The trawler stank of diesel and old fish. Halloran stood at the rail, a dead man's notebook tucked in his coat, watching the spot on the chart where an island should be. Low tide would uncover it for six hours, then drown it again. Six hours to dig up whatever the Meridian settlement had buried before the water took it back. The captain spat over the side. "Mud's showing," he said. "Go now or go home."

Halloran took the dinghy and rowed for the gray smear of mud where the island was rising. The notebook said: dig at the broken church, ten paces north of the bell. He hit the flats and ran, boots sinking in the muck, the clock already ticking in his chest.

He found the church, half-sunk and roofless, its bell lying green in the mud. Ten paces north, his shovel struck wood. He dug fast and pulled up a sealed iron box, heavier than it looked. The tide was already turning, water creeping back across the flats toward his ankles.

The water rose faster than it should, coming in against the wind. It climbed past his knees in seconds, far quicker than any tide he knew. Halloran clutched the box and ran for the dinghy, but the flats had turned to soup and his boots stuck fast. Whatever was buried here, the island was fighting to keep it.

Halloran lost his grip and the box vanished under the rising water. He thrashed back to the dinghy with nothing but the notebook and his life. From the trawler he watched the island sink, taking its secret with it. He'd failed the job. But he was breathing, and the dead man in the notebook was not.