angel - rafe cameron (outerbanks)

14 - illegal boating club

chapter 42
illegal boating club

she didn't think her parents were responsible. not really.

but they knew something. they always had.

angie had spent the last few months combing through maddie's disappearance like it was a puzzle she could solve if she just stared long enough. but the edges never quite lined up—there was always something missing, something deliberately left out. some moment skipped over, some sentence abruptly ended with "you don't need to worry about that, honey."

she didn't believe her parents had anything to do with maddie going missing. but she did believe they were hiding pieces. fragments of truth buried under careful words and stiff silence. protective lies, maybe. or something darker.

and if she was ever going to figure out what happened to her sister, she needed everything they knew. whether they liked it or not.

that's why she was here now, standing in the shadows of her father's office as the taillights disappeared down the driveway. the porch light blinked off a second later—automated—and left the house in a hush that was almost too complete.

one hour. maybe less.

just enough time to turn the office inside out.

the door creaked slightly as she pushed it shut behind her. she flinched, waited—nothing. no sound from upstairs, no sudden appearance of her mother's disapproving voice or her father's slow, quiet anger. the coast was definitely clear.

the room smelled of leather and old books, the kind that hadn't been read in decades but looked expensive on a shelf. her father's desk sat like a throne at the center of the room—polished mahogany, piles of neatly stacked paperwork, a gleaming fountain pen placed with almost ritualistic precision. he always said a tidy workspace was a tidy mind.

yeah. okay. well, tonight, she was about to mess with his "tidy mind."

she started with the desk drawers, carefully sliding them open. bills, contracts, an old pack of cigarettes hidden under a folder labeled "Quarterly Review." classy. she moved on. drawer after drawer—receipts, memos, a leather-bound notebook filled with corporate jargon.

nothing. unless maddie had been abducted by an accounting firm, this was all useless.

moving quickly, she rifled through the filing cabinet next. she knew the rhythm of this now: meaningless legal docs, tax records, more files with vague titles like "Correspondence - M. Woods." her eyes narrowed at that one, but the contents were dry—mostly emails printed out and highlighted.

margret woods. not maddie.

then her eyes landed on the bookshelf.

she approached it slowly, methodically. not just scanning for titles this time, but anything out of place. a book shoved back farther than the others. a too-clean space on the shelf. after a minute, her hand paused over a thick, weathered journal tucked between two years' worth of tax code updates.

she pulled it out and flipped it open.

scribbled notes filled the pages—names she didn't recognize, phone numbers, addresses. almost like a personal log. but it wasn't until she saw maddie's name that her stomach truly dropped.

maddie —
st. vincent street - 9pm. 4/1/2020
marina - 10pm. 4/4/2020
redfield lighthouse - 10:40pm. 4/5/2020

what the hell?

those were days before maddie went missing. and her father had written them down like appointments.

her hands trembled as she took out her phone and snapped picture after picture, making sure to capture the entire page. then the next one. and the next. names like "Jordan S." and "Holloway - F." More locations. more dates.

she wasn't sure what any of it meant yet, but it meant something. and it wasn't the kind of something she could ignore.

she carefully slid the journal back into place. one final glance. undisturbed. perfect.

she stepped back, nerves fraying, and began to pace the room—fast, shallow breaths. what had she just found? what was the connection?

was he... watching maddie? or watching someone who was?

she stopped mid-step as a soft creak sounded beneath her foot. her breath caught.

the sound came from beneath her foot. she glanced down.

"oh, for god's sake," she muttered. "apparently everyone has a secret hiding place under their floorboards now?what is this, a thriller cliché starter pack?"

but sarcasm aside, her pulse picked up. crouching down, she felt along the edge of the loose board. it wouldn't budge. she needed something thin.

she rifled through the desk drawer again and came up with a letter opener. convenient. she wedged it in and pried the board up with a small groan of wood.

it looked empty at first. the dramatic kind of empty, like something had just been removed. but her hand slipped in, brushing dust and then—paper. old, brittle, folded tight.

she pulled it out. her eyes widened.

a nautical map.

the bahamas.

not a tourist map. not a "we're planning a vacation, sweetie" kind of map. this had lines. and circles. and tiny, angry-looking arrows that pointed toward clusters of uninhabited islands.

the map looked like it had been used—seriously used. lines curved between islands, notes scribbled in different handwriting. her father's handwriting covered some of the margins. but there were notes in a different scrawl too—messier, faster. someone else. her mother? no. too sloppy.

she took photos of everything, from every angle. the corner of the map said one thing:

"B." 3.17.20 - check eastern ridge, potential route.

beneath that, a scrawled series of numbers she didn't recognize.

coordinates? smuggling routes? illegal boating club for emotionally repressed parents?

whatever it was, it wasn't nothing.

she had just finished tucking the map back into the floor and pressing the board into place when the headlights swept across the window—two long arcs of bright white light cutting across the room.

panic tore through her chest like fire.

they were home.

she bolted from the office, adrenaline propelling her down the hallway. the floor felt slick under her socks, her heart nearly leaping from her chest as she rounded the stairs and launched up them, two at a time.

she made it to her bedroom just as she heard the familiar click of the front door opening.

she shut the door behind her, locked it, and leaned back against it, chest heaving.

they couldn't know.

not yet.

the pictures were still on her phone. she crossed the room, dropped to her knees, and began swiping through them one by one—maddie's name. the lighthouse. the map.

"okay," she whispered, her voice shaky. "so we're... stalking our missing sister now. cool, cool, cool."

her fingers itched to print them out. to see everything side by side. create some kind of order out of the chaos. like a mental pinboard—even if it was just laid out across her bedspread.

this wasn't nothing.

this was a thread.

and angie was about to start pulling.

hard.

AN//

not the longest of chapters but quite important.  do you guys prefer shorter chapters? lmk.