The Ferry That Never Docked

On her last crossing before retirement, the ferry Tidewater carries the usual commuters home to Bainbridge — and a captain who never steps off the bridge. Mate Lena Okafor finds him in the wheelhouse as the ferry noses into Eagle Harbor. The company calls it a heart attack. The manifest disagrees: there's a passenger who never boarded, and a log page that's simply gone. Lena's father spent his career on this route and never told her why he left. Now the men who shared that last deck in 1994 are dying, one by one, each death as quiet as a skipped heartbeat. Lena doesn't believe in coincidence, and she's beginning to believe the killer never left the ferry system. Someone has been keeping a promise for thirty years. And the last item on the list is the only person still telling the truth.