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 didn't trust the captain's grin. Before leaving, he flipped to the last page of the notebook. The dead man had scrawled one line: "Don't go alone. They count the boats that come, not the boats that leave." Halloran turned and looked back at the trawler's crew. They had stopped working to watch him.

Halloran pretended to faint on the deck. When the crew rushed over, he grabbed the captain's own knife from his belt and pressed it to his throat. "You knew the man who owned this notebook," Halloran said. "You're going to tell me how he died." The captain's grin finally dropped.

The captain talked. The notebook's owner had been his brother, sent out to dig and never brought back. "The island pays," the captain whispered, "but it always takes the digger." Halloran lowered the knife, stepped into the dinghy alone, and rowed toward the mud, knowing exactly what waited and going anyway.