Chapter 3 - Smoke Over the Harbor
Detective Sloane arrived with a colleague that afternoon.
She listened without interrupting, examined the photographs, and asked June to describe exactly where she had found the ledger.
Then she asked about the St. Agnes.
“Did anyone inquire about buying it after you brought it here?”
Nora remembered an email.
An unusually generous offer.
Cash, immediate collection, no inspection required.
She had declined because she wanted the boat.
Molly found the message.
The sender had used a company name none of them recognized.
Sloane read it twice.
“Please forward that.”
By evening, copies of the records were stored with Mara and the investigators. The original left the building in an evidence container.
Nora watched it go with unexpected relief.
Then she went upstairs to work out payroll.
Her personal savings would cover most of it. Selling a small investment account would cover the rest. It would leave almost nothing for the baby.
She entered the figures anyway.
At six thirty, June appeared in the office doorway.
“My brother got a call.”
Nora looked up.
“What kind of call?”
June held out her phone.
Her younger brother was finishing a technical training course. Someone had offered to pay his remaining tuition if June remembered that the notebook had been empty.
“He said no,” June whispered. “But he’s scared.”
Nora felt anger rise so sharply it steadied her.
“Forward that to Detective Sloane. You’re going home with Luis tonight. Nobody walks to a bus stop alone.”
“What about you?”
“I’m leaving too.”
That promise saved her life.
She had intended to stay until the payroll figures balanced. Instead, she shut the laptop, collected her coat, and went downstairs.
At the rear exit, she smelled something wrong.
Not varnish.
Not the familiar sweetness of cut timber.
Something sharper.
She stopped Luis before he switched off the lights.
“Get everyone outside.”
He looked at her face and moved.
Nora pulled the fire alarm.
The sound tore through the workshop.
June came running from the locker area. Molly appeared on the stairs. Two carpenters hurried out through the front.
Then a dull impact sounded from the storage room.
Heat rolled across the ceiling.
Nora stumbled backward as orange light flashed beneath the door.
Luis caught her elbow.
“Move.”
She moved.
Outside, rain struck her face while smoke pushed from the rear vents.
For one terrible second, she couldn’t count.
People kept turning, blocking one another.
“Molly?”
“Here.”
“June?”
“Here.”
“Evan?”
“Over here.”
Twelve.
All twelve.
Only then did Nora begin to shake.
Fire engines arrived within minutes. Police closed the street. Someone wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
She watched water strike the roof above the lumber store.
Years of work disappeared behind smoke.
Cassian arrived while a paramedic checked her pulse.
He moved toward her, then stopped when Detective Sloane stepped into his path.
“Not now.”
“Is she hurt?”
“She’s being assessed.”
Nora heard his voice but couldn’t look at him.
She was watching the windows.
The office window.
The one beside the little shelf where she had placed a photograph of her father and the first boat they restored together.
A firefighter emerged carrying a blackened metal box.
Molly began to cry.
The box held their paper payroll records.
It was such an ordinary thing to rescue.
That was why it hurt.
Later, at the hospital, Nora sat beneath a thin blanket while a clinician checked her after the smoke exposure.
The room was quiet except for the soft machinery and the rustle of paperwork.
When the ultrasound image appeared, Nora forgot the fire.
There.
A tiny movement.
A heartbeat.
She covered her mouth.
The clinician smiled gently.
“That’s what we wanted to see.”
Outside the examination room, Mara waited with Nora’s coat.
“The investigators believe the fire was deliberately set,” she said.
Nora closed her eyes.
“And the ledger?”
“Safe.”
“The staff?”
“Everyone accounted for. Minor injuries only.”
Nora nodded.
Then she asked for her phone.
Mara hesitated.
“Who are you calling?”
“The employees.”
“You can do that tomorrow.”
“No.”
Nora looked down at the ultrasound picture in her hand.
“Tonight they need to know we still have a company.”
Across the harbor, Cassian stood beneath the awning of the hospital entrance.
For once, he had no useful order to give.
May you like
Inside, the woman he had betrayed was calling twelve frightened people.
And telling them the truth.
