Page 35 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
Rows of files filled the screen—dozens, maybe hundreds. Videos. PDFs. Names she didn’t recognize, and some she did:Fletcher,LaurelTide,Manifest_B,Schedule_Alpha,Isobel.jpg.
Her throat closed around air that felt too thick. She scrolled. There were spreadsheets full of coded transactions, shipment routes, false company names—all linking back to ports up and down the coast.
But the last file stopped her cold. It bore a date: December 24, the day her father disappeared. And beneath it, one word.
Insurance.
She double-clicked, her pulse hammering. The videowindow opened, static clearing into a shaky handheld shot—her father, older, tired, standing in the very pilot house she now stood in.
“Hey, Little Rabbit,” he said.
Her breath hitched. Rone must’ve heard it because his footsteps thudded back onto the swim platform; the door flew open to the cockpit.
“Isobel?”
She couldn’t look away. Her father’s eyes on the screen were rimmed in exhaustion, but alive. “If you’re seeing this,” he said, “then something’s gone sideways. Laurel Tide isn’t just smuggling anymore. They’ve gone bigger—chemical, military-grade. And someone high up is letting it happen.” He hesitated, swallowing. “I tried to pull out. But as I learned fifteen years ago, they’ll never let me be. So I did the only thing I could. I left them a trail.”
Rone stopped beside her, gaze locking on the image. He went still.
Her father’s voice trembled. “You’ll find all the evidence you need on this drive. Don’t trust anyone wearing a badge. And tell Rone Archer…” He exhaled shakily. “Tell him I’m sorry.”
The screen went black.
Silence again. The kind that hums heavy and unreal.
Rone’s jaw flexed, eyes still on the blank screen. “He knew,” he said under his breath. “He knew they’d come for it, and he dragged his only daughter into this anyway?”
Isobel pressed a hand to her mouth, her body trembling in the quiet aftermath. “He wasn’t one of them,” she whispered. “He wastrying to stop them.”
Rone looked like he wanted to argue—like logic demanded he keep his distance—but something stopped him. He reached out instead, touched her arm. “Then we’re both targets now.”
Her father’s voice seemed to linger in the air:Don’t trust anyone wearing a badge.
The boat rocked gently against its lines, the water slapping in low, rhythmic waves.
“Rone,” she said softly. “What do we do now?”
He opened his mouth, but the sound that answered wasn’t his. It came from outside—the sharp, rising whine of an approaching engine.
He strode to the window, scanning the docks.
Echo growled low, the sound vibrating through the hull.
“We need to get out of here. High tides at two in the morning. Be ready to leave.”
Isobel closed the laptop, pulse spiking, her father’s warning still echoing in her head.
“Where will we go?”
He lifted his chin. “Where no one can find us until we figure this out.”
The hours crawled slower than a manatee swims.
They didn’t speak much. Words felt too fragile, too dangerous. Rone sat at the small galley table, back against the bulkhead, his gaze moving between the laptop and the window as if watching the horizon could change it. Isobel stayed near Echo, fingers absently tracing circles in the fur at his neck while the dog slept with one ear cocked toward the door.
Outside, the marina had gone quiet. Even the gulls had given up and roosted somewhere inland. The only sounds were the soft slap of water against hulls and the groan of ropes shifting with the tide. A few boats away, a wind chime clinked in the darkness.
Every so often, Rone’s eyes flicked toward the clock above the galley. The hands crawled past midnight, then one, then two.
