Quinn could understand that sentiment. She had felt something similar ever since Alicia had blazed onto the coffee-shop patio in her semicoherent frenzy. “Did Alicia go out to the Crawford compound that you know of?”

“No,” Maura said quickly. “Not that we know of.”

Don dropped his wife’s hand and slung an arm over her shoulder. “We should go. We’re so sorry about Alicia, Quinn. If you need anything, let us know. Knock on the door or give us a call.”

“Thank you.” Quinn smiled at the couple. “And thank you for the crab stew.”

After they left, she smelled the rich stew, grateful to have such decent people as neighbors, even if she had the feeling they had held back something, if only out of respect for her friendship with Alicia.

If they knew anything important-anything that would help people understand what had happened to Alicia-Quinn was positive that Maura and Don would tell the authorities.

She couldn’t eat.

Quinn finally gave up trying and put the crab stew in the refrigerator and made herself a pot of chamomile tea, hoping it would help soothe her. She used a flowered teapot she’d found at a flea market and a mismatched, cheerful cup and saucer, sitting at her little kitchen table with its view of the bay. She opened a box of saltine crackers, eating a stack, like a little kid, with her tea.

And crying, silently at first, tears dripping into her tea until, finally, she was sobbing. She couldn’t stop. She stood up, knocking over her chair, then gave it a good kick as if somehow that would make her feel better.

She cried until she couldn’t stand up any longer.

Then she pulled a quilt, another flea-market find, off her bed, wrapped it around her shoulders and went for a walk.

Yesterday at dusk, after the storms, when she’d stood on the water’s edge, Alicia was almost certainly already dead. Quinn kept picturing herself by the cove after she’d arrived in Yorkville, but she couldn’t remember seeing anything out of the ordinary. Her red kayak. Gulls. Anything in the water.

She tightened her quilt around her, passing the Scanlon cottage, continuing along the waterfront on the loop road. There were more cottages, people working out in their yards on the cool but pretty spring evening. She smelled charcoal and barbecue sauce, and she heard children laughing.

She caught sight of an osprey high in the sky.

“The osprey will kill me.”

Had Alicia had a premonition of her own death?

Or had her fears and delusions lured her out onto the bay at a dangerous time and become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Quinn forced herself to pull her gaze from the osprey.

She could feel where the frigid, wet sand had rubbed her winter-tender feet raw, but at least they were warm now. After the police had arrived, Huck Boone had taken her back to her cottage and insisted she find dry socks.

She came to the small local motel that marked the halfway point of her usual waterfront walk. Instead of continuing, she sat on a bench, listening to the steady rhythm of the tide. A lone gull perched on a post of the motel’s rickety dock and turned to her, staring at her. Quinn shivered, wondering if it was one of the gulls from that morning, if it recognized her somehow.

It flew off, and its cry into the empty sky seemed to echo her mix of sadness and loneliness.

Alicia had come to her for help, and now she was dead.

A shadow fell over her, and a dark, drop-dead-handsome man handed her a tissue. “Thank you,” she mumbled, wiping her eyes.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I happened to have a tissue?”

She managed a smile. “How?”

“My mother. She said a man should carry tissues in case a pretty woman needs one.”

“That’s very old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

“It was her way of getting a fourteen-year-old to be prepared. If she said I should keep tissues in case I needed them for myself-” He shrugged. “I’d have told her that’s what shirtsleeves are for.”

Quinn laughed, sniffling. “I’m Quinn Harlowe, by the way.”

“Diego Clemente. I’m staying here at the motel.”

“I hear they serve good breakfast.”

He made a face. “Two kinds of sugary cereal, stale Danish and bananas a monkey would throw back.”

“How can you screw up a banana?”

“I don’t know. Ask them.” He nodded toward the hotel. “It’s not a picky clientele. How’re you doing? Feeling better?”

She nodded. “Thanks.” When she rose, her knees wobbled under her, but Diego Clemente had the grace to give her a moment to steady herself. “Have the police been by here?”

“The police?”

“A woman-there was-” Not normally at a loss for words, Quinn couldn’t seem to focus. “A woman drowned. She was probably out on a kayak yesterday. A red kayak. I was wondering if the police asked anyone out here if they saw her.”

Diego had narrowed his dark eyes on her. “I didn’t see anything.”

“I wasn’t suggesting-” She pulled up her quilt, which had drooped to the ground. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“The woman was your friend?”

“Yes.”

“Stinks, losing a friend that way.” He tugged on an edge of her quilt. “What, you don’t own a coat?”

“I just grabbed the quilt…”

He frowned at her. “Your cottage is on that dead-end road out by the cove? You’re not going to make it that far.”

“The walk will do me good. Thanks for the tissue.”

“Sure.”

Quinn took a few steps back down the road, but stopped and turned back to him. “By the way, have you seen an abandoned dark blue BMW around here anywhere? Alicia-my friend who died this morning. Her car’s missing.”

His gaze held hers. “I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

“Thanks.”

Twenty yards from the motel, Quinn tripped over her quilt and almost went flying, but rearranged it quickly, glancing back toward the dock in case Diego Clemente wanted to say he’d told her so. But he’d disappeared, and she wondered if he’d already forgotten their conversation.

She made it the rest of her way back to her cottage without tripping or crying. The walk and the chilly air had helped her appetite, and she got the crab stew out of the refrigerator and set it on the stove. While it heated, she checked her cell phone for messages. Gerard Lattimore and Steve Eisenhardt had called. Lattimore asked her to call him back. Steve left it up to her. He seemed to understand that they didn’t know each other well enough for her to want to talk to him after such a day.

When she tried Lattimore’s number, she got his assistant. He was in a meeting.

Thank God, Quinn thought, dipping up a bowl of the steaming crab stew and taking it into the living room with her. She wrapped back up in her quilt and sat on the sofa, a yard-sale find that she’d covered in a sea-green plaid herself.

The Scanlons were good cooks, and the stew was wonderful.

But Quinn took two bites and set the bowl down on a side table, assaulted by images of Alicia paddling in the storm, trying to keep her kayak from overturning in the swells and failing, capsizing, drowning.

And no life vest, no emergency whistle in case she got into trouble.

Either might have saved her life.

Quinn sank back against the soft couch and could almost feel Huck Boone’s arm around her as he’d walked with her back to the cottage.

Heck of a name, Huck Boone. Was it real? How many guys working private security changed their names?

Probably a lot.

She thought of Diego Clemente and his tissue, and his neutral expression when she’d mentioned Alicia’s car. Maybe too neutral? Had he seen something yesterday and didn’t want to get involved?

You’re exhausted.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, so startling her that she almost fell off the couch.

She got up and ran through the cottage, making sure all the windows were locked, checking the porch door and the side door. If she felt unsafe, she could call Kowalski. But what would he do? And he’d meant truly unsafe, as in killers were on her doorstep, not the wind rattling the windows and unnerving her.