Read Chapter 24: The Sabotage Uncovered

The storm had finally blown itself out, leaving the village of St Kilda wrapped in a sodden, grey dawn. Isla hadn't slept. She sat at her kitchen table, the Morven's maintenance log open in front of her, her half-cold coffee growing a skin as she stared at the same three lines she'd read a dozen times since 4 a.m.

Engine hour log. Clutch assembly note. A signature.

Jamie's signature.

The entry was dated three days before the Morven's engine seized, the day she'd lost six weeks of data. The maintenance check had been marked as routine, no faults found. But the handwriting was too neat, the timestamp too convenient. And there was a fuel-additive log entry—a biocide flush that had no business being there.

She knew that flush. It was the kind of thing you used to clean out a fuel system that had been deliberately contaminated. And Jamie had never once mentioned doing one.

Isla shoved her chair back and grabbed her jacket. The inn was twenty minutes up the coast road, but that wasn't where she was headed. She found Jamie in the equipment shed behind the research station, shoulder-deep in the spare transducer's casing. He looked up at the sound of her boots, and the easy smile that usually lived on his face flickered and went out when he saw the logbook in her hand.

"Morning," he said, too casual. "You're out early."

"Biocide flush. Three days before the Morven died." She held the logbook open, her finger tapping the entry. "You never mentioned you did one."

Jamie wiped his hands on a rag that did more to smear grease than clean it. "It was preventative. The fuel from the mainland was dodgy, I thought—"

"The fuel was fine." Isla stepped closer. "I'd already had it tested when I got the boat back. The tank was clean, Jamie. So why did you flush it?"

He wouldn't look at her. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't." Her voice cracked, and she hated it. "I've known you for four years. You're a terrible liar. So tell me what you did, and why you did it, before I call the harbour office and tell them you sabotaged a research vessel."

Jamie's face went pale beneath his windburn. "Isla, you have to understand—"

"No. I don't have to understand anything. I have to know. Was it Cleary?"

The name landed like a stone in a still pool. Jamie's silence was louder than any confession.

"He paid you." Isla's knuckles were white around the logbook. "He paid you to sabotage my boat."

"He said it was the only way!" Jamie's voice rose, desperate. "He told me about your father's project, about how the Commission was holding the grant hostage against your findings. He said if the Morven failed, you'd have grounds to renegotiate, that you'd get a bigger budget, more time. He said—"

"He said whatever it took to get you to do his dirty work." Isla dropped the logbook on the workbench. "And you believed him. You believed a man you met twice, over me."

Jamie's face crumpled. "I did it for you. You've been killing yourself out here, trying to prove what's happening to the seal colonies, and nobody's listening. I thought—I thought if you had a disaster, a real one, then maybe they'd have to pay attention. I thought I was helping."

"You nearly got me killed." The words came out flat, quiet, more terrifying than any shout. "If I'd been out past the headland when that engine seized, if the tide had turned—"

"I know." Jamie's voice broke. "I know, and I'm sorry. When I saw the state of the boat after, I— I didn't know he meant for it to be that dangerous. He said it would just stall you out, a few days' delay, nothing more."

"He's a liar." Isla turned away, her hands shaking. "He's a liar, and you helped him, and now he has what he needs to destroy me."

"He said you'd understand." Jamie's words were barely audible. "He said you'd see it was for your own good."

Isla grabbed her jacket from the peg by the door. "Pack your things. I want you off the island by the evening ferry."

"Isla—"

"Don't." She stopped in the doorway, not turning around. "You don't get to apologize. You don't get to explain. You get on the ferry, and you pray I don't file a marine-safety report. Because if I do, you'll never work on a boat again."

Jamie's voice followed her out into the wet salt air. "Isla, wait. There's something you need to know. About Cleary."

She paused, her hand on the gate.

"He's not just a Commission man." Jamie's voice had dropped to a near-whisper, as if saying it louder might summon the man himself. "I looked into him, after—after the boat. I was trying to find something to use against him, in case you found out and needed leverage. He's not a bureaucrat, Isla. He's a selkie hunter."

The word hung in the air between them, cold and ancient.

"He works for a private collector," Jamie continued. "Some man on the mainland with more money than sense, who's been hunting selkies for decades. Cleary's the one who finds them, tracks them, gets them to come to him. The Commission is just his cover—a way to get close without raising suspicion."

Isla felt the world tilt slightly. The Commission, with its official seals and its deep-sea court agreements, was a front. Cleary wasn't there to study Tam. He was there to capture him.

"How do you know this?" Her voice was steady, even though her heart wasn't.

"I found invoices in his hotel room." Jamie's face twisted with shame. "I followed him one night, after he first came to the village. He'd been in the pub, drinking, and when he went back to his room, he left the window cracked. I heard him on the phone. He was talking about the specimens he'd already delivered, and the one he was here to collect. He called it 'the last of the old line.'"

The last of the old line. Mhairi's pelt. The one she'd left Tam when she died.

"Isla, he knows about the pelt." Jamie's voice cracked again. "He knows what it does. He's not here to study Tam. He's here to take him apart."

"Isla trusted Jamie once."—a small, distant part of her mind surface. She forced it down. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because you were right." Jamie met her eyes finally, and there was a raw honesty in his that cut through her anger. "He's a liar. And I'm a fool. But I'm not a monster. I didn't know what he really was until last night. When the storm hit the pier—that wasn't the sea, Isla. That was him, testing. He has something that lets him command a bit of the deep, some tool or charm. He wanted to see how much damage he could do, how far the sea would obey him. He wanted to know what he was dealing with."

The pale figure rising from the water beyond the headland. She'd seen it in the storm, had told herself it was a seal, a shadow, a trick of the lightning. But it had been something else. Something Cleary had called up.

"Get on the ferry," she said quietly. "And don't come back."

She didn't wait for his reply. She ran, feet slipping on the wet cobbles, up toward the cottage where Tam was waiting.

The stakes had shifted. Cleary wasn't a bureaucrat with leverage. He was a hunter with a trap already sprung, and the prey was the man she loved.