“No one but a seagull or an osprey would try to get to Breakwater through the marsh. It’s rough going. When did you get here?”
“Over the weekend.”
“This your first time jogging out this way?”
“No, why?”
He was calm and very direct, but obviously wondering why she was asking such questions. But she had dreamed about Alicia last night, not good dreams. “I got here late yesterday thinking a friend of mine who borrowed my cottage for the weekend might still be here. I guess I’m wondering if you’ve run into her.”
“Was she supposed to be here?”
“I don’t know where she’s supposed to be. It’s a long story.”
“Hope you find her.”
“Does that mean you haven’t seen her?”
He paused a moment. “What’s her name?”
“Alicia Miller. Her car’s not here, and none of her stuff’s here.”
And no suicide note, Quinn thought. In a fit of paranoia, she’d searched the cottage before going to bed last night and found nothing that eased her mind about Alicia-nothing, either, that indicated she’d had a complete mental breakdown. The place was clean and tidied up, not even a dish left in the sink.
Huck Boone, she noticed, hadn’t moved a muscle.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” she said quickly.
“You don’t sound sure.”
Quinn found herself wanting to tell him about Alicia’s odd behavior yesterday, but she resisted. “I’m heading back to Washington this morning. If you do hear of anything-” She debated her options. “Can you hang on a second? I’ll give you my cell-phone number.”
Boone shrugged. “Okay.”
She ran inside and grabbed a notepad and pen off the coffee table, where she’d spread out files and papers and had tried to work last night. She quickly scrawled down her number, folding the small sheet in half as she returned to the porch.
She walked along the stone path in her stocking feet, Boone meeting her halfway. His eyes, she saw, were a dark green, at least in the cool morning light of early April. Quinn tried to smile, but knew she didn’t quite manage. “Since you’re in private security…” She let her shoulders lift and fall in an exaggerated manner. “Never mind. I’m just covering all the bases I can think of, in case something’s happened to her.”
“Why do you think anything’s happened to her?”
“I don’t-”
“Yes, you do.”
She felt sudden tears in her eyes and hoped he would blame them on the cold air.
“Does she know Oliver Crawford?”
“Not well. They met briefly at a party last month.” Quinn blinked back the tears. “He and I have met a few times, but I don’t know him well, either.”
Interest rose in Boone’s expression. Little, she suspected, escaped this man’s attention, a skill that had to be a plus in private security work.
But she brought her mind back to the subject at hand, adding, “Oliver Crawford and my former boss-Alicia’s current boss-are friends. They went to college together.”
“And your boss would be-”
“Gerard Lattimore.” She didn’t know how she’d ended up giving him this information about herself. “He’s a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department.”
“What are you, a lawyer?”
“Historian.”
Boone took a second to digest that information but had no visible reaction. “You don’t work for this Lattimore anymore?”
“No. I left Justice in January.”
“He knows your friend’s missing?”
Quinn realized the tables had turned and now Huck Boone was interrogating her. He was a security type, she reminded herself, and such tactics probably came naturally to him. But she didn’t feel particularly reassured. “Alicia’s not missing. She’s just-I just haven’t accounted for her.”
Boone didn’t relent. “But Lattimore knows?”
“Yes.”
“And Mr. Crawford?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t talked with him.”
“You don’t socialize with him in Washington?”
“I told you, I don’t know him that well. And these days, Mr. Boone, any socializing I do is work related.”
He grinned unexpectedly and leaned toward her. “Then it’s not socializing, is it?” He straightened, his eyes softer now, not as intense. “Since we’re neighbors, you can just call me Huck.”
She felt a twitch of a smile. “Huck Boone. That’s quite a name, isn’t it? Makes me think of Huckleberry Finn and Daniel Boone-”
“My folks have a strange sense of humor. I should get rolling. You okay? Anything I can do for you?”
His concern took her aback, and she wondered just how tight and preoccupied she appeared. She glanced out at the osprey nest at the mouth of the cove and almost told him about Alicia’s pleas, but she’d told Boone, a man she didn’t know at all, more than she’d meant to as it was. “I’m okay. Thanks for asking,” she said. “Don’t let me keep you from your run.”
“Just getting loose. We’re getting put through our paces today at Breakwater.”
“Good luck.”
He winked at her. “Thanks.”
He jogged off toward the loop road at a moderate pace.
Quinn didn’t immediately return to her hot tea. The bay glistened in the morning sun, the water quiet and very blue under the clear sky. She wondered how many of Oliver Crawford’s guys would be jogging past her cottage now that he’d converted his estate into a private security outfit.
She started across the road, then remembered she was in her socks. But they were damp now, anyway, and she continued on her way, taking the narrow, sandy path through the tall marsh grass down to the water. The tide was out, leaving behind wet sand, slippery grass and swirling shallow pools. Using one hand to block the sun, she squinted out at the enormous osprey nest, but it was empty, the female, presumably, still out hunting.
As she turned to head back to the cottage for her cell phone, a fishing boat out in the water beyond her cove caught her eye. Something bright drew her gaze downward, out past her waterfront to the edge of the protected marsh.
Red.
What would be red on the shore?
“I have a red kayak,” she said aloud.
Had Alicia left it in the marsh?
Why? Dropping her hand from her eyes, Quinn ran back up to the road and down to the marsh, pushing her way through thick marsh grass onto a narrow path. Her socks were soaked through now, covered with sand. Barely breaking stride, she lifted one foot and pulled off her wet sock, then lifted the other, leaving the socks on the path and pressing forward barefoot, the cold sand a shock.
She kept running toward the water, noticing gulls up ahead.
Gulls…
Why so many? Quinn counted five near the shore.
The path curved, and she saw the red kayak lying parallel to the beach, partly submerged in the receding tide. The gulls seemed to be picking at something in the tall marsh grass.
Quinn felt a crawling sensation at the top of her spine. Her mouth went dry. She tucked her hands up into the sleeves of her sweater and slowed her pace, ignoring her frozen feet.
More gulls arrived.
“Shoo!” She waved her arms at the birds, but they stayed with their find, whatever it was.
She looked up toward the road, hoping to see someone-anyone-she could call to walk with her down to the kayak and the gulls and see what was there. But there was no one.
With a nauseating sense of dread, she forced herself to veer off the path through the knee-high grass, still cold with the morning dew, slapping at her as her feet sank into the wet, shifting sand.
A dolphin? A small whale? Was it possible something had beached itself here on the edge of a Chesapeake Bay marsh? She was a historian, not a naturalist. She’d fancied that in her spare time, on long, lazy weekends, she could study bay life, learn the names of the birds and fish and wildflowers and grasses.
She came to the kayak and forced herself to look where the sea gulls were feasting.