Her ex-husband. The man she’d been hunting for weeks since he vanished during a custody dispute over their son.

The morning fog hadn’t lifted from the harbor when Sara Garrett’s phone buzzed with a text she’d been dreading: “They found something at the WMA.”

“What is it?” she asked, stepping out.

The medical examiner pulled back the tarp. Inside a torn black bag was a man’s blazer—expensive wool, singed at the edges—and a single dress shoe. No body. But inside the blazer pocket: a wallet. Sara’s hands trembled as she opened it.

“Rose, we need eyes on Voss. Now.”

Sara, still in her jacket from the night before, drove the rusted pickup along the landfill road. The Waste Management Authority site was a labyrinth of gravel mounds and seagulls circling like sentinels. She found Detective Madsen already there, his silhouette sharp against the pale sky.

Madsen pointed to a tarp-covered shape near the compactor zone. “Contractor saw a bag snagged on the scale. Not household waste.”

John Porter.