Page 40 of Jonah’s Lure

“I’m forty minutes from Weyport. I’ve already called Judge Farrell’s clerk. By the time I’m back in town, the warrant will be ready.” His voice was steady. Not unkind. The voice of a man who had made a decision and would not be swayed. “I need you to stay where you are.”

Angus looked at the bedroom ceiling.

He thought about Pembrook Road. How close he’d been. What the blanket against the wall meant, and what it might not mean anymore. He thought about how difficult it had been to hold himself back, to stay in the truck, to drive home when Miguel told him to. He thought about what he’d prayed yesterday in the truck, what he’d written in his journal, and what it had cost to mean both.

“I’ll stay,” he said.

He heard Miguel exhale. Brief. Controlled. The exhale of a man who’d been carrying something and could finally set it down. “I’ll call you when I have something.”

Angus got up, dressed, and went to the kitchen. Scout was at the back door. He let him out into the yard and stood on the step in the cold morning air while Scout moved through the damp grass, his nose working and his tail steady, completely indifferent to the significance of what had just been discussed in the bedroom.

The yard was just the yard. The morning was just the morning. Scout’s only concern was whatever had come through the fence overnight and whether it was still worth tracking.

Angus stood on the step and took deep breaths.

He thought about the outbuilding on the north edge of Weyport. An old processing facility. He knew the area. The disused waterfront stretched further north than Pembrook Road, past the cannery buildings and into a stretch of land that had once been industrial but hadn’t been used for years. He could picture it without trying. Could picture the drive there. Could picture himself arriving before Miguel’s warrant came through and looking for another padlocked door.

He went back inside.

He made coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and opened his journal. He didn’t write anything for a long time. Then he wrote:

The address exists. I don’t have it. That’s probably the right call.

He looked at that for a moment. Then, below it:

Lord, let him be there. Let him be alive. Let this be the day all of this ends.

He closed the journal.

* * *

Clara called at 8:15.

He almost didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t want to talk to her, but because he had nothing to give her yet. No confirmation. No news. Nothing that would make eleven days—five of them silent since that one call to Frank—any shorter or easier to bear.

But she’d been holding her father together since this started. She’d come to the diner, sat across from him, and said, “I don’t believe you took my brother.” She’d handed him the planner that had started the chain leading Miguel to Augusta last night.

She’d earned a phone call.

He answered.

“Anything?” she said. No preamble. Clara’s directness no longer surprised him.

“Things are moving,” he said carefully. “I can’t give you details yet. But something broke open last night that wasn’t there yesterday.”

Silence. He heard her breathe. “Is he alive?”

The question sat between them with its full weight.

“I don’t know,” he said plainly, the way she deserved to hear it. “I genuinely don’t know, Clara. What I know is that we’re closer this morning than we were yesterday evening and that someone is moving on it right now.”

Another silence, longer. Her voice held the same steadiness it had in the dock office on day one—the steadiness of a woman who processed what she was given rather than what she wanted to hear.

“My father asked me last night whether you did this,” she said. “He’d seen something online. About the messages. About the account.” A pause. “He wanted me to tell him it wasn’t true.”

Angus said nothing.

“I told him no,” she said. “He didn’t believe me.”