Page 33 of Jonah’s Lure

Miguel looked at the third building. At the padlock. His jaw moved once and then went still.

“The planner,” Angus said. He held it out through the window. “Chain of custody starts now. Clara Holt gave it to me this morning at the diner. I went home first. Read it. Then I drove here.”

Miguel took it, turning it over in his hands. Then he looked at Angus.

“You should have called me from the diner,” he said.

“I know.”

Miguel looked at him. The knowledge of what Angus must have done in the hours between the diner and this moment sat between them. Miguel was too good an investigator not to notice the gap in the timeline. And Angus was too honest a man to dress it up.

“I’m calling it in,” Miguel said. “Warrant application tonight. I need you to go home.”

“Miguel—”

“Home, Angus.” His voice wasn’t hard. It was something more difficult than that. “Trust the process. I know what that’s asking right now. Trust it anyway.”

Angus looked at the building once more, started his truck, and drove home.

Chapter Twenty

Miguel called at 7:45 on Tuesday morning.

“Warrant application is with Judge Farrell. As you know she’s known for moving fast when the facts support it.” A pause. “And Angus, they support it.”

Angus was standing at the kitchen counter with his first coffee. “Any idea how long?”

“Could be this morning. Could be this afternoon. She’ll want to read it properly as always.” Another pause, shorter. “I know what I’m asking you to do.”

“You’re asking me to wait.”

“Yes.”

He looked out the kitchen window. The Millers’ house across the street, curtains still drawn. A car backing out of a driveway two doors down, the same silver sedan that left at the same time every Tuesday. The ordinary cadence of a neighborhood running at its usual pace, indifferent to what was happening in his kitchen. “I’ll wait,” he said.

He meant it when he said it. That didn’t make the waiting any easier.

* * *

He cleaned the kitchen. Not because it needed it, but because his hands needed something to do and standing at the window watching the street wasn’t sustainable. He cleaned the counter, the stovetop, and the inside of the refrigerator. At 8:45, he found himself standing in the middle of the kitchen with nothing left to clean and the day stretching out before him.

This was what it felt like to be removed from the thing that gave shape to your days. Not the badge itself. He’d understood for years that the badge was only the emblem of something deeper. The work. The purpose of it. The satisfaction of solving a problem and having the authority to pursue it. Stripped of that, the hours took on a different quality. Longer. Heavier. The kind of time that turned back on itself and became thought when what he needed was action.

He opened his journal.

He didn’t write much. Just the date and a single line: Waiting is not the same as doing nothing. Remind me of this.

Then, below that, after a gap: I am trying to trust the process. The process is imperfect. I am too.

He looked at it for a moment. Then he capped the pen and put the journal in his jacket pocket and went to see Walt Greer.

* * *

Walt answered at the second knock, dressed this time, a mug of coffee in hand and the expression of a man who had been half-expecting this visit since the last one.

“Sheriff,” he said. Then caught himself. “Sorry. Habit.”

“Don’t apologize,” Angus said. “Can I come in?”