Chapter 7 #3
The question caught him off guard. He glanced at her. She stood with her chin high, eyes defiant even in the half-light.
“Not yet. But if we hide, we will be.” He made sure the AIS was switched off so they couldn’t be seen. Not a smart move in the dark, but it was the lesser of the evils that faced them.
She nodded once. No argument this time. Just trust—or something that looked close to it.
The shoreline slipped past, mangroves and cypress forming dark walls. The channel narrowed, twisted. Twice, he cut the throttle and let the current pull them silent past shallow markers.
By the time they reached the inlet to the hidden cove, the horizon had started to gray. The tide had turned, ebbing out toward the gulf.
Rone eased the boat through a slit of water barely wide enough for her hull. The mangroves swallowed them whole. Branches brushed the rails, leaves whispering against fiberglass like warnings.
When the channel widened again, it opened into stillness—a pool of glassy water reflecting the first silver streaks of dawn.
“This’ll do,” he murmured. “Only accessible during high tide, and not even the locals know a trawler like this can slip through near the shore. All charts show its depth at two feet, but the last hurricane ripped out more mangroves, and Shade found this place. Showed me.”
He dropped anchor near the far bank, cut the engine, and listened as the silence folded back around them.
The sudden absence of sound made his pulse thunder in his ears. The air smelled of brine and wet wood and something faintly metallic—gun oil, maybe. His own.
He double-checked deck lights were off, confirmed the anchor line was tight, scanned the perimeter with a small tactical flashlight, keeping the beam low.
Nothing but frogs and the slap of small fish breaking the surface.
For now, they were nothing but another secret hidden in the harbor.
Inside, Isobel was pacing the narrow galley. Her movements sharp, restless, contained only by will.
She twirled and faced him. “You said you would find Echo and my father.”
“Not yet.” He pulled the oilcloth bundle from under the bench seat, his field bag which he’d snuck on board that first night that he had an inkling they’d have to run.
Inside, he pulled out his compact satellite unit, old burner phone, short-range scanner.
“Since they removed Echo’s collar, there’s no way to track his GPS tag. ”
“Then let’s go back, find another way to track him. Isn’t that what you do? You’re a detective, right?”
“Former.” He gave her a look that shut that down cold. “They’ll be waiting. We go back, we’re dead. Echo, too.”
Her eyes flashed, angry and wet. “So what, we hide here forever?”
“No,” he said, voice low. “We get the upper hand. Then we hunt.”
The word hunt landed between them, hard as stone.
Isobel’s shoulders sagged. She sank onto the bench, gripping the collar. The metal tag caught the weak light and gleamed like a tear.
“My father. He brought me here for a reason,” she whispered.
“If I had a daughter, there is no reason I’d ever bring her into this mess.” Rone’s stomach tightened. “Especially when he was the reason for all this.”
Her gaze snapped up, fierce. “You don’t believe that.”
He met her eyes. “I didn’t. Until now.”
The silence stretched, taut as a wire.
She looked away first, voice unsteady. “I know what you think, but he chose to protect us—that’s why he left. He went back to a life he didn’t want, but something happened that got him killed or kidnapped. That drive was his insurance policy, but instead of cashing it in, he left it for me.”
Rone leaned back against the bulkhead, closing his eyes, not willing or able to argue her point. The truth didn’t change anything anyway.
The hours crawled. The light grew stronger, silver turning to pale gold filtered through the canopy. Neither of them slept.
Holiday songs blared from some beachside bar in the distance, reminding him it was nearing Christmas.
Isobel made coffee at some point by lighting the gas stove by hand since he refused to run the generator, the smell filling the small space—bitter, grounding.
Rone took a cup but barely drank it. His thoughts kept looping back to Echo—where he might be, how far they’d gone, what it meant.
He surveyed the food she had aboard and was thankful for the power bars in his ditch bag or they wouldn’t make it more than a few days.
And they needed longer than that to get the heat off enough to refuel at a dock.
They’d be watching for any sign of this boat.
He would’ve taken his own boat if he hadn’t spent too much time focused on Isobel and not enough on fixing his engine.
He kept replaying the collar’s break, the cut, the precision. A clean removal. Not a fight. A snatch. Professional.
Which meant Echo was still alive.
The thought steadied him more than the coffee did.
By late morning, the heat began to climb. Cicadas screamed in the mangroves. The air thickened. The quiet turned heavy, suffocating.
Rone stood at the helm again, scanning the tree line. Isobel joined him after a while, her face pale but composed.
“They’ll come looking,” she said.
“I don’t plan on being found. But we start planning our hunt.
” Tactical plans swirled in Rone’s head.
He wouldn’t play hero, but he’d get Echo back, and before Isobel knew what was going on, he’d have all of them disappear into the tides.
He still had a connection with his friend in the FBI; he’d turn over the thumb drive and get some sort of witness relocation for Isobel.
The tide rose again, lifting the trawler an inch, two. The shadows lengthened across the cove. Rone worked on recalibrating the portable radio, trying to pull any chatter from nearby vessels. Mostly static and fishermen complaining about fuel prices.
He was about to shut it off when a burst of white noise filled the cabin—a sharp crackle, loud enough to make Isobel flinch.
Rone frowned and turned the dial back a hair.
The static thinned, resolved into a faint rhythm, like breathing through a bad connection.
Then a voice—low, warped, echoing slightly—slid through the interference.
“Family First… this is… Shade. Do you copy?”
Isobel froze. The mug in her slipped, shattering against the teak floor.
Rone went still. His hand hovered over the tuner, not touching, not breathing.
The voice came again, clearer this time, strained.
“Rone… Isobel… need… help…”
She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Did he—did he say Shade?”
Rone’s heart pounded, slow and violent. Every instinct told him it couldn’t be real. Shade was gone. He’d seen the aftermath himself. But the cadence—that clipped, gravel-edged tone—it was him.
“Could be a recording,” Rone muttered. “A mimic.”
“Or it’s him,” Isobel whispered. “He’s alive.”
Rone shook his head, jaw clenched. “They’re baiting us.”
But even as he said it, his hand drifted toward the microphone. His pulse beat in his throat, hard enough to hurt.
The radio crackled once more.
“Echo’s alive. They want the drive.”
The signal cut out, dissolving into static.
Isobel grabbed for the mic. “Father. We’re here.”
Rone disconnected the radio. Isobel’s hand found his sleeve, trembling. “Rone… what if it’s true?”
He stared at the radio.
“If it is, then we’re already too late. They know we have the drive.”