The Deep Set

THE DEEP SET
Book Two of The Bridge Tenders Mysteries

Sloane Harlow trusts numbers over people. That habit almost got her killed once. It's about to be tested again.

Three months post-surgery and still running from what she left unresolved in Bayard's Crossing, Sloane gets an anonymous tip: a crew member dead aboard a research vessel off the Massachusetts coast, ruled an accident, filed by a holding company that traces back to the same shell network from her last case. The pattern found her before she went looking for it.

She talks her way aboard the Meridian under a false name. The lab is over-equipped for the mission on paper. The crew is short by half. And somewhere below deck, Rex alerts to something Sloane can't yet explain.

What she uncovers isn't a single death. It's a foundation that turned "community outreach" into permanent ownership of the blood and tissue of the fishing families who trusted it - and a filing agent, a jurisdiction gap, and a chain of command built specifically so that no one person is ever the one who did it.

The data doesn't lie. But proving the truth and being allowed to use it are two very different things.

With a Coast Guard officer who's already lost this fight once, an engineer who won't let her hide behind her spreadsheets, and a knee that keeps a running tally of what this case is costing her, Sloane has one shot to surface what the foundation buried - before the Meridian pulls out of reach for good.

Some things you can recover. Some you can only partially save.

For readers of The Weight of Keys, and anyone who likes their mysteries sharp, procedural, and unwilling to hand out easy endings.