Page 63 of Jonah’s Lure

Somewhere behind the old compressor housing, water found a live wire.

A pale flicker jumped along the far wall, then there was a sharp crack. A shower of sparks. The smell of burning insulation followed almost immediately—chemical, acrid, not wood smoke but something older and more dangerous.

“Kill the power,” Frank said.

Miguel looked up at the deputy on the stairs. “Where’s the breaker?”

“I thought this place was dead,” Rawlings said.

Frank’s voice was tight. “It should be.”

Smoke began to move along the ceiling of the landing—thin, the color of old paper, sliding toward the stairwell.

Miguel made the call quickly. He took the stairs two at a time and spoke into his radio: fire rescue to the north side of the building, exterior hatch, manual release.

He came back down.

“We have minutes before that smoke makes this landing unusable.” He looked at Frank. “The service hatch—can you reach it from outside?”

“Yes.”

“Water’s rising. Will it be accessible?”

Frank hesitated. “It’ll be at the waterline. Maybe just below.”

“Can you reach the release?”

Frank straightened. “Yes.”

Miguel looked at Angus, then back at Frank. “You go. Angus goes with you. I stay here at the door.” He turned to the deputy on the stairs above. “The moment that pressure drops, we push.”

From behind the lower door, Jonah struck the metal.

Once.

Twice.

The third strike didn’t come.

Frank Holt was already moving.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Angus.”

He turned.

Miguel was at the top of the stairwell. “You get him to the release and you come back. Nothing else.”

“Understood.”

Frank was already around the corner of the annex by the time Angus cleared the door. Outside, the scene had changed quickly—two fire rescue trucks and EMS units were staging near the dock office, and a deputy was moving along the north wall with a radio pressed to his ear. Smoke threaded from the seams of the annex siding, thin and gray, into the cold afternoon air. Frank didn’t look at any of it. He moved along the north wall with the purpose of a man navigating by memory. The hatch was low in the siding, set back from the dock line, half-hidden beneath old metal debris and tidewater that had crept up the foundation. A square of rusted iron plate, maybe two feet across, with a latch that had seen thirty years of salt air and hadn’t been touched for most of that time.

Angus reached it alongside Frank.

Frank went for the latch with both hands. His fingers slipped. He tried again. Rust had welded the mechanism into something that barely qualified as a mechanism anymore.

“Frank.”