Chapter 2 - BENEATH THE ROTTEN BOARDS
Daniel did not answer immediately. The customs-house light blinked once more, and he pulled Noah away from the dock's exposed edge, keeping his own body between the boy and every window.
“We're together,” he said finally. “That means we're going to make a plan.” Noah studied his face, hearing the promise but also the fear Daniel could not conceal.
Wind pushed spray over the boards. Daniel tucked the wet photograph inside his shirt and guided Noah toward the repair shop, whose blue door stood open beside the gravel lot.
The afternoon had become strangely silent. No neighboring fishermen argued over fuel prices. No radios called across the slips. Even the gulls had shifted inland before the approaching storm.
Daniel's truck waited by the shop, but its front tire sagged flat. A sharp metal screw stood upright in the rubber, too perfectly placed to be an accident.
He stopped short. Noah followed his gaze and whispered, “The bad man did that?” Daniel crouched beside him. “Maybe. So we don't take this truck.”
Inside the shop, the smell of engine oil and cedar shavings momentarily brought Daniel back to ordinary life. A half-repaired outboard rested on his bench beneath Elena's old family photograph.
Noah had left a blue paper boat beside the cash register. Daniel remembered helping him fold it that morning, promising they would test it in a puddle after school.
He wanted that morning back so badly his chest hurt. Instead, he locked the door, checked the rear exit, and reached for his phone with a hand he struggled to steady.
Detective Nora Hayes answered on the third ring. She worked with a regional organized-crime task force, and Daniel had once repaired her patrol boat without charging her for the labor.
“Nora, someone tried to take my son,” he said. “A man at the harbor. He said Elena left something behind.” Silence followed, then the scrape of a chair.
“Where are you?” she asked. Daniel told her. Nora's voice sharpened. “Do not call local dispatch yet. Keep Noah inside. I'm coming to you.”
Daniel frowned at her warning. “Why not dispatch?” A vehicle door slammed on Nora's end of the call. “Because I don't know which radio channels they're listening to.”
The line disconnected. Daniel stared at the screen. He had expected comfort from the police. Instead, her answer suggested the threat was larger than one man in a leather jacket.
Noah climbed onto a stool and held his father's sleeve. “Does Mommy have a key?” Daniel looked toward Elena's photograph, where she stood laughing in a red scarf by the water.
“I don't know, buddy.” He swallowed. “Your mom kept lots of things organized. She knew how to find the answer when the rest of us were lost.”
Elena Mercer had managed accounts for several waterfront businesses. She noticed missing invoices the way other people noticed a crooked picture frame. Three weeks before the fire, she had become unusually quiet.
Daniel had thought she was exhausted. Their son was three, money was tight, and Elena had been working late. He had never asked why she locked her office drawer.
He opened the drawer now. It contained pencils, a faded receipt book, and a brass compass with a small crack across the glass. The compass had belonged to Elena's father.
A memory surfaced. On the last evening before the fire, Elena had placed that compass in Daniel's palm and said, “If anything goes wrong, remember where we started.”
He had laughed and put it away, assuming she meant their first date at the lighthouse. Now the words returned with such force that his knees nearly buckled.
Noah leaned closer. “Mommy showed me that. She said north doesn't move, even when your boat does.” Daniel closed his fingers around the brass casing.
Something tapped against the shop's side wall. Once. Then twice. Daniel switched off the overhead lights and moved Noah behind the workbench, silently putting a finger to his lips.
A shadow passed across the frosted side window. The handle rattled. Whoever stood outside tried the locked door, paused, and moved toward the rear of the building.
Daniel took Noah by the hand and slipped toward the storeroom. An old service passage connected the workshop to the neighboring net shed, installed decades earlier for winter deliveries.
“Quiet feet,” he whispered. Noah nodded with an intensity that hurt to see. He had been learning to tie his shoes last week; today he was learning how to hide.
The rear door shuddered beneath a heavy strike. Daniel guided the boy through the passage, ducking under beams hung with dry nets. Behind them, wood splintered against metal.
They emerged into the net shed as the first raindrops hit its tin roof. A yellow maintenance van stood outside. Its driver, elderly harbor owner Maggie Shaw, jumped down holding two keys.
“Daniel!” she hissed. “Nora called me. Get in.” Maggie had known Elena since high school and had carried casseroles to Daniel's house after the funeral.
He lifted Noah into the van. Maggie took one look at the stretched yellow hoodie and turned away briefly, blinking hard before climbing behind the wheel.
A dark SUV rolled into the repair-shop lot as they pulled onto the service lane. Two figures stepped out, scanning the buildings. Maggie kept her gaze forward and drove without headlights.
The lane curved behind stacked lobster pots and joined the old coastal road. Daniel watched the SUV disappear behind them, then examined the photograph under the dashboard's dim light.
Printed number seventeen. Elena's name. The boy and father standing in their own yard. Whoever had arranged the attack knew their routines, their memories, and their weakest point.
Maggie noticed the brass compass in his hand. Her grip tightened around the steering wheel. “Where did you find that?” Daniel looked up. “Elena's desk. Why?”
“Elena came to me the week before the warehouse burned,” Maggie said. “She asked whether the lighthouse clock still worked. I told her it had stopped at four twelve.”
Daniel's pulse quickened. The compass lid carried a faint scratch he had dismissed for years: 4:12. He rubbed the metal with his thumb, seeing the marks clearly now.
“Did she say what she wanted?” Maggie hesitated, then shook her head. “Only that if she couldn't get something into safe hands, you would eventually understand the tide.”
Noah sat between them, clutching his folded blue paper boat. He looked smaller than he had that morning. “Did Mommy know the bad men?” he asked softly.
Daniel wanted to say no. He could not. “I think she knew something they didn't want anyone else to know,” he said. “But she loved you more than anything.”
At the next bend, Maggie slowed. A police cruiser stood across the road, lights off, angled to block the lane. Deputy Marshal Cole stepped out into the rain and raised a hand.
May you like
He smiled when he spotted Daniel through the windshield. It was the same friendly smile he had worn at Elena's memorial service. Behind him, another SUV idled beneath the trees.
Maggie whispered a single word that changed everything. “Don't.” Then she slammed the van into reverse as the cruiser doors opened and men began moving toward them.
