Stitch's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Stitch returned to the boathouse to read the pages in daylight. He laid them on the dock and bent close. A floorboard creaked behind him in the empty building. He turned. No one. But the latch on the far window hung open, and he had closed it the day before. Someone had been here while he dove. Someone was watching him work. He thought of the dead woman. She had kept a boat here. She had ended in the river. If the killer knew Stitch had her pages, Stitch would follow her down. He could not keep working in the open. He had to vanish and still finish the name. He made a plan. He owned a lantern with a dial on its base. He set the dial to burn for an hour, placed it on the dock, and turned up the glow. Through the window it looked like a man bent over his work. Then he gathered the pages, pocketed a lump of amber sap with iron sealed inside it, and slipped out the river side. Across the water stood an old customs house, shutters loose, no one minding it for years. Stitch crossed to it and climbed inside through a broken shutter. The tall windows let him watch the boathouse while he stayed hidden in shadow. He spread the pages on the dusty sill and worked on the smudged name. An hour passed. The lantern across the water dimmed and died on its timer. The boathouse went dark. Stitch waited. A shape moved along the far bank toward the dark boathouse. The watcher had waited for the light to fade. Stitch gripped the weighted sap and held still. The shape reached the dock, eased the door open, and slipped inside. Stitch saw the man strike a match. The small flame lit a face he knew. The twitchy dockhand. Finn Shakes. His hands shook as he searched the planks where the lantern had sat. He was looking for the pages. Finn found nothing. He kicked the dead lantern into the river and cursed. Then his head snapped up toward the customs house, as if he felt eyes on him. Stitch dropped below the sill. His heart slammed. Finn stared a long moment, then hurried off along the bank and was gone. Stitch let out his breath. The trick had worked. The watcher thought him fled, and now Stitch knew the watcher's face. But knowing changed everything. Finn worked the docks every day. He had seen Stitch dive. He wanted these pages badly enough to hunt them in the dark. Stitch looked at the smudged name on the page. The first part he could read. He whispered it against Finn's full name and felt the match land cold in his gut. He had hidden from the man watching him. Now he carried proof the man would kill to bury, and Finn knew exactly where the river had led.