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.”