Page 56 of Jonah’s Lure

The old uniform coats. The ones the dock staff wore before Frank switched to the new slickers. He’d worn this same model through his first two years on the dock. He knew this coat—the heaviness of its canvas fabric, the smell of cold brine and diesel that never quite washed out, the way the collar sat wrong until you turned it up.

The coat was Holt Marine. Which meant the building was Holt Marine.

The North Annex. It had to be.

He lived with that knowledge for a while, the coat still draped across his knees. He was inside this building—the one he’d been trying to get his father to fix since last fall. Months of Frank saying, “Yes, noted. We’ll get to it.”

He’d raised it with him the first time in September. In the maintenance files he’d found the service records—original inspection, storm damage assessment, and the structural engineer’s note that flagged the old sluice works as compromised. Recommend immediate review of tidal ingress risk to lower chamber. Dated four years ago with no follow-up record.

On a Tuesday morning, he’d brought it to the dock office.

Frank had been on a call. He’d looked at the papers, said he’d review them, and put them on the pile beside the tide charts.

He’d raised it again in November, then in January. Each time, Frank had said, “Yes, noted. We’ll get to it.” Each time, the pile had grown, and the annex had stayed exactly as it was.

He’d told himself the risk was real. And it was. The engineer’s note was clear—high spring tide, certain conditions, the lower chamber could flood completely with no egress.

But what he hadn’t admitted until now was that he’d kept raising it partly because he wanted Frank to say: You’re right. Good catch. I should have seen this. He’d wanted the moment of being the one who spotted what his father had missed. He’d wanted Frank to look at him the way Frank looked at Clara when she caught something in the accounts.

That look—the one that said: You did good work.

The same hunger. He understood that now. The same hunger that had made him lean forward in a coffee shop on Harbor Street while a man he barely knew asked him questions he should have questioned. The same hunger that had made Cobb’s attention feel like recognition, like being chosen by someone who could finally see his true worth.

He’d wanted to be found sufficient.

And here he was, inside a death trap, waiting to find out if the tide would do what he’d warned Frank it would.

* * *

He went back to the nail.

The rusted shank was rough enough to work with. He pressed the zip tie binding his right wrist against it and began moving, slowly, methodically, in one direction.

He didn’t pray for rescue. He’d moved past the prayers that asked for things. They felt too much like bargaining, and he had nothing left to bargain with.

Please.

Just that. Said into the dark, into the cold, into the sound of the compressor cycling above him. Not a demand. Not a deal. Just the word, placed in the direction of whatever was listening.

He felt the zip tie give a fraction more. He held the position for a moment, then stepped back from the wall. Everything ached—his wrists, his shoulders, his hands. He lowered himself carefully to the floor, his bound hands outstretched to brace himself.

His cold fingers felt it first. Water. Not dampness from old floorboards. A thin film spreading toward him.

He got to his feet.

The water was barely there—a skin of it across the boards, thin and cold. But it was moving. He could feel its direction as it found the low points of the uneven floor and spread toward the edges of the room.

He understood what it meant.

The drain.

He dropped carefully to his knees and felt across the wet boards until his fingers found the old iron grate. It shifted under his hand—not enough to lift, but enough to tell him it wasn’t sealed as tightly as it should have been. Cold water pushed up through the narrow gaps and spread across his fingers.

He took the metal button in both bound hands and struck the grate.

Once.

Twice.