BURN PATTERNS
The harbor woke to headlines that made new enemies out of old acquaintances.
By nine a.m., Ellery's favorite morning show ran a segment titled BRIDGE TRAGEDY: QUESTIONS ABOUT 'FRAUDULENT' PHOTOS. A former city PR aide in a good scarf suggested "certain freelance shooters" had a "history of sensational framing." A lower-third graphic did the part of the job the host couldn't; ROWAN HALE UNDER SCRUTINY and Winter Harbor's group chats snarled like fishing line around a propeller.
Rowan watched the clip on Caleb's laptop with her jaw set. "He's faster than we are," she said. "He always has been."
Caleb's phone lit with three texts in a row. Rishi:plate confirmed as Carrow's; skiff still missing. Judge:I'm awake; bring me bone two. Sloane:Do not watch TV. Also, I love you and I'm mad.
"Let him spend himself on TV," Caleb said, closing the tab. "We spend ourselves on paper."
They drove to the house where Rowan's mother had died, white clapboard rehabbed by a couple from away who kept the good lines and replaced the old ghosts with tasteful lighting. The new owner, a widow with a kind mouth and Maine pragmatism, let them walk the yard in their boots and their quiet.
"Smelled smoke the first week, even though they gutted it," she said. "Sometimes you keep the memory of a thing and you don't get a vote."
Caleb crouched near the side door, eyes moving like a man reading a tide chart. "Your mother's alarm at 02:04," he said. "Neighbor hears a woman shout Don't let him in. Door jamb shows stress, old report says warped from heat. But…"
"But?" Rowan prompted.
"Look at the sill," he said. "Tiny crescent scuff, polish worn off varnish. Right-handed ring, heavy, habitually used to knock." He glanced up at her. "When a man thinks a house belongs to him, he knocks with the hand that holds his name."
Ellery wore his family ring like a crest, a reminder and a threat. Rowan had never noticed how it hit wood.
She swallowed back a taste she didn't want to identify. "If it was him," she said, "we still don't know if he was there to help or to hide."
"Then we ask him under oath," Caleb said. "Not under camera."
They were back in the SUV when a text hit the brick phone again, another image from the saboteur. A dock cleat, close-up. A rope spliced in a way that screamed Carrow's yard. Nate taught his men that splice; he liked to brag about it. Under the image, two words:
CHECK UNDER.
"Bait," Caleb said.
"Or map," Rowan said. "He wants a game."
"Then we set one." He called Rishi; by the time they reached the yard, two plainclothes and a diver with shoulders like a myth waited with a coil of line and the bored competence of people who did their jobs too often to decorate them with adjectives.
The diver slipped under and came up ten minutes later with his mask lifted and an expression Rowan would have called unprofessional delight on anyone else. He held up a small waterproof case.
Rishi cracked the latch with a grin he tried to hide. Inside lay a GoPro, scuffed and stubborn, and a laminated field-tag with a date from last week and a Sharpied note: Mid-span rehearsal.
"Thank you, God," Rishi said to no one in particular.
They took it to the unit, dried it like a newborn, coaxed it clean, and fed it power. The clip began mid-sentence; work light glare, the drone's whine a thin metallic bee, first-person footage from the skiff. The hood stood in profile at frame left, scar bright. Nate hovered behind him in a winter coat like a supervisor at a carnival ride.
"Tom says we're late," the gloved hand said again, a clearer take this time, the drone closer. "We do the look and go."
The hood tilted his head, amusement lazy. "He likes fireworks."
"He likes ribbon cuttings," Nate said.
The hood laughed. "Same thing."
The camera swung to the trestle. The stainless bolt gleamed. A tool clacked. A ring tapped metal, the signet leaving a tiny nick that would take an obsessive to notice. The hood turned slightly toward the lens, and for one wheezing second Rowan dared to believe they'd catch his face.
Then he reached up; deft, practiced and palmed the lens with a gloved hand. The world went black.
The audio didn't. Over the hum, the hood's voice, close enough to smell.
"Delete your test," he said. "Nobody needs rehearsal if we only do this once."
Rishi paused. The room listened to the sound of intent, captured and caged.
"Bone two," Caleb said, sending the packet to the judge with the speed of a man who rarely got to enjoy his job and refused to gloat when he did.
The judge answered in three minutes: Signed. Bring me three.
"Three?" Rowan asked.
"The arrest you never get over," Caleb said. "The one that sticks because everybody who signed it knew what it cost."
The town turned in the way towns do, first in whispers at the bakery, then in full-throated certainty by late afternoon. A councilman posted a long thread about "personal responsibility." An anonymous account with a stock photo for a face accused Rowan of "editing for clout." Someone chalked WE REBUILD on the sidewalk outside Ellery's office and underlined it three times with zeal that smelled like spray paint.
At dusk, Nate Carrow found them first.
He waited in Caleb's alley, hat in his hands, bare-knuckle proud. When the door opened, he put on the hat and off the pride.
"Investigator," he said, but his eyes landed on Rowan. "Ms. Hale."
"You brought your lawyer?" Caleb asked.
"Should I?" Nate said, and the shape of the lie didn't fit his shoulders.
Caleb said nothing. Nate filled the quiet anyway. "Boat drifted," he said. "Boys salvaged what they could. GoPro must've slipped."
"You're unlucky," Rowan said.
Nate's jaw flexed. "I'm efficient," he said. "Which is why I'm here. A man in a hood comes and goes, I can't help you. A man without one signs purchase orders. You want those? E. Ward signed three to my one. The city made this project a pet; I'm just a kennel."
"Why tell us now?" Caleb asked. "Your timing used up all its luck at birth."
Nate hesitated. His eyes did something Rowan hadn't seen them do before: they asked for permission to be afraid. "Because," he said, and the word cost him, "the man you're really after has never been told no, and I've got a son who doesn't need to be taught that lesson."
Rowan watched him and put a small pin in her mind by his name. Men are not just the worst thing they've done; sometimes they are also the best thing they've said too late.
"Bring us your procurement trails," Caleb said. "Everything with Ward's initials. You'll paint yourself in the corner, but at least the color will be yours."
Nate nodded once, a carpenter measuring a cut. "Done."
He turned to go, then hesitated, squinting at Caleb as if at a puzzle in good light. "You're not from here," he said. "You keep acting like you are."
"I'm from fire," Caleb said simply. "It's the same."
Nate's smile cracked, real this time, quick. "Fair."
When he was gone, Rowan let out a breath she'd been holding so long it had made a home under her ribs. "He'll run," she said.
"He'll think about his son first," Caleb said. "If he runs, he'll run toward him."
"That's a kind of confession," she said.
"It's a kind of proof," he said.
They didn't get time to test the theory. At nine, Rishi sent up a flare: Municipal ISP logs—hit on an anonymous upload at the council office Wi-Fi. Ten minutes after your decoy text. The IP resolved to Ellery's wing. The device fingerprint, obfuscated, still leached enough metadata to look like a phone his chief of staff would carry.
"Ward," Rowan said.
"Or someone using Ward to keep their hands clean," Caleb said. "Which is Ward's job."
"Three," Rowan said. "Judge wants three."
Caleb looked at her with a question he usually only asked himself. "You ready to be the bite on the trap?"
"I'm tired of being the bait," she said. "Bite sounds better."
They drafted the sting in an hour that tasted like coffee and wrong decisions made right. Ward had a reputation for meeting fixers in the gray middle; nowhere crowded, nowhere empty. They chose the ferry pier: lights, cameras, angles, exits. Rowan would offer to trade the "full-res originals" for safe passage and silence; Ward would bring cash because men like him believed in props. The hood would come because control wasn't something he outsourced twice.
"I'll be wired," Rowan said as Caleb's hands worked the tiny transmitter into the seam of her jacket. She ignored the trembling under her skin and the quiet domesticity of his fingers near her collar, the way his breath lifted her hair. "You'll be everywhere."
"Everywhere is ambitious," he said. "But I'll be enough."
"Promise me you won't let me make a better-looking mistake than you can fix," she said.
"Promise me you'll follow my lead even when it feels like cowardice," he said.
They looked at each other with all the patience they'd learned the last three days and none of the patience they'd burned through the last ten years. Then they went to the pier and tried to be smarter than their fear.
Wind walked the ferry terminal. Sodium lights smeared gold on damp planks. A gull said something obscene about evolution. Rowan leaned on the railing near the ticket window and let her body say I'm waiting without letting it say for who.
Ward arrived alone, which meant he wasn't. He wore a pea coat and a smile borrowed from a school principal. He carried a messenger bag that didn't swing like money; it swung like paper.
"Ms. Hale," he said, voice pitched to mild. "You've suffered this week. I'm sorry for your loss."
"You'll be sorrier when I publish," she said.
"Let's walk," he said, with the confidence of a man who always picked the route. He turned toward the dark end of the pier where the ferry's wake lapped like a bored cat. She went because not going would have broken the curve of the trap.
Her jacket mic hissed in her ear. Caleb's breath, a single word: "Easy."
Ward propped elbows on the rail and looked out like a man contemplating improvements. "You have files," he said. "You have…interpretations. You've also had a difficult year, I hear. Estate stuff. Medical bills."
"I have pictures," she said. "And a list of people who will want to see them."
He unzipped the bag with a soft, expensive sound. Money didn't flash; a stack of municipal forms did, stamped and signed, the parts of the machine people pretend aren't their favorite.
"Here's what you do," Ward said, the condescension so well-bred it sounded like compassion. "You deliver your copies to the city. You make a statement about 'misunderstandings in the fog of tragedy.' We give you a contract for official bridge rebuilding photos. No more press hounding. You get to be the story we like."
"Who do you like?" she asked.
He didn't blink. "The mayor."
Her ear hissed again: Caleb, soft, as if talking in his sleep. "He's stalling. The hood is near."
"Don't let him in," Ward said conversationally, eyes still on the water.
Rowan's throat tightened. She hadn't said those words aloud to anyone except Caleb. She kept her voice level with an effort that felt like holding a camera still on a moving ship. "Who?"
Ward's mouth did a small apologetic thing as footsteps ghosted behind them. "This is above my pay grade," he said, and stepped neatly aside.
The hood was smaller up close and larger at the same time; light, animal, the kind of body that knows rope and water and where to put both. He didn't bother with words. He reached for her jacket where a file might be, and his breath hit her cheek like cold metal.
Rowan moved. She twisted, used the railing as leverage, and shoved back hard enough to surprise them both. He recovered without losing humor, impressed, almost then pushed her in turn. Her hip hit the rail. The sea opened its mouth under her.
"Now," Caleb said in her ear, and the night turned into choreography.
Plainclothes stepped out of shadow. A spotlight on the terminal roof flared into day. The hood pivoted with the kind of economy you learn the first time someone swings at you and you decide to remain interesting. He grabbed Rowan's sleeve and hauled toward the gap in the railing the ferry left for ropes, toward the ladder, toward the clean promise of water.
Caleb hit him at the angle you use when you don't want to break a man, only his plan. They tumbled as if the pier had shrugged. The hood slipped, a hand wrenching free with a sound like Velcro. He darted for the ladder, dropped, caught the last rung with cat grace, and was gone, down, then sideways into the black that had wanted him all week.
"Go!" Caleb snapped to a diver staged two slips away. The man dove with the bored efficiency of someone who collects strangers.
Ward didn't run. He straightened his coat like an affronted usher. "This is outrageous," he said to the nearest badge. "I'll be calling the mayor."
"You already did," Caleb said, righting Rowan with hands that were all business and a voice that wanted to be other things. "Ten minutes ago. From the council Wi-Fi."
Ward's eyes did not flicker. He was the kind of man whose eyes had been trained like dogs. "We rebuild," he said calmly, and the way he said it—the cadence, the ring on his finger ticking the metal rail once made the hair on Rowan's arms stand up. He set the messenger bag down with exaggerated patience. "You can search me."
They did. He had clean hands and a dirty calendar. He had deniability printed on letterhead.
The diver hauled himself back onto the ladder, water shedding in sheets. "Lost him," he grunted. "He knew the pylons. Had a cut under the ear. Scar maybe."
Rowan and Caleb looked at each other. They were past words like maybe.
Back at the unit, they logged Ward's papers; bid waivers, emergency authorizations, procurement notes with his tidy initials where Ellery's office should have had courage instead. Rishi's latest pull put Ward's handset in the right place at the right time too often to be an accident. The judge texted back two words that felt like a bell tolling: Bring cuffs.
They had three now. Drone and GoPro. Procurement and IP trails. Ward on the pier saying the prayer with the ring tapping time.
"Tomorrow," Caleb said, voice low. "We pick up the liaison."
"And then Ellery," Rowan said, and didn't recognize her own steadiness as anything but borrowed from the man across the table.
"We'll do it in order," he said. "Some rules exist for a reason."
She nodded because tonight had almost been a fall and she'd like to avoid the kind that didn't come with a ladder. The adrenaline retreated, leaving a soft, illogical trembling. She set her palms flat on the table until the wood lent her its calm.
"You're shaking," he said, the line repeated from last night, the concern less careful.
"I know," she said. "My body got the memo late."
"Come here," he said, and it wasn't a command, more a permission with a door in it.
She stepped into the space he made and let his hands find her shoulders, her back, the place between her shoulder blades where breath gets stuck. She closed her eyes and listened to the shape of him; heart, lungs, the static of a long day. When she lifted her face, he was already there, and the kiss happened like a decision they'd made hours ago and just now had time to sign.
It was steady more than it was urgent, a promise before a plan. Salt from the pier on her lip, heat from his mouth, the careful way he didn't pull, didn't crowd, only met.
She broke first, because someone had to. They stood with their foreheads together in a quiet that felt like shelter and not like absence.
"This is a mistake I want," she whispered.
"It's not a mistake if we survive it," he said, and the rough humor in his voice put her back on her feet.
They pulled apart by inches, which is the slowest distance in the world. He poured water. She drank. On the laptop, the GoPro still showed the last clean frame before the hood's gloved hand palmed the lens. It felt, suddenly, like a blessing, to have something so clear, even if it didn't have a face.
"Tomorrow we arrest Ward," Caleb said, the ordinary language of the next step sounding like a spell. "Tomorrow we squeeze Carrow until his name makes a new sound. Tomorrow we find Ellery's ring where it doesn't belong."
"And tonight?" she asked, quieter this time, because the night had almost taken their chance to ask it.
"Tonight we lock the windows," he said, practical as a parka. "And we sleep...."
".....in shifts," she finished, smiling despite herself.
He smiled back, and for one breath the world looked almost like a place that deserved them.
They didn't get the whole night. At 03:11, the smoke alarm three doors down started a quiet, insistent beep. Then a second. Caleb was vertical before the sound became a sentence. By the time they reached the stairwell, Sloane was already shouldering a medical bag up from the street, hair in a knot, face set.
"Third-floor storage," she called. "Smells electrical. Or stupid."
The door gave under Caleb's shoulder with a hollow report. The room breathed a curl of dirty smoke, the kind that means not yet, but soon. A tangle of extension cords ran from a single outlet to a family of space heaters around a stack of paint rags. It would have been funny in a sitcom.
Rowan took three fast frames, then helped yank plugs and fling rags into the alley snow. The smoke thinned, offended.
Sloane looked at the tangle and then at Rowan, then at Caleb. "Someone wanted a pattern," she said. "Small, containable. Enough to get the building cleared. Enough to get you outside and visible."
Caleb rolled a discarded power strip in his palm. A faint smear of grease blackened the plastic, not paint. Motor oil. Boat oil. Harbor oil.
"Burn patterns," he said quietly. "Theirs. Ours."
Rowan checked the window. Across the alley, a shadow detached from shadows and disappeared. She didn't chase. She amen-ed the part of herself that had learned the difference between bravery and bait.
When the alarms went silent again and the neighbors trudged miserably back to their beds, Sloane stood in the doorway with her arms crossed, a guardian and a judge.
"You two," she said. "Stop making my heart a hobby."
"We're collecting hobbies," Rowan said, and for the first time that night Sloane's mouth betrayed her and softened.
"Collect handcuffs instead," she said. "And bring them to Ward at nine."
They would. In the morning, with coffee and cuffs and the ring-tap of a city's lies, they would.
For now, the building breathed, the smoke dissipated, and the harbor—faithless, constant—tickled the pilings beneath them, counting to itself like a man who liked to hear numbers add up.