Page 57 of Jonah’s Lure

Three times.

The sound was thin in the room, but it traveled downward—metal carrying through metal, into whatever old works ran beneath the floor.

He held still and listened.

Nothing answered.

He went back to the nail, pressed the zip tie against the rusted shank, and began again. Harder this time. Whatever he had left.

The water crept across the floor toward him, and the old building kept his noise to itself.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Angus was halfway across the parking lot when Miguel appeared in the doorway.

“Angus.”

He stopped. The look on Miguel’s face brought him back without needing to be told why. He crossed the lot and returned to the office.

The office was operating as if it were an ordinary afternoon—phones ringing, keyboards clacking, a deputy’s voice on the radio at the back. Angus followed Miguel’s gaze across the floor.

Tammy was at her desk. Her hands were too still—not resting, but held. The camera system window on her second monitor was minimized. She’d been working around it rather than with it.

Miguel stepped to the edge of the main floor.

“Tammy. Can you come in here a minute?”

It wasn’t a question.

* * *

Miguel chose the small office at the back. The one with a table, two chairs, and a window overlooking the staff parking lot. Not the interview room. Not the glass-paned conference room. The room where matters too serious for a desk but not yet official were handled.

Angus came in behind Miguel and stood near the door, jacket over his arm, back against the wall. Miguel had the table. Tammy sat across from him and folded her hands on the surface.

She looked as she always did—composed, practical, the face of a woman who had managed a building full of difficult things for years and had learned to do it without showing the effort. But something around her eyes was different. A readiness. The alertness of a person braced for impact.

Miguel opened a folder. He didn’t look at it.

“The footage,” he said. “Walk me through what you found.”

She did. Precise and organized, she laid out the camera system the way she had for years—angles, recorders, timestamps, the gap. Miguel listened without interrupting.

Then he said, “The west corridor. You said it skipped.”

She looked at him. “Yes.”

“I didn’t tell you which corridor had the skip.”

The room became very quiet.

Her hands didn’t move. Neither did her expression. But something behind it shifted. The almost imperceptible recalibration of a person who said a word she hadn’t intended to say and is deciding what to do about it.

“I assumed. Given the location of the interview room⁠—”

“Tammy.” Miguel’s voice was still quiet. “Where were you during the eleven minutes Cobb was alone in that room?”

She said nothing.