“We run a tight operation. Everyone knows what they’re doing.”

“What I mean is, did Jonah seem like himself on Friday? Distracted, preoccupied, anything different?”

Frank opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked, briefly, like a man confronting a question he hadn’t let himself ask. “He was quiet. But Jonah’s often quiet.”

“He wasn’t quiet,” Clara said.

Both men looked at her. She kept her eyes on Angus.

“He wasn’t quiet on Friday. He was excited about something. He’d been that way for a few weeks—coming in early and staying late on the accounts side, which isn’t his usual area. I asked him what he was working on.” She paused. “He said I’d see soon enough.”