Page 43 of Jonah’s Lure

“Angus.” Miguel’s voice was different. Not the controlled professional register. Not the careful neutrality he’d been carrying since the investigation turned either. Something gentler than either of those. “It’s not good news. I’m sorry.”

Angus stood very still at the kitchen window.

“Jonah was definitely here at some point.” “We’ve been through the entire building.” Miguel paused. A pause filled with grief. The specific grief of a man who had arrived somewhere important too late. “The signs are all there. A water bottle. A blanket. And it was recent. I’d stake my badge on it.” Another pause. “But he’s not here. Someone moved him before we arrived.”

Angus looked out at the quiet street and said nothing.

“I keep thinking about the twelve hours,” Miguel said quietly, almost to himself. “If we’d had the first warrant twelve hours earlier.”

“Don’t,” Angus said.

Silence. Then Miguel drew a breath, and the professional register returned. Not coldly. More like the way a man picked up a tool and returned to the work in front of him. “Cobb is still locked up at the office, and I’ve been interrogating him since he arrived. He’s not budging on giving me the location though. I know he has it. My guess is he’s holding it for a deal.”

“He knows where Jonah is.”

“He knows where Jonah is,” Miguel confirmed. “He’ll give it. But he’s smart and slick. He won’t give it up without something in writing first.”

Angus turned away from the window. “I want to be in that room.”

The silence on the line was longer this time.

“Miguel.”

“I heard you.” Angus could hear him working through it. The procedural weight. The risk. The ramifications if it went wrong. “If you’re in that room, it has to look like something it isn’t.”

“I know.”

“I’ll bring you in for a follow-up interview as part of the ongoing review. You’re still a subject. Nobody on the staff will question it.” Another pause. “I don’t think I need to say this, but you should sit on my side of the table. You can’t speak unless I indicate. You can’t react to anything Cobb says, regardless of what it is. If I tell you to leave, you leave without argument. Deal?”

“Understood.”

“I mean it, Angus. If you make this difficult, I’ll have no choice but to walk you out myself.”

“I understand.”

* * *

The sheriff’s office felt different from the outside than it had on Friday morning.

On Friday, he’d walked in and the room shifted around him. Careful non-acknowledgments. Thinned conversations. Jeanine’s reddened eyes. Miguel’s silent coffee. Today, he came through the door with Miguel two steps behind him, his hands in his jacket pockets, and the posture of a man being brought in for questioning—which was exactly what everyone was supposed to see.

Most of them saw it. Jeanine looked up when he came in and held his gaze for a half a second, a moment that felt different from Friday. Less guarded perhaps. He didn’t have time to read it before Miguel moved them past the front desk and down the corridor to the interview room.

* * *

Ray Cobb looked smaller than Angus had expected.

He’d built an idea of the man throughout the investigation. The person who had walked into a harbor board meeting thirteen months ago and found a door. Who had spent months building Jonah’s trust with the patience of someone working to a plan. That man had existed at a distance, defined entirely by what he’d done rather than by what he looked like.

The man at the interview table wasn’t much older than Angus—lean, with the wary stillness of someone who had made a calculation and was living with the result. He looked at Miguel when they came in. Then at Angus.

An emotion moved across his face. Not surprise. Recognition. He knew exactly who Angus was.

Angus sat beside Miguel, looked at the table, kept his hands still in his lap, and said nothing.

Miguel opened his notebook and looked at Cobb with the unhurried attention of a man who had time and intended to use every minute of it.

“Mr. Cobb. For the record, we’re resuming the interview. Sheriff Reid is present as part of the ongoing administrative review.” He looked at Cobb steadily. “Where’s Jonah Holt? We know you know.”