Chapter 5 #4
“Yes,” Isobel answered with no hesitation.
Her eyes wide with promise. “Imagine a man who was the perfect father—attentive, loving, present—that disappeared in the night without a word. No one would tell you why. You spend your life searching, hoping, willing him to turn up, but he never does. Then, one day, after your life had completely crumbled around you, a lawyer waltzes in, drops a paper, and tells you that your father is dead and left you a trawler.” Her voice cracked.
He didn’t like it, and he wanted to reach across the table and take her hand, pull her into him to comfort her, but the other part of him wanted to shove her away so hard she couldn’t return to this place, the boat… to him.
“A trawler with a name that rubbed the brackish, salty Estero Bay water into a festering wound.” Isobel looked down at Echo, petting him with her complete attention, but Rone caught her trembling lip.
Waves lapped at the shore with extra force on the beach behind her. People mulled about near the trailer. Rone took a deep breath and knew he couldn’t keep hiding things from a woman determined to find the truth. Maybe if he gave her something, enough to satisfy her curiosity, she’d move on.
“Shade wasn’t a bad man. He helped me,” Rone said, staring at the steam rising off his cup. “Back when I didn’t think I could be helped. After my partner was killed, he was the one who made sure I didn’t eat my gun.”
Isobel’s hands stilled around her mug. “Were you military?”
“Once. Then police academy. Ultimately, I landed as a police detective. Always in other people’s messes. Always trying to fix things that couldn’t be fixed.”
“You cared about him.”
Rone nodded once. The memory came back uninvited—Shade’s laugh, dry as desert wind; his habit of saying truth’s a weapon, use it wisely.
“He wasn’t perfect,” Rone said. “But he had a code. The kind you bleed for.”
Isobel leaned forward, eyes bright with that mix of curiosity and ache that made him want to look away. “Then why won’t you tell me what really happened to him? Or what he left behind?”
Because the truth gets people killed, he wanted to say. Because the last person I tried to protect from it drowned in her own blood. Instead, he said quietly, “It’s not your fight.”
Her jaw tightened. “You don’t get to decide that. My father was involved somehow, wasn’t he? That man, did my father work for him? Did he drown or did they murder him or is he still alive?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Then tell me so I can decide if it’s worth knowing.”
The argument rose like thunder between them—low, charged, inevitable. People at the next table turned their heads, then looked away quickly when Rone’s voice dropped into that flat, dangerous register that used to make rookies back off.
He set his coffee down carefully because his hands had started to shake. “You think this is about your curiosity? You think chasing fantasies will bring your father back?”
“I think pretending I don’t want the truth will break me faster,” she shot back.
For a second, he saw her father in her face—the same stubborn set to the mouth, the same eyes that didn’t back down even when the odds were impossible. He’d liked the man once. Still would, if not for everything that came after.
He wanted to tell her. God help him, he wanted to take that Altoids tin from the hiding place in the wall and show her the small, simple thing Shade had left behind. But the image of her finding out too much—of her name showing up next on some list—locked his jaw tight.
When they finished eating, she pushed her chair back and stood. “You can try to protect me all you want, Rone. But if I’m already in this, I deserve to know why.”
He let her walk ahead. It was easier to watch her back than meet her eyes.
The marina was quieter when they returned. Midday heat had driven most people inside. The scent of salt and burnt plastic still lingered from the fire. Rone cleared the boat, and Echo plopped down, letting them all know who he’d chosen to live with today.
Isobel disappeared down the hall into her cabin, muttering something about grabbing a change of clothes. He slipped out to his own boat, knowing Echo would alert to any trouble.
He paused in the main birth and eyed the wall. The Altoids tin sat where he’d hidden it weeks ago, tucked into the hidden cubby. Plain. Harmless. Lying like a sin.
He picked it up. It rattled.
Shade’s voice echoed in his memory from a drunk rambling a few nights before he’d disappeared — If something happens to me, don’t open it. Give it to her. It could save her.
He hadn’t connected what it and her were, that they were more than a delusion of a drunk man until today. Rone turned the tin over in his hands, thumb tracing the embossed letters. He didn’t trust fate, or luck, or himself anymore. But could he trust Shade?
No. Not when it came to endangering Isobel more than she already was.
He popped the lid.
Inside, a small flash drive gleamed dull silver against the mint dust. No note. No explanation. Just that.
His gut went cold.
He closed the tin, fingers tight around the metal, and exhaled through his teeth.
This wasn’t just a keepsake. It was a key. And keys opened doors best left locked.
He looked out the window toward Family First where Isobel sauntered by a window—and felt the ground shift under his feet.
She wanted truth. He wanted her alive.
And now, both of those things couldn’t exist in the same world.