Page 170 of Slack Tide Kill

"Who the hell are you to say this?" someone barked.

"I know Jack!" another shouted. "He's a good man."

"He's a murderer who's lied to you for decades," Sally answered coldly. "And he's planning to wipe Dungeness off the map. We need the reactor's security services to conduct an immediate sweep and harden their perimeter, while we rally everyone, immediately, to that location. CTSFOs, bomb disposal, Coastguard, ambulance, every warm body we can muster, right now."

Seconds passed. There were no more defiant cries, just all eyes staring at Sally. She felt the disbelief congeal in the air, swelling from the Gaze's piece on her, from Chakrati's death, the dartboard picture and the flower shrine.

Then DI Gemmell rose to his feet. "You heard Officer Rogers! This is real, this is happening, and we are going to knock it on the sodding head. Teams 1, 2 and 3, you're on radio and phones, coordinating all our remote forces under DS Simms here, to the reactors. Everybody else, you're with me. Gear up and let's go!"

There was another flat second, then the room broke open in movement and noise. Phones came up. Chairs scraped back. Officers ran for radios, jackets, weapons, keys.

Sally was already running, Liam beside her. In moments they were out of the station, into the squad car and revving out of the lot before the first batch of officers burst through the doors.

70 TOGETHER

The folder lay open on Gloria Mayhew's lap, barely visible in the gray half-light, while the van's wipers beat time across the windscreen.

Jack Mercer drove without speaking.

She turned a page. Photocopies, most of them, the print gone soft and smudged. A birth register. A name blacked out and another written beside it. She read the same three lines twice and took nothing in, then gave up, looking out as Romney Marsh went by on both sides, one great flat sheet of standing water.

Twenty minutes ago she'd been in her office, on the radio with the CTSFOs in Rye train station. A train had shut down just short of the platform due to a flooded track, and tempers were flaring.

Then Jack Mercer stepped in without knocking.

She buried the flicker of annoyance, because this was Uncle Jack, after all. Her father's DI and best friend. She had clear memories of him from her childhood: hiding under his desk at Rye station, giggling uncontrollably while her father stalked through the office booming, 'Fi Fo Fum'; having dinner at their house, his laugh carrying over a barbecue while she pelted around the garden with a plastic sword.

Then afterward, too. He'd been so solemn, on one knee in that same garden, wearing his black suit and tie. Telling her that if she ever needed anything. If he could ever help in any way.

And now he was here.

She closed out the call and gave him her full attention. "What can I do for you, Jack?"

His face was grave. He shut the door behind him and came to her desk.

"I just learned something, Glory." That was his old nickname for her, Glory Hallelujah. She'd loved it when she was a child. "Something that could be definitive. But I'm worried your station's compromised."

She stood. If there was anyone she trusted, it was Uncle Jack. "Compromised? What makes you say that?"

"I've been monitoring movements of people through the station. I hope you'll forgive me, but I placed trackers on several vehicles. Illicit, I know, but you need to know what I found out."

None of that was good. Not procedurally, not for her, not for him, and not for whatever it threatened. But this was Uncle Jack.

"What did you find?"

He lowered his voice. "There's a paramedic called John Logan. He's been at all the locations where the killer struck. His vehicle has visited them multiple times in the days and hours since. So I've been looking into him." A pause. "And I just got confirmation from an old contact. Logan's actually directly related to the Rooks."

She froze, working that through. She'd met Logan. Crossed paths with him half a dozen times. At the reactors that first morning. At the Mustang crash site. Around the station, patching up her teams.

"Related how?"

"It turns out, John Logan is Reg Rook's son."

"He's what?"

"I know. Before Roarke and the others. They had Logan adopted out. I've got all the paperwork here." He raised the manila folder. "I think Logan killed Harrow on Reg Rook's standing orders."

The world tunneled around her. "That's impossible. I know him."