Page 39 of Jonah’s Lure

“Same compound as before,” Angus said. “Same hand behind both.”

Murphy watched him. Her composure was real, but he knew what it cost. The strain of a woman processing evidence in a case that had her partner’s name woven through it and doing her job anyway.

“Angus.” She leaned forward slightly. “I need you to find whoever did this. Not Logan’s way. The way that holds. The way that’s right in the sight of the Lord.” Her eyes didn’t move from his. “Whatever that costs.”

He nodded.

She picked up her coat, paused at the kitchen door, and looked back once—the look of someone checking that the person to whom she’d just handed something fragile had a good grip on it.

Then she left.

He sat at the table after the sound of her car faded up the street.

He thought about a man in a motel room in Augusta who didn’t yet know that a deputy was an hour away with a warrant.

He thought about Jonah. Ten days now. The call to Frank was four days old, and there had been nothing since. The kind of silence that became harder to sit with the longer it went on.

He thought about Walt’s reading chair and the ship’s clock still marking the hours on the wall. Vera Stinson standing on the sidewalk with a borrowed book she’d never be able to return.

He opened his Bible. His hand found Psalm 94.

“Will the throne of injustice, which devises evil by law, have anything to do with you? The LORD has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.”

He read it twice. From two versions, blending the verses until they made more sense to him. Then he closed the Bible, sat with the kitchen quiet around him, and waited for Miguel to call.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Miguel called at 6:47 Wednesday morning.

Angus was already awake. He’d been awake since five, lying in the dark with the alertness of a man whose body had given up on sleep without consulting him, listening to the house settle around him and waiting for his phone to do something.

It did something at 6:47.

“He was there,” Miguel said.

Angus sat up. “And?”

“Room twelve. Cash payments going back three days. He had a laptop, two prepaid phones, and a bag packed like a man who intended to move again soon. We’re transporting him back to Weyport now.” A pause—the kind that carried weight. “He also had emails. A personal account, separate from anything connected to his work in Weyport. He hadn’t deleted them.”

Angus said nothing. He let Miguel speak freely.

“He kept them as insurance,” Miguel said. “That’s how he explained it. He wasn’t loyal to whoever hired him. He wanted something to hold over them in case the arrangement turned bad.” Another pause. “It turned bad.”

“What do the emails say? Any names?”

“They’re careful. No names. Everything routed through the shell structure. The same holding company behind the dock lease. But there are instructions. Specific ones. Locations, timing, procedures.” Miguel’s voice was measured, each word chosen with care. “One email references a property. An outbuilding on the north edge of Weyport, attached to a defunct processing facility. The email describes it as a secondary containment point.”

Angus’s hand tightened on the phone.

Secondary containment point.

He knew what that meant. He also knew that he couldn’t act on it—no badge, no authority. The same wall he’d been standing against for three days. The knowledge of a location and the inability to move on it was its own kind of torture.

“You have the address?” he said.

“I have the address but I’m not giving it to you. The fact that I’m telling you all of this could cost me. It’s out of courtesy … and respect. That’s all.”

“Miguel—”