Breakwater (3 page)

Quinn checked her private office line, but she had no messages.

If Alicia was okay, why not call and reassure her?

Dropping into her swivel chair, Quinn let her gaze settle on the dark, ominous oil painting of her great-great-grandfather that hung on the wall to her right. His name, too, was Quinn Harlowe. His portrait came with the office. Like her, he had black hair, pale skin and hazel eyes, but his face had more sharp angles than hers, and his expression was more dour than she could ever manage.

As a little kid, the painting had scared the daylights out of her. Her father would grin at it with pride. “What an incredible man he was. Nothing could stop him. He had guts and luck.”

A scholar and adventurer, Quinn Harlowe had died at ninety-eight, having explored parts of all the continents. His son wasn’t so lucky, dying in an avalanche in the Canadian Rockies at fifty. His son, Quinn’s grandfather, Murtagh Harlowe, was a gentle soul, a Civil War expert who’d all but raised her while her parents were off on adventures of their own. Everyone who knew her father as a baby said they realized he was a throwback to that first Quinn Harlowe, a risk-taker, even before he could walk.

Quinn appreciated her family history, but she didn’t worry about where she fit in. She liked her quiet cottage by the bay, her work as an analyst. She wasn’t an adrenaline junky.

Right now she wanted to find Alicia. Whatever it took. She called several friends she and Alicia had in common, but no one had heard from her. Had she gone back to the cottage?

On a good day, with reasonable traffic, the drive to Yorkville took about three hours. Beltway traffic, however, was seldom reasonable.

“The osprey, the osprey.”

An osprey pair had built a nest on a buoy just offshore in front of the cottage. The large birds of prey made Alicia nervous. They’d never held much romance for her.

“The osprey will kill me.”

What on earth did Alicia mean?

Quinn glanced at her watch. Almost three. If she got moving, she could be at her cottage before nightfall.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Gerard Lattimore had his driver drop him back at the Department of Justice. As he returned to his office, he could feel his pulse throbbing in his temple, as if Quinn’s words were pounding themselves into his brain. Somehow or another, Alicia Miller’s nervous breakdown-whatever was wrong with her-would come back to haunt him. He was her boss. He’d hired her. If she went off the deep end, it would reflect badly on him.

Depressed, drunk, drugged-did it matter what had caused her to make the scene earlier today at the coffee shop? She was a problem he should have addressed sooner.

Pushing back his concern, his anger at himself, he walked down the hall to the maze of cubicles where Alicia worked and wasn’t surprised to find Steve Eisenhardt at his desk. Lattimore warned himself not to get worked up. He had borderline high blood pressure and feared that the next crisis would pop him over the line, and he’d have to go on medication. Provided, of course, he didn’t drop dead of a stroke first.

A faint body odor wafted up from Eisenhardt. Odd, Gerard thought, because he was fastidious about his personal hygiene. He and Steve had similar backgrounds-family money, political connections-but the younger attorney didn’t have the same drive to prove himself. The kid was brilliant-he didn’t have to work hard to impress anyone. Alicia had tried to get him to be a little less arrogant, a little less obviously jaded, but she liked him. Most people did.

Gerard was the exception. From his first week on the job, Steve Eisenhardt bugged the hell out of him. It wasn’t Eisenhardt’s arrogance or his ambition, and certainly not his family money or connections-it was the little bastard’s sense of entitlement. If only he’d been the one to go nuts, sobbing about ospreys, instead of Alicia. Gerard would love to have an excuse to get rid of him.

When Steve saw his boss, he made a move to get up. Lattimore held up a hand. “Sit, sit. I just spoke to Quinn Harlowe. She told me she’s talked to you about Alicia.”

“Oh, right. Yeah.”

“You should have told me.”

“Told you what? That Alicia Miller was upset about something?”

Fair enough, Gerard thought. Quinn had told him that she hadn’t given Steve all the details of her encounter with Alicia. “Have you heard from her?”

“Not since she left here Friday.”

“Steve-Quinn downplayed Alicia’s condition when she called you earlier. She’s worried about her.”

“To the point of calling the police?”

“No. At least not yet. You don’t have any idea who might have picked her up?”

He leaned back in his chair and looked up at Lattimore. “I have no idea. I’m sorry. I wish there was more I could do. Did Quinn have someone check her cottage in case Alicia went back there?”

“She’s on her way there now to see for herself.”

Steve was silent a moment.

“What is it?” Lattimore prodded him. “Steve, this conversation’s off the record. I have no more desire to see Alicia hurt than you or anyone else does.”

“What if Quinn misread the situation? She and Alicia have had their problems. I don’t want to get dragged into the middle of some squabble between friends.” He shifted his attention back to his monitor and tapped a couple of keys, clearing the screen. “Why did Quinn tell you? When I talked to her, she didn’t want to say anything.”

He had no intention of letting this kid know that he’d gone to Quinn’s office himself out of concern for her friend-before he knew about their encounter at the coffee shop. “She thought Alicia would turn up fine by now.”

Steve shrugged, unconcerned. “She probably still will. Alicia told me she and Quinn would always be friends but not the kind of close friends they once were. Hey, it happens, right? People go in different directions. From what I gather, they haven’t had much contact with each other since Quinn left here. Alicia could have new friends that Quinn wouldn’t know to call-”

“Do you know any names?”

“We aren’t that buddy-buddy.”

Something in his eyes didn’t feel right to Lattimore. He decided Steve was being disingenuous-he cared more about Alicia Miller than he wanted to let on. A romantic interest? Gerard would never put the two of them together.

“If you hear of anything, let me know.”

Eisenhardt nodded. “Sure. Of course. Are you worried?”

Lattimore thought a moment. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m worried.”

The younger attorney swore under his breath, but Gerard left, already late for a meeting that would drag on through dinner. Another night, he thought, that he wouldn’t have time to stop at the house and see his kids-another night his ex-wife could use to prove her point: His work came first. Before her, before their children, before his own health.

And she was right. It had to be that way, at least while he was a deputy assistant attorney general. To pretend otherwise was dishonest, a disservice to himself and everyone he loved.

His ex-wife had wanted the goodies without the sacrifices.

No one, he thought, could have it all.

The osprey…

Cold rain pelted onto Alicia Miller’s bare head and her red kayak, into the cockpit, drenching her to the skin. Lightning lit up the gray sky, followed by a roar of thunder. The waves had kicked up, frightening her.

Sobbing, shivering, she tried to slow her racing thoughts and control the rush of panic, the sudden spasms in her arms and legs. Especially her legs.

I’m going to die.

The osprey will kill me…

“Why?” she screamed, stabbing the paddle into a three-foot swell. “Why am I out here? What am I doing?”

Her words were lost in the wind, the rain, the pounding surf. She couldn’t see. Everything was gray. Where was the land? Where was Quinn’s cottage?

“Quinn! Help me, Quinn!”

Why should Quinn help me? I haven’t been a good friend to her, to anyone.

Negative self-talk…Alicia remembered she was supposed to avoid it.

She felt the kayak bump against something firm.

Land?

She looked up, into the rain.

Above her, suspended on a pole, was a sprawling, giant, frightening bird’s nest, a mass of sticks and twigs and dead grass.

Her heart raced even faster. She couldn’t suppress an overwhelming sense of doom.

I don’t want to be here. The osprey…

She’d been paddling forever. She didn’t know where she was. The cove? Was this Quinn’s osprey nest?

The kayak bumped against the pole, turning sideways into the surf. The men in the car-she remembered them.

Travis.

One was called Travis, and he had encouraged her to take the kayak out. By himself. She didn’t know what had happened to the other one. She remembered Steve getting out of the car back in Washington.

Travis’s voice had been so soothing.

“Kayaking’ll calm your nerves. Nothing like a good paddle.”

But the ospreys-he knew she was afraid of them.

He hadn’t mentioned the dark clouds moving in from the west. She saw them and assumed they meant nothing.

She’d shoved her kayak into her car. He hadn’t helped her. She drove out the loop road by herself and launched in a pretty spot, where there was a strip of sandy beach and she wouldn’t have to deal with the slimy underwater grasses that were by the cottage.

No one was around on the loop. No one had seen her put in her kayak.

Steve-what had he been doing in the back of the car with her?

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.

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.”

He almost asked why three-why not two? Why not five? That kind of deliberate effort to get under a person’s skin was more natural to him than he cared to admit, but he also knew it helped with his cover, the persona he’d established when he’d first gone undercover after his fugitive. Breakwater Security had done a thorough background check on him before letting him into their Yorkville compound. The U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI together made sure any paperwork and people needed to verify his new identity were in place, down to a retired deputy who posed as Huck’s former first-grade teacher. That little Boone boy. What a corker.

Glover left Huck to what remained of the three minutes. He got a clean shirt from his built-in dresser. Because he was working for a private security firm, he got to carry his Glock 23 in his belt holster and a snub-nosed.38 revolver on his ankle. He had the proper paperwork as Huck Boone, bodyguard extraordinaire, so he couldn’t arrest himself for gun-law violations. His Breakwater colleagues all were good with their paperwork-not that he would arrest them for low-level gun violations. There were rumors the vigilantes had shoulder-fired missiles, grenades, chemical sprays, illegal explosives-a long list.

Supposedly, they wanted to buy an armored helicopter.

The task force didn’t want him blowing the whistle too soon.

Most of all, they wanted to know names and plans. Who were these guys, and what were they up to?

He sat on the edge of his bed. White no-iron sheets, cotton blanket, one pillow. He could feel the metal springs through the thin mattress. He was five-ten, one-eighty. On a good day, he had a face that scared children and small dogs.

An extra blanket was up on a closet shelf for cool nights. He had three Breakwater Security shirts, one sweatshirt and one windbreaker. A navy blue suit hung in his closet, and on the floor were running shoes, water shoes, lightweight combat boots and black dress shoes. If he needed anything else, he’d have to find a store.

When he ventured outside, the air smelled of wet earth and bay, but it was fresh and clean, the storm having blown out any remaining rain and humidity. The grounds of the Crawford compound were old-Virginia lush, with trim grass, flowering trees and shrubs, spring bulbs-certainly not the kind of landscape anyone would picture when imagining a start-up private security firm.

The sprawling main house, white clapboards with black shutters, overlooked the bay, a spot most people would be content to live. Not Oliver Crawford. He’d stirred up Yorkville when he announced that he was converting his picturesque country estate into Breakwater Security. Although people still had their doubts, outright protest was short-lived, at least partly because Crawford had only recently survived his harrowing kidnapping and his Yorkville neighbors understood his need to take action-except, perhaps, for Alicia Miller.

Huck stepped over a puddle left over from the storms. The late-afternoon sun angled through a stray gray cloud. It’d been a rough series of storms, rain and wind slapping the converted barn’s windows, trees swaying outside, flashes of lightning, claps of thunder-the works. Diego had brought in his boat just in time.

The Riccardis, the couple who ran Breakwater Security, walked down the stone path to the converted barn. Joe had let his iron-gray hair grow out maybe a quarter-inch since he’d retired from the army. He was forty-two, six feet even and without any obvious excess fat. He had on a navy polo with the Breakwater Security logo embroidered in gold, pressed khaki pants and black running shoes. He wore his Glock on a shoulder holster. His wife, Sharon, was thirty-five and pretty, even delicate, with her dyed blond hair and blue eyes. She was unarmed and wore a skirted suit. Navy blue. She had worked as Oliver Crawford’s executive assistant for fifteen years but now oversaw everything nonoperational for Breakwater Security.

Sharon spoke first. “How’re you doing, Mr. Boone? Settling in?”

“Doing just fine, thanks.”

Huck didn’t have a solid read on the Riccardis, athough the task force had provided Huck with a brief workup on them. They were married last summer right there at Breakwater. Sharon ’s first marriage, Joe’s second. He had two kids in college in Colorado. Nothing in their backgrounds shouted vigilante.

“Mr. Crawford is arriving from his Washington home in the morning,” Sharon said. “He’ll want to see what all we’ve accomplished in the week since his last visit. Joe will go over the details with you tonight at dinner.”

Huck had yet to meet Crawford. He and Diego had read a write-up on him, too, but nothing in it indicated any wing nut vigilante propensities. Then again, who knew what a terrifying ordeal like a kidnapping could do to a man.

A towheaded kid of maybe twenty-two burst out of the barn. Sharon Riccardi gave an impatient sigh, but her husband greeted him pleasantly and shook his hand, welcoming him to Breakwater. The kid all but saluted. Joe couldn’t stop a smile. “Relax, O’Dell. You’re not in the army anymore. Boone, Glover-meet Cully O’Dell, our newest recruit. He’s from the Neck. A local boy. He can tell you the best fishing spots, and you can show him around the property.”

O’Dell shook hands with Vern, then Boone. The kid seemed to have a sunny disposition and was obviously excited about entering the high-stakes, high-possibilities world of private security. Vern didn’t look thrilled at having to help show Cully O’Dell around Breakwater, but one thing Huck had discovered in his two days in Yorkville-he was never left to wander around the property on his own. Someone was always watching.

Being senior, Vern gave O’Dell the quick rundown of the various buildings and what was up and running and what was only in the planning stages.

No mention of private interrogation chambers and thumbscrews.

No mention of a plot to destroy the federal government, to assassinate judges or to snatch bad guys off the streets and toss them into their own private jail cells.

Vern talked about maintaining the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and training as they provided individual and corporate security ranging from routine background checks and threat assessment to investigations, protection, surveillance and crisis management. Those who started now, when the company was still more dream than reality, would have the opportunity to move up as Breakwater Security grew.

“Cool,” the new recruit said under his breath.

Huck grimaced. If Cully O’Dell was a budding psycho vigilante, Huck would cut off his big toe. In the meantime, he’d try to make sure nothing happened to the kid.

They started up the stone path to a new, perfunctory structure that was out of keeping with the aesthetic of the estate. It housed classrooms and the gun vault. Huck figured if Breakwater had any shoulder-fired missiles, illegal explosives, illegal chemicals or vials of anthrax, they’d be in the vault. He wanted to get in there on his own, but it wouldn’t be easy.

On the other hand, if he’d wanted easy, he would never have worked undercover at all.

They ran into the Riccardis again on their way down to the indoor firing range.

“I forgot to ask,” Huck said. “Any word on the woman who was out here this morning? Miller-Alicia Miller, right?”

“She went back to Washington,” Sharon said stiffly.

“That’s what I heard. Did she drive herself?”

“I don’t know if she did or didn’t drive herself. She objects to Breakwater Security having its headquarters and training facility out here. This morning’s histrionics were nothing but a rude, inappropriate protest.”

“Was she drunk?”

“I have no idea.” Sharon caught herself, softening. “I don’t mean to sound cruel. Obviously Alicia Miller’s a troubled woman.”

Joe touched his wife’s elbow. “We should get back to the house. Didn’t you say Oliver was calling at seven?”

“Right. Yes, of course.” She shifted her attention to Vern and O’Dell. “Mr. O’Dell? What do you think of Breakwater so far?”

The kid beamed. “Awesome.”

Quinn buttoned her sweater and crossed her arms against the cold early-April wind as she stood at the water’s edge across from her bayside cottage. Even in the small cove, the bay was choppy after the line of thunderstorms had blown across the Northern Neck and off to the northeast. The heavy rain had slowed her drive to Yorkville but left behind dry, fresh, much cooler air.

She’d arrived thirty minutes ago, parking her silver Saab practically in the branches of her huge holly, her hope of finding Alicia’s ten-year-old BMW in the driveway or even the black sedan that had picked her up immediately dashed. The side door to the cottage was locked. Alicia had cleared out of the cottage-the only traces of her weekend stay were the hastily made bed in the guest room, towels in the bathroom hamper and an unopened nonfat, sugar-free strawberry yogurt in the refrigerator.

Quinn had walked next door to the only other cottage on the quiet, dead-end road, but the Scanlons, the couple who’d retired to Yorkville just before Quinn bought her place, were still not home.

A wasted trip, she thought, watching an osprey-a female-swoop up from the marsh into the clear sky above the bay. In spite of her concern for Alicia, Quinn felt some of her tension ease at the familiar sight of the huge bird. Once facing extinction, ospreys had become opportunistic in choosing their nesting sites, using channel markers, buoys, old dock posts and even the occasional bench on a quiet private dock. The nests could only be removed with a permit.

The two young ospreys that had constructed the oversize mess of a nest on a marker at the mouth of Quinn’s cove had returned. The nest had survived several fierce winter storms. With luck, the ospreys, mates for life, would have baby ospreys in a matter of weeks.

But they were raptors-birds of prey. Although they dined primarily on fish, if Alicia had indeed walked out to the water early one morning and saw an osprey scoop up an unsuspecting duckling in front of her, she would have been horrified. Stressed out as she was from the pressures of her job, perhaps on the verge of a breakdown, she could have latched onto such a gruesome sight as she’d melted down, twisting it into a metaphor for all her fears and troubles.

Speculation, Quinn thought, turning away from the water.

Built in the 1940s, her cottage occupied a half-acre lot with lilacs and azaleas, not yet in bloom, and a vegetable garden out back that she meant to revive. Right now, it was mostly weeds. Alicia had promised to rent a tiller and dig up the garden, but Quinn had known it was just well-meaning talk. She loved Yorkville for its simplicity. A picnic, kayaking, walking on the beach, prowling mom-and-pop shops for books and antiques, sitting on her porch and reading. What Quinn enjoyed most about Yorkville, Alicia found lacking. Quinn grew up in the Washington suburbs, but Virginia ’s Northern Neck, with its wide, shallow rivers, its marshes and inlets, its beaches and rich history, spoke to her soul.

She walked across the road and up the stone walk to her cottage, the grass, which needed mowing, wet from the pounding rain. She stepped onto her porch, no railing to impede the view of the water from her wicker chairs. On one of her weekends on the bay, Alicia had put out a blue ceramic pot of yellow pansies as a gift for use of the cottage.

Quinn tucked her hands up into the sleeves of her sweater. Dusk was easing into night, the wind quieting, the air cold and fresh. Shivering, she went inside, her small living room dark enough now that she needed to switch on a lamp.

When she’d bought the cottage, it was a wreck. For two years, she’d poured herself, and coaxed various friends, into fixing it up. The scrubbing and painting and foraging for deals served as a welcome contrast to her days spent researching and analyzing criminal networks with tentacles that knew no borders, no boundaries, no ethics or morals but the lust for power, money and violence. She painted the simple wood floors and replaced the wainscoting, splurged on tile for the bathroom that she had put in herself.

Quinn remembered a sun-filled weekend in Yorkville, shortly after Alicia had moved to Washington. They’d gone on long walks together and had crab cakes at the marina restaurant, then drank wine and talked until midnight on the front porch, rekindling a friendship strained by busy lives and different interests and goals.

It was just before Alicia had introduced Quinn to Brian Castleton, the Washington, D.C., reporter for a Chicago newspaper, and they’d begun an on-again, off-again six months together that now, in retrospect, seemed doomed from the start. Brian found Yorkville too small, too boring, too unsophisticated, too, as he liked to say, 1947. He’d drag himself along with Quinn as she scavenged flea markets and yard sales for bargains-her mishmash of dishes, a Depression glass pitcher and tumblers, a copper pot for kindling, tables and chairs she’d refinished and painted.

The cottage, ultimately, had helped end their relationship. He wanted to buy a boat-he said he might stand the occasional weekend in Yorkville if he had a boat. They’d bought two kayaks together. Then he said a kayak wasn’t the sort of boat he meant.