No one, he thought, could have it all.
6
The osprey…
Cold rain pelted onto Alicia Miller’s bare head and her red kayak, into the cockpit, drenching her to the skin. Lightning lit up the gray sky, followed by a roar of thunder. The waves had kicked up, frightening her.
Sobbing, shivering, she tried to slow her racing thoughts and control the rush of panic, the sudden spasms in her arms and legs. Especially her legs.
I’m going to die.
The osprey will kill me…
“Why?” she screamed, stabbing the paddle into a three-foot swell. “Why am I out here? What am I doing?”
Her words were lost in the wind, the rain, the pounding surf. She couldn’t see. Everything was gray. Where was the land? Where was Quinn’s cottage?
“Quinn! Help me, Quinn!”
Why should Quinn help me? I haven’t been a good friend to her, to anyone.
Negative self-talk…Alicia remembered she was supposed to avoid it.
She felt the kayak bump against something firm.
Land?
She looked up, into the rain.
Above her, suspended on a pole, was a sprawling, giant, frightening bird’s nest, a mass of sticks and twigs and dead grass.
Her heart raced even faster. She couldn’t suppress an overwhelming sense of doom.
I don’t want to be here. The osprey…
She’d been paddling forever. She didn’t know where she was. The cove? Was this Quinn’s osprey nest?
The kayak bumped against the pole, turning sideways into the surf. The men in the car-she remembered them.
Travis.
One was called Travis, and he had encouraged her to take the kayak out. By himself. She didn’t know what had happened to the other one. She remembered Steve getting out of the car back in Washington.
Travis’s voice had been so soothing.
“Kayaking’ll calm your nerves. Nothing like a good paddle.”
But the ospreys-he knew she was afraid of them.
He hadn’t mentioned the dark clouds moving in from the west. She saw them and assumed they meant nothing.
She’d shoved her kayak into her car. He hadn’t helped her. She drove out the loop road by herself and launched in a pretty spot, where there was a strip of sandy beach and she wouldn’t have to deal with the slimy underwater grasses that were by the cottage.
No one was around on the loop. No one had seen her put in her kayak.
Steve-what had he been doing in the back of the car with her?
How long ago was that?
Everything was a jumble in her mind.
Why can’t I think straight?
“Oh, God. What’s wrong with me?”
The poison. Had she told Quinn about the poison?
No.
Alicia dropped her paddle across the kayak’s cockpit and placed both hands on the sides of her head and squeezed, hard, as if that would help to quiet her mind.
She’d left Yorkville to go see Quinn in Washington that morning.
Yes.
Quinn, living the life she wanted now that she’d quit her job at Justice. That was good, wasn’t it? Having coffee and a croissant on a beautiful spring afternoon.
The little boy-Alicia could see his frightened look.
Her chin on her chest, she sobbed quietly, embarrassed, exhausted, yet unable to sit still, unable to quiet her body or mind.
A screech.
She jerked her head up, and the bird was there. She could see its talons and black wings, its beady eyes. It was the same one that had ripped apart the duckling.
Terror gripped her.
“What do you want from me?”
She picked up her paddle and swiped it at the bird.
“Ospreys are fascinating. I just love them.”
Quinn’s words, months ago, when their friendship was solid and they’d laughed and talked on the cottage porch, drinking pinot noir, comfortable with each other.
So much had changed.
Alicia sobbed, tears streaming down her face.
I don’t have your courage, Quinn.
The osprey had disappeared.
Alicia spun around in the cockpit, looking for the big bird. She was so cold. “I know you’re out there! I know you want me!”
Part of her knew she wasn’t making any sense. Yet she couldn’t stop herself.
She dropped her paddle into the gray, churning water.
A huge swell came at her. Lightning and thunder struck at the same time. She slumped deeper into the cockpit, exhausted, her hands purple and blue. She hadn’t worn a life vest. She didn’t have a safety whistle to alert anyone on shore or in a nearby boat.
She saw her paddle floating on the oncoming swell. It looked so peaceful. No one, nothing, could do it harm.
Once more, her kayak banged against the pole where the ospreys had built their nest. She reached for the nest, but didn’t know why, except that she needed to-she needed to stop the ospreys. She needed to save someone. Herself.
I can’t think.
The swell hit. She was too far out of the open cockpit, and the wave knocked her kayak from under her. She tried to hook it with her feet, but her movements were impossible to control. Her entire body twitched, her teeth chattering as she grabbed hold of the pole.
She was cold. So cold.
She looked down at the water and saw only gray, churning water, her kayak, like her paddle, gone.
7
Huck cranked open the tall, narrow casement window in his dorm-style room at Breakwater and let in the cool, poststorm breeze off the bay. The unnaturally still gray-blue water lay past the immaculate lawn and over a barbed-wire fence. Supposedly, erosion had brought the Chesapeake Bay closer to the converted barn than when it was built in 1858. A plaque at the main gate gave a brief history of the house, barn and surrounding hundred acres.
The place felt like a summer camp.
Huck reminded himself he wasn’t there for the accommodations. He was there to penetrate an elusive, violent criminal network and find out who they were and what they were up to. Had Oliver Crawford set up Breakwater Security to train vigilante recruits for future operations? Was he being used? Are we all on a wild goose chase?
Vern Glover appeared in the doorway. “The Riccardis want to see you.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.”
Huck knew he got under Vern’s skin. “Where?”
“Outside.”
“Vern, that leaves about a hundred acres-”
“You’re an asshole, Boone, aren’t you?”
Boone. Huck didn’t flinch at the phony name. He’d gotten used to it during his months of deep-undercover work. “Who, me?”
“Be outside in three minutes.”
He almost asked why three-why not two? Why not five? That kind of deliberate effort to get under a person’s skin was more natural to him than he cared to admit, but he also knew it helped with his cover, the persona he’d established when he’d first gone undercover after his fugitive. Breakwater Security had done a thorough background check on him before letting him into their Yorkville compound. The U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI together made sure any paperwork and people needed to verify his new identity were in place, down to a retired deputy who posed as Huck’s former first-grade teacher. That little Boone boy. What a corker.
Glover left Huck to what remained of the three minutes. He got a clean shirt from his built-in dresser. Because he was working for a private security firm, he got to carry his Glock 23 in his belt holster and a snub-nosed.38 revolver on his ankle. He had the proper paperwork as Huck Boone, bodyguard extraordinaire, so he couldn’t arrest himself for gun-law violations. His Breakwater colleagues all were good with their paperwork-not that he would arrest them for low-level gun violations. There were rumors the vigilantes had shoulder-fired missiles, grenades, chemical sprays, illegal explosives-a long list.
Supposedly, they wanted to buy an armored helicopter.
The task force didn’t want him blowing the whistle too soon.
Most of all, they wanted to know names and plans. Who were these guys, and what were they up to?
He sat on the edge of his bed. White no-iron sheets, cotton blanket, one pillow. He could feel the metal springs through the thin mattress. He was five-ten, one-eighty. On a good day, he had a face that scared children and small dogs.