Page 44 of Jonah’s Lure

“And you know what I need before I tell you anything,” Cobb said. His voice was even, midrange, the voice of a man accustomed to the long middle of difficult conversations. “Those are different discussions.”

“They’re the same discussion,” Miguel said. “A young man has been missing for nearly two weeks. His location is relevant to an active criminal investigation. Withholding it has consequences.”

“Everything has consequences,” Cobb said. “That’s why I need the deal in writing first.”

Miguel wrote something in his notebook. The scratch of the pen was the only sound in the room.

Angus kept his eyes on the table. He thought about a blanket in an empty building, Clara’s hands braced on the diner counter, and Frank Holt’s face in the parking lot.

He kept his hands still.

“Tell me about the emails,” Miguel said.

“Tell me about the immunity agreement,” Cobb said.

The exchange had been circling the same track all morning. Miguel’s jaw tightened slightly, barely visible, but Angus noticed.

He looked at Cobb directly for the first time.

“The woman who processed Walt Greer’s examination,” Angus said. “She’s thorough.”

Miguel looked at him. One sharp look. A warning.

Angus held Cobb’s gaze.

Cobb’s expression shifted. Small. Quick. A man updating an assumption.

“Her preliminary findings came back,” Angus said. “Not a cardiac event. A specific compound. Clinically controlled. Not recreational.” He kept his voice level. Factual. Not a threat; a statement. “Walt Greer’s death is not what it looked like.”

The room was very quiet.

Cobb looked at the table. The evenness in his face was still there, but it was working harder now to maintain its shape.

“Those emails you kept,” Angus said. “The ones you didn’t delete. They cover more than Jonah Holt. And the arrangement you’re negotiating, may not cover everything you think it covers.”

Miguel set his pen down. He sat back, his posture revealing he’d made a decision and was watching it play out.

Cobb looked up. His eyes moved between Miguel and Angus, then settled on a point between them. The calculation behind his face was now visible. Not the outcome but the process. A man who had walked in believing he held the leverage discovering the ground beneath him had shifted.

“I want to speak to my attorney,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Six

He woke up cold.

Colder than before. A different kind of cold—one that had gotten into him during the unconscious hours and settled there without asking permission. His jaw ached from it. His hands, when he tried to move them, responded slowly, the zip ties biting differently than he remembered, his fingers stiff in a way they hadn’t been before.

A different floor. Not concrete—wood, old and uneven, the grain rough under his palms. Different smell. The saltwater was gone. In its place, something dry and closed—sawdust and old machinery and the staleness of a space that had been sealed for a long time before someone opened it quickly and put him in it.

He lay still and let his eyes adjust.

No light under a door. That was the first thing he noticed, and it took him longer than it should have because he’d built his whole orientation around that line of gray at the base of the door, and its absence was more than merely physically disorienting. He searched the darkness around him—ceiling, walls, floor—until he found it. Not under the door but above it. A crack between the door’s top edge and the frame, thin as a thread, with light shining beyond it.

Different door. Different configuration. Different everything.

He sat up slowly and waited for his vision to stabilize.

The note was gone.