Page 1 of Presumed Dead

Prologue

The room had no name and no number. Just a steel door with a keypad. Two floors down, in a building that didn’t appear on any directory, in a part of the city most people drove past without seeing.

Ethan Vale had been to this room before. He’d lost count of how many times. Long enough to know which of the vinyl chairs had a tear that pinched if a man sat wrong. That was the one he was sitting in now. He always did. Small acts of stubbornness were what kept a man on a long cover from forgetting he was a person.

Three years. He counted in his head sometimes, when there was nothing else to do, and the number always landed the same. Three years, two months. He’d stopped counting weeks a long time ago.

The fluorescent overhead buzzed. He poured himself a cup of the coffee that had been on the burner an hour too long and lifted it in a small toast to the empty room before he tasted it. It tasted exactly the way he’d expected. He drank it anyway.

David Mien came through the door with a folder under his arm and the expression of a man who hadn’t slept since the previous Tuesday. The folder went down on the table. His eyes went to the cup in Ethan’s hand.

“How is it?”

“Educational.”

David almost smiled. He pulled the chair out and sat. The folder stayed closed for now, but they both knew what was in it, and they both knew the closed folder was a courtesy that wouldn’t last past the next minute.

“How was the wedding?”

“Pie.”

“Pie?”

“Maren’s mother made pies. Apparently, the negotiation was short. Six varieties on a long table, and Graham looked at her like she’d hung the moon. Which, as far as he’s concerned, she did.”

“And you?”

“And me what?”

“You danced.”

“I danced. Caleb danced. Ronan danced, which I’m still processing.” Ethan set the cup down. He watched David’s hand on the folder. “It was a good night. Best one I’ve had in a while.”

“Good.” David’s palm flattened on the cardboard. “Then I’m sorry to do this on a Saturday.”

“It’s a Monday.”

“That’s how long it’s been.”

Ethan didn’t answer. Four days separated him from the wedding. The lab result had come back two days after that. From the moment David’s name had lit up his phone, he’d known what this meeting was. Eight months on the case. Almost eight months waiting for this folder.

Eight months on this case. Three years and two months on the larger one. Different pieces of the same animal, and the animal had a name now, and the name was the thing that had brought him into this room today.

David opened the folder.

He didn’t lay the photographs out the way he had eight months ago. Back then he’d spread the Gulf coast across the table like a hand of cards. They were past that. What came out today was a single narrow stack. Updates. New angles. A close-up of the Sea Ray sitting in slip seventeen at Sloane Mercer’s marina, taken last week from the waterside.

Ethan looked at the boat. Then at the dock. Then at the slow curl of the marina visible in the corner of the frame. The same small stubborn pull at the back of his ribcage came up that had come up every time he’d looked at it for the last eight months. Three months back, he’d stopped trying to talk himself out of it.

“Boat’s still for sale.”

“Boat’s still for sale. Owner died last year. Family wants out of the slip fees. Sloane’s been showing her on weekends as a courtesy.”

“Forty-two-foot Sea Ray.”

“Forty-two-foot Sea Ray. Needs everything.”

“Listing’s up online.”