When Lubec, Rochester and Glover picked Huck up near the quirky American Society for the Study of Plants and Animals, he told them he was taking the afternoon off and would find his own way back to Breakwater. He didn’t offer any explanations. Lubec didn’t like it, but he had a helicopter waiting-no time to argue with a low-level employee like Huck Boone.
Diego Clemente, who, as Huck had expected, had just arrived in Washington, picked him up in front of the White House and took him out to Arlington and the historic northern Virginia house where Nate Winter lived with his wife and the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee.
“Find another ride back to the Neck,” Diego said. “I’m going to check on Harlowe.”
“You’re still ticked off at her because she made you.”
Diego had made his opinion plain about Quinn Harlowe turning her research and analysis talents onto the two of them. He scowled. “Ever think she could have hooked up with these vigilante pukes and be playing us?”
“No.”
“Historians,” he said, as if that explained everything.
The second Huck shut the truck door, Clemente backed out, as if he’d seen ghosts coming out of the old house’s chimney. Most likely, he just didn’t want anyone making him stick around for a high-level meeting. Diego hated meetings. Huck had called Nate Winter an hour ago and said he was on the way. He didn’t know who Winter had managed to get out to the house in the meantime.
He walked around to the back of the pre-Civil War house. Sarah Dunnemore, Winter’s wife, was in charge of getting it ready to open to the public. They’d bought their own place. Huck noticed the boxes on the back porch and wondered what it was like to be that settled, moving into a home of his own.
Winter stood at the top of the porch steps. A tall, rangy, naturally impatient man with an unusual family background, he was fast becoming a legend in the Marshals Service. Last spring, he had survived a sniper-style shooting in Central Park. The incident had, however, led him to Sarah Dunnemore of Night’s Landing, Tennessee, surrogate daughter to John Wesley Poe, former Tennessee governor and now the U.S. president. That had to complicate Nate’s life, Huck thought.
As he mounted the steps and shook Winter’s hand, Huck considered how much his own life had just been complicated by Quinn Harlowe.
“Where’s Clemente?” Winter asked.
“On his way back to Yorkville.”
Winter didn’t seem surprised. “No point in risking anyone from town seeing the two of you together. Juliet Longstreet and Ethan Brooker are here.”
“I don’t mean to disturb you at home. Your wife-”
“She’s out with my sister and brother-in-law.” Winter’s voice had tightened slightly. “It was my suggestion we meet here. It’s safer for you. The U.S. attorney working with us wanted to be here but couldn’t make it on such short notice.”
“FBI?”
“No.”
Nothing had been said, but Huck didn’t doubt the FBI would have preferred to have one of their own working undercover with the vigilantes, not some deputy marshal from California who’d pretty much stumbled on them. He shrugged. “Good.”
Juliet Longstreet-it had to be her, since she was the only woman on the porch-got up from the porch rail and introduced herself, then introduced a man in a dark suit, Ethan Brooker, a Special Forces officer who was now a presidential adviser. Diego’s pal from his own Special Forces days.
Huck could feel their misgivings about him. He understood.
At least they didn’t ask him if he’d been followed, a minor nod to his abilities.
“Have a seat,” Winter said.
Huck shook his head. “That’s okay.”
A small table was set with a stainless-steel urn of coffee, white mugs, a matching sugar pot and creamer, a stack of pansy-decorated cocktail napkins and a plate of quartered pimiento-cheese sandwiches. Not Winter’s doing, for sure, Huck thought, helping himself to a couple of the pimiento-cheese triangles. No one else was eating. Longstreet watched him with the kind of frank skepticism he could appreciate. Brooker was harder to read. The two of them supposedly were an item, but Huck hadn’t heard anything about wedding bells.
“Steve Eisenhardt,” he said to the assembled group. “What do we know about him?”
Winter sat next to the food table. “He works under Gerard Lattimore.”
“I know that much. He turned up at Harlowe’s office after I was dispatched to keep her occupied.” He inhaled, impatient with himself. “I miscalculated. I thought they wanted me to find out how much she knew about their operation.”
“You think they had Eisenhardt search her office?” Longstreet asked, dubious. “Middle of the day, building full of people-why take that risk?”
“What, as opposed to breaking in with crowbars and triggering alarms?”
She shrugged. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
Brooker had loosened his tie. He was dark-haired, dark-eyed, quiet-Diego had said he had attitude, especially after his wife’s murder almost two years ago. “Did he take anything?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Her laptop was still there.” And stacks of books, notebooks, files, mail and letters, the one on top asking her if she would be interested in speaking with a certain congressman about her perspective on transnational crime. Her work before, during and since she was at the Department of Justice had brought her credibility and respect. “Harlowe took a quick look but didn’t notice anything missing.”
“If she finds out something is missing-”
“She’ll call Kowalski.”
Winter didn’t react to what was said. “Kowalski’s up to speed on the task force and the investigation. It’s safer that way.”
“I like to know who’s aware of my status and who isn’t.”
“Now you know. Kowalski doesn’t like Alicia Miller showing up at Breakwater the morning before she drowned or the mysterious black sedan that picked her up in Washington. Then there’s the timing-she’s agitated and upset, and yet soon after she arrives back in Yorkville, she goes kayaking?”
“She was obsessed with ospreys. There are nests all along the Yorkville waterfront.”
“One right in front of the cottage she was borrowing,” Winter said. “Why not put her kayak in there? Why take it two miles up the road?”
“She wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t have any answers, either. I wish I’d gotten to Breakwater sooner. I might have a better fix on what kind of relationship she had with Crawford and his crowd. I don’t know, though. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck…” He ate the pimiento-cheese triangle in two bites, although he wasn’t hungry. “Usually it’s a duck.”
Brooker spoke, his tone mild. “You believe her death was an accident or suicide as a result of her agitated mental state.”
“I don’t believe anything. I just can’t see someone killing her by getting her into a kayak and then knocking her out of it. It’s possible someone took advantage of the situation and let her drown. The weather was bad that day. Worse than expected.”
“If someone did seize the moment, so to speak,” Juliet Longstreet said, “who?”
“Lubec.” Huck didn’t hesitate. “He and Sharon Riccardi have worked for Crawford longer than the rest of us at Breakwater. Something’s bothering Joe Riccardi. He’s not obvious about it, but there’s no question he’s on alert.”
“Does he trust you?” Juliet asked.
“I’m not sure he trusts any of us. He’s ex-military. He’s in a job now that plays by different rules. He might do better with the ex-military and ex-law enforcement guys. I think he regards the rest of us as a bunch of thugs.”
Longstreet poured herself a cup of coffee. “You are a bunch of thugs.”
Huck didn’t disagree. “I’ve been spewing the vigilante line since I got to Breakwater. Joe Riccardi doesn’t bite. He says he wants Breakwater to be an elite, legitimate, respectable security firm with highly trained personnel. That’s his mantra. If there’s a thug quotient early on, he’ll stamp it out in training, get rid of people who don’t belong.”
“‘Elite’ usually means small,” Longstreet said.
“That’s right. Both Riccardis say they’re not looking to be one of the big players in the security field.”
“This Joe Riccardi has a lot of responsibility,” Brooker said. “Breakwater is a start-up with no reputation-he’s building it from the ground up. One mistake-a training accident, anything-and they’re out of business. He’ll be living off his military pension.”
Winter looked out at the landscape, at the height of its spring beauty. He seemed preoccupied. “The network we’re trying to penetrate is loosely coordinated, which makes the people involved more difficult to track. When they act, they’re brazen.”
“It’s their arrogance.” Brooker stood, his eyes on Huck. “I ran into some of these guys in Afghanistan. They set up their own torture chamber to interrogate people they detained, under no authority whatsoever but their own. They were so convinced they were right that they assumed we would applaud their efforts and give them carte blanche. They were surprised and outraged when we turned them over to the Afghan government. Too bad we weren’t able to break open their entire network then.”
“They’re not total whack jobs,” Huck said. “If I’m on the right track, they’re rational and very deliberate. They believe they’re preventing, not sowing, chaos and self-destruction.”
Nate turned from the view of the yard he’d be leaving within hours. “What about Quinn Harlowe?”
Huck didn’t mince words. “She’s made me. And Diego.”
Winter had no visible reaction, but Juliet Longstreet threw up her hands and groaned. “How? If she-”
“She was focused on me. She has access to information the Breakwater guys don’t. She’s an expert on this sort of thing. She’s a natural bird dog. Once she’s got the scent, she won’t let go.” Huck realized he didn’t like being in the position of defending her, or vouching for her. “She still has a high-level security clearance.”
“You trust her?” Nate asked.
“It’s not a question of trust. My first instinct was to pull her off the street. But if we shut her down now, these guys will crawl back under their rocks just as they’re starting to come out into the light. If they blame her for upsetting their plans, she’ll be worse off. I’m willing to keep going. Clemente is, too. A couple Californians like us-we went to a lot of trouble to make ourselves fit in out here.”
“We’re not risking this woman-”
“It’s safer for her if we don’t interfere with her.” Huck picked up a couple more pimiento-cheese triangles; nobody else seemed interested. “She’s not on the government payroll anymore. She answers to herself. What she does is up to her.”
“I don’t like it,” Nate said.
“I’m not worried about me-or Diego. And we’re not going to do anything to endanger Harlowe. Last thing we need is to have to put on the brakes to rescue her.”
Juliet stirred. “I’ll bet having you rescue her is right there with having her fingernails plucked out with pliers. My take? Quinn Harlowe’s asking questions because she’s trying to get used to her friend’s tragic death. She’ll settle down.”
Ethan Brooker and Nate Winter didn’t look as optimistic.
Finally, Winter sighed. “I’ll pull you out in a heartbeat, McCabe, if I think you’re taking unnecessary risks.”
Huck finished off his pimiento-cheese triangles. Winter, Longstreet, Brooker. He had to trust them.
And they had to trust him.
“Relax. I can do my job.”
Quinn splashed more champagne into Thelma’s glass, an antique crystal flute that, according to legend, the first Quinn Harlowe had used to drink a toast in celebration of the discovery of a triceratops fossil in South Dakota.
After her close call in keeping herself out of Huck Boone/McCabe’s trunk, Quinn decided she was in the mood to think about dinosaurs. The fiercer the better.
It was early afternoon, but the Society, in keeping with long-standing tradition, shut down at 2:00 p.m. on Fridays from mid-April through Labor Day weekend. A little early in the day for an end-of-the-week drink, but Thelma didn’t seem to mind. She tipped her champagne glass to Quinn. “May your sanity return. Cheers.”
“I’m going to the Breakwater open house, Thelma.” Quinn had taken Gerard’s call with Thelma next to her, opening the champagne, not bothering to disguise the fact that she was eavesdropping. As a result, Quinn now had no plausible deniability. “I’m a neighbor.”
“Lattimore’s going to think you’re his date.”
“No, he’s not. I’m meeting him there. You’re being very old-fashioned, you know. He and I are colleagues. There’s nothing romantic between us. Zip. Zero.”
“You’re both attractive and available.”
“Available.” Quinn wrinkled up her face, trying to keep the conversation lighthearted, which was not even close to how she felt. “I’m not sure I like that word. Think about the layers of different meaning.”
Thelma settled deeper into the slouchy modern chair that Quinn had insisted on adding to her office, although it went with none of the stiff, late-nineteenth-century antiques. “Are you sure you don’t want any of the champagne?”
“Positive. I’m my own designated driver, and a Friday afternoon in Washington in springtime-what are the odds I get to Yorkville in under four hours?”
“Slim to none.” Thelma narrowed her eyes. “You’ll need a champagne-free brain. Do you suppose Oliver Crawford knows Lattimore’s invited you?”
“He says it was Crawford’s idea.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better, Quinn. Why would he invite you to a party after he caught you trespassing?”
“Maybe he understands the emotional state I was in at the time.”
And still am, Quinn thought. Her grief wasn’t as raw and volatile as in the first hours after finding Alicia, and the shock had eased. Digging into Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security had helped occupy her mind as she’d processed what had happened.
Of course, now she was in hot water with the marshals. Were they discussing, even now, what to do about her?
“You’ll notice Lattimore keeps inviting you to parties,” Thelma went on. “The marina party in March, and now this one. And you keep going.”
Quinn changed the subject. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Several friends and I are going birding in the mountains.”
“That sounds like fun. You’ve never married, have you, Thelma?”
“No, I haven’t.” Her eyes sparkled. “Although I came close a few times. Why do you ask?”
“I have no idea. I suppose-” She thought of Huck, but didn’t go there. She smiled at Thelma, who seemed not to have changed since Quinn’s first memories of her as a child. “I suppose I’m just trying to distract you. Any regrets about not marrying?”
Thelma sipped her champagne. “Why, I wonder, do we never ask married women if they have any regrets?”
Quinn shrugged. “I’m not sure we don’t. Isn’t divorce a way of saying they regret having married?”
She sat back, eyeing Quinn. “I have a full life. I realize I have more days behind me than ahead, but that just makes me even more determined to live each one I have to its fullest.”
“If you didn’t have to work-”
“I love my work. This place.” With a wave of one hand, she took in the Octagon Room, with its fireplace and oil portrait, its brass candlesticks, its worn wood floors. “I come to work, and I feel as if I’ve stepped back in time to my grandmother’s day. She used to work here, too, you know. Some days, I swear I can hear her talking to me. It’s very comforting.”
Quinn looked up at her great-great-grandfather’s dour face. “I’m not sure I’d want to hear him talking to me.”
Thelma smiled. “He died before my time here, but in the early days, there were many people who remembered him. They said he wasn’t at all a crazy adrenaline junkie. He was thoughtful, very intelligent. He had a purpose. He knew what he was here on earth to do, and he accepted the risks involved as part of the challenge.” Her plain, frank eyes zeroed in on Quinn. “He didn’t shrink from his duties and responsibilities, whether he’d had them foisted upon him or took them on by choice.”
“Thelma…”
Quinn breathed out, setting the champagne bottle on a stack of cast-off files on her desk. She knew what the longtime receptionist-and adventurer-was trying to say, the point she was driving home in her own not particularly subtle way.
“Quinn, you know what you have to do.”
“I can’t say for sure that Steve was here to search my office. I can’t say for sure he tried to access my laptop files.” She watched the sweat from the champagne drip onto a dry, ancient file. “I don’t want to make trouble for him.”
“I saw him. I don’t know him, of course, but I’d say he’s already in trouble. It’s not your job to save him from any mess he’s gotten himself into. You can’t help him by running from what you know.” She finished off the last of her champagne. “That’s another quality your great-great-grandfather had. He understood and respected his limits.”
“Risk-takers think they have no limits.”
Thelma snorted. “No, Quinn, grandiose idiots think they have no limits. You Harlowes are neither grandiose nor idiots.”
“Just occasionally very unlucky,” Quinn said dryly, getting to her feet.
She hadn’t left anything out in the open in her office that provided any critical information-no names or numbers of her sources, none of her conclusions, especially about Huck. Nowhere had she typed or written a single word about her suspicions about who he was. If Steve had searched her office, he would only have seen cryptic notes, jotted questions to herself.
But there were enough, she thought, for even the most cursory search to confirm that she’d spent some time researching Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security.
“I’ll call T.J. Kowalski on my way to Yorkville,” she said.
Thelma smiled knowingly. “You’re afraid if you call him from here, you won’t get to Yorkville. He’ll stuff you into a hotel somewhere. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into this time, Quinn, but I can guess-” She tilted her empty flute up at the portrait. “I can guess your Harlowe genes are coming out in you.”
“Special Agent Kowalski has his own ideas about what I should and shouldn’t be doing.”
“And you have yours,” Thelma said, as if Quinn had just won her point for her about Harlowe genes.
Quinn ignored any reference to her crazy ancestors. “Thelma-I owe Alicia. My grandfather says I’m a catalyst. I make things happen.”
“Spoken like a true Harlowe.”
“I’m not about to do anything reckless. I want to make answers happen. I want to know why Alicia died. Why she came to me for help, talking about ospreys. Who was in the car that picked her up. Where they went.”
“Understandable, but is any of that the responsibility of a friend?” Thelma’s voice had gone quiet. “Be aware of who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Don’t delude yourself.”
Quinn gave her a cheerfully stubborn look. “You’re just telling me I’ve gone Harlowe because you don’t want me going to that open house.”
Thelma didn’t relent. “I don’t trust Gerard Lattimore. Or Oliver Crawford. You’ll be all alone tomorrow.”
Not alone, Quinn thought. Huck Boone/McCabe would be there.
But if he were here now, she had no doubt he’d be siding with Thelma. “It’ll be fine, Thelma.” Quinn picked up the champagne bottle and refilled her friend’s glass. “Besides, I have to go now-I already know what I’m wearing.”
Quinn had lied to Thelma. She had no idea what to wear to Oliver Crawford’s open house. Choosing an outfit was the least of her concerns, but it gave her something inconsequential to focus on. What dress, what shoes, whether to go dramatic or natural with her makeup were all better than dwelling on undercover marshals and whatever Steve Eisenhardt was up to.
She decided on a simple champagne-colored silk dress with a 1930s shawl, strappy shoes and hot-pink lipstick.
If Huck Boone/McCabe was guarding bodies, she might as well be in hot-pink lipstick.
What a thought. She felt a rush of heat and quickly threw her open-house outfit and enough clothes for the weekend into a zippered bag.
In a few minutes, she was on the road, a stack of work next to her on the front seat. She rolled down the windows and opened the sunroof, letting in as much warm spring air as possible. She loved the freedom of being able to juggle her schedule and-often-work outside her office. Being her own boss had its downside, but not, she thought, today.
Once she cleared city traffic, she called Special Agent Kowalski on her cell phone. She hoped just to leave a message, but he picked up. “Where are you?” he asked her.
“In my car.”
“In your car in Alaska, or in your car in front of FBI headquarters?”
“I’m on the Beltway.”
“Going-”
“About sixty-five miles an hour.”
He took an audible breath. “All right. What’s up?”
“You all need to find Steve Eisenhardt and make sure he’s not mixed up in-” She stopped herself. Did Kowalski know about the undercover marshals? Huck hadn’t been specific with her. “I’m pretty sure he searched my office this afternoon. He just happened to stop by when I was out.”
“Why should I care if he searched your office?”
“Because I had notes out on research I’ve been doing on Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security.”
Silence.
“Nothing I kept in the open would compromise me or anyone else in any way,” Quinn added carefully. “No notes from conversations I had with sources, none of my conclusions-”
“What sources?”
“Just people I know from my work.”
“What conclusions?”
“‘Conclusions’ is too strong a word. Thoughts, questions, speculations-none of that was in the open. Most of it’s in my head or on a password-protected file on my laptop-”
“Which is where?”
“Right next to me on the front seat of my car. It was on my desk this afternoon. Steve could have grabbed it, but he didn’t. He must have known Thelma would never have let him out of the building with it.”
“Thelma’s the receptionist,” Kowalski said.
“I see you’ve been doing your homework, too.”
“Any idea why this Steve character would care if you were researching Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security?”
“No.”
“Don’t you lock your office?”
“I didn’t think of it. Someone stopped by to see me, and we went out for coffee-I never went back upstairs.”
Just a half beat’s hesitation. “All right. Anything else?”
Quinn bit her lip, considering Kowalski’s reaction. Why wasn’t he asking her who’d stopped by her office? But she didn’t pursue the subject. “Don’t you want to know who Steve Eisenhardt is?”
“You told me you called him after Miss Miller took off in the black sedan.”
“Good memory,” Quinn said, tongue-in-cheek. He wasn’t telling her everything-and he didn’t care that she knew he was holding back. But she had no status herself in any investigation, whether it was Alicia’s death or whatever-whoever-Huck McCabe was hunting in Yorkville.
“Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.” He didn’t sound grateful for anything. “Where can I find you if I need to talk to you?”
“Yorkville.”
“That’s not a good idea. Why are you headed there?”
“I’m going to an open house at Breakwater tomorrow afternoon.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Oliver Crawford asked Gerard Lattimore to invite me.”
“You like playing with fire, don’t you?”
“Actually, no, I like peace and quiet.”
Kowalski grunted. “Then go pick lilacs and read a book tomorrow. Watch the birds.”
“I had coffee with Huck Boone this afternoon,” she said.
Another two-second silence.
He knows about Huck. Quinn felt her hand on the phone turn clammy. “I’m coming into traffic-I need to hang up.”
She clicked off, tossing the phone onto the seat. Traffic was fine. She just didn’t need another federal agent second-guessing her. If the FBI and the marshals had bad guys to catch, they could go catch them. She’d stay out of their way. In the meantime, Oliver Crawford was her neighbor, Breakwater Security wasn’t going anywhere, and the best thing she could do-Huck had even said so-was to resume her normal routine.
In April, she’d spend the weekend at her cottage.
If invited to a party at the Crawford estate, she’d go in a heartbeat.