“I’ll be in the shower.”

His deliberately flip answer got a reaction out of Lieutenant Colonel Riccardi. He made two fists. Huck thought he’d end up with at least one of them coming at his jaw, but his new boss restrained himself.

His wife touched his hand. “Joe.”

Neither Riccardi said anything as Huck ducked into the converted barn. A straight hall ran down the middle, with rooms on either side, like horse stalls. There was a kitchen with cafeteria tables, an office, a men’s room, a shower room. The bedrooms were at the far end-mostly singles, but a few doubles and one triple with its own private bath, apparently for any women who showed up. So far, Sharon Riccardi was the only female on the premises, but she stayed in the main house with her husband.

Huck ran into Vern Glover at the far end of the hall. “I heard about the dead woman, Boone. Damn. Couldn’t you have picked a different route for your morning run and kept us out of this thing?”

“Sure. Next time I’ll check my crystal ball to find out where the dead people are.”

“You ran past the body and didn’t see it?”

Vern had him there. Huck had noticed the red kayak in the tall grass out by the water, but hadn’t thought much of it. If he’d investigated, he could have spared Quinn the trauma of discovering her friend’s body.

“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” he said.

Travis Lubec emerged from the room across the hall from Huck’s. Lubec had just moved into the converted barn. He had worked security for Oliver Crawford for a couple of years and wasn’t among those fired after his kidnapping-apparently, Crawford had ignored some piece of sage advice Lubec had given him before his trip to the Caribbean.

Nick Rochester, a kid maybe a hair older than Cully O’Dell, joined the men in the hall, coming in through the back door. He and Lubec were scrubbed, serious and ultrafit, wearing Breakwater Security polo shirts and khakis, their weapons in shoulder holsters.

Lubec’s gaze fell on Huck. “You’re bad luck, Boone.”

Rochester nodded. “Hell, yeah. You’re here, what, three days, and you’ve already managed to stumble on a body and end up under the hot lights, talking to the feds.”

“Just one fed,” Huck said. “The rest were local guys.”

“You’re a cheeky bastard, aren’t you?” Travis took a step closer to him. “I’d watch that mouth if I were you.”

“Cheeky. That’s a PBS kind of word, isn’t it?” Huck replied. “Shouldn’t you say ‘cheeky bastard’ with an upper-crust British accent?” Huck yawned. “You know that Lubec and Rochester are both names of towns, right? Lubec, Maine. Rochester, New York.”

Vern rolled his eyes at Huck’s taunting the two meats. Lubec’s fair cheeks turned red, but he didn’t say anything. The kid told Huck to fuck off.

“Boone’s had a rough morning,” Vern said. “Don’t kill him.”

Lubec took a couple of breaths through his nose, then glared at Vern. “I’ll excuse him this time. Next time, I’m not cutting him any slack.”

After Lubec and Rochester left, Vern stuck a thick finger in Huck’s face. “I’m not bailing you out again. If you want to mouth off, you can take the consequences.”

“I was just stating a fact. Lubec and Rochester -”

“Shut up, Boone. I don’t care if you did find a dead woman this morning. Just shut the hell up.”

Huck thought he was displaying just the right amount of rule-breaking attitude for the vigilantes among Breakwater Security to take notice. On the other hand, he could just be pissing people off. He couldn’t make himself care. He pictured poor dead Alicia Miller and her friend Quinn Harlowe, fighting tears and panic-and guilt. A lot of guilt.

Not that he had much hope for Harlowe heading back to Washington and minding her own business. Huck knew a few research analysts and he’d never met one who’d leave well enough alone.

FBI Special Agent T.J. Kowalski joined Quinn on her porch, the smells of low tide heavy in the air. She’d been sitting out there for more than an hour trying to grasp the reality that Alicia was dead.

Kowalski looked out at the water. “Nice spot.” He was trim, lean and very good-looking in his dark gray suit and red tie, with his classic G-man square jaw and close-cropped dark hair. He also had a not-so-classic two-inch scar under his left eye. “You must like coming out here.”

“I love it. But after today-”

“Don’t think about that right now. Alicia cleared out of here yesterday morning and drove back to Washington. Then she came back here. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s her car?”

“I don’t know that, either. Maybe it’s still in Washington, and whoever picked her up there could have driven her to Yorkville and dropped her off here. She was very upset when she came to me at the coffee shop. I couldn’t make sense out of half of what she said.”

“Would she have taken her car to go kayaking?”

“It’s possible. I generally put in right out front, but if I’m taking a different route, I’ll launch somewhere else to save on time. Alicia didn’t like launching here. It’s fairly deep, and the underwater grasses-” Quinn stopped, staring at the porch floor but seeing the kayak, Alicia’s body, the wet grass on her. “But she ended up back here in the cove.”

The FBI agent’s expression softened. “The local police are looking for her car. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Alicia was fixated on ospreys. There’s a nest out here in the cove-she could have wanted to avoid getting too close to it.” Quinn shook her head, sinking deeper, if possible, into her wicker chair. “I just don’t know.”

“Did she have her own key to your cottage?”

“Yes. I gave her one in March.”

“Is there a spare?”

“It’s outside on the kitchen windowsill. I haven’t checked to see if it’s there.”

Without a word, Kowalski headed down the stone walk and across the yard to the side entrance. Quinn didn’t move, didn’t think. The cove was quiet, nothing like it must have been yesterday at the height of the storms.

The FBI agent returned. “Key’s still there. What about your kayak? Where do you keep it?”

“I have two. One red, one green. I keep them in the garden shed out back. The door’s padlocked.”

“Did Ms. Miller have that key?”

“Yes-it’s here in the kitchen.”

“And you didn’t notice one of your kayaks was missing?”

“No, I didn’t. I never looked. There’d been storms…”

Kowalski waited a moment for her to continue, and when she didn’t, he rubbed the back of his neck and looked out at the glistening bay. “Was Alicia an experienced kayaker?”

“Not very, but she could handle quiet water-”

“Not big waves?”

“I’m not sure. We haven’t gone kayaking together in a long time.” Her stomach clenched at her automatic use of the present tense. Taking a quick breath, she continued. “She might have improved.”

“You’re a pretty good kayaker?”

Quinn nodded without looking at him.

“Would you have gone out yesterday?”

“No,” she said almost inaudibly.

He turned, facing the water. “Wish I had a friend who owned a cottage on the bay. You and Ms. Miller were good friends?”

“We were.”

“Were?” the FBI agent prodded her.

Unable to sit any longer, Quinn shot to her feet. “We haven’t been as close in recent months, especially after I left the Justice Department.”

“You didn’t like your job?”

“I wanted something else.”

Kowalski managed a quick grin. “A life?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you have one?”

She gave him a sharp look, not deluded into thinking any of his questions were idle or friendly. “I work hard, Agent Kowalski, but what I do now is on my terms. I saved aggressively when I was at Justice and could afford-” Quinn broke off. “It doesn’t matter. I have no regrets.”

“Alicia was a spendthrift? Did she have a lot of debt?”