The lead investigator spoke gently. “Your father helped build this case and hid a duplicate archive when he realized the original might be destroyed. Without him—and you—this stays rumor.”
Rowan nodded, throat working around a weight he couldn’t spit out. He thought of the brass compass that had come home in a government envelope, the only piece of his father anyone could find.
The sea hadn’t kept him; it had kept his message and waited for Rowan to be stubborn enough to listen.
Outside, gulls complained like always. Inside, the past stopped being a story told in bars and started being a file number with teeth.
