Page 59 of Jonah’s Lure

“Do you know what it’s like?” she asked. “To have only one thing left worth protecting?”

She wasn’t looking at Miguel. She was looking directly at Angus—the first time she’d looked at him since she’d sat down. Her eyes were dry. Whatever she’d been carrying had moved beyond the kind of grief that produced tears.

“I do now,” Angus said.

She closed her eyes. For a moment her lips moved, but no sound came out.

Miguel gave it a moment. Then he said, “Jonah. Where is he?”

“I don’t know.” She said it quickly, the way people did when they needed to be believed. “He never told me locations. He was careful about that.” She opened her eyes. “But he said something after Cobb died. I didn’t understand it then.”

“What did he say?”

“He said if they found the boy before high tide, everything would be wasted.” She looked between them. “He said by the time anyone found Jonah, the tide would have done the rest.”

Angus went still.

Not the stillness of someone processing. The stillness of someone who had already understood and was now fitting the pieces together—mapping what he knew against what she’d said. Frank Holt walking past the North Annex without stopping and mentioning that Jonah wanted money spent there before he was ready. Then Clara’s voice: “He said the old water system needed attention.”

He reached for his jacket.

Miguel looked at him.

“Holt Marine,” Angus said. “The North Annex.” He looked at Tammy once more—not with anger, not with pity, but with the knowledge that her fear had put a blade in Pete’s hand. “What time is high tide?”

Miguel already had his phone out, his thumb moving over the screen.

“Seven forty-two.”

They had fewer than four hours.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Miguel was already talking when Angus followed him out of the small office.

Not to Angus. To Deputy Rawlings at the nearest desk—clear, fast, no wasted syllables. Secure Tammy’s desk, her computer access, the camera system, her phone. Send a unit to her house. Get forensics on the mailbox, the note, and the syringe casing.

Rawlings was up and moving before Miguel had finished speaking. Another deputy stayed at the door of the small office.

Angus stood at the edge of the main floor and watched the office respond. He knew this feeling. Orders rising in him by habit, the reflex of a man who had run this building for years and knew which deputy moved fastest, which needed clear instruction, and which question to ask first.

He swallowed the impulse to take charge.

This was Miguel’s room now.

Through the small office window, Tammy sat very still at the table. The first honest thing she’d done in days, already too late to undo the rest.

“You’re lead,” Angus said when Miguel came back to him.

Miguel looked at him steadily.

“I mean it,” Angus said. “I’ll tell you what I know. You decide what to do with it.”

A beat. Then Miguel nodded once. “You can come. But if I tell you to stand down⁠—”

“You won’t hear an argument.”

Miguel held his gaze a moment longer. Then he reached for his phone.