The Premium (Circle of Tides — Book 5)

A $5.4 million continuous-compounding ransom on Ray Spooner's life. Hijacked sea-turtle satellite tags guiding midnight contraband drops. And a father-daughter reckoning in the surf of Midnight Pass.

November 1995. Working late-night loggerhead sea-turtle conservation patrols along the dark beaches of Siesta and Casey Key, Maya Spooner discovers a dead nesting female washed ashore with a modified titanium telemetry housing bolted to its carapace. Inside the casing isn't a biological tracker—it's an encrypted acoustic transponder calibrated to a three-percent volumetric displacement offset.

When Ray Spooner and Lloyd's adjuster Beverly Burns trace the offshore shell companies behind the transponders, they uncover The Premium: a shadow maritime ledger opened after the 1988 Silver Queen disaster that has been compounding at continuous actuarial interest into a $5.4 million liquidation contract on Ray's head—with Maya's beach patrol routes mapped as the final target vector.

Teaming up as full forensic equals aboard The Residue alongside Artie Whittaker, Ray and Maya run darkened surveillance sweeps through the GRI-7980 LORAN-C blindspot, outsmart broadband signal jammers, and confront Leo McAniff's offshore smuggling ring during a violent tropical storm on the shifting Midnight Pass sandbar.

When the hull is scuttled beneath them in the roaring surf, Ray and Maya must rely on Maya's benthic drift science and Ray's salvage grit to survive the rip current with the Titanium Premium Ledger—setting the stage for the final war over the 1988 Silver Queen.

**THE PREMIUM is the high-voltage fifth book in the Circle of Tides series—where family loyalty, marine biology, and cold actuarial math collide.**

Instant Digital Delivery Package - **DRM-Free EPUB Edition (`AHS-BOOK-COT-05.epub`)**: Compatible with Apple Books, Kindle, Kobo, and all standard e-readers. - **Typeset 6×9 Print-Edition PDF (`AHS-BOOK-COT-05-print.pdf`)**: Full 519-page collector's interior layout (200,773 words, 34 chapters). - **Forensic Case File & Reader Dossier (`AHS-BOOK-COT-05-dossier.md`)**: Series chronology, 1995 Suncoast setting coordinates, and technical forensic notes.