Not an offer. A statement of capability.
Gabe studied him. "Okay. Start with the manifests. See if you can correlate them with anything else in the files."
Tom pulled his laptop closer.
Reagan opened her notebook. "These boat names your brother documented. I've seen them."
Gabe's attention sharpened. "Where?"
"My diner." She flipped through pages covered in server's shorthand. Dates. Times. Notes. "Same group of men come in right after we open around once a month. Seven, seven thirty in the morning. They look exhausted. Smell like diesel. Claim they've been night fishing."
"That's not unusual for fishermen," Gabe said.
"No. But the pattern is." Reagan pointed to her notes. "They only appear around new moon. Every dark moon phase, like clockwork. Real fishing depends on weather and season. This is scheduled."
Wade shifted. "Same crew each time?"
"Same faces. Different boats." Reagan's voice carried certainty. "One month a guy claims he works The Marisol. Next month it's Pacific Dream. Fishing crews don't rotate like that. Captains keep the same people."
Gabe felt something click into place. "You've been documenting this."
"Six months. Ever since I noticed they don't talk like realfishermen. They're not part of the local fishing community." She met his eyes. "And they always pay cash."
Classic smuggling behavior. Regular schedule coordinated with environmental conditions. Rotating personnel to avoid patterns. Reagan had been tracking an operation without knowing what it was. Or why she’d need the intel.
Tom glanced up from his laptop. "These manifests are dated by lunar cycle. Your brother was correlating dark moon phases with boat activity. Sounds like Reagan’s dudes."
"The warehouse." Wade's voice cut through. Flat. Certain. "They'd need somewhere local to offload. Can't go straight to Seattle with the tonnage these boats carry. Not without refueling."
Gabe turned to him. "What warehouse?"
"Dock Road. Only facility with deep water access and container capacity." Wade tugged at his beard, thinking. "Security lights haven't worked in two years. No overnight guards. Perfect waystation."
Every instinct Gabe had screamed that Wade Patterson was more than an old boat hand who'd fished in Alaska. Military. Had to be, though the graying temples and signs of white in his five o’clock shadow suggested he’d likely been out maybe longer than he was in. The question was which branch and why he was hiding it.
Later. Right now, Gabe needed the information more than the explanation. "Can you sketch the layout?"
Wade pulled Reagan's notebook over. Drew quick, confident lines. Loading dock. Container crane. Office building. Sight lines. Access points.
"David has photos." Tom turned his laptop. "Dozens of them. The warehouse. The boats. People moving containers."
The images scrolled past. Nighttime surveillance shots. Telephoto lens capturing faces. License plates. Boat registrations.
Pride filled his chest, hard and sharp and bittersweet. His brother had documented everything. Built a case that would stand up in federal court.
"This is where we need to look." His certainty solidified. "If David was tracking this operation, he would have maintained surveillance on the warehouse. Something there led to whatever happened to him."
"When?" Tom asked.
"Tonight. Midnight. Darkest approach."
"I'm coming." Cara's voice allowed no argument.
They'd already had this fight. He'd lost. "Fine. But we follow protocol. Stay behind me. No heroics."
She nodded. Agreement that didn't quite reach her eyes.
Piper looked up from her phone. "Wait. You can't just go."
