Four armed men came for the terrified Cane Corso hiding behind me, but when his billionaire owner arrived, the dog planted himself on my foot and refused to move.

“The file may give us a location,” she said. “Don’t answer yet.”

Elias looked at the message on my phone. “He sent it to you because he thinks you have the book.”

“I don’t.”

“Does Maisie know where it is?”

“She might know more than we do.”

That possibility frightened me. Maisie was eight. She loved mysteries because, in the books she read, children found clues and adults listened when they spoke. Someone had made her part of a real one.

Moreno’s technician copied the video. The location data had been removed, but a faint sound ran beneath Maisie’s voice: three low blasts, a pause, then another. Elias recognized the harbor foghorn. It could be heard across miles of waterfront.

I listened again through headphones. Behind the horn came a mechanical rattle.

“Could that be a train?” I asked.

“Freight cars,” Elias said. “There’s a line behind the old cold-storage buildings.”

The truck had headed in that direction. Moreno sent officers to search, warning us that Julian might be watching for them.

Elias’s lawyer arrived at the rescue carrying maps and property records. He spread them across my office desk, covering Maisie’s drawings with deeds and lease diagrams.

South Harbor had once held fish markets, warehouses, repair shops, and storage tanks. Wren Holdings had bought the largest tract five years earlier. Julian managed its old leases while Elias worked with the city on plans for housing and a youth center.

Celia had been helping residents document what lay beneath the abandoned lots.

“She was worried about soil and water testing,” Elias said. “I hired an independent firm after she died. Their report said there was no immediate danger.”

Moreno asked for the firm’s name. Elias gave it to her.

I pointed to three buildings beside the freight line. “We’ve had dogs surrendered from these blocks. Rashes, vomiting. Owners couldn’t afford more tests.”

Elias examined the addresses.

“Did you tell my company?” he asked.

“Three times.”

He looked up. “Who answered?”

“The office Julian runs.”

For the first time since meeting him, I saw anger push past Elias’s fear. It gave him something to do, and he reached for his phone. Moreno stopped him from calling Julian.

“Let us get to Maisie first.”

At one thirty, an officer found the white truck abandoned inside a locked freight yard. Its cargo space was empty. The rear floor was wet, and someone had scraped away a company marking beneath the magnetic sign.

No sign of Maisie.

Elias walked outside to take a call from his lawyer. I followed a few minutes later with coffee. He stood under the awning, staring at a photograph on his phone.

Celia and Maisie sat in a boat beneath a bright summer sky. Bishop was wedged between them, looking deeply unhappy about his life jacket.

“Celia took this a week before she died,” Elias said. “She was going to tell me what she’d found that night. I was late getting home. We argued.”

I waited.

“The next morning she went out alone. When the marina called, I kept thinking about the last thing I’d said to her.” He locked the phone. “I told her Julian knew the harbor better than either of us.”

A car moved slowly past the rescue. Both of us watched until it turned the corner.

“We’ll find Maisie,” I said.

“I have people searching every dock in the city, and I don’t know whether she’s warm.”

I had no answer. I handed him the coffee.

At two, Moreno came back. Her officers had found an overnight caretaker near the freight yard. He had seen a dark van leave around nine, then turn toward the aquarium access road. He remembered it because a rear door had not been shut properly.

“We searched the aquarium,” I said.

“The main floor and storage rooms. The building has service tunnels. The city’s finding plans.”

Elias stood. “I’m going.”

“Not into a search area,” Moreno said. “I need you where Julian can reach you.”

My phone rang before he could argue. Unknown number.

Moreno signaled for me to answer on speaker.

“Nora?” Maisie whispered.

My hand tightened around the phone. “I’m here, sweetheart.”

“Is Bishop okay?”

“He’s right beside me.”

A small, broken breath came down the line.

“Tell him I’m sorry I ran.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. We’re coming to get you.”

In the background, something heavy rolled across a floor.

Maisie spoke faster. “The blue whale still doesn’t have teeth.”

I looked at Moreno. “I remember.”

“Mom said if I got lost—”

A man’s voice sounded close to her. The phone scraped against something.

“Maisie?” I said.

“Please tell Dad—”

The call ended.

Elias had heard every word. “What did she mean about teeth?”

“When we visited the aquarium, one of the guides explained that the blue whale outside was supposed to have a smiling mouth. The sculptor left it plain because the funding ran out. Maisie was furious. She said everyone could see it wasn’t finished.”

Moreno leaned over the city plan her officer had just sent. The whale sculpture stood beside the old entrance. A tunnel ran under it to the aquarium’s water-filtration rooms.

“Three doors,” I said, thinking of Maisie’s drawing.

The officer on the phone with Moreno said the first set of plans was incomplete. Renovations had changed the tunnels years later.

“We’ll search them,” she told him.

Elias looked at me. “She knows we’re listening.”

“Yes.”

“And she knows that place.”

“She might have heard where they brought her,” I said. “Or seen the whale before they took her inside.”

Moreno had the call traced as far as an old cell tower serving the waterfront. It fit, but it didn’t settle where in the maze of buildings Maisie was being held.

She sent another team toward the aquarium and warned them to watch the service entrances. The harbor tide was rising with the rain. Several of the lower rooms had pumps, and no one knew which still worked.

Elias called his attorney again. This time he asked for Celia’s records: storage, bank boxes, every place she might have kept a notebook. He spoke steadily until the call ended.

Then he sat beside Bishop on the office floor.

The dog rested his head on Elias’s knee.

“I should have believed her,” Elias said.

Bishop didn’t move.

My phone lit up with another message from Julian.