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No Country for the Tide

adventure◐ Mature
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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.

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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.

SV
Sasha Volkov
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