“Only a couple of weeks?”

“They were on to me; I got the hell out by the skin of my teeth.”

“What else?”

“I did some bush flying in Alaska, ostensibly fishing trips for rich businessmen, but the business they were in was highly illegal.”

“How long you been flying?”

“Since I was in high school; flying was my first great love.”

“I took my first lesson yesterday.”

“Good for you! You’ll love it!”

“I think I already do. And my first day out, I landed on the beach, or at least, my instructor did.”

“Lose the engine?”

“No, we were flying past my house, and I spotted a van parked outside that shouldn’t have been there. I got there just in time to take a pistol upside the head. Daisy, my dog, got an anesthetic dart for her trouble.”

“I’ve never heard of anybody using a dart on a dog during a domestic break-in,” Grant said.

“Neither have I. The guy got past my alarm system fairly easily, and earlier, my phones were tapped.”

“You’re dealing with a pro,” Grant said, “or pros.”

“Looks that way.” She didn’t tell him how worried she was about this.

“Do you have any idea who’s behind this?”

“Not a clue; I’m completely baffled.”

He stopped talking and seemed deep in thought.

“You think this might be connected with what you’re working on?” she asked.

“I don’t think Harry would want me to speculate about that.”

“Oh, come on, Grant; you don’t have to tell me everything. Maybe you can suggest something about who to take a look at.”

Grant shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

Now it was her turn to be silent.

“If I thought you were in any danger…”

“How do you know I’m not?” she demanded.

“All right, I’ll say this much: It sounds as though someone is doing something around here, and they want to know if the chief of police is on to them. They probably think they’ll pick up something in your house or listening to your calls.”

“That’s a reasonable hypothesis,” she said. “Tell me more.”

“I can’t say any more than that. Suffice it to say that Harry wouldn’t have sent me up here if he didn’t think there was something to investigate. I mean, the Bureau has pulled hundreds of agents off investigations in order to concentrate on terrorism, since the events at the World Trade Center.”

“So it would take something pretty important for Harry to put an undercover agent on it right now.”

“It would take something pretty important to Harry,” Grant said.

“As opposed to important to the Bureau as a whole or to the defense of the country?”

“You know,” he said, laughing, “the Bureau could use you as an interrogator. You’d have a terrorist spilling the beans in no time at all.”

“You may as well fold now, Grant,” she said. “I’m going to get it out of you one way or the other.”

“I’m looking forward to the other,” he said. “I think.” He pulled into her driveway and stopped in front of her house. A motion detector switched on the exterior lights.

Grant walked her to the door. “How about dinner this week sometime?”

She fished a card out of her handbag and wrote her home and cell numbers on the back. “Call me,” she said.

He leaned forward to kiss her.

She turned her head a little and took the kiss on the corner of her mouth. “It was a nice evening,” she said. “I think I’m going to enjoy interrogating you further.” She unlocked the door, and Daisy greeted her, nuzzling her fingers.

“You’ll find me an impenetrable wall,” Grant said.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, closing the door behind her.

Holly awoke with a feeling she had not had for a year-desire. She stretched her body to its full length, fingers reaching for the headboard, toes reaching for the foot. The resulting feeling was like a tiny orgasm, something she thought she had lost interest in. Clearly a cold shower was in order.

She settled for a cool shower, and she thought about her dinner date of the evening before. A dinner date! Who would have thought it? And who would have thought that she could have Harry Crisp to thank for such an event? Her next job, she mused, was to pry from Grant Early what his assignment was, and, she reflected, she was willing to do just about anything she had to to find that out.

Who were these FBI guys that they could send an agent undercover into her jurisdiction, tell her about it, then refuse to tell her why? She’d see about that.

Her phone rang. She grabbed a towel and, still dripping wet, grabbed the phone by the john. “Hello?”

“Good morning, it’s Hurd.”

“Morning, Hurd. What’s up?”

“Somebody phoned in a floater in the Indian River about half an hour ago. Patrol car checked it out, and it was real. The ME is on the way. I thought you’d like to take a look.”

“Where?”

“About three hundred yards south of the North Bridge. Sounds like somebody tossed him off the bridge, and the tide took him down. He came to rest against somebody’s dock.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” she said. “Don’t let anybody take the body away before I’ve seen it.”

“Right.”

She hung up, dressed, fed Daisy, and let her out while she had a quick bowl of cereal. The floater wasn’t going anywhere, so there was no great need to rush. Daisy came back and scratched at the screen door, wanting her cookie for a job well done. Holly gave it to her, then they both got into her car and drove north.

The floater was in a body bag when she got there, stretched out on an ambulance gurney. The medical examiner arrived a minute after she did.

“Let’s have a look,” she said to the EMT.

The EMT unzipped the entire length of the bag and peeled it back, revealing a white male, thirty to forty years of age, longish black hair, swarthy complexion. She reckoned he was six feet and weighed in at about one-eighty.

The ME walked over and stood beside her. “Look at the mouth,” he said.

Holly pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and peeled back the lips, which were tattered. “Missing his front teeth,” she said.

“Broken off,” the ME replied.

“Let’s roll him over.” The two of them rolled the body over, facedown. “There’s why,” Holly said, pointing to the back of the head.

The ME parted the hair on the back of the head to reveal a wound. “One shot to the back of the head, came out the mouth, took some teeth with it.”

“Was he kneeling?”

“The angle is right for it.”

They rolled the corpse onto its back again, and Holly examined the wrists. “No ligature marks,” she said. “He wasn’t tied up at the time.”

“A gun pointed at the head is enough to get a man on his knees,” the ME said. “He didn’t need to be tied.”

“Anybody go through his pockets?”

“No,” the officer replied. “We were waiting for the ME.”

“I’ll do it at the morgue,” the ME said. “Three to one he won’t have any ready ID.”

“I agree,” Holly said. “Do what you can with his clothes.”

“We always do,” the ME replied. “Okay, fellas, I’ll meet you at the morgue.”

The EMTs loaded the corpse into their wagon and drove away, with the ME right behind. Holly looked around. Nice spot, she thought. Nice house, nice dock, nice boat tied up to it. She heard a screen door slam and turned to see a man coming out of the house.

“Good morning,” she said. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“Thanks for hauling that thing away,” the man said.

“All part of the service. Did you hear anything last night? Anything like a gunshot?”

The man shook his head. “Nah. I reckon it happened upriver, probably at the bridge, and the tide brought him down here.”

“You should be a cop,” Holly said, trying not to sound sarcastic, since it was what she thought, too. “Did you get a good look at him?”

“Yep.”

“Ever seen him before?”