I wasn’t.

“I really thought we had him this time, Tim,” I said.

“I know.”

I plucked the lime wedge out of my drink and squeezed until it was a mass of dry pulp. “I could leave. If I went somewhere else, he’d follow me out of here.”

“Maybe. But what about Trey?”

“Bram wants to hurt me, or punish me, or whatever, and that means nobody’s safe while I’m around. So what am I supposed to do?”

“You focus on these two cases,” Tim said. “Catch up with him before he can do any more damage.”

I gave that some thought. “Every time we’ve gotten close to Trey, it’s because Bram left a clue. If we haven’t found him yet, maybe I missed something.”

Tim said, “Okay, then let’s talk through what you did find.”

I pushed my drink aside and waved down Matt for a glass of water. “We found Trey’s hat and the bloody message off Swan Hollow Road. The boat was stolen from Swan Bay. My shirt from the police academy—the place I went to after leaving Swanton—was on Deer Island. He’s drawing parallels between Alexandria Bay and Swanton, my new town and our old one. Connecting the present with the past.”

“If that’s true, then you’re probably right. There has to be more,” Tim said. “You’ve got years of shared experiences.”

I combed my memory of the past days for a cogent answer. “There was the missing persons poster at Smuggler’s Cargo. It was in A-Bay, but related to Brett.”

“Right. We’ve exhausted that lead. What else?”

“The note he left with the tooth. It said The Truth Is Out There, like from The X-Files. That was the movie playing at the drive-in the last night any of us saw Brett.”

“Keep going.”

The heat in the pub was dry and stale, and I felt a headache coming on. I closed my eyes. What else?

“We’ll figure this out,” Tim said. “We’ll find Trey alive and get Bram behind bars. You’ll be reinstated, and I’ll have someone interesting to talk to again. With all the bickering Sol and Bogle do, I’d rather share an office with Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I said. “I still have to talk my way out of a suspension.”

“I’m not worried. I’ve got your number, Shane. You may get off track now and then, but you play your cards right in the end.”

“Cards.” The word shot through me like an electric shock. The card was still in my gym bag. I’d found it after my class with Sensei Sam. It had the Three of Hearts on one side, and a picture of Boldt Castle on the other.

“Cards, Tim,” I said. “The day I saw Bram at my karate studio may not have been his first time there. On Saturday I found a playing card in my gym bag after class. It’s from a Thousand Islands deck—like the kind they have at the souvenir shops here in town. It’s got Boldt Castle on it. The abduction site.”