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Hidden Tide

Page 111

by Susie McIver

“That easily?” Ben asks.

“I’m learning too.”

He almost smiles.

Marquez turns to Keating. “Have they learned anything from the search of Thomas’s boathouse?”

Thomas stiffens.

Keating taps the screen.

“The federal team found signs that someone entered through a rear window before the attack here. The office was searched.”

“I could have told them that,” Thomas says. “Cross tore the place apart.”

“They found something else.”

Keating looks at him.

“The wall behind your workbench is hollow.”

Thomas’s face loses its color.

“What’s behind it?” I ask.

“A narrow storage space. It was empty except for an old metal film canister.”

My heart begins to pound.

“Dad’s film?”

“The canister was empty.”

“Then Cross found it first,” Ben says.

“Possibly.”

Thomas shakes his head. “I didn’t know that compartment existed.”

“Grandpa built the workbench,” Storm says.

“I know. He installed it after your Dad died.”

Keating enlarges a photograph on the tablet.

A small round canister sits on the workbench beneath an evidence marker. The metal is scratched and corroded. A strip of faded tape crosses the lid.

Two words are written on it.

LANDS END.

My knees weaken.

Ben’s arm circles my waist before I can fall.

“I was there,” I whisper.

Storm moves beside me. “We all were.”