LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      An extra blanket was up on a closet shelf for cool nights. He had three Breakwater Security shirts, one sweatshirt and one windbreaker. A navy blue suit hung in his closet, and on the floor were running shoes, water shoes, lightweight combat boots and black dress shoes. If he needed anything else, he’d have to find a store.

      When he ventured outside, the air smelled of wet earth and bay, but it was fresh and clean, the storm having blown out any remaining rain and humidity. The grounds of the Crawford compound were old-Virginia lush, with trim grass, flowering trees and shrubs, spring bulbs—certainly not the kind of landscape anyone would picture when imagining a start-up private security firm.

      The sprawling main house, white clapboards with black shutters, overlooked the bay, a spot most people would be content to live. Not Oliver Crawford. He’d stirred up Yorkville when he announced that he was converting his picturesque country estate into Breakwater Security. Although people still had their doubts, outright protest was short-lived, at least partly because Crawford had only recently survived his harrowing kidnapping and his Yorkville neighbors understood his need to take action—except, perhaps, for Alicia Miller.

      Huck stepped over a puddle left over from the storms. The late-afternoon sun angled through a stray gray cloud. It’d been a rough series of storms, rain and wind slapping the converted barn’s windows, trees swaying outside, flashes of lightning, claps of thunder—the works. Diego had brought in his boat just in time.

      The Riccardis, the couple who ran Breakwater Security, walked down the stone path to the converted barn. Joe had let his iron-gray hair grow out maybe a quarter-inch since he’d retired from the army. He was forty-two, six feet even and without any obvious excess fat. He had on a navy polo with the Breakwater Security logo embroidered in gold, pressed khaki pants and black running shoes. He wore his Glock on a shoulder holster. His wife, Sharon, was thirty-five and pretty, even delicate, with her dyed blond hair and blue eyes. She was unarmed and wore a skirted suit. Navy blue. She had worked as Oliver Crawford’s executive assistant for fifteen years but now oversaw everything nonoperational for Breakwater Security.

      Sharon spoke first. “How’re you doing, Mr. Boone? Settling in?”

      “Doing just fine, thanks.”

      Huck didn’t have a solid read on the Riccardis, athough the task force had provided Huck with a brief workup on them. They were married last summer right there at Breakwater. Sharon’s first marriage, Joe’s second. He had two kids in college in Colorado.

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