Kate Calloway is a Chicago attorney who reads clean paperwork and sees the theft underneath. When a Louisiana land-fraud case lands on her desk, dead notaries signing deeds, families paid pennies for marsh now worth millions, she reads it through the night.

By morning she knows two things: it's her kind of case, and some names are from her past.

She goes south. Eleven families become fifty-one, the fraud reaching back four decades, every theft dressed as ordinary business. In the corner of her map, in pencil because she isn't ready for ink:

Calloway Coastal Holdings.

Then the call comes. Lawrence is gone. Come home for the funeral.

So she drives toward the Gulf. She never leaves a thing unfinished that matters.

And this one is personal.

What the Gulf Kept is the free origin story of the Pointe Coquille Mysteries, for readers who love atmospheric Southern mysteries with the patience of a legal thriller.

"What the Gulf Kept"

by K.E. Reister