Page 58 of Jonah’s Lure

He let the silence run its full course. Then he set his pen down. “I've been going through Pete's case files,” he said, then opened a folder and placed a single sheet on the table in front of her—a copy of an old incident report, the kind that should have gone further than it did.

“How old was Kyle when Pete helped you?”

Her eyes lifted to his.

“Don’t.”

“How old?”

Her mouth tightened. For a moment Angus thought she might still choose the lie. Then her hands came apart on the table—just her fingers separating, the fold releasing—and he understood that something had given way.

“He was seventeen,” she said. Her voice had changed—not collapsed, changed. The evenness was still there, but it came from somewhere deeper now—the place you went when the thing you’d been holding finally grew too heavy. “It was Mill Road. Rain and a bad bend. Kyle was going too fast. The car went off the road.”

Angus knew Mill Road. Everybody in Weyport knew the bend.

“There was another boy in the car who was in the hospital for two months. He still walks with a brace.” She looked at the table. “Kyle had been drinking—not much, but enough. Pete was the sheriff. He came to me the next morning and told me he could make it go away.” She paused. “I said I didn’t want that. He said it was already done. He said I owed him.”

“What happened when he came back?” Miguel asked.

“He called me the week after his release and said he still had the original report. The witness statement. That Kyle had a life now and it would be a shame.” She exhaled slowly. “He said he’d been waiting a long time to collect.”

She looked toward the window for a moment.

“Kyle has a life,” she said. Her voice was steady, but the steadiness was taking a toll now. “He’s moved past it. I couldn’t let Pete take him back there. I kept telling myself that a mother was allowed to do anything for her child. That it was love.”

Miguel looked at her. “So you let him take Jonah instead.”

She didn’t answer.

“What did he ask for?”

She told him. Movement patterns inside the office since Pete came back. When Angus was running searches, when Miguel was at or away from his desk. She’d fed it through numbers Pete had given her—calls only, never anything in writing. That was all she knew. What he told other people about her, she had no say in and no knowledge of.

“Prepaid?” Miguel said.

She nodded. “Different numbers. He changed them twice.”

She’d given him what he asked for because she’d told herself each time that it was small. That it wasn’t hurting anyone. That Kyle has a life now.

“The cameras,” Miguel said.

“I controlled what you saw after Cobb was brought in,” she said without flinching. “I’ve managed that system for six years. I knew where the gaps were, and I made sure you only saw what wouldn’t lead anywhere.”

“Walt Greer. Not Jonah. That was Cobb’s doing.”

A pause. “Pete said Walt had described him to someone. That Walt could identify him.” She looked at her hands. “He told me what to put in the coffee.”

“How did you get it to him?”

“I took it to him.” Her voice didn’t waver. “He knew me. He had no reason not to open the door.”

The room absorbed that.

“And Cobb,” Miguel said.

She was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was flat in a way that had nothing to do with composure. “He said Cobb was going to give you the location. That if Cobb talked, the sealed record would surface through another channel and there’d be nothing left to protect Kyle.” Her jaw tightened. “He put something in my mailbox. A syringe. A note. Four words.”

Angus looked at the wall and did not speak.