The Summons

The whiskey in the glass didn't look like salvation anymore; it looked like amber-colored stagnation. Declan Moore stared at it, the condensation dripping down the cheap tumbler to pool on the laminate table of his efficiency apartment.

Outside, the rain of Portland battered the window, a relentless gray rhythm that he had been trying to drown out for three years.

A knock at the door broke the trance. It wasn't a friendly knock. It was the sharp, authoritative rap of process servers or cops.

Declan didn't move to hide the bottle. He stood up, his knees popping—a reminder of the nitrogen bubbles that had nearly crippled him in his last dive—and opened the door.

A man in a wet trench coat stood there. He didn't offer a name, just a thick Manila envelope.

"Declan Moore?"

"Depends on who's asking."

"Sign here."

Declan signed. The man vanished into the hallway damp, leaving Declan with the package. He ripped it open. Inside wasn't an eviction notice, which he expected, or a court date for his latest DUI. It was a single sheet of heavy, cream-colored bond paper, embossed with a seal that looked like a tangled briar patch.

* NOTICE OF DEBT ACQUISITION*

* Mr. Moore,*
* Your outstanding liabilities to State Street Bank, The credit union, and the civil judgment regarding the incident on I-95 have been consolidated and purchased by the Thorne Estate.*
* Current Balance: $284,000.*
* You are hereby summoned to Oakhaven Island. The ferry departs at 5:00 PM. Attendance is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in the immediate revocation of your parole and transfer to state penitentiary.*
* We have a job for a man with your specific skill set.*

Declan lowered the paper. The Thorne Estate. Judge Alistair Thorne. The name was a ghost story in Maine—a man who owned half the coastline and all the judges.

Declan looked at the whiskey. He looked at the rain. He had no money, no badge, and no honor. But he had a fear of prison that outweighed his fear of the bottle.

He poured the drink into the sink. It was the hardest thing he had done in months. He grabbed his duffel bag, packed his wetsuit—the neoprene stiff and smelling of old salt—and walked out the door.

\---

The ferry to Oakhaven was a rust-bucket called *The Charon*. It suited the destination. Oakhaven Island rose out of the Atlantic like a broken tooth, jagged cliffs of granite crowned by a dense, suffocating forest of pine.

The rain was horizontal now, driven by a nor'easter that the weathermen were screaming about on the radio. Declan stood on the deck, letting the spray hit his face. It felt cold, but not as cold as the memory that lived in his marrow: the feeling of a seatbelt jamming underwater, a child’s wide eyes, the taste of brackish water as he failed.

The boat docked at a rotting wooden pier. The town—if you could call it that—was a cluster of boarded-up shops and fishermen's shacks.

A black town car waited at the end of the dock. The driver, a man with a neck like a tree stump, opened the door.

"Mr. Moore. The Judge is waiting."

Declan slid into the leather interior. It smelled of peppermint and stale smoke. "Does he usually buy people?" Declan asked.

"Only the broken ones," the driver said, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. "They’re cheaper."