The New Owner Asked Me To Sign Away The Bottom

"I can't sign that," I said.

Brill turned the destruction page toward me again.

"It says you have no survey material outside this office. Standard housekeeping."

"Then it isn't a destruction certificate. It's a statement you want to be true."

The room went still. Outside, a truck backed toward the warehouse. Its warning beep sounded small through the glass.

"You are a junior technician," Brill said. "You don't decide which records matter."

"I decide whether my signature is true."

He took my work laptop himself.

Dane watched him unplug it.

"Roisin," Dane said, "we can work this out later."

"Write that on the form."

He did not.

I crossed out the sentence saying I had returned every copy. Beside it, I wrote that my personally owned instrument held an archive under the signed loan agreement. I listed the laptop's serial number and signed only for handing it over.

Brill read my note. His face stayed pink and calm.

"You have made yourself expensive."

At noon, my building code stopped working. At twelve fourteen, an email said I had been suspended without pay for taking company property.

My hourly rate had been $24.60. I read that number on my last pay stub until it stopped looking like enough to live on.

Fiona came home carrying groceries and a replacement fuse for a rain gauge.

"County office," she said after reading the email.

"He'll say I stole everything."

"Then take the page that says you didn't."

We drove past wet rail yards and a diner with steam clouding its windows. Superior smelled of thawing ground, diesel, and the lake wind that found every bad seal in Fiona's car.

The investigator who met us introduced himself as Gabriel Serrano.

He was thirty-three, Mexican American, and wore a plain blue sweater over his shirt. A dive bag rested behind his chair. His hands had pale marks where a watch and gloves had kept the sun off.

He read my loan agreement before asking to see the sonar.

"Tell me what you know," he said. "Then tell me what you think. We'll keep those in different columns."

I liked him for that before I wanted to like anyone.

I knew the positions. I knew the time. I knew the audio came through a marine channel our boat used during fieldwork.

I thought the targets were cars.

I thought Brill had bought North Reach to get my files.

"Did you recognize either radio voice?"

"No."

"Good. Leave it there."

He meant the answer, not the recorder.

A digital evidence worker joined us. She photographed my gray box, noted its serial number, and copied its storage while I watched. She made file fingerprints so later copies could be checked against this one.

Gabriel gave me a receipt for the original instrument.

"You may need it for work," he said.

"Apparently I don't have work."

He looked at the suspension notice.

"You still have a trade."

I had managed not to cry at North Reach. That nearly broke me.

He pushed a box of tissues closer without looking at my face.

The next morning, he called. The county had opened a case. The recovery team would first check the targets by camera, then plan safe dives. My positions could help them avoid the old timber and loose cable.

"I'm one of their divers," he said. "Would you come explain the lines?"

At the pier, I stood behind the marked boundary with my own notebook. Wind slapped the harbor water against the stone.

"Eleven," I said under my breath.

Gabriel glanced toward the pilings.

"You count them?"

"When I'm scared."

"There's no test you have to pass here. You can step back."

"I want to stay."

He nodded and asked me to show him T1.

I explained the towfish track and the gap between the pier face and the first target. He listened without finishing my sentences. Then he checked my drawing with the dive leader.

The camera came up with a clear view of a windshield.

By late afternoon, a hired crane lifted a dark SUV from the water. Everyone moved slowly. Nobody cheered.

Gabriel surfaced, climbed the ladder, and sat while another diver helped with his gear. Before he spoke to me, he made his report to the team.

The SUV was empty. Its identification plate was readable.

I let out a breath that hurt.

A deputy held a towel over his clipboard while he wrote down the number.

Then Gabriel's phone rang.

He listened, looked at the wet SUV, and asked the caller to repeat herself.

"The insurer already paid eighty-six thousand dollars," he told the dive leader. "Their loss report says this vehicle washed into Lake Superior from a road near Bayfield."

He turned the clipboard toward me.

The registered owner was Mara Sleet, the woman who had signed Brill's marina financing letter.