Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
The boat went too still. Even the hum of the generator faded as if the air itself had taken a breath and refused to let it out.
Isobel stood there, frozen, as if an arctic, dystopian blast had hit Florida and mummified her in ice. The words he’d spoken hung between them.
He was working for them.
Her father.
Her father, who’d taught her how to tie a cleat hitch before she could spell it.
Who’d carried her on his shoulders through the lake marina, who’d told her to “find the truth, kiddo—it’s the only compass that doesn’t break.
” The man who’d laughed loud and easy, who’d fixed things instead of breaking them.
That man wasn’t the kind who worked for something rotten.
She moved before she knew she was moving—past Rone, to the narrow stairway down to the salon where the sun was painting the water gold and broken. Her reflection caught in the glass, split by a hairline crack from the earlier blast. Two halves of herself: one believing, one not.
“That’s impossible,” she said, her voice small but sure. “He wasn’t—he couldn’t be.”
Rone’s footsteps echoed down the stairs. He set the laptop on the dining table, leaving the screen to glow mercilessly in the corner of her vision. His eyes were on it, that quiet, tactical stare that stripped a thing down to its bones.
“He could,” he said finally. “Shade knew what he was doing.”
Her throat went tight. “No. You’re wrong.”
The denial slipped out sharp, like a reflex she didn’t get to control.
She spun back toward him. “You don’t know him.
You think you do, because of a logo, a name.
But people make mistakes on screens all the time.
It could’ve been planted. It could’ve been a cover—deep enough he couldn’t risk leaving a trail. ”
Rone leaned back in his chair, elbows braced on his knees, jaw tight.
“I’ve seen deep cover. It leaves shadows.
Breadcrumbs. This—” he gestured at the screen “—this is a brand. They mark their own. You’ve spent your life looking for a hero, but they don’t exist in real life.
This changes everything. You have your answer, so now you can go. ”
“Go? Don’t even start that again. This changes nothing,” she said, the words coming too fast, too sharp, too desperate. “He has information on a drive, that doesn’t mean he belonged to them.”
Her pulse thundered in her ears, drowning out everything else—the hum of the generator, the whisper of water against the hull, even the sound of her own voice shaking.
She pressed a hand to her chest, as if she could steady her heartbeat through sheer force of will.
“He could’ve seen something. Or someone forced him—used him.
You said yourself that group cleans things until they look holy.
And you pass judgment—convict him—without even seeing what’s in that file. ”
Rone didn’t move right away. The silence between them filled with the weight of things unsaid—his breathing, her trembling. When he finally did move, it was slow, deliberate. He stepped closer and reached out, his hand finding her shoulder, rough palm warm through her thin shirt.
The contact broke something in her—some small, rigid part she’d been holding tight.
The warmth of him, solid and quiet, pulled the sting out of her words.
She let her forehead tip forward, just enough for a breath, a heartbeat, to steady herself against him.
For that fleeting moment, she let herself believe it was okay to lean on someone else.
Then her mind caught up. The memory of every man who had smiled before he twisted the knife came rushing back. Pity dressed as compassion. Promises dressed as control.
She jerked back, the air between them snapping cold. “Don’t,” she said, voice low and shaking. “Don’t use comfort like a weapon. You don’t get to soften me up so I’ll do what you want.”
His brows knitted, confusion flashed before he exhaled, slow and measured, like he was handling live wire. “That’s not what this is.”
She folded her arms tight across her chest, armor against the warmth that still lingered where his hand had been. “It always is. That’s how it works, right? Get the woman to feel something so she’ll fall in line.”
Rone’s gaze softened, not wounded but resolute. “You think that’s who I am?”
“I think you’re a man who wants me to run. To hide.”
“I’m a man who’s seen what happens when people stay.
” His tone was quiet, even, stripped bare of any defense.
He took another step, close enough that she could see the tired lines at the corners of his eyes, the small scar just beneath his jaw.
“I’ve done wrong in my life, Isobel. More than you’ll ever know.
But I don’t play games. I don’t lie to get what I want.
You’ll only ever get truth from me. No tactics. ”
Her chest tightened again—but for a different reason this time. The words landed heavier than she expected, grounding her instead of swaying her. She wanted to believe him. She almost did.
She looked away first, staring at the computer screen’s dull glow instead of the honesty in his eyes. “Then tell me the truth,” she whispered. “Tell me he wasn’t one of them.”
Rone’s silence stretched long enough for her to feel it settle in her bones. When he finally spoke, it was a whisper that sounded almost like regret.
“I can’t. I won’t lie to you. I’ll keep information, drive you to the airport, throw my body in the line of fire, but I won’t tell you what you want to hear when it isn’t honest.”
The words cracked something inside her.
The laptop’s blue glow made her father’s image dance in her mind—his grin, his voice, his calloused hands guiding hers on the tiller. Her chest burned. She wanted to smash the screen, to erase those letters, that name.
Instead, she folded her arms and said, “There’s a password. That means something. If he didn’t want anyone in, it’s because what’s inside could clear him.”
Rone rubbed his hand over his face. “Or it’ll reveal the kind of information that gets people killed.”
“Then you don’t have to look,” she said, chin lifting. “But I do.”
For twenty minutes, Rone typed, erased, guessed, and muttered half-codes under his breath. Names, dates, coordinates. Each failed attempt brought a harder line to his shoulders.
Isobel stood by the table, arms wrapped around herself.
She watched the light crawl across the pilot house floor and thought about her father’s laugh, how it used to fill every inch of space around him.
She thought about the phone call she’d overheard to her mother the day he disappeared, the static on the line, and the words she hadn’t understood until now: “Don’t come looking. ”
Rone finally exhaled, a long, slow sound that deflated the room. He closed the laptop like a coffin lid. “Nothing,” he said. “Whoever made this didn’t want it opened. Maybe I was wrong and he didn’t mean this for you.”
He rose, the chair legs scraping against the floor, and crossed to the galley sink to pour himself a glass of water. His movements were steady, but there was something brittle under them. He looked tired. Older. The kind of man who’d seen too much and couldn’t scrub it clean.
Isobel watched the way his hand trembled as he drank, and her anger thinned into something else—something sharp and aching. “You really think he was one of them?”
“I think,” Rone said, but then took another swallow of his drink as if buying an extra few seconds before he continued, “that you can’t afford not to consider it.”
The words hurt more than she’d admit. She turned away, looking out through the fractured window at the sea.
“He told me once… people only believe the part of the truth that fits the story they’ve already written.”
Rone looked over his shoulder. “What’s your story, Isobel?”
“That he loved me,” she said, voice barely there. “That he was trying to come home.”
Rone didn’t argue. He set the glass down, the faint clink sounding final somehow, and walked out the back door to the dock, muttering something about checking the lines before dark.
She stayed where she was, hands braced on the edge of the table. The laptop sat in front of her, screen gone black, reflection faint. It was still plugged in—waiting.
Password required.
Her mind wandered back through the years. Christmas mornings on the boat, the scent of engine oil and cinnamon rolls, her father humming “Silent Night” off-key while hanging lights along the rails. He’d always named things after tides and time.
A memory surfaced: him showing her his password journal once, half-joking. “If I ever forget, it’s always something worth remembering.”
Worth remembering.
Her gaze fell to the name of the folder. TideLedger.
“Christmas Tide. Our boat on the lake.” Then, before she could second-guess herself, she reached out and typed ChristmasTide.
Nothing.
Then, she added the boat model year. He’d always been so proud of her, so she typed ChristmasTide1979.
Then clicked the enter key.
She held her breath.
For a moment, nothing.
Then the cursor blinked twice and the folder opened like a secret spilling into daylight.
Rows of files filled the screen—dozens, maybe hundreds. Videos. PDFs. Names she didn’t recognize, and some she did: Fletcher, LaurelTide, Manifest_B, Schedule_Alpha, Isobel.jpg.
Her throat closed around air that felt too thick. She scrolled. There were spreadsheets full of coded transactions, shipment routes, false company names—all linking back to ports up and down the coast.
But the last file stopped her cold. It bore a date: December 24, the day her father disappeared. And beneath it, one word.
Insurance.
She double-clicked, her pulse hammering. The video window opened, static clearing into a shaky handheld shot—her father, older, tired, standing in the very pilot house she now stood in.
“Hey, Little Rabbit,” he said.