The Dark Tide

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

The twelve-seater Island Air Cessna touched down on the remote island strip, its wheels barely finding the slip of land in the green-blue Caribbean Sea. The small plane coasted to a stop at the terminal, basically a Quonset hut with a tower and a wind indicator.

Hauck winked to Karen across the aisle from him. “Ready?” Two baggage handlers in T-shirts and shorts ran out as soon as the propellers stopped.

The young pilot in wraparound sunglasses helped passengers out onto the tarmac at the bottom of the landing steps.

“Nice flight,” Hauck said.

“Welcome to paradise.” He grinned back.

They had taken the morning flight down to San Juan from JFK, caught the American Eagle connection to Tortola, and now the cramped puddle jumper over the glasslike sea to St. Hubert. Karen had been quiet for much of the trip. She slept, fidgeted through a paperback she’d brought along. Anxious. To Hauck she could not have looked prettier in a tight-fitting brown tank and white capris, an onyx pendant around her neck, and tortoiseshell sunglasses perched on her head.

Hauck helped her off the steps and flipped down his own shades. Whyever they had come here, it was beautiful. The sun was dazzling. A cool trade wind off the sea caressed them.

“Friedman? Hauck?”

A local representative from the resort, dressed in an epauletted white shirt and holding a clipboard, called out to them.

Hauck waved him over.

“Welcome to St. Hubert.” The young black man grinned amiably. “I’ll be taking you to the resort.”

They loaded their bags into a hotel Land Cruiser. The island seemed barely more than a large ribbon of sand and vegetation in the middle of the sea. Only a few miles from end to end. There was a small mountain splitting the island, some makeshift food stands, locals selling fruit and homemade rum, a few goats. A couple of colorful billboards for a local rent-a-car service and Caribe beer.

The trip to the hotel took a little more than fifteen minutes of bouncing over the uneven road. Soon they were pulling into the St. James’s resort.

The setting was beautiful, lush with vegetation and tall palm trees. It took about two seconds to establish that this wasn’t the type of place Hauck could afford on his own. A week here probably cost more than a month’s pay. At the open-air front desk under a thatched roof, Karen asked for the two adjoining rooms she’d reserved in the hotel part of the resort. They had discussed it. That was okay with Hauck. This wasn’t a holiday. It was important to remember just why they were here.

“Any messages?” Karen inquired as they checked in.

The pretty island desk clerk behind the counter scanned the computer. “I’m sorry, Ms. Friedman, none.”

A bellman took them out to their rooms, each tastefully decorated with a large canopied bed and expensive rattan furniture. A large marble bathroom with a big tub. Outside, palm trees swayed right up to the terrace, which looked over the perfect white-sand beach.

They met on their adjoining decks, gazing out at the sea. There were a few tented cabanas dotting the beach. And a gorgeous white thirty-foot yacht moored at the pier.

“It’s beautiful,” Hauck said, looking around.

“Yeah,” Karen agreed, inhaling the ocean breeze, “it is.”

“No point in just sitting around until you hear from him.” Hauck shrugged. “Want to meet for a swim?”

“What the hell?” Karen smiled. “Sure.”

A short while later, Karen came down in a stylish bronze one-piece and a tie-dyed sarong, her hair pinned above her head. Hauck had on a pair of “designer” Colby College shorts.

The water was warm and foamy. Tiny white waves lapped at their feet. The beach was pretty much deserted. It was June and the resort didn’t seem exactly filled. There was a small reef a couple of hundred yards out, a handful of sunbathers camped out on it. A young couple was playing paddleball. The sea was almost as calm as glass.

“God, it’s gorgeous.” Karen sighed, as if in heaven, wading in.

“Man,” Hauck agreed, diving into the surf. When he came up, he pointed. “Want to swim out to that reef?”

“Swim? How about I race you?” Karen grinned.

“Race me? You know who you’re talking to, lady?” Hauck laughed. “I’m still the third-leading all-time rushing leader for Greenwich High.”

“Oh, I’m quaking.” Karen rolled her eyes, unimpressed. “Watch out for sharks.”

She dove in gracefully ahead of him. Hauck let her get a couple of strokes’ head start, then went in after. He pulled hard, a few small waves breaking against him. Karen cut through the surf in an effortless crawl. He wasn’t gaining. No matter how he pushed he couldn’t seem to make up ground. Once or twice he tried to lunge and grab her legs. It took about three minutes. Karen beat him to the reef by a mile. She was already waiting as he climbed out, sucking air.

“I’ve been had.”

She winked. “Atlanta AAU twelve-and-under freestyle champion.” She shook the water out of her hair. “What the hell took you so long?”

“Ran into a shark,” he snorted, grinning coyly at her.

Karen lay back on the fine sand. Hauck sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, looking back at the thatched roofs and swaying palms on the beautiful tropical isle.

“So what else do you do well?” he asked, feigning dejection. “Just so I know.”

“Chili. Tennis. Large donors.” She grinned. “I’ve been known to successfully raise a few bucks in my time. You?”

“Clear out a hockey crease. Get cats out of trees. Munch on doughnuts,” he replied. “Catch the occasional blue.”

“You paint,” Karen said encouragingly.

“You saw it.”

“That’s true.” She poked at him playfully with her toe. “You could call it that!”

Hauck watched the beads of water drying on her wet skin.

“So what happens?” Karen asked, her tone suggesting that the subject had changed. “After?”

“After?”

“After I see Charles. Then what happens to him, Ty? All those things he’s done…”

“I don’t know.” Hauck exhaled. He shielded his eyes from the sun. “Maybe you can convince him to turn himself in. We found him-someone else could also. He can’t run forever.”

“You mean go to jail, right?”

Hauck shrugged.

“I don’t think that would happen. I don’t see that, Ty.”

He tossed a pebble into the water. “First let’s see what he has to say.”

She nodded. They looked at each other a few seconds, neither of them wanting to put into words their fears for a future they didn’t know. Then Karen prodded him again with her toe, smiled. “So…uh, double or nothing on the way back?”

“Not a chance. You should know, I don’t take defeat very well.”

“Your loss!” Karen chimed in with a conspiratorial grin, looking back at him as she pushed herself up and into the waves.

He jumped in after her. “On the other hand, I don’t take being shown up particularly well either!”

Later they met for dinner. The dining terrace overlooking the cove was barely half filled. A few honeymoon couples and a couple of European families.

Hauck ordered a local spicy fish dish; Karen had lobster. Hauck insisted he pay, and ordered a fancy bottle of Meursault. Karen, already slightly tanned, was dressed in a black lace dress. Hauck knew the ground rules, but he could hardly keep his eyes off her.

Afterward they walked back along the pathway to the front desk. She checked her BlackBerry, disappointed. Then she asked at the desk for her messages.

Nothing there either.

“This was a nice day,” he said.

Karen smiled sweetly. “Yeah.”

Upstairs, he walked her to her door. There was an awkward moment until Karen leaned close and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek.

She smiled at him again, with a grateful twinkle and a wave of a finger, as she closed the door. But Hauck could see the worry in her eyes.

Still no word from Charles.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

There was nothing the next day either. Karen grew increasingly tense.

Hauck felt it, too. In the morning he went for a run outside the grounds, then came back and lifted some weights. Later he tried to distract himself with some departmental reviews he’d taken with him before he left.

In her room Karen checked her BlackBerry for messages a hundred times.

What if she had scared him off? she wondered. What if Charles had gone back into hiding? He could be a million miles away.

He would let her know, she told herself. He wouldn’t torture her again.

In the afternoon Hauck swam out to the reef again, floated on his back for what seemed an hour. He thought about what Karen had said, what he would do regarding Charles-after. Back at home.

He knew he had to lay it all out. Dietz. Hodges. The money offshore. The empty tankers. Pappy Raymond. The hit-and-runs.

Everything.

Even if she begged him not to. There’d be an investigation. Into Hauck’s behavior. He’d be suspended for sure. He might even lose his job.

He put it off and went back up to the room and lay down on the bed. His insides felt as if a jagged wire had been dragged through them. Charles’s silence was killing both of them. And the thought of “what after.” All of a sudden, the future, and everything it held, didn’t seem so far off.

He tossed the stack of work papers onto the bed, slid open the sliding door, and stepped out onto the balcony.

He spotted Karen across from him on her terrace. She was facing the ocean, doing yoga, in tight leggings and a short cotton tank.

He watched.

She was graceful, moving from one pose to another as in a dance. The curve of her finely cut arms, her fingers reaching toward the sky. The steady rhythm of her breaths, her chest expanding and contracting, the delicate deep arch of her spine following the movement of her arms.

His blood stirred.

He knew he was in love with her. Not probably as he had kidded-but completely. He knew she had awakened him from a deep slumber, the sweet lure of something that had been dead inside him for a long time.

It was bursting through him now.

She didn’t notice him at first, so intent was she in the precision of her movements. The arc of her leg, the lift of her pelvis, stretching. Her hair tumbling forward in its ponytail. The glimpse of her exposed midriff.

Goddamn it, Ty…

She brought her arms back in a wide semicircle and seemed to open her eyes. Their gazes met.

At first Karen just smiled, as if she’d been exposed in some private ritual, like taking a bath.

Hauck saw the blotch of sweat on her top, the shoulder strap off her shoulder, the wisp of honey-colored hair that had fallen across her eyes.

He couldn’t stand it anymore. It was like a fire blazing through him. Through the urgency of his nod. They didn’t say a thing, but something wordless and breathless was communicated between them.

“Karen…”

He was at her door the very second that it opened, pushing it wide, taking her and forcing her back inside the room and up against the wall before she whispered, “What the hell do you want from me, Ty?”

He pressed his mouth on hers, stifling any objection, tasting the sweetness of her breath. Karen pulled his shirt out in the same necessity, tugging at his shorts. He cupped his rough palm to the curve of skin underneath her leggings, heat radiating out of every pore, unable to stop himself.

Her chest heaved. “Jesus, Ty…”

He yanked down her leggings. Her skin was slick and sweaty from outside. He lifted her there, setting her straight against the weight of the high-backed rattan chair, hearing her murmur, her arms around his neck, lifting, until he was inside her, like two starved people ravaging for food, her legs straddling his thighs.

This time there was no softness, no tenderness. Only a yearning that rose up from deep within their core. She buried her face in his chest and rocked in his arms. He clung to her as tightly as he had ever held anything in his life. And when it was over, with a last, unembarrassed gasp, he continued to hold her, pressing her shape against his, and letting her drop easily into the big chair, Hauck leaning up against the wall, sliding to the floor, spent.

“So much for the conditions.” Karen groaned, brushing her damp hair out of her face.

“Didn’t work too well…” Hauck exhaled, raising a knee up off the floor.

“We could just leave,” he said to her. “We don’t have to wait around for him, Karen. I know there are things you want to hear from him, but the hell with it-all it’s going to do is hurt you, Karen, whichever way it falls. We could just leave. Let Charles go back to wherever the hell he wants to.”

Karen nodded. She forced a smile. “That doesn’t exactly sound very policelike, coming from you, Ty.”

“Maybe because I don’t feel very policelike. Maybe because for the first time in five years I feel whole. I’ve spent my entire goddamn life trying to do the right thing, and I’m scared-for once I’m scared-of what seeing him will do. What we’re doing here, Karen, this may be the biggest lie in the world. But whatever it is, it’s a lie I don’t want to end.”

“I don’t want to end it either, Ty.”

A sharp ringing cut her off. It came from the table where Karen’s bag was. Both sets of eyes flashed to it. She pulled her top over herself and ran and rummaged for her BlackBerry.

It was vibrating.

She looked up, anxious. “It’s him.”

Karen opened the message. “‘A boat will be at the St. James dock at eight A.M.,’” it read. “‘The captain’s name is Neville. He’ll take you to me. You alone, Karen. That’s the only way. No one else. Charles.’”

She came over and passed the phone to Hauck. He read it for himself. Inside, he felt everything slipping away.

“He’s my husband,” Karen said. She slid down next to him. “I’m sorry, Ty, I have to go.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Forty miles away Phil Dietz sipped a black cactus margarita in the Black Hat Bar in Tortola. There was a band playing Jimmy Buffett and Wyclef Jean, a throng of young people dancing, spilling beers, their carefree brains buzzing with rum. Dietz noticed a pretty gal in a low-cut halter sitting at the other end of the bar and thought, what the hell, he might just make a move as the evening developed, even if, by the looks, he had to pay. He’d earned it. He’d charge it off on Lennick’s account, he decided. Sort of a celebration, because tomorrow the fun was over. It was going to get native again.

He’d found his man.

It had been a breeze to track the itinerary of Karen Friedman. Lennick had alerted him. He knew that the fish had caught the line. If she was heading to the BVIs, it was likely she’d pass through San Juan, so he called with a question about the reservation. Airlines still gave out shit like that. Made his job easy. So he had Lenz, who had driven the hit car in Greenwich, but whose face was unknown to them, watching out for her in Tortola. He tracked the Island Air single-engine to St. Hubert ’s. There was only one place they could go there.

What he hadn’t planned on was the cop. Dietz knew this wasn’t exactly a lovers’ getaway. Charles wouldn’t be far behind.

He had led them there.

Whatever would happen next, that part was right up Dietz’s alley. Charles would show himself soon. He had Lenz installed at the club, keeping a watchful eye on them. Dietz had a small plane rented. The rest was routine. What they paid him for. The kinds of skills he’d honed his whole life.

Dietz took another sip of his drink. The girl with the boobs in the halter smiled his way. He grew aroused.

He knew he wasn’t exactly handsome. He was short and stocky and had military tattoos up and down his thick arms. But women always managed to notice him, and they were drawn to him in a hard-edged way.

He thought of the cop. He complicated things. If they knew about Dolphin, they might have found the old geezer in Pensacola. And if they had, coupled with Lauer, maybe it wasn’t as much of a fishing expedition down at his house as he’d thought.

Charles knew things. More than they could let him divulge. He had been sloppy, but the sloppiness was going to have to end.

Dietz scratched his mustache and pushed out his cigar. Time to pay up, Charles.

But in the meantime he had this little diversion. He took another look at the girl and finished off his drink. He flipped open his cell phone. One last call.

He dialed the number that was in his memory. A gravelly, accented voice picked up. Always play both ends against the middle, Dietz thought. He’d been told to give a progress report, stay in touch.

“Good news,” Dietz said, keeping an eye on the girl. “I think we’ve found him.”

“Excellent,” the voice replied. “Was it through the accounts?” The banks, the electronic transfers. The diamond merchant they had painstakingly tracked.

“No need,” Dietz said. “Ultimately, I found another way. His wife led us right to him.”

Dietz stood up and tossed a twenty on the bar. Tomorrow…tomorrow it was back to business. He’d take care of Hodges, too. But tonight…The girl was talking to a tall, blond surfer dude. He passed by a group of bone fishermen, bragging about their catch. When he got in front of her, she looked up.

“Where are you?” Dietz asked into the phone.

“Don’t you worry,” the brusque voice replied. “I’m around.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

The morning broke hazy and warm.

Karen woke early and ate a light breakfast in her room. She sat out on the balcony and sipped her coffee, watching the sun rise over the calm sea. Trying to settle her nerves. A flock of birds circled out by the reef, honking and diving for an early meal.

Around seven-thirty she saw a white launch pull up at the St. James’s dock. A captain jumped off. She stood and tried to relax her restless stomach. Here goes…

She put on a print sundress and a pair of espadrilles. She clipped her hair up off her neck and applied a touch of blush to her cheeks and gloss to her lips, just to make herself look pretty. Then she packed her bag, sun cream, lip balm, a couple of bottles of water. She took along some pictures of the kids she’d brought with her.

Downstairs, Ty was waiting on the walkway to the beach. He gave her a supportive wink. What else was there really to say?

“I have something for you,” he said, taking her under the loggia to a private spot where he sat her down in a wooden beach chair. He pressed a small disk into her palm. “It’s a high-powered GPS receiver. Hide it in your purse. That way I can find you. I want you to call me on the hour. Every hour. Just so I know you’re safe. You promise you’ll do that for me, Karen?”

“Ty, I’ll be fine. It’s Charles.”

“I want you to promise,” he said, not a question this time, more of a command.

“Okay.” She relented and smiled at him. “I promise.”

From his pocket Hauck took out something else-a dark, metal object, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand-that made her shudder. “I want you to take this along, too, Karen.”

“No.”

“I mean it, Karen.” He pressed it into her hand. “Just in case something happens. It’s a Beretta.22. The safety’s off. It may be nothing. But you don’t know what you’re walking into. You said it yourself-people have died. So take it. Please. Just in case.”

Karen gazed at the gun, her heart quickening. She tried to push it back. “Ty, please, it’s Charles…”

“It’s Charles,” he said, “and you have no idea what else you’re walking into. Take it, Karen. It’s not a request, it’s an order. You can give it back to me this afternoon.”

She stared at the gun, and it reminded her that no matter how she tried to play this, he was right-she was a little scared.

“I’m reluctant to bring it, ’cause I just might use it on him,” she chortled. But she tucked it into her bag.

“Karen, listen.” Ty lifted his shades. “I do love you. I think I have from that first day I came to your house. You know that. I don’t know what happens after this, between you and me. We’ll work that out. But now it’s my turn, and I want you to hear me clearly. You be careful, Karen. I want you to stay as public as you can. You don’t go anywhere with him-after. You don’t take any risks, you understand?”

“Yessir.” Karen nodded, a small smile creeping through the nerves.

“What the hell would you want me to say, Karen? I’m a cop.”

The captain of the boat, a black man of about thirty in surf shorts and a baseball cap, jumped off the launch. It was called the Sea Angel. He seemed to be checking his watch.

Karen said, “I think I have to go.”

She leaned close to him, and he hugged her. She gave him a kiss on his cheek and squeezed him tightly. “Don’t worry about me, Ty.” She stood up and did her best to smile. “It’s Charlie. We’ll probably be drinking a beer in some café by ten.”

She hurried toward the dock, turning once and waving, her heart pounding all the same. Ty came out and followed her a few steps over the sand, a wave back. Then she ran up the dock to the Sea Angel’s captain, an affable-looking man. “You’re Neville?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He took her bag from her. “We should be heading out.” He noticed Ty, taking a step or two toward them. “He said just you, ma’am. Just you or we don’t go.”

Karen took his hand and jumped aboard. “It is just me. Go where?”

Neville stepped aboard, tossing the bowline back onto the dock. “He said you would know.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

She did know. Somewhere deep in her heart. It came to her on the water, the islands growing familiar. With a rising anticipation in her blood.

They headed west. As they cleared the reef, the twin-engine launch picked up speed. Karen went to the back of the boat. She waved at Hauck, who had come out onto the pier. A minute later the boat skidded around a bend, and he disappeared.

She was in Charlie’s hands now.

It was a beautiful ride. Lots of white-beached islands, small, uninhabited slivers of sand and palms. The water was a soft green-blue, dotted with whitecaps. The sun beat down on them, clear and warm. The craft kicked speedily over the waves, leaving a wide wake, the captain clearly at home in the local waters. Karen’s hair whipped in the salty breeze.

“Do you know Charles?” she shouted to Neville over the loud engines.

“You mean Mr. Hanson?” he said. “Yes. I man his boat.”

“This one?”

“No, ma’am.” Neville grinned broadly, as if amused. “Not at all.”

The boat passed inhabited beaches. A few towns tucked into coves. Places they had been to. All of a sudden, she knew why Charles had asked her to come here. Once in a while, they shot past a beautiful yacht in the open sea. Or little fishing skiffs, manned by shirtless fishermen. Once Neville grinned and pointed out toward the horizon. “Sailfish.”

Whatever agitation Karen felt, it began to ease.

The ride took fifty minutes. The launch started to come closer to tiny, uninhabited islands.

Suddenly she realized that Neville had been right. A bizarre familiarity began to overtake her. Karen recognized a beach restaurant they had once pulled into-no more than a large thatched hut with an open-kettle grill, where they had had lobsters and chicken. A few small boats moored there. Farther along, a lighthouse she remembered, striped blue and white. The name came back to Karen.

Bertram’s Cay.

Now she knew where he was taking her. A last gulf of open blue sea and she saw it.

Her heart expanded.

The isolated cove where they’d once sailed, where the two of them had anchored. She thought of Charlie and his floppy hair and Ray-Bans at the helm. They had to swim into the beach, brought a basket of food and some beer, lay around like beach-combers on the fine white sand, protected by wavy palms.

Their own personal cove. What had they called it? The Never Mind Lagoon.

Where the hell did Charlie and Karen go? everyone would ask.

Karen went up to the bow as the boat slowed, and she shielded her eyes. Pulse quickening, she scanned the small horseshoe beach. Neville guided the launch, which must have drawn around three feet, to within a few yards of the beach.

It looked the same. Just as when they’d discovered it eight years earlier. There was a yellow inflatable raft drawn up on the sand. Karen’s heart beat faster. She looked around. She didn’t see anybody. Just heard a caw-a few gulls and pelicans hovering above the trees.

Charlie…

She didn’t know what she was feeling. She didn’t know what her reaction might be. Karen took off her sandals, crept up on the bow, steadying herself on the railing. She glanced back at Neville, and he gave her a cautioning hand to wait as he coasted in a little closer and came around sideways. Then he nodded for her to go. Now…

Karen jumped off, her bag strapped around her shoulder. The water was warm and foamy, coming halfway up her thighs, soaking the bottom of her dress. She waded in to the beach. She didn’t see anybody there. She turned around to look as Neville started to back the Sea Angel away from the shore. He waved to her. Karen spun around again and for the first time actually began to feel afraid.

She was alone. On this totally deserted strip. Hardly even on a map.

What if he never even came for her?

She realized she had not called Ty. Stay in a public place, he had insisted. Public? This was the most deserted spot in the whole fucking world.

Karen stepped tentatively up the low dune. The morning sun had baked the sand, and it felt warm and fine underneath her bare feet. There was no sound, only some chirping from the trees and the soft lapping of the tide.

She went to grab her phone from her bag as a tiny tingling of fear rippled on the surface of her skin.

She heard the brush move and then his voice before she saw his shape.

Soft, eerily familiar. It sliced through her.

“Karen.”

She felt her chest tighten, and she turned.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

Like a ghost, Charles stepped out of the thick, close brush.

Karen’s heart came to a stop.

There was a strange tentative smile on his lips. He looked at her and took off his sunglasses. “Hello, baby.”

A knifepoint of shock stabbed through her. “Charles…?”

Staring back at her, he nodded.

Karen’s hand shot to her mouth. She didn’t know what to do at first. Her breath was stolen away. She just stared. He looked different. Completely changed. She might not have recognized him if she’d passed him on the street. He had on a khaki baseball cap, but underneath Karen could see that his hair was virtually shaved. He had a stubbly growth over his cheeks, his eyes hidden. His body looked leaner, more built. And tanned. He wore pink and green floral beach trunks, water sandals, and a white tee. She couldn’t tell if he looked older or younger. Just different.

“Charles?”

He stepped toward her. “Hello, Karen.”

She stepped back. She didn’t know quite what to feel. She was a jumble of confused emotions, suddenly seeing the man with whom she had shared every joy and important moment in her adult life, whom she had mourned as dead, and feeling the disgust that now burned in her for the stranger who had abandoned her and their children. She felt herself rear back. Just hearing his voice. The voice of someone she had buried. Her husband.

Then he stopped. Reflexively, she took a couple of awkward steps to narrow the distance. His gaze was tentative, uneasy. She stared through him like an X-ray. “You look so different, Charles.”

“Comes with the territory,” he shrugged, a thin, wiry smile.

“I bet it does. Nice touch, Charles, this spot.” Continuing to walk toward him, absorbing the sight of him, like sharp, uncomfortable light slowly settling into shade.

He winked. “I thought you’d like that.”

“Yeah.” Karen stepped closer. “You always had a good antenna for irony, didn’t you, Charles? You sure outdid yourself here.”

“Karen”-his complexion changed-“I am so sorry…”

“Don’t!” She shook her head. “Don’t you say that, Charles.” Her blood was hot now, the shock over. The truth came back to her, why she was here. “Don’t you tell me you’re sorry, Charles. You don’t understand where sorry even begins.” A powerful current of anger and disbelief roared through her. She felt her fists close. Charles nodded, accepting the blow, removing his sunglasses. Karen stared, teeth clenched, narrowing her gaze into his familiar gray eyes.

She slapped him. Hard, across the face. He flinched, taking a step backward, but didn’t cover up.

Karen hit him again-harder, confusion boiling over into unleashed rage. “How could you? Goddamn you, Charles! How can you be standing here in front of me?” She raised her hand and struck him again. This time in the chest, with her fist, sending him reeling back. “Goddamn you to hell, Charles! How could you do this to me? To us? To Alex and Sam, Charles, your family. It killed us. You took a part of us with you, Charles. We can never get that back. But you, you’re here… You’ll never know. We mourned you, Charles, as deep as if it were a part of ourselves that had died.” She pounded his chest again, tears of anger glistening in her eyes, Charles now deflecting the blows, which continued to rain on him, but not moving away. “We cried for you every day for a goddamn year. We lit candles in your memory. How can you be standing here, Charles?”

“I know, Karen,” he said, bowing his head. “I know.”

“No, you don’t know, Charles.” She glared. “You have no fucking idea what it is you’ve stolen from us. From Sam and Alex, Charles. And for what? But I know. I know exactly what you’ve done. I know what a lie you’ve lived. I know what you’ve kept from me. Dolphin. Falcon. Those tankers, Charles. That old guy in Pensacola…”

His eyes fixed on her. “Who have you been talking to, Karen?”

She hit him again. “Go to hell, Charles. Is that what you want from me here? You want me to tell you what I know?”

Finally he caught her arm, his fingers wrapping around her wrist.

“You say you know! You don’t, Karen. You’ve got to listen to me and hear me out. I never meant to hurt you like this. God knows, in a million years, I never meant for you to find out. Whatever I did, I did it to save you, Karen. All of you. I know how you must hate me. I know what it must feel like for you to see me here. But you have to do one thing for me, Karen. Please, just hear me out. Because whatever I did, and why I’m standing here now, taking my life in my hands, I did for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes, for you, Karen. And the kids.”

“All right, Charles.” Karen sniffed back tears. They moved out of the sun, near the brush. They sat down in the sand, cooler there. “You’ve always been able to charm me, haven’t you, Charlie? Let me hear your best shot at the truth.”

He swallowed. “You say you know what I’ve done. The offshore trading, Falcon, Dolphin Oil…It’s all true. I’m guilty of all of it. I ran money for years I never told you about, Karen. I ran into some problems. Liquidity problems. Big ones, Karen. I had to cover myself. I panicked. I concocted this elaborate fraud.”

“Those empty tankers…You were falsifying oil.”

Charles nodded and sucked in a breath. “I needed to. My reserves were so low, if the banks found out, they would call in my loan agreements. I was leveraged up eight to one, Karen. I had to create collateral. Yes.”

“Why, Charlie, why? Why did you have to do these things? Didn’t I love you enough, Charlie? Wasn’t I there for you? Didn’t we have a good enough life together? The kids…”

“It was never that, Karen. It had nothing to do with you.” He shook his head. “You remember years ago when I got overleveraged and Harbor was about to go under?”

Karen nodded.

“We would have been totally underwater. I would have had nothing, Karen. I would have ended up on some trading desk again, with my tail between my legs, trying to work myself back. I would’ve spent years paying off that debt. But it all came at a price, Karen.”

“A price?”

“Yeah.” He told her about the funds he’d been overseeing. “Not the birdshit little accounts I had at Harbor.” The private partnerships. Falcon. Managed offshore. “Billions, Karen.”

“But it was dirty money, Charles. You’re a money launderer. Why don’t you call it what it is? Who did this to you, Charles?”

“I’m not a money launderer, Karen. You don’t understand-you don’t judge these kinds of funds. You run them. You manage the money. That’s what I do, Karen. It was our way out. And I took it, Karen, for the past ten goddamn years. I didn’t know where the hell it all came from or who they fucking robbed or stole it from. Just that it was there. And you know what? I didn’t care. They were accounts to me. I invested for them. It was the same, the same as the Levinsons and the Coumiers and Smith fucking Barney. I’ve never even met these people, Karen. Saul found it all for me. And what do you think, there aren’t others? There aren’t people doing this every day, respected people who come home every night and toss the ball with the kids, and watch ER, and take their wives to the Met. People like me! It’s out there, Karen. Drug financiers, mobsters, people siphoning off their country’s oil pipelines. So I grabbed it. Like anyone else would have. It was our way out. I’ve never laundered a penny, Karen. I just managed their accounts.”

Karen looked at him-like a laser, looked through him. The truth, like some haze in the sky, melting away. “You didn’t just manage their accounts, Charlie. That sounds so good, doesn’t it? But you’re wrong. I know… This is what Jonathan Lauer wanted me to know, Charlie. After you so conveniently ‘died.’ But now he’s dead, Charlie. For real. He’s not coming back on some island. Like you…He was set to testify at some hearing a few weeks back, but he was killed, run over, just like that innocent boy in Greenwich, Charlie.”

Charles averted his face.

“The one you went to see, Charlie, after Grand Central, when you stole that person’s identity. The kid you helped kill, Charlie. Or did kill for all I know. I have no fucking idea.

“What was he going to do, Charlie, turn you in? Blow your little scam out of the water? You’re not some money launderer-you’re a whole lot worse, Charlie. These people, they’re not coming back. Not to mention how many thousands were ruined or murdered in the name of all this money you so sacredly invested. Oh, Charlie…what the hell did you do? How did you lose your way? This was your big way out, right, baby…? Well, look at you! Look at what the hell it’s done.”

Charles stared at her, eyes pleading. He shook his head and moistened his dry lips. “I didn’t do that, Karen. What you think. I swear. You can hate me if you want, just hate me for the things I’ve done.” He took off his cap and ran his hand over his shaved scalp. “I didn’t kill that boy, Karen. No matter what you think. I went up there to try to save him.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

“Save him?” A surge of anger flared up in Karen. “Like you were going to save me, Charlie?”

“I went there to stop him, Karen! I knew what they were threatening to do.”

“Who, Charles?” Karen shook her head in frustration. “Tell me who?”

“I can’t spell it out for you, Karen. I don’t even want you to goddamn know.” Charles’s face dimmed, and he drew in a harried breath and puffed his cheeks, slowly exhaling. “I had met with him once before. Near his shop. I tried to persuade him to convince his bullheaded father to simply let things go. If it got out, what we were doing with the tankers, it could unravel everything. You don’t have a fucking clue where it would go. So I went there. Back to Greenwich. After the bombing. I was totally rattled. Part of me saw this as a chance to simply disappear. I should’ve died there anyway. These people had threatened me, Karen. You have no idea. Another part of me just wanted to make this whole thing go away.

“So I called him. Raymond. To come and meet me. I rang him from across the street, using the dead guy’s name. And I sat there, in that goddamn booth, not knowing what I was going to do or what I was going to say. Just thinking, this whole thing has to end. Now. These people are bad. I can’t have this poor kid’s blood on my hands.

“And then I saw it.” Charles looked through her, staring blankly. “I saw that kid through the goddamn window, coming toward me, crossing the street, flipping open his phone… I saw the car, a black SUV, coming down the Post Road parallel to him, picking up speed.

“The vehicle veered around the corner. The kid, these locks of red hair in a ponytail, realizing what was about to happen. That moment I knew that the door had closed for me, Karen. I had lost all that money. Falsified my reserves. These bastards wanted blood. And now I had this kid’s blood on my hands.” He looked at her. “You have to see it, Karen, I was at risk. You were at risk, the kids… There was no turning things back for me. I wasn’t going to spend ten years in jail. I might as well have perished in that train. So I did.”

“For what, Charles? To protect those monsters?”

“You don’t understand.” He shook his head at her. “I lost over half a billion dollars, Karen! Every day I watched, having to cover my long contracts, the spread between my position growing larger. Our life sliding away. I crashed through my reserves. I could no longer cover my loans. They were going to kill me, Karen. I needed to hold them off. So I started to fake things. I had these goddamn tankers crisscrossing the fucking globe- Indonesia, Jamaica, Pensacola… All empty! And this goddamn bullheaded fool in Pensacola who wouldn’t go away…”

Karen touched his arm. He flinched slightly. “You could have told me, Charles. I was your wife. We were a family. You could have shared this with me.”

“How could I share it with you, Karen? They sent me Christmas cards with the kids’ faces cut out. Would you have liked me to share that? They killed Sasha. They sent me this note saying the kids were next. How about that, Karen? These kinds of people, you don’t just send them out a report promising you’re going to make it up next quarter. Our home, that fancy life of ours-it all came at a price, Karen. Should I have shared that? Who I was? What I did? These people are killers, Karen. That’s the deal I made.”

“The deal you made? Goddamn it, Charlie, look at it now. Look at us. Are you happy with it?”

Charles drew in a deep, painful breath. “You know, I thought about leaving a hundred times. Taking us all. I even went as far as to get us passports. Fake ones. You remember, when I had us all take pictures? I said they were for visas to Europe, a trip we never took?”

Karen blinked, biting back tears. “Oh, Charlie…”

“So tell me,” Charlie went on, “should I have come to you, Karen? Is that the life you would have wanted? If I told you what I was and what we had to do, uprooting the kids, you, in days. Taking them out of school in the dark, away from everything they knew. Put all of you at risk. Made you all a part of this, too. What would you have said to me, Karen? Tell me, honey, would you have gone along?”

Charles looked at her, his gaze reflecting a shattered ray of understanding, answering the question for her. “These people have the means to track anyone, Karen. You would always have been at risk, the children… When the bombing occurred, it was almost like a gift. The answer suddenly seemed so clear. I know you can’t see it like that. I know you think there were ways I could have dealt with this, and maybe there were. But not one that was safer, Karen. Not for you.”

“But it hasn’t been safe for us, Charlie.” Harried, she told him about the visit of the people from Archer that first scared her, then the man who accosted Sam in her car. And recently how she’d been sent that brochure from Tufts, where Sam was going to go, with the words We’re still here. They keep demanding all that money.”

“Just who have you been talking to, Karen?”

“No one, Charlie. This detective who’s been helping me. Saul. That’s all.”

Charlie’s jaw went tight. He took her hand. “How did you find out about me here? How did you first know I was alive?”

“I saw your face, Charlie!” Karen’s eyes shone moist and wide, and she looked at him, fighting back a rush of tears.

“My face…?”

“Yes.” She told him about the documentary. How for a year she’d grieved for him, kept the parts of his life intact that she couldn’t put away, tried to heal the hole in her heart. “You don’t know what it was like, Charlie.” And then the documentary, on the anniversary. How she forced herself to watch but it was too much, and she went to shut it off.

And then the instantaneous flash of him. On the street. After the explosion. Looking away from the camera. “I saw you. Rushing by, in the crowd. I must have watched it a thousand times. But it was you. Impossible as it was for me to believe. I knew you were alive.”

Charles leaned back, his palms outstretched behind him. He chuckled, almost amusedly at first, in disbelief. Their lives, separated by death, crossing in a captured moment, despite a thousand precautions. “You saw me.”

“I didn’t know what to do. I was going crazy, Charlie. I didn’t tell the kids. How could I, Charles? They love you. They would die.”

Moistening his lips, he nodded.

“Then I found your safe-deposit box.”

His eyes grew wide.

“The one with your other passport, Charlie. In a different name. And all that money.”

“You found it how?”

Karen told him about the framed note sheet she’d received. From after the blast. Someone had found it at Grand Central. With all that scribbling on it. “Part of it was the information on the box. I had nothing else to go on, Charlie.”

Charles looked back at her. His face in shock. Almost ashen. A notepad. That had led her to him. Something that hadn’t been destroyed in the blast. Then he stiffened. His eyes grew hooded and dark. He squeezed her hand, but this time there was a coldness there, the pressure firmer than just support.

“Who else knows about this, Karen?”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

Anxious, Hauck decided to take a run, leaving the hotel’s grounds and heading up along the coast road in a steady jog. He had to do something. Sitting around watching the GPS, letting his mind wander to inescapable conclusions, he was going insane.

The GPS had stopped a while back. Fixed. 18.50° N, 68.53° W. Some tiny sand reef in the middle of the Caribbean. Twenty miles away. About the least public place she could be. He had told her to call him and let him know she was going in.

That had been two hours ago.

In his job Hauck had been partnered on dozens of stakeouts and surveillances. Waited anxiously in cars while partners put themselves on the line. It was always better to be the one to go in himself. Still, he had never felt so helpless or responsible as he did now. He ran up the long, unevenly paved road that traveled the circumference of the tiny island. He had to do something.

Move.

His strong thighs picked up the pace. There was a large rise that loomed in front of him, green with vegetation and sharply ascending, jutting out of the sea. Hauck headed up the hill toward it, his heart rate rising, a sheen of sweat matting the back of his T-shirt, building up on his skin. The sun baked down on him. Whatever breeze there was remained on the beach.

Every once in a while, he stopped and checked the screen of the GPS, which he had strapped to his waist. Still 18.50 and 68.53 degrees. Still at the same spot. Still no word. It was going on two hours now. He had tried to call. Just her recording. Maybe there was no signal where she was. What could he do, set out in a boat after her? He had given her his word.

So he ran. The seascapes were beautiful, vistas of wide-open stretches of green-blue water, a few verdant knolls rising precipitously from the beaches, an occasional white boat dotting the sea, the hazy outline of a distant island on the horizon.

But Hauck wasn’t absorbing all that. He was angry at himself for letting her go. For succumbing. The muscles in his thighs burned as the topography rose. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his waist as sweat coated his skin. C’mon, Karen, call… Call! His lungs grew tight.

Another hundred yards…

Finally he reached the top of the rise. Hauck pulled to a stop, doubled over, feeling angry, helpless, responsible.

He shouted out to no one, “Goddamn it!”

He doused himself with water. He seemed to be at the highest point. He looked back in the direction he had come from and saw the resort, tiny, far off, seemingly miles away.

Something caught his attention out on the sea.

Off the opposite side of the island. Hauck put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun.

It was a huge black ship. A sailing vessel. Like something he’d never seen before. Vast-it must have been as long as a football field, ultramodern, with three gleaming, metallic masts reflecting the sun. He was mesmerized.

He reached into his pouch and took out the binoculars he’d brought along. He looked out at the water and zeroed in.

Spectacular. Sleek and sparkling black. The name was on the stern. He focused.

The Black Bear.

The boat filled Hauck with awe, but also with a sense of unrest. From the edges of his memory, he knew he had seen it somewhere before.

He took out his cell phone and snapped a picture.

He had seen it-he tried to recall.

He just couldn’t place where.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

“Listen, Charles, this is important.” Karen reached out and touched his arm. “We’re not the only people who know you’re alive.”

He ruffled his brow. “‘We’?”

She nodded. “Yes, ‘we.’” Karen told him about Hauck. “He’s a detective. From Greenwich. He was trying to solve the Raymond hit-and-run that happened the same day. The boy had your name and number in his pocket. He looked after me a bit in the days when we weren’t sure if you had died. Then all these crazy things began to happen.”

“What kinds of crazy things?”

“People were suddenly trying to find you, Charles. Or at least all that money. I told you, they were talking about millions. They were coming to the house. Then they threatened Samantha. At school. I didn’t know who else to turn to, Charles.”

He looked concerned. “People as in who, Karen?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t find out. The police, or Saul. But that doesn’t really matter now. What does matter is, this detective, Hauck, he found out. Listen, Charles, they seem to be looking for you, too. Not just for the money. You! They’re tracing you through these bank accounts down here. This person, his name is Dietz… Do you know him?”

“Dietz?” Charles shook his head.

“He was a part of the Raymond hit-and-run. He was a witness, in Greenwich. But the thing is, he was also there at Jonathan Lauer’s, too! They were both arranged hits, Charles. Not accidents. But you know that, don’t you? You know what they were trying to protect. And now I think they’re down here, Charles, trying to find you. They somehow know, Charles. You’re in danger.”

Charles pushed up his cap and massaged his brow, as though running back in his mind through a series of events, and the conclusion he seemed to come to alarmed him. “They know about the fees,” he said, looking at her glumly.

“What fees, Charles?”

“A lot of money, Karen. Money I earned,” he said, “I didn’t steal. One and a quarter percent, on a couple of billion dollars. Accumulating over the past eight years. I always kept it offshore. It was for our island,” he said. “Remember? We’re talking over sixty million dollars, Karen.”

Karen’s eyes grew wide.

“I never cared about the money, Charlie. I never cared about your stupid island. That was never going to happen. That was just our stupid dream.” She looked at him. “What I cared about was you, Charlie. I cared about us, our family. These people are onto you. They can trace you, as I did. What are you going to do, Charlie, run from them the rest of your life?”

He hung his head, ran a troubled hand across his scalp. A wistful smile appeared in his gray eyes. “You know I came back once, Karen. Sam’s graduation. I looked up the date on the school’s Web site.”

“You were there?”

He nodded fondly. “In a way. I took a car up and watched you come out after the ceremony from across the street. You had on a short yellow dress. Sam had a flower in her ear. I saw my folks there. Alex…He’s gotten so tall…”

“You were there!” Karen felt a pang grab at her heart. “Oh, Charlie, how long can you let this mess keep going on?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said. Then, “Tell, me”-his eyes brightening-“how’s his lacrosse?”

“His lacrosse?” Tears of confusion formed in her eyes. “I don’t know, Charlie, he’s second string, attack. He’s on the bench mostly. Sam had a good year, though. She scored the winning goal against Greenwich Academy. She-” Then she caught herself. “Oh, Charlie, why are we doing this? You want to know how it was? It was hard, Charlie. It was fucking hard. Do you know how they would feel if they could see you here now? It would kill them, Charlie. Sam, Alex-they would die.”

“Karen…”

Some strange force impelled her, and she leaned toward him, Charlie scared and confused, and they both took the other into their arms. It felt so strange, to have his arms wrapped around her. So familiar, yet so awkward. Like a ghost. “It’s been hell, Charlie. First with you gone, then…You hurt me so.” She pulled away, something between pain and accusation flashing in her eyes. “I can’t forgive you, Charlie. I’m not sure I ever will. We had a fucking life, Charles!”

“I know it’s been hard, Karen.” He nodded, swallowing. “I know what I’ve done.”

Karen sniffled back some tears and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands. “No,” she said, “no, you don’t know. You don’t even have a clue what you’ve done.”

He looked at her. For the first time, he seemed to look her over. Her face. Her figure. How she looked in her dress. A faint smile came to his eyes. “You still look good, Karen.”

“Yeah, and you don’t wear glasses anymore?”

“Lasik.” He shrugged. “Occupational necessity.”

She smiled. “Finally drummed up the nerve, huh?”

“You got me.”

Karen’s smile broadened, a ray of sun reflecting brightly off her freckles.

“I want you to be happy, Karen. I want you to move on. Learn to love somebody. You ought to have happiness in your life.”

“Yeah, well, you picked a wonderful time to suddenly have all this concern for me, Charlie.”

He smiled ruefully.

“Listen, Charlie, it doesn’t have to be like this. You can turn yourself in. This detective, Hauck, he’s here with me now, Charlie.”

Charles looked concerned.

“You can trust him, Charlie. I promise. He’s my friend. He’s not here to bring you in. You can explain what you did. You didn’t kill anyone. You falsified collateral, Charlie. You lied. You can give back the money. Pay a fine. Even if you have to spend time in jail, you can get back your life. The kids, they deserve their father, Charlie. Even if we can’t go back the same, they’ll forgive you. They will. You can do this, Charlie.”

“No.” He shook his head weakly. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can. I know you, Charlie.”

“I can’t do it, Karen. I’ll be in jail for twenty years. I can’t. Besides, I’d never be safe. Nor would you. This is better, whatever it seems.” He looked at her and smiled. “And just to be honest, Karen, neither of us would want to explain this to the kids.”

“They would want their father, Charlie.” She drew in a breath. “What are you going to do, run for the rest of your life?”

“No.” He shook his head. Then a light of understanding seemed to go on in his eyes. “Listen, there are some things, Karen. You say these people are looking for me. If anything happens to me, I have these safe-deposit boxes, in different places around. St. Kitts. Panama. Tortola…”

“I don’t want your money, Charles. What I want is for you to-”

“Ssshh…” He took her hand and stopped her. Squeezed. “You still have the Mustang, don’t you?”

“Of course I have it, Charlie. That’s what you said. In your will.”

“Good. There are things you’ll want to know. Important things, Karen. If anything should happen to me. The truth. The truth has always been right inside my heart. You understand that, Karen. Promise me you’ll look. It’ll explain a lot of things.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Charlie? You have to come in with me. You can testify against these people. You can go into custody if you have to. But they’re going to find you, Charlie. You just can’t keep running.”

“I’m not going to keep running, Karen.”

“What do you mean?”

He glanced at his watch. “It’s time to be getting back. I’ll think about what you said. No promises.” He got up, looked out at the water, and waved. On the Sea Angel, Neville signaled back. Karen heard the engine start. Farther out, a larger craft had come into view from around the bend. “That one’s mine,” Charlie pointed. “Pretty much my home for the past year. Check it out on the way back. You might get a kick out of the name.”

Karen’s heart kicked up, worried, as she watched her launch putter in. She was positive there was something she had failed to say.

“Promise me about the car.”

“Promise you what, Charlie?”

“You’ll need to get in.” He took her by the shoulders and put a hand softly to her cheek. “I always thought you were beautiful, Karen. The most beautiful thing in the world. Except for maybe the color of my baby’s eyes.”

“Charlie, I can’t just leave you here.”

He took a glance up at the sky. “You have to leave me, Karen.”

Neville coasted the Sea Angel back in near the shore. Charles took Karen by the arm, led her into the warm cove water. She went ahead, wading into the lapping surf, reaching for the bow. Grinning, Neville pulled her up onboard. She turned back to Charlie. The small boat began to move away. She looked at him standing on the shore. A wave of sadness swept over her. She felt she was leaving something there, a part of herself. He looked so lonely. She was sure she was seeing him for the last time.

“Charlie!” she called out over the engine.

“I’ll think it over.” He waved. “I promise. If I change my mind, I’ll send Neville back for you tomorrow.” He took a step into the shallow water and waved again. “The Mustang, Karen…”

Then he flipped his dark Ray-Bans down over his eyes.

Karen held on to the railing as the Sea Angel’s twin engines kicked up, creating a wake. Neville backed the craft around, and Karen ran to the stern as the boat picked up speed, the sight of Charlie on the beach growing smaller. He waved to her one last time. Karen finally gave herself over to the urge to cry. “I did miss you,” she said softly. “I did miss you so much, Charlie.”

As the Sea Angel sped away from the cove, it passed within close distance of Charlie’s boat-larger, the kind he’d always dreamed of, heading in. As they drew near, Karen was able to make out the name, written in an ornate gold script on the wooden hull.

Emberglow.

It almost made her laugh, as warm, fond tears welled in her eyes. She took out her cell phone and framed a shot to remember, not knowing what she would do with it, or who she would ever show it to.

Karen never noticed the small plane circling high in the sky above her.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

Karen didn’t arrive back at the hotel until well into the afternoon. Hauck was in his room by then, seated in a cane chair, his feet propped on the bed, going over some work to distract himself. His worst fears had faded. Karen had called in as soon as she hit open water to let him know she was all right. She sounded vague, even a bit distant emotionally, but she told him she would say more about it when she got to the hotel.

There was a knock on his door.

“It’s open,” he said.

Karen stepped into the room. She looked a little weary and conflicted. Her hair was tousled, out of place. She dropped the bag she was carrying onto the table by the door.

He asked, “So how did it go?”

She tried to smile. “How did it go?” She could read it-anyone could read it, what he was really asking. Had anything changed?

“Here,” she said, placing the gun he’d given her on the table by the bed. “He didn’t kill those people, Ty. He committed fraud with those tankers to cover up his losses, and he admitted he went up to Greenwich after the bombing like you said-with that man’s ID. To meet with Raymond, Ty, not to kill him. To try to get him once and for all to convince his father to stop.”

Hauck nodded.

She sat down across from him on the edge of the bed. “I believe him, Ty. He said he saw the whole thing happen and that he realized there was no turning back. These people had threatened him. I showed you that Christmas card. The note about what they did to our dog. He thought he was saving us, Ty, however it sounds. But everything he said-it fits.”

“What fits is that he’s up to his ankles in a shitload of trouble, Karen.”

“He knows that, too. I tried to get him to come in. I even told him about you. I told him he hadn’t killed anyone, that all he’d done was commit fraud, that he could give back the money, pay a fine, do some time, whatever anyone would want. Testify.”

“And…?”

“And he said he’d think about it. But I’m not sure. He’s scared. Scared to face what he’s done. To face our family. I think it’s just easier to run. When the boat pulled away, he waved. I have the feeling that was his answer. I don’t think I’ll see him anymore.”

Hauck drew his legs back, tossed his papers on the table. “Do you want him to come back, Karen?”

“Do I want him back?” She looked at him and shook her head, eyes glazing. “Not the way you’re thinking, Ty. It’s over between us like that. I could never go back. Nor could he. But I realized something there. Seeing him, hearing him…”

“What’s that?”

“My children. They deserve the truth. They deserve their father, whatever he’s done, as long as he’s alive.”

Hauck nodded. He understood that. He had Jessie. Whatever he’d done. He drew a breath.

Karen looked at him, aching. “You know how hard it was for me to do that, Ty?”

Something held him back. “Yeah, I know.”

“To see him.” Her eyes filled up. “To see my husband, in front of me again. To hear him out. After what he’s done…”

“I know how it was, Karen.”

“How? How was it, Ty?”

“What is it you want me to do, Karen?”

“I want you to hold me, goddamn it! I want you to tell me I did the right thing. Don’t you see that?” She let her hand fall to his leg. “Anyway, I realized something else out there as well.”

“What was that?”

She got up and sat down on his lap. “I realized I do love you, Ty. Not something close.” She smiled, sniffing back a tear. “The whole shebang.”

“Shebang?”

“Yeah.” Karen nodded and drew herself close across his chest. “Shebang.”

He wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her face against his shoulder. He realized she was crying. She couldn’t help herself. He held her, feeling her warm body and the lift in his own heart as hers beat steadily against him. The dampness of a few warm tears pressed against his neck.

“I do,” she whispered, cuddling against him. “Impossible as that may seem.”

He shrugged, bringing her face gently against his chest. “Not so impossible.”

“Yes it is. Totally frigging impossible. You don’t think I can read you, mister? Like an open book.” Then she pulled away. “But I can’t let him simply disappear again. I want to bring him home to the kids. Whatever he’s done. Their father’s alive.”

Hauck wiped a bead of moisture from her freckled cheek with his thumb. “We’ll find a way,” he said. “We will.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips, rested her forehead against his. “Thank you, Ty.”

“Not so impossible to me,” he said again. “Of course, for the kids maybe…”

“Oh, man!” Karen shook her head, brushing a wave of hair out of her face. “Am I gonna have a bunch to explain when they get back or what?”

THAT NIGHT THEY stayed together in his room. They didn’t make love. They just lay there, his arm around her waist, her body tucked closely to him, the shadow of her husband hovering ominously, like a front coming in across the sea, over their calm.

Around one, Hauck got up. Karen lay curled on the bed, sleeping heavily. He drew the covers off and pulled on his shorts and stepped over to the window, looking out at the moonlit sea. Something gnawed at him.

The Black Bear.

The boat he’d seen. It was in his sleep. His dreams. A dark presence. And it had come to him in his dream, where he had seen it before.

Dietz’s office. A photo pinned there.

Dietz’s arms wrapped around the shoulders of a couple of cronies, a sailfish dangling between them.

Dietz had been on it.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

Charles Friedman sat alone on the Emberglow, which was now moored offshore near Gavin’s Cay. The night was quiet. His legs rested up on the gunnels, and he was halfway through a bottle of Pyrat xo Reserve rum that was trying to help him make up his mind.

He should just take off. Tonight. What Karen had told him, about people on his tail, worried him. He had a house he’d bought, on Bocas del Toro, up in Panama. No one knew about that. No one would trace him there. Then from there maybe on to the Pacific if he had to…

The way she had looked at him. What are you going to do, Charles, run the rest of your life…

He shouldn’t involve them now.

Yet a new stirring rose up in him. The stirring of who he was, who he’d been. Seeing Karen had awakened it. Not for her-that part was over. He’d never again regain her trust. And didn’t deserve it. That, he knew.

But for the children. Alex and Sam.

Her words echoed: They’ll forgive you, Charles…

Would they?

He thought back to the sight of them leaving the graduation. How hard it was just to look, aching, and then drive on. How deeply the sight of them burned in his memory, and the longing in his blood. It would be nice to reclaim his life. Was that a fantasy? Was it just a drunken hope? To seize it back, no matter what the cost. Who he was. From these people.

Why do they get to win?

What had he done? He hadn’t killed anyone. He could explain. Serve time. Pay back his debt. Steal back his life.

Seeing what he’d lost made Charles realize just how sorry he was to have let it go.

Neville was on shore. At a sailors’ party. In the morning they were supposed to head to Barbados. There he would leave the boat, fly to Panama.

Seeing her had suddenly made things hard.

A year ago he’d had a similar choice to make. He had watched the boy get killed. Run over in front of his eyes. Watched in horror as the black SUV drove away. Something inside told him there that he could never turn back. That that world was closed to him. The grave already dug. So why not use it? For a moment he’d given some thought to calling a car. Directing the driver to head up the Post Road. To his town-Old Greenwich. Then down Soundview onto Shore-in the direction of the water. Home… Karen would be there. She’d be worried, panicked, hearing word of the bombing. After he hadn’t called. He would say he’d been confused. Confess everything to her. Dolphin. Falcon. No one would have to know where he’d been. That was where he belonged.

Instead he had run.

The question continued to stab at him. Why do they get to win?

The image of Sam and Alex shone in Charles’s mind with the answer: They don’t. He thought of the joy he’d felt with Karen, just hearing her speak the sound of his own name.

They don’t. Charles put down the rum. The answer suddenly clear in his head.

He ran below. He found his cell phone in his cabin and left a detailed message for Neville, telling him just what he needed him to do. The words kept ringing: They don’t. He went to the small pull-out counter he used as a desk, switched on his laptop. He scrolled to Karen’s e-mail address and typed out the quick, heart-felt words.

He read it over. Yes. He felt lifted. He felt alive in his own body again for the first time in a year. They don’t. He thought of seeing her again. Holding his kids again. He could reclaim his life.

He pressed send.

A noise came to him from up on deck, like a boat tying up. Neville, back from his reveling. Charles called out the captain’s name. Excited, he headed up to the deck. His heart was racing. He ran out from under the bridge. “Change of plans-”

Instead he stood facing two men. One was tall, lanky, in a beach shirt and shorts, holding a gun. The other was shorter, barrel-chested, with a small mustache.

Both were looking very satisfied, as if a long search had ended and they were staring at a prize they’d waited to see for a long time. The man with the mustache wore a grin.

“Hello, Charles.”

CHAPTER NINETY

“Ty, wake up! Look!” Karen stood at the side of the bed, shaking him.

Hauck sat up. He’d been unable to get back to sleep for much of the night, troubled by his realization about the boat.

“There’s a message from Charlie,” Karen said excitedly. “He wants us to come.”

Hauck glanced at the clock. He saw it was going on eight. He never slept this late. “Come where?”

Karen, in a hotel robe, just out of the shower, shoved her BlackBerry in front of him as he tried to shake the sleep out of his eyes.

Karen. I’ve been going over what you said. I didn’t tell you all I knew. Neville will be at the dock at ten and will bring you to me. You can bring who you like. Maybe it’s time. Ch.

She latched onto Hauck’s hand and clasped it victoriously. “He’s gonna come in with us, Ty.”

They dressed quickly and met in the breakfast room downstairs. That was where Hauck informed Karen, afraid of under-cutting her excitement, that Charles would have to be arrested. Shaving, he had determined that the only way to make this work was to have Charles come back to the States with them of his own accord. Hauck could take him into custody there. Here, Charles would have to remain in a jail awaiting extradition. They’d have to produce a warrant, which meant going through everything with the people back home, including, in no small way, Hauck’s own part and what he’d done. That could take days, weeks. The extradition could be challenged. Charles might get cold feet. And Dietz and his people were already circling nearby.

Shortly before ten he and Karen made their way to the dock. Neville, at the helm of the white-hulled Sea Angel, was just cruising in.

Karen waved to him from the pier.

“Hello, ma’am.” The captain waved back as the boat pulled close. A dockhand from the hotel grabbed the line. He helped Karen climb aboard, Hauck following on his own.

“You’re taking us to Mr. Friedman?”

“To Mistuh Hon-son, ma’am. That’s what he ask me,” Neville replied dutifully.

“Are we going back to the same place?”

“No, ma’am. Not this time. The boat is at sea. It’s not far.”

Hauck took a seat in the rear, and Karen sat across from him as the dockhand threw Neville the line. Hauck felt in his pocket for the Beretta he’d brought along. Anything could happen out here.

They headed west, never more than a quarter mile out at sea, hugging the coastlines of tiny, speckled islands. The sky was blue but breezy, and the boat bounced, the twin engines kicking up a heavy wake.

Neither of them said much on the journey out. A new uneasiness had settled over them. Charles could give Hauck the line onto AJ Raymond’s killer, why he had started out in this from the beginning. Karen was quiet, too, maybe dealing with how she was going to explain all this to her kids.

About four islands east from St. Hubert, Neville brought the engines to a crawl. Hauck checked the map. It was a strip of land called Gavin’s Cay. There was a town on the north side of the island, Amysville. They were on a barely inhabited part, on the south. They came around a bend.

Neville pointed. “There he is!”

A large white boat sat at anchor in an isolated cove.

Hauck steadied himself on the railing and headed up to the bow. Karen followed. The boat was maybe sixty feet. Probably slept eight, Hauck figured. A Panamanian flag flew from the stern.

Neville slowed the engines to under ten knots. He traversed around a reef expertly, obviously knowing the way. Then he picked up a walkie-talkie receiver at the controls. “Sea Angel comin’ in, Mistuh Hon-son.”

No reply.

Charlie’s boat was about a quarter mile away. At anchor. Hauck couldn’t make out anyone on deck. Neville picked up the walkie-talkie again. The tone was scratchy.

“What’s going on?” Hauck called back to him.

The Trinidadian captain glanced at his watch and shrugged. “No one there.”

“What’s wrong, Ty?” Karen asked, suddenly worried.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

At a slow speed, they crept up on the bobbing craft from the port side. An anchor cable stretched underwater from the bow. No sign of life on deck. Nothing.

“When is the last time you spoke with him?” Hauck called to Neville.

“Didn’t.” The captain shrugged. “He left me a message on my cell phone last night. Said to pick you up at ten and bring you here.” He brought the Sea Angel around to within about fifty feet.

Still nobody visible.

Hauck climbed as high as he could on the railing and peered over.

Neville coasted the Sea Angel closer in. He called out, “Mistuh Hon-son?”

Only silence. Worrisome silence.

Karen placed her hand on Hauck’s shoulder. “I don’t like this, Ty.”

“Neither do I.” Hauck took the Beretta from his pocket. He grasped for the railing of the larger boat as the Sea Angel came abreast. He said to Karen, “Just stay where you are.”

He jumped on board.

“Hello?” The main deck of Charlie’s boat was completely empty. But in troubling disarray. The seat cushions were upended. Compartment drawers were open. Hauck noticed an empty bottle of rum on the deck. He bent down and picked his finger at a small stain he noticed on one of the displaced cushions, and didn’t like what he saw.

Traces of blood.

He turned to Karen, who was still on the Sea Angel with a worried look on her face. “Stay on board.”

Shifting the gun off safety, Hauck climbed down to the cabin below. The first thing he encountered was a large galley. Someone had been here. The sink was filled with mugs and pots. Cabinets were open, pawed through, condiments strewn all over the floor. Farther along, toward the stern, Hauck ran into three staterooms. In the first two, the beds had been tossed, drawers open, empty. The larger one looked like the Perfect Storm had hit it. The mattress was askew, sheets ripped all about, drawers rifled through, clothes thrown everywhere.

Hauck knelt. His eye was caught by the same traces of red on the floor.

He went back up on deck. “It’s clear,” he called to Karen. Neville ran a line and helped her climb aboard. “No one’s here.”

“What do you mean, no one’s here? Where the hell is Charles, Ty?” said Karen, agitated now.

“Zodiac’s still here,” Neville said, pointing to the yellow inflatable raft, the one Karen had seen the day before, meaning that Charlie had not taken it ashore.

“Who knew he was here?” Hauck asked Neville.

“No one. Mr. Hanson kept to himself. We just moved our location yesterday afternoon.”

Karen’s face grew tense. “I don’t like this, Ty. He wanted us to come to him.”

Hauck gazed across the bay, toward the island, maybe about two or three hundred yards away. Charles could be anywhere. Dead. Taken. On another boat. He didn’t want to tell Karen about the blood, which complicated things.

“Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked Neville.

“Amysville,” the captain replied. “Six miles or so. Around north.”

Hauck nodded soberly. “Radio them in.”

“Oh, Charlie…” Karen shook her head, exhaling a troubled breath.

Hauck went up to the bow and examined the overturned forward seat cushions, looking at the drops of blood. They seemed to lead right to the edge. He leaned over the side. The anchor line went under the surface from there. Hauck ran his hand along the cable. “Neville, hang on!”

The captain turned back from the bridge, the radio in his hand.

Hauck asked, “Do you know where the anchor switch is?”

“Of course.”

“Raise it up for me.”

Karen inhaled nervously. “What?”

Neville stared quizzically himself, then flicked a switch at the helm. Instantly, the anchor cable began to slowly wind back up. Hauck leaned over as far as he could, holding on by the railing.

“Stay back,” he said to Karen.

“Ty, what do you think is going on?” she asked, a rising anxiousness in her tone.

“Just stay back!” The anchor motor whirred. The tightly threaded cable rewound. Finally something broke the surface. Like a kind of line. Fishing wire. Seaweed wrapped around it.

“Ty…?”

A grave dread ran through Hauck as he looked it over.

The wire was wound around a hand.

“Neville, stop!” he called, throwing up his own hand. Hauck turned back to Karen. The solemn feel in his gaze communicated everything.

“Oh, Jesus, Ty, no…”

She ran to the side to look, panicked. Hauck came back over and caught her, tucking her face firmly into his chest, hiding her from the ugly sight.

“No…”

He held on to her as she flinched, trying to break away from him. He motioned to Neville for him to raise the line a little higher.

The cable wound a few more turns. The hand that came out of the water locked tightly around the cable. Slowly, the rest of the body began to emerge.

Hauck’s heart sank.

He had never seen Charles except in Karen’s photos. What he was staring at now was a swollen, ghostly version of him. He hid Karen’s face away and held her firmly to his chest.

“Is it him?” she asked, eyes averted, unable to look.

Charles’s bloated white face rose above the surface-staring widely.

Hauck raised his hand and signaled for Neville to stop.

“Is it him, Ty?” Karen asked again, fighting back tears.

“Yeah, it’s him.” He nodded. He pressed her face close to his chest and held her as she shook. “It’s him.”

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

A launch of white-uniformed officers from the town of Amysville arrived an hour later with a local detective on board.

Together, they raised him.

Karen and Hauck stood by, watching Charles’s body pulled up on deck, stripped of the oily seaweed and debris that had clung to him and the wires that had bound him to the anchor line.

Hauck identified himself as a police detective from the States and spoke with the local official, who was named Wilson, while Karen stood by, holding her face in her hands. Hauck identified her as Hanson’s ex-wife and said they had gotten back in touch after a year and had come to visit. They both said they had no idea who would want to do such a horrible thing. Robbers, maybe. Look at the boat. That seemed easiest, without opening everything up. Whatever happened next, Hauck determined it was important that he control the investigation from the States, and if they came entirely clean with the local authorities, that wouldn’t happen. They gave their names and their addresses back in the States. A brief statement. They told the detective what line of work Hanson had been in-investments. Hauck knew, once they checked, that Charles’s new name wouldn’t yield much.

The detective thanked them cordially but seemed to regard their stories with a skeptical eye.

Two of his men lifted Charles over to a yellow body bag. Karen asked if she could have a moment. They agreed.

She knelt down next to him. She felt she had already said her good-byes to him so many times before, shed her tears. But now, as she looked into the strange calm of his face, the puffy, bluish skin, recalling both the anguish and the resigned smile he had displayed on the beach the day before, the tears began to flow, all over again. Unjudging this time. Hot streaming rivers down her cheeks.

Oh, Charlie… Karen picked a piece of debris out of his hair.

So many things hurtled back to her. The night they first met-at the arts benefit-Charlie all decked out in his tux, with a bright red tie. The horn-rim frames he always wore. What had he said that charmed her? “What did you do to deserve to sit with this boring crowd?” Their wedding at the Pierre. The day he opened Harbor, that first trade-Halliburton, she recalled-everything so full of hope and promise. How he would run along the sidelines at Alex’s lacrosse games, living and dying with each goal, shouting out his name-“Go, Alex, go!” clapping exuberantly.

The morning he’d called to her up in the bathroom and said he had to take the train into the city.

Karen brushed her fingers along his face. “How did you let this happen, Charlie? What do I tell the kids? Who’s gonna mourn you now, Charlie? What the hell do I do with you?”

As much as she tried, she could not forgive him. But he was still the man with whom she’d shared her life for almost twenty years. Who’d been a part of every important moment in her life. Still the father of her kids.

And she had seen, in the repentance of his eyes yesterday, a picture of what he so desperately missed.

Sam. Alex. Her.

What the hell am I gonna do with you, Charlie?

“Karen…” Hauck came up behind her and placed his hands softly on her shoulders. “It’s time to let them do their job.”

She nodded. She put her fingers on Charlie’s eyelids and closed them for the last time. That was better. That was the face she wanted to carry with her. She lifted herself up and leaned ever so slightly against Hauck.

One of the officers stepped over to Charles and zipped up the protective bag.

And that was all. He was gone.

“They’re going to let us go,” Hauck said in her ear. “I gave them my contact info. If stuff comes out, and it’s likely it will, they’ll want to talk with us again.”

Karen nodded. “He came back to the States, you know.” She looked at him. “For Samantha’s graduation. He sat there in a car across the street and watched. I want him home, Ty. I want him back with us. I want the kids to know what happened. He was their dad.”

“We can request that the body be sent back once the medical examiner has gone over it.”

Karen sniffed. “Okay.”

They climbed back onto the Sea Angel and watched Charles being lifted into the police launch.

“Those people found him, Ty…” Karen fought back a rising anger in her blood. “He would’ve come back with us. I know it. That’s why he called.”

“They didn’t find him, Karen.” The troubling image of the large black schooner he’d seen grew vivid in his mind. “We did. We led them directly to him.” He looked over Charles’s ransacked boat. “And the real question is, what the hell would they be looking for?”

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

Maybe they had been, Karen finally admitted as she went over and over the horrible image of Charles the next few days.

Maybe they had been set up. Maybe they did lead them directly to him.

Who?

Hauck told her about the black sailing ship he’d seen the day before. That he’d also seen on Dietz’s wall. Karen even remembered a plane circling high above the island as she and Charles said good-bye, though it hadn’t registered at the time.

Still, none of that mattered to her now.

Seeing Charlie-his poor, bloated body, whatever he’d done, whatever pain he’d caused, that’s what haunted her. They’d spent half their lives together. They had shared just about every joyful moment in each other’s life. As Karen reflected, it was hard to even separate her life from his, they were so intertwined. The tears returned, and they came back with mixed, hard-to-understand emotions. He had died all over again for her. She could not have imagined, having lost him a year ago, then having held in such pent-up anger toward him, that it could be so cruel. The who or the why-that was for Ty to solve.

They flew home the following day. Hauck wanted to get back into the country, before the investigation there rooted out that Steven Hanson had no past. Before they would have to explain things in full.

And Karen…she wanted to get out of that nightmare world as quickly as possible. When they got home, Hauck left her with her friend Paula. No way she could be alone. She had to finally open up to someone.

“I don’t even know how to begin,” Karen said. Paula took her hand. “You just have to swear, Paula, this is something between us. Us alone. You can’t tell anyone. Not even Rick.”

“Of course I won’t, Karen,” Paula vowed.

Karen swallowed. She shook her head and let out a breath that felt like it had been kept inside her for weeks. And it had. She looked at her friend with a flustered smile. “You remember that documentary, Paula?”

THAT SAME AFTERNOON Hauck went into Greenwich. To the station. He bypassed saying hello to his unit and went straight to Chief Fitzpatrick’s office on the fourth floor.

“Ty!” Fitzpatrick stood up, as if elated. “Everyone’s been wondering when we’d see you again. We got a few doozies waiting for you if you’re ready to come back. Where you been?”

“Sit down, Carl.”

The chief slowly retook his seat. “Not sure I like the sound of that, guy.”

“You won’t.” Before he started in, Hauck looked his boss firmly in the eye. “You remember that hit-and-run I was handling?”

Fitzpatrick inhaled. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I have a little more information I can add.”

Hauck took him through everything. From the top.

Karen. Charles’s number in the victim’s pocket. His trip down south to Pensacola. Finding the offshore accounts, how they all tied back to Charles. Soberly, he took Fitzpatrick through his escapade down at Dietz’s house. The chief ’s eyes grew wide. Then his scuffle with Hodges…

“You must be fucking shitting me, Lieutenant.” The chief pushed back from his desk. “What sort of evidence did you have? What went on down there-not to mention not reporting back immediately that you fucking shot someone-was totally illegal.”

“I don’t need a handbook refresher, Carl.”

“I don’t know, Ty.” The chief stared. “Maybe you do!”

“Well, before that, there’s more.”

Hauck went on and told him about the second hit-and-run in New Jersey. How Dietz had been a witness at that one, too.

“They were hits, Carl. To keep people silent. To cover up their investment losses. I know that what I did was wrong. I know I may have to be cited. But the accidents were set up. Murders, Carl.”

The chief put his fingers over his face and pressed the skin around his eyes. “The good news is, you may have found enough to reopen the case. The bad news is-it may be part of the case against you. You know better, Ty. Why the hell didn’t you stop right there?”

“I’m not quite done, Carl.”

Fitzpatrick blinked. “Oh, Jesus, Mary…”

Hauck took him through the last part. His trip to St. Hubert. With Karen. How they’d located Charles.

“How?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Hauck shrugged. “We just did.” He told his boss about finding Charles’s body on the boat. Then how he’d slightly misled the investigators there.

“Jesus, Ty, were you trying to break every fucking rule in the book?”

“No.” Hauck smiled and shook his head, finally done. “Just seemed to happen naturally, Carl.”

“I think I’m gonna need your badge and gun, Ty.”

BEFORE HE LEFT, Hauck went over to a computer on the second floor. Members of his squad came up to him excitedly. “We got you back now, LT?”

“Not quite,” he said with an air of resignation, “not just yet.”

He did a Google search-something that had been bugging him for days.

The Black Bear.

The search yielded several responses. About a dozen wildlife sites. An inn in Vermont.

It took to the third page until Hauck finally found the first real hit.

From the Web site of Perini Navi, an Italian boatbuilder.

The Black Bear. Luxury sailing yacht. The 88-meter clipper (290 ft.) is the largest privately owned sailing yacht in the world, using the state of the art DynaRig propulsion concept. 2 Duetz 1800 HP engines. Max Speed 19.5 knots. Sleek black ultramodern design with three 58-meter carbon fiber masts, total area under sail 25,791 sq. ft. The boat has six luxury staterooms, complete with full satellite, Bloomberg, communications, oversize plasma TVs, full gym, 50" plasma in main salon, B/O sound system. A 32" twin-engine Pascoe tender. Sleeps 12 with a crew of 16.

Impressive, Hauck thought, scrolling on. A page later, in an online boat-enthusiast magazine, he found what he was looking for.

Hauck pushed back from the computer. He paused a long time on the name. It hit home. Once he’d even been out to the house. Some house.

The Black Bear was owned by Russian financier Gregory Khodoshevsky.

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

We led them to him, Karen.

The whole first day back, after telling Paula and swearing her to secrecy, Karen racked her brain for how that might be.

Led whom?

She hadn’t told anyone where they were going. She’d made the reservations herself. Sitting around trying to divert her thoughts from Charles, she backed through everything from the beginning.

The documentary. The horror of seeing his face on TV. Then the note sheet from his desk she’d been sent-with no return address. Which led to the passport and the money.

Then the men from Archer, the creep who terrified Sam in her car. The horrible things Karen had found in Charles’s desk-the Christmas card and the note about Sasha. Her mind kept unavoidably flicking back to him. On the beach. Then the boat.

What was anyone trying to find there, Charles?

“Who? Charlie, who? Tell me?” Who were you running from? Why would they want to keep after you now? She knew that Ty had gone into the office, come clean. They’d have to reopen the hit-and-runs. They’d be able to find out now who his investors were.

Tell me, Charlie. How did they know you were alive? They must have seen the fee account drawn down, he had said. Followed the bank trail. A year later, what did they need from him? What did they think he had? All that money?

Karen let her mind run as she gazed out the office window. She’d been answering a couple of e-mails she’d received from the kids. Which excited her, made things feel normal. They were having a fabulous time.

The garage doors were open. She noticed Charlie’s Mustang, parked in the far bay.

Suddenly it came back to her. Just what Charlie had said: The truth, it’s always been right inside my heart, Karen.

Something did happen to you, Charlie.

Why weren’t you able to tell me? Why did you have to hide it, Charlie, like everything else? What did he say when she pressed him? Don’t you understand, I don’t want you to know, Karen.

Don’t want me to know what, Charles?

She was about to sign off on her message to the kids when her mind wandered back once again.

This time her whole body seemed to rattle.

The truth…it’s always been right inside my heart.

Karen stood up. A sweat came over her. She looked out the window.

At Charlie’s car.

You still have the Mustang, don’t you, Karen?

She thought he was just babbling!

Oh, my God!

Karen ran out of the office, Tobey trailing after her, and out the front door to the open garage.

There it was. On the rear fender of the Mustang. Where it had always been. The bumper sticker. She had seen it, passed it by-every day for a year. The words written on it: LOVE OF MY LIFE.

Written on a bright red heart!

Karen’s whole body seemed to convulse. “Oh, Charlie,” she moaned out loud. “If you somehow didn’t mean it like this, please don’t think I’m the biggest fucking idiot in the world.”

Karen knelt beside the rear bumper. Curious, Tobey nuzzled up. Karen pushed him away. “Gimme a second, baby, please.” She crouched down, her back to the ground, reached up underneath the chrome bumper, and felt around.

Nothing. What did she expect? Just a bunch of dust and grime, her hand showing black streaks all over it. She pretended she wasn’t feeling like a total fool.

It’ll explain a lot of things, Karen.

Karen reached up again. This time farther. “I’m trying, Charlie,” she said. “I’m trying.”

She groped blindly just behind the “inside” of the heart.

Her fingers wrapped around something. Something small. Fastened to the inside of the fender.

Karen’s heart started to race. She pushed herself farther underneath and stripped the object away from the edges of the chrome.

Whatever it was peeled off.

It was a small bundle, tightly bound in bubble wrap.

Karen stared incredulously at Tobey. “Oh, my God.”

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

Karen brought it into the kitchen. She went through the pantry drawer and took out a package blade and cut at the tape, carefully unfolding the protective wrapping. She held it in her hand.

It was a cell phone.

Not any phone she’d ever seen before. Thinking back, she remembered that Charlie used a BlackBerry. It had never been found. Karen stared at it-almost afraid to keep it in her hands. “What are you trying to tell me, Charles?”

Finally she pressed the power button. Amazingly, after all this time, the LCD screen sprang to life. HANDSET LOCKED.

Damn. Disappointed, Karen placed it down on the counter.

She ran through a mental file of what Charlie’s password might be. Several possibilities, starting with the obvious. She punched in their anniversary, 0716. The day Harbor opened. His e-mail name. She pressed enter.

Nothing. HANDSET LOCKED.

Shit. Next she punched in 0123, his birthday. Nothing, again. Then 0821. Hers. Wrong-a third time. So Karen tried both of the kids’ birthdays: 0330. Then 1112. No luck. It began to exasperate her. Even if her thinking was right, there could still be a hundred variations. A three-digit number-eliminate the zero for the month. Or a five-digit number-include the year.

Shit.

Karen sat down. She took a notepad from the counter. It had to be one of them. She prepared to go through them all.

Then it hit her. What else did Charlie say that day? Something about “You’re still beautiful, Karen.”

Something about “the color of my baby’s eyes.”

Charlie’s Baby.

On a whim Karen punched in the word-the color of his “baby.” Emberglow.

To her shock, the LOCKED icon on the readout disappeared.

CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE

Saul Lennick sat in the library of his home on Deerfield Road, on the grounds of the Greenwich Country Club.

He had Puccini’s Turandot on the sound system. The opera put him in the right mood, as he was going over the minutes of the most recent board meeting of the Met that he’d attended. From his leather chair, Lennick looked out at the expansive garden in back, tall trees, a pergola leading to a beautiful gazebo by the pond, all lit up like a colorful stage set.

His cell phone trilled.

Lennick flipped open the phone. He’d been awaiting the call.

“I’m back,” Dietz said. “You can rest a little now. It’s done.”

Lennick closed his eyes and nodded. “How?”

“Don’t worry your buns off how. It seems that your old friend Charlie had a penchant for the late-night swim.”

The news left Lennick relieved. All at once the weight he’d been carrying seemed to rise from his tired shoulders. This hadn’t been easy. Charles had been his friend. Saul had known him twenty years. They’d shared many highs and lows together. He’d felt sadness when he first heard the news after the bombing. Now he just felt nothing. Charles had long ago grown into a liability that had to be written off.

Lennick felt nothing-other than a frightening new sense of what he was capable of.

“Were you able to find anything?”

“Nada. The poor bastard took it to the grave, whatever he had. And you know that I can be highly persuasive. We searched his boat from top to bottom. Ripped out the fucking engine block. Nothing.”

“That’s okay.” Lennick sighed. “Maybe there never was anything. Anyway, it was due.” Perhaps it was just a fear. Survival, Lennick reflected. It’s truly astounding what one can do when it becomes threatened.

“There may still be a problem, though,” Dietz said, breaking into his thoughts.

“What?” The detective, Lennick recalled. Now that he was back.

“Charles met with his wife. Before we were able to get to him. She and the cop, they found him.”

“No,” Lennick agreed sadly, “that’s not good.”

“They talked for a couple of hours on this island. I would’ve tried to do something down there, but the local cops were all over. He knows about both accidents. And Hodges. And who can guess what your boy Charles may have said to her?”

“No, we can’t let that linger,” Lennick concluded. This was something he had let fester far too long. “Where are they now?”

Dietz said, “Back here.”

“Hmmph…” Lennick had gone to Yale. In his day he’d been one of the youngest partners ever at Goldman Sachs. Now he knew the most powerful people in the world. He could call anybody, and they would take it. He had the fucking secretary of the treasury on his speed dial. He had four loving grandkids…

Still, when it came to business, you couldn’t be too careful or too smart.

“Let’s do what we have to do,” Lennick said.

CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

“I was placed on disciplinary leave,” Hauck said at Arcadia, warming his fingers around his coffee cup.

Karen had called him an hour earlier. She’d told him she had something important to show him. He met her in town.

“What about your job?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.” Hauck let out a breath of resignation. “I’m not exactly up for Officer of the Year. I told them everything,” he said, then smiled. “The whole shebang. There’ll be a review. The problem is, I didn’t help my case with what I let go on down in New Jersey. Still, we have the hit-and-runs… I’m pretty sure Pappy Raymond will testify it was Dietz who forced him to back off the tankers. That’ll have to do-until something else plays out.”

“I’m sorry,” Karen said. She placed a hand on his. Her eyes were sparkling, round. And they came with a smile. “But I think I may be able to help you, Lieutenant.”

“What do you mean?” His heartbeat picked up, looking at her.

She grinned. “Something else played out.”

Karen reached inside her bag. “A present. From Charlie. He left it for me to find. He mentioned something about it when he was walking me back to the boat on the island, about things I would want to know if anything happened to him. About the truth being somewhere inside his heart. I thought he was just babbling. I never even gave it a second thought until I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The heart.” Karen beamed triumphantly. “Charlie’s Mustang, Ty. His baby.”

She held out the phone. He looked at her a bit uncomprehendingly.

“It was taped inside the rear bumper of his car. That’s why he didn’t want me to get rid of it. He had it hidden there all along. It’s what he wanted me to find.”

“What, Karen?”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure either. So I checked through the entire contact log. It didn’t tell me much. Maybe you’ll find a number or two you could trace. Then I thought, a cell phone-pictures. Maybe he had some photos in there, you know, implicating someone. There had to be some reason for him to have hidden it there. So I went into Media…into Camera.” Karen flipped open the phone. “But there wasn’t anything there either.”

Hauck took it. “I can have someone go through it at the lab.”

“Don’t have to, Lieutenant-I found it! It was a voice recording. I never even knew these things did that, but it was there, next to Camera. So I clicked.” Karen took back the phone and scrolled into Voice Recording. “Here. Here’s your something else, Ty. A present from Charlie. Straight from the grave.”

Hauck looked at her. “You don’t seem very pleased about it, Karen.”

“Just listen.” She pressed the prompt.

A tinny voice came on. “You think I like having to be here.”

Hauck looked at Karen and Karen said, “That’s Charles.”

“You think I like the predicament that I’m in. But I’m in it. And I can’t let it go on.”

“No,” a second voice replied. This one Hauck was sure he’d heard somewhere before. “We’re in it together, Charles.”

Karen looked at him, the shock evaporated, replaced by a glint of vindication. “That’s Saul Lennick.”

Hauck blinked.

The recording continued. “That’s the whole problem, Charles. You think you’re the only one whose life you’re going to drag down because of your own bungling. I’m in this straight as you. You knew the stakes here. You knew who these people are. You want to play at the big table, Charles, you’ve got to put up the chips.”

“I got a holiday card back, Saul. Where the hell else could it have come from? For God’s sake, my kids’ faces were cut out.”

“And I have grandchildren, Charles. You think you’re the only one whose neck is on the line?” A pause. “I told you what to do. I told you how to handle this. I told you you had to shut up that redneck fuck down there. Now what?”

“It’s too late,” Charles replied with a sigh. “The bank, they already suspect-”

“I can handle the bank, Charles! But you…you have to clean up your own mess. If not, I assure you there are other ways, Charles.”

“What other ways?”

“He’s got a boy, I’m told, who lives up here.”

Pause.

“It’s called leverage, Charles. A concept you seemed to grasp quite clearly when it came to taking us down the well.”

“He’s just an old geezer, Saul.”

“He’s going to the press, Charles. You want them sticking their noses into some national-security story and finding out what they will? I’ll make sure the old man doesn’t talk. I’ve got guys who specialize in this kind of thing. You clean up your balance sheet, Charles. We’ve got a month. A month, Charles, no more fuckups. You understand what I’m saying, Charles? You’re not the only one with his head in the noose here.”

A hushed reply. “I get it, Saul.”

Hauck stared at Karen.

“It was Saul,” she said, tears fighting their way into her eyes. “Dietz, Hodges-they work for him.”

He covered her hand. “I’m sorry, Karen.”

A sadness darkened Karen’s face. “Charlie loved him, Ty. Saul was there at every turn in our lives. Like an older brother to him.” She clenched her teeth. “He fucking spoke at Charlie’s memorial. And he could do this to him… It was Saul, Ty. Jesus Christ, I even went to him when the Archer people came. When Sam got accosted. It makes me sick.”

Hauck squeezed.

“I went to him, Ty-before we left. I didn’t tell him exactly where I was going, but maybe he could have put it together.” Her face was ashen. “Maybe we were followed, I don’t know.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Karen.”

“You’re the one who said we led them to him.” She lifted the phone. “This is what they were looking for when they trashed the boat. Charles could have told him he had evidence. Before the bombing. Insurance. Then somehow they found out he was alive.”

She let out a breath, one filled with a feeling of betrayal and anger. “So what are we going to do?”

“You’re going to go home,” Hauck said. He looked at her firmly. “I want you to go and pack some clothes and wait for me to come over. If these people followed us to Charles, they must also know that you met with him there.”

“Okay. What about you?”

He reached for the cell phone. “I’m going home to make a copy of this, just in case. Then I’m going to call Fitzpatrick. I’ll have a warrant for them by tomorrow. Before this goes one step further.”

“They killed Charles,” Karen said, her fists curling slightly. She handed the phone over. “Make it worth something, Ty. Charlie wanted me to have this. Don’t let them win.”

“I promise, they won’t.”

CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN

Karen drove home.

Her fingers trembled on the wheel. Her stomach had never felt quite so hollow or so uncertain. Was she in danger now?

How could Saul have done this to her? To Charles?

Someone she’d trusted like family over the past ten years. Someone she’d run to for support herself. It almost made her retch. He had lied to her. He had used her to get to Charlie, just as he’d used her husband. And Karen knew she had brought it on herself. She suddenly felt complicit in everything that had happened.

Even in Charlie’s death.

Her mind flashed to Saul, standing up at the memorial, speaking so lovingly about Charles. How it must have amused him, Karen seethed, for fate to have intervened so beautifully. To get such a potential liability out of the way.

And all the while Charlie was alive.

Did Charlie know? Did he ever realize who it was who was after him? He thought it was his investors, in retribution. These are bad people, Karen… But Dietz and Hodges, they worked for Saul. All along it was just his frightened longtime partner. Trying to protect his own cowardly ass.

Oh, Charlie, you always did get it wrong, didn’t you?

She turned onto Shore, heading toward the water. She thought of going straight to Paula’s but then remembered what Ty had told her. She turned onto Sea Wall. No sign of anybody. She pulled the Lexus into the driveway of her house.

The house lights were off.

Karen hurried in through the entrance off the garage and flicked on a light as soon as she got into the kitchen.

Immediately something didn’t feel right.

“Tobey!” she called. She straightened the mail she’d left on the kitchen island. A few bills and catalogs. It always felt a little different with Alex and Sam out of the house. Since Charlie was gone. Coming back to a darkened house.

She called again, “Tobey? Hey, guy?” He was usually scratching at the door.

No answer.

Karen removed a bottle of water from the fridge and went into the house with the mail.

Suddenly she heard the dog-but somewhere distant, yelping.

The office, upstairs? Karen stopped, thought back. Hadn’t she left him in the kitchen when she went out?

She headed through the house, following the sound of the dog. She flicked on a light near the front door.

An icy jolt traveled up her spine.

Saul Lennick sat facing her in a living-room chair, legs crossed.

“Hello, Karen.”

CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

Her heart crawled up her throat. She looked back, frozen, the mail falling to the floor.

“What the hell are you doing here, Saul?”

“Come over here and sit down.” He motioned, patting the cushions of the couch next to him.

“What are you doing here?” Karen asked again, a tremor of fear tingling across her skin.

Something in her shouted that she should immediately run. She was near the door. Get out of here, Karen. Now. Holding her breath, her gaze darted toward the front door.

“Sit down, Karen,” Lennick said again. “Don’t even think of leaving. I’m afraid that’s not in the cards.”

A figure stepped out of the shadows from down the hallway to her office, where Tobey was loudly barking.

Karen froze. “What do you want, Saul?”

“We have a few things to go over, you and I, don’t we, dear?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Saul.”

“Let’s not pretend, shall we? We both know you saw Charles. And now we both know he’s dead. Finally dead, Karen. C’mon…” He patted the couch as if he was coaxing over a niece or nephew. “Sit across from me, dear.”

“Don’t call me ‘dear,’ Saul.” Karen glared at him. “I know what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done?” Lennick’s fingers locked together. The avuncular warmth in his eyes dimmed. “What I’m asking you isn’t a request, Karen.” The man down the corridor moved toward her. He was tall, wearing a beach shirt, his hair gathered up in back in one of those short ponytails. Somehow she thought she’d seen him before.

“I said come here.”

Her heart starting to pound, Karen moved toward him slowly. Her mind flashed to Ty. How could she get word to him? What were they going to do with her? She lowered herself onto the couch where Lennick had indicated.

He smiled. “I want you to try to conceptualize, Karen, just what the figure ‘a billion’ really means. If it were time, a million seconds would be about eleven and a half days. A billion, Karen-that’s over thirty-one years! A trillion-” Lennick’s eyes lit up. “Well, that’s hard to even contemplate-thirty-one thousand years.”

Karen looked at him nervously. “Why are you telling me this, Saul?”

“Why? Do you have any idea just how much money is on deposit offshore in banks on Grand Cayman and in the British Virgin Islands, Karen? It’s about 1.6 trillion dollars. Hard to imagine just what that is-more than a third of all the cash deposits in the United States. It’s almost as much as the GNP of Britain or France, Karen. The ‘turquoise economy,’ as it’s referred to. So tell me, Karen, a sum so vast, so consequential, how can it be wrong?”

“What is it you’re trying to justify to me, Saul?”

“Justify.” He was wearing a brown cashmere V-neck sweater, a white dress shirt underneath. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. “I don’t have to justify anything to you, Karen. Or to Charles. I have ten Charleses. Each with sums under investments just as large. Do you have any idea who we represent? You could Google them, Karen, if you wished, and find some of the most prominent and influential people in the world. Names you would know. Important families, Karen, tycoons, others…”

“Criminals, Saul!”

“Criminals?” He laughed. “We don’t launder money, Karen. We invest it. When it comes to us, whether from the sale of an Old Master painting or from a trust in Liechtenstein, it’s just plain old cash, Karen. As green as yours or mine. You don’t judge cash, Karen. Even Charlie would have told you that. You multiply it. You invest it.”

“You had Charles killed, Saul! He loved you!”

Saul smiled, as if amused. “Charlie needed me, Karen. Just as, for the purpose of what he did, I needed him.”

“You’re a snake, Saul!” Tears trembled in Karen’s eyes. “How is it I could be hearing you like this? How could I have gotten it so wrong?”

“What do you want me to admit, Karen? That I’ve done things? I’ve had to, Karen. So did Charles. You think he was such a saint? He defrauded banks. He falsified his accounts-”

“You had that boy killed, Saul, in Greenwich.”

“I had him killed? I kept fucking around with those tankers?” Lennick’s face grew taut. “He lost over a billion dollars of their fucking money, Karen! He was playing a shell game with his own bank loans. Loans I set up. I killed him? What choice did we have, Karen? What do you think these people do? Pat you on the back? Tell you, ‘Jolly good run of it, we’ll do better next time’? We’re all at risk here, Karen. Anyone who plays this game. Not just Charles.”

Karen glared at him. “So who was Archer, Saul? Who was that man in the back of Samantha’s car? Did they come from you? You bastard, you used me. You used my children, Saul. You used Sam. To get to my husband, your friend. To kill him, Saul.”

He nodded, a bit guiltily, but his eyes were cold and dull. “Yes, I used you, Karen. Once we discovered that Charles was somehow alive. Once we realized that all the fees that had remained in his accounts offshore after he supposedly died had been withdrawn. Who else could it have been? Then I found that note sheet on his desk with the numbers of that safe-deposit box. I had to find out what was in them, Karen. We weren’t getting anywhere tracing the accounts. So we tried to frighten you a bit, that’s all. Put you in play, in the hope, slim as it was, that Charles might contact you. There was no other choice, Karen. You can’t blame me for that.”

“You preyed on me?” Karen gasped, her eyes wide. Why, Saul, why? “You were like a brother to him. You got up and eulogized him at his memorial-”

“He lost over a billion dollars of their money, Karen!”

“No.” She gazed at him, this man who had always seemed so important, so wielding of control. And in a strange way, she suddenly felt she was stronger than him, no matter who was standing behind her. No matter what he might do. “It was never, ever about the money, was it, Saul?”

His face softened. He didn’t even try to hide it. “No.”

“It wasn’t all that missing money you were looking for, why your people trashed his boat.” Karen smiled. “Did you find it, Saul?”

“We found whatever we needed, Karen.”

“No.” Karen shook her head, emboldened. “I think not. He beat you, Saul. You may not realize it, but he did. You had that young boy killed. To protect your own interests. To keep silent what his father had managed to find out. Because you were behind it all, weren’t you, Saul? The big, important man pulling all the strings. But then when you realized that Charlie’s accounts had been drawn down, you suddenly understood he was alive. That he was out there, right, Saul? Your friend. Your partner. Who knew the truth about you, right?”

Karen chuckled. “You’re pathetic, Saul. You didn’t kill him for money. That might even give you some dignity. You had him killed out of cowardice, Saul-fear. Because he had the goods on you and you couldn’t trust him. Because one day he might testify. And it was like a ticking bomb. You would never know when. One day, when he simply got tired of running…What do they call that, Saul, in business circles? A deferred liability?”

“A billion dollars, Karen! I gave him every chance. I put my life on the line for him-my own grandkids’ lives! No-I couldn’t have that hanging over me, Karen. I could no longer trust him. Not after what he’d done. One day, when he got tired, tired of running, he could just come in, make a deal.” Saul’s gray eyebrows narrowed. “You get used to it, Karen. Influence, power. I’m truly sorry if when you look at me, you don’t like what you see.”

“What I see?” She stared at him, eyes glistening with angry tears. “What I see isn’t someone powerful, Saul. I see someone old-and scared. And pathetic. But guess what? He won. Charles won, Saul. You knew he had something on you. That’s why you’re here now, isn’t it? To find out just what I know. Well, here it is, Saul, you fucking, cowardly bastard: He made a tape. Of your voice, Saul. Your clear, conspiring voice going over what you were getting ready to do to that boy. How’d you say it? With your people, who take care of these things? And right now-and I hope you find the same amusement I do in this, Saul-that tape is in the hands of the police, and they’re swearing out a warrant against you. So whatever you and your lackeys had in mind to do to me, there’s no point anymore. Even you can see that, Saul, not that that would cause you to lose even an hour of sleep. It’s too late. They know. They know it’s you, Saul. They already do.”

Karen stared with a fierceness burning in her eyes. And for a second, Saul looked a little weak, unsure of what to do now, the arrogance melting. She waited for the composure to crack on Lennick’s face.

It didn’t.

Instead he shrugged and his lips curled into a smile. “You don’t mean that detective friend of yours, Karen. Hauck?”

Karen’s glare remained on him, but in her stomach a worm of fear began to squirm through.

“Because if that’s what you had in mind, I’m afraid he’s already been taken care of, Karen. Good cop, though-dogged. Seems to genuinely care about you, too.” Saul stood up, glanced at his watch, and sighed.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s even alive now, as we speak.”

CHAPTER NINETY-NINE

Hauck headed home from the coffeehouse in Old Greenwich, about five minutes up the Post Road. He planned to copy the recording onto a tape, then take it over to Carl Fitzpatrick, who lived close by in Riverside, that very night. Karen had found exactly what he needed-evidence that was untainted. Fitzpatrick would have to open everything back up now.

In Stamford he veered off the Post Road onto Elm, soaring. He crossed back under the highway and the Metro-North tracks to Cove, toward the water, Euclid, where he lived. There were lights on across the street from his house, at Robert and Jacqueline’s, the furniture restorers. It looked like they were having a party. Hauck made a left into the one-car driveway in front of his house.

He opened his glove compartment, pulled out the Beretta he had given Karen, and shoved it into his jacket. He slammed the Bronco’s door shut and bounded up the stairs, stopping to pick up the mail.

Taking out his keys, he couldn’t help but smile as his thoughts flashed to Karen. What Charles had told her before he died, how she’d put it all together and found the phone. Wouldn’t make a half-bad cop-he laughed-if the real-estate thing didn’t work out. In fact…

A man stepped out of the darkness, pointing something at his chest.

Before he fired, Hauck stared back at him, recognizing him in an instant, and in that same instant, his thoughts flashing to Karen, he realized he’d made a terrible mistake.

The first shot took him down, a searing, burning pain lancing through his lower abdomen as he twisted away. He reached futilely into his pocket for the Beretta as he started to fall.

The second struck him in the thigh as he toppled backward, tumbling helplessly down the stairs.

He never heard a sound.

Frantic, Hauck grasped out for the banister and, missing it, rolled all the way to the bottom of the stairs. He came to rest in a sitting position in the vestibule, a dull obfuscation clouding his head. One image pushed its way through, accompanied by a paralyzing sense of dread.

Karen.

His assailant stepped toward him down the stairs.

Hauck tried to lift himself up, but everything was rubbery. He turned over to face Richard and Jacqueline’s and blinked at the glaring lights. He knew something bad was about to happen. He tried to call out. Loudly. He opened his mouth, but only a coppery taste slid over his tongue. He tried to think, but his brain was just jumbled. A blank.

So this is how it is…

An image of his daughter came into his mind, not Norah but Jessie, which seemed strange to him. He realized he hadn’t called her since he’d been back. For a second he thought that she was supposed to come up or something this weekend, wasn’t she?

He heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

He put his hand inside his jacket pocket. Instinctively, he fumbled for something there. Charlie’s phone-he couldn’t let him take that! Or was it the Beretta? His brain was numb.

Breathing heavily, he looked across the street again to Richard and Jacqueline’s.

The footsteps stopped. Glassily, Hauck looked up. A man stood over him.

“Hey, asshole, remember me?”

Hodges.

“Yeah…” Hauck nodded. “I remember you.”

The man knelt over him. “You look a poor sight, Lieutenant. All busted up.”

Hauck felt in his jacket and wrapped his fingers around the metal object there.

“You know what I’ve been carrying around the past two weeks?” Hodges said. He placed two fingers in front of Hauck’s face. Hazily, Hauck made out the dark, flattened shape he was holding there. A bullet. Hodges pried open Hauck’s mouth, pushed in the barrel of his gun, all metallic and warm, smelling of cordite, clicked the hammer.

“Been meaning to give this back to you.”

Hauck looked into his laughing eyes. “Keep it.”

He squeezed on the trigger in his pocket. A sharp pop rang out, followed by a burning smell. The bullet struck Hodges under the chin, the smile still stapled to his face. His head snapped back, blood exploding out of his mouth. His body jerked off of Hauck, as if yanked. His eyes rolled back.

Hauck pulled his legs from under the dead man’s. Hodges’s gun had fallen onto his chest. He just wanted to sit there a while. Pain lanced through his entire body. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what was worrying him.

Dread that fought its way through the pain.

Karen.

Using all his strength, Hauck pushed his way up to his feet. A slick coating of blood came off on his palm from his side.

He took Hodges’s gun and staggered over to the Bronco. He opened the door and reached for the radio. He patched into the Greenwich station. The duty officer answered, but Hauck didn’t recognize the voice.

“This is Lieutenant Hauck,” he said. He bit back against the pain. “There’s been a shooting at my house, 713 Euclid Avenue in Stamford. I need a local team dispatched there.”

A pause. “Jesus, Lieutenant Hauck…?”

“Who am I speaking to?” Hauck asked, wincing. He twisted the key in the ignition, closed the door, and backed out of the driveway, crashing into a car parked on the street, and drove.

“This is Sergeant Dicenzio, Lieutenant.”

“Sergeant, listen, you heard what I just said-but first, this is important, I need a couple of teams, whoever’s closest out there, sent immediately to 73 Surfside Road in Old Greenwich. I want the house secured and controlled. You understand, Sergeant? I want the woman who lives there, Karen Friedman, accounted for. Possibly dangerous situation. Do you read me, Sergeant Dicenzio?”

“I read you loud and clear, Lieutenant.”

“I’m on my way there now.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED

A blade of fear knifed through Karen as the blood drained from her face. Disbelieving, she just shook her head. “No, that’s a bluff, Saul.” Ty couldn’t be dead. He’d just left her. He was headed to the station. He was going to come back and pick her up.

“I’m afraid so, Karen. We had an old friend of his awaiting his arrival at home. He might even have been carrying something of interest to us on his person. Am I right, dear?”

“No!” She stood up. Her blood stiffened in denial and rage. “No!” She went to lunge at Lennick, but the ponytailed man who had crept up behind grabbed her by the arms and held her back.

She tried to wrench them away. “Go to fucking hell, Saul!”

“Maybe later.” He shrugged. “But in the meantime, Karen, I’m afraid it’s simply back to my house for a late dinner. And you…” He smoothed out the wrinkles from his sweater and straightened his collar. He had a look on his face that was almost sad. “You know I don’t take any pleasure in doing this, Karen. I’ve always been fond of you. But you must realize there’s just no way we can afford to let you go.”

At that moment the French doors to the backyard opened and another man stepped in-shorter, dark-haired, with a graying mustache.

Karen knew him instantly from the descriptions. Dietz.

“All clear,” he said. Karen noticed that his shoes were caked with dirt and sand.

Lennick nodded. “Good.”

Fear swelled up in Karen. “What are you going to do with me, Saul?”

“A little late-night swim, maybe. Overcome with grief and dismay at finding your husband alive-then dead again. It’s a lot for anybody, Karen.”

Karen shook her head. “It’s not gonna hold up, Saul. Hauck’s already been to his boss. He told him everything. About the hit-and-runs, Dietz, and Hodges. They’re gonna know who did this. They’re gonna come after you, Saul.”

“After me?” Lennick headed toward the door as Karen struggled against the man who pinned her arms. “Don’t worry your little head about it, dear. Our friend Hodges is going to have a rather difficult go of it tonight himself. And Mr. Dietz here”-Lennick nodded conspiratorially-“well, I might as well let him explain his situation to you himself.”

She pulled against her assailant’s grip, tears of hate burning in her eyes. “How did you ever become such a reptile, Saul? How can you ever look at my children again after this?”

“Sam and Alex.” He brushed his thin hair back. “Oh, rest assured they’ll be very well taken care of, Karen. Those kids will have a lot of money coming to them. Your late husband was a very wealthy man. Didn’t you know?”

“Rot in hell, Saul! You bastard!” Karen twisted around as he closed the front door.

He left. Karen started to sob. Hauck. Charles. Never seeing Sam and Alex again. The idea of Saul “grieving” over her. The anger burning inside her that her kids would never know. She thought of Ty, and a sharp sadness came over her. She had gotten him into this. She thought of his own daughter, who would never know.

Then she turned to Dietz, petrified. Hot tears and mucus were running down her face.

“You don’t have to do this,” she begged.

“Oh, don’t get yourself into such a state,” the man with the mustache sneered. “They say it’s like falling asleep. Just give yourself over to it. It’s sort of like sex, right? Do you want it rough? Or do you want it easy?” He chuckled to his partner. “We’re not exactly savages here, are we, Cates?”

“Savages? No,” the man holding her said. He kneed her in the back of the legs, and Karen cried out, her weight crumbling. “C’mon…”

Dietz picked up a roll of packing tape that was sitting on the table. He tore a piece off and placed it firmly over Karen’s mouth. It cut off her breath. Then he ripped a longer strip and wrapped it tightly around her wrists. “C’mon, doll…” He took her by the arms. “Shame about your boyfriend, though. I mean, after busting into my house like that-I’d have liked to have done that one myself.”

They dragged her through the open French doors out onto the patio in back. Karen could hear Tobey barking wildly from where he was locked up, fighting them, forced into the dark against her will, his helpless yelps filled her not only with worry but with a rising sadness, too.

Why the hell do they get to win?

They pulled her off the deck into the backyard. There was a path behind her property through a wooden gate that led to the town road to Teddy’s Beach, restricted to local residents, just a block away.

Teddy’s Beach. Suddenly a new fear swept through Karen’s body. That beach was tiny and deserted. It had a protective rock-wall jetty, and other than a few teenagers who might’ve gone down there at night to make a bonfire or smoke some pot, Karen realized that it would be totally deserted. And blocked from the other homes.

That’s what Dietz had meant when he’d said “All clear.”

Goddamn it, no. She kicked Dietz in the shins with the point of her shoe, and he spun, angry, and smacked her in the face with the back of his rough hand. Blood spurted out Karen’s nose. She choked on it.

Dietz glared at her. “I said behave!”

He hoisted her over his shoulder like a sack of flour and ripped off her shoes. He thrust the barrel of a gun up into her nose. “Listen, bitch, I told you what the choice was. You want it easy-or rough? You can fucking decide. Me, I can do it either way. My advice is to lie back and enjoy the ride. It’s gonna be over before you even know it. Trust me, you got a much better ticket than your boyfriend.”

He carried her through the tightly wooded path, thorns and brambles scratching her legs. Her only hope was that someone would see them. She screamed and fought against the tape, but she could barely make a sound. Please, let someone be down here, she begged, please…

But what would that even get her? Probably only a bullet in the head.

They came out of the woods onto the end of the town road. Totally dark and deserted. No one. The salty breeze crept into her nostrils. A few lights shone from houses in the distance, across the cove.

Dietz dropped her and pulled her by the arms. “Let’s go.”

No… Karen was crying. Fiercely, she wrenched her bound wrists away from him, but there was nothing she could do. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She thought of Ty, and the tears grew heavier and uncontrollable, choking her, making her unable to breathe. Oh, baby, you can’t be dead. Please, Ty, please, hear me… Her heart almost split in two at the thought that she had caused him harm.

They dragged her down through the sand, and she shook her head back and forth, screaming inside, No!

Cates, the ponytailed bastard, yanked her into the water.

Karen kneed him in the groin. He howled and then spun in rage. “Goddamn it!” and kicked her in the stomach. He dropped her at last, face-first, in the shallow water. Exhausted, out of resistance. Forcing Karen’s face under the warm foam.

“Heard the jet stream’s nice this time of year.” Cates chuckled. “Shouldn’t be too bad.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE

It took just minutes, Hauck’s Bronco speeding down Route 1 with its top hat flashing, for him to pull outside the house on Sea Wall.

Two local blue-and-whites had already beaten him there.

Hauck noticed Karen’s white Lexus parked in front of the garage. He grabbed his gun and slid out of the Bronco, favoring his right leg. Two uniformed cops, each carrying lit Maglites, were exiting the front door. He recognized one from the station, Torres. Hauck went up to them, clutching his side.

“Anyone inside?”

Torres shrugged. “There was a dog locked in one of the rooms, Lieutenant. Other than that, negative.”

That didn’t wash. Karen’s car was here. If they had come after him, it seemed inevitable that they had come after her. “What about Mrs. Friedman? Did you check upstairs?”

“All over the house, Lieutenant. O’Hearn and Pallacio are still in there.” The officer’s eyes fell to Hauck’s side. “Jesus, sir…”

Hauck headed past him into the open house, the patrolman left staring at the trail of blood.

He called out, “Karen?” No reply. Hauck’s heart started to beat wildly. He heard barking. Officer Pallacio came down the stairs, with his gun drawn.

“Fucking dog.” He shook his head. “Shot by me like a Formula One.” He looked surprised to see Hauck. “Lieutenant!”

“Is anybody here?” Hauck demanded.

“No one, sir. Just Rin Tin Tin out there.” He pointed out back.

“Did you check the basement?”

The cop nodded. “All over, sir.”

Shit. Karen’s car was here. Maybe she had gone to her friend’s… He racked his brain. What was her name? Paula. Hauck’s gaze fixed on a roll of packing tape on a chair. A pile of mail and magazines were scattered about the floor. The French doors leading to the patio were ajar-Tobey barking like crazy out there.

He didn’t like what he was feeling at all.

He went through the doors and looked out at the yard. The night was bright, clear. He smelled the nearby sound. The dog was on the deck, barking nonstop. Clearly upset.

“Where the hell is she, Tobey?” Hauck sucked in a breath. Every time he did, it killed him.

Limping, he made his way into the backyard. There was a small pool out there, a couple of chaises. Every instinct in his body told him Karen was in danger. She had talked with Charles. She knew. He should never have let her come back here without him. Why would it make sense to silence only him?

Farther along, his eyes were drawn to something lying in the grass.

Shoes. Karen’s. The ones she’d been wearing earlier tonight. A pattering of nerves drummed up in him. The beating in his heart intensified.

“Karen?” he called.

Why would they be out here?

He looked further. There was some gardening equipment on the ground, a plastic watering jug. Near the end of the yard, he came upon a wooden gate-unlatched. It opened to a narrow wooded path. He went through it. Hauck suddenly realized what it was.

It led around to the end of the town road off Surfside.

To Teddy’s Beach.

He heard a voice from behind him. “Lieutenant, you need any help out there?”

Clutching his gun, forcing the pain out of his mind, Hauck stepped along the path. He pushed a few branches out of his way. After thirty or forty yards, weaving behind other houses on Sea Wall, he saw the opening to the town road.

He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Karen!”

No reply.

Something on the ground caught Hauck’s eye. He knelt, almost buckling from the surge of pain shooting through his thigh.

A sliver of fabric. Orange.

His heart stopped still. Karen had been wearing an orange top.

A tremor of dread rose up in him. He looked out toward the beach. Oh, Jesus. He did his best to run.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO

Her face was pressed under the surface, breath tightening in her lungs, flailing at him with her arms, Cates’s strong hands pinning the back of her head.

Karen had fought him with everything she had. Clawing, trying to bite his arm, gasping to suck a gulp of precious air into her lungs. Once she even pulled him over on top of her, amusing Dietz, getting Cates all soaked, and he drew his fist to her face in a menacing rage. “Jesus, Cates, what a fucking woman!” she heard Dietz cackle.

Karen spit water out of her mouth and tried to scream. He dunked her under again.

Now it was ending. Cates had finally ripped off the tape from her mouth, and she was taking in water, gasping for breath with every last ounce of strength, coughing, but he cupped his hand over her mouth and forced her back down before she could scream.

And who would hear anyway? Who would hear in time? Her thoughts flashed to Ty. Oh, please…please… Now water was pouring in. She twisted away from his grasp a last time, gagging. This was it. She could no longer fight it. In desperation, Karen reached back, vainly trying to claw at the bastard’s leg.

She heard him shout, “How’s the temperature, bitch?”

A desperate will fought the urge to simply open her mouth, just surrender. Give herself over to the dark tide. She thought of Sam and Alex.

No, Karen, no…

Don’t think of them. Please… That would mean this is it. Don’t give in.

Then the denial inside her slowly relaxing, her mind wandering amid her last futile throes to an image that even in her greatest fear surprised her: an island, palms bending in the breeze, someone on the white sand, in a baseball cap, stepping toward her.

Waving.

Karen stepped toward him. Oh, God…

Just as the hand that pinned her under the dark water suddenly seemed to release.

HAUCK STAGGERED UP out of the grasses over the dune, his leg exploding in agony.

From thirty yards away, he spotted the man kneeling above her in the water, pressing her face down. Someone else-Dietz, he was certain-standing a few yards back on the beach, seemingly amused by things.

“Karen!”

He stepped forward, steadying his gun with two hands in a shooter’s position, just as the man kneeling over Karen looked up.

The first shot hit him in the shoulder, jerking him backward in surprise. The second and the third thudded solidly into his print beach shirt, spewing red. The man toppled into the water and didn’t move.

Karen rolled over and put a hand up in the soft tide.

“Karen!”

Hauck took a step toward her and at the same time spun on Dietz, who was scrambling along the sand, drawing his weapon. The bright moon had illuminated the first guy on the water, but it was dark. Dietz was like a shadow on the move. Hauck squeezed off a shot. It missed him. The next struck him in the knee as he tried to make a run toward the jetty. He pulled up, hobbling like a colt that had broken its leg.

Hauck ran, labored, toward Karen.

Slowly, she rolled over in the shallow surf, gagging, coughing up water. She pushed herself up on her elbows and knees. In horror, she stared at Cates’s wide-eyed shape-next to her, faceup in the water, and backed away as if it were something vile. She turned to Hauck, tears and disbelief in her wet eyes.

But Dietz had moved into position behind her, placing her directly in Hauck’s line of sight. He had his gun aimed at Hauck, momentarily shielded behind Karen.

“Let her go,” Hauck said. He kept stepping forward. “Let her go, Dietz. There’s no way out.” He steadied his gun at Dietz’s chest. “You might imagine just how much I’d relish doing this.”

“You better be good.” Dietz chuckled. “You miss, Lieutenant, the next one goes in her.”

“I am good.” Hauck nodded.

Hauck took a step toward him. More of a stagger in the sand. It was then he realized that his knees were growing weak and that his strength was waning. He had lost a lot of blood.

“No reason to die here, Dietz,” he said. “We all know it was Lennick who was behind the hits. You’ve got someone to roll on, Dietz. Why die for him? You can cut a deal.”

“Why…?” Dietz circled behind Karen, keeping her in his line of sight. He shrugged. “Guess it’s just my nature, Lieutenant.”

Using her as a screen, he fired.

A bright streak whizzed just over Hauck’s shoulder, the heat burning him. His wounded leg buckled as he staggered back. He winced, his arm lowering, exposed.

Seeing an advantage, Dietz stepped forward ready to fire again.

“No…!” Karen screamed, lunging out of the water to stop him. “No!”

Dietz shifted his gun to her.

Hauck hollered, “Dietz!”

He fired. The round caught Dietz squarely in the forehead. The killer’s arm jerked as his own gun went off in the air. He fell back onto the sand, inert, landing like a snow angel, arms and legs spread wide. A trickle of blood oozed from the dime-size hole in his forehead into the lapping surf.

Karen turned, her face wet, glistening. For a moment Hauck just stood there, breathing heavily, two hands wrapped around the gun.

“You didn’t leave,” she said, shaking her head.

“Never,” he said, with a labored smile. Then he dropped to his knees.

“Ty!”

Karen pushed herself up and ran over to him. Dark blood leaked from his side into his hand. Shouts emanated from behind them, flashlights raking over the beach.

Exhausted, Karen hugged him, wrapping her arms around him, a sob of laughter and relief snaking through her tears of fear and exhaustion. She started to cry.

“It’s over, Ty, it’s over,” she said, wiping the blood off his face, tears flooding her eyes.

“No,” he said, “it’s not over.” He collapsed into her, sucking back his pain against her shoulder. “There’s one last stop.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE

The call came in just as Saul Lennick settled down for a late meal in his kitchen at his house on Deerfield Road.

Ida, the housekeeper, had heated up a pain du champignon meat loaf before she left. Lennick poured himself a glass of day-old Conseillante. Mimi was on the phone upstairs, going over donors for this season’s Red Cross Ball.

He caught his face in the reflection from the window that overlooked Mimi’s gardens. It had been close. A few days later, he didn’t know what might have happened. But he had tidied it all up. Things had worked out pretty well.

Charles was dead, and with him the fear that anything might fall on Lennick. The heavy losses and the violations of the loans, those would be pinned on Charles. The poor fool had simply fled in fear. The cop was dead. Hodges, another loose end, would be dealt with the same way that very night. The old geezer in Pensacola, what did it matter what he went on about now? Dietz and Cates, as soon as he got the call, they would be rich men and out of the country. Out of anyone’s sight.

Yes, Lennick had done things he never thought himself capable of. Things his grandchildren would never know. That was what his career was all about. There were always trade-offs, losses. Sometimes you just had to do things to preserve your capital, right? It had come close to all tumbling down. But now he was safe, his reputation unimpeachable, his network intact. In the morning there was money to be made. That was how you did it-you simply turned the page.

You forgot your losses of the day before.

At the sound of the phone, Lennick flipped it open, the caller ID both lifting him and making him sad at the same time. He washed down a bite of food with a sip of claret.

“Is it done?”

The voice on the other end made his heart stop.

Not just stop-shatter. Lennick’s eyes bulged at the sight of the flashing lights outside.

“Yes, Saul, it’s done,” Karen said, calling from Dietz’s phone. “Now it’s completely done.”

THREE GREENWICH BLUE-AND-WHITE police cars were pulled up in the courtyard of Lennick’s stately Normandy that bordered the wooded expanse of the Greenwich Country Club.

Karen leaned against one, wrapped in a blanket, her clothes still wet. With a surge of satisfaction running through her, she handed Dietz’s phone back to Hauck. “Thank you, Ty.”

Carl Fitzpatrick himself had gone inside-as Hauck was under the care of a med tech-and the chief and two uniformed patrolmen pulled Lennick out of the house, his wrists bound in cuffs.

The banker’s wife, dressed in just a night robe, ran out after him, frantic. “Why are they doing this, Saul? What’s going on? What are they talking about-murder?”

“Call Tom!” Lennick shouted back over his shoulder as they led him onto the brick circle to one of the waiting cars. His eyes met Hauck’s and cast him a contemptuous glare. “I’ll be home tomorrow,” he reassured his wife, almost mockingly.

His gaze fell upon Karen. She shivered despite the blanket but didn’t break her gaze. Her eyes contained the hint of a wordless, satisfied smile.

As if she were saying, He won, Saul. With a nod. He won.

They pushed Lennick into one of the cars. Karen came over to Hauck. Exhausted, she rested her head against his weakened arm.

It’s over.

The sound came from behind them. Only a sharp ping of splintering glass.

It took a moment to figure it out. By that time Hauck was screaming that someone was shooting and had pressed his body over Karen’s on the driveway, shielding her.

“Ty, what’s going on?”

Everyone hit the pavement or ducked protectively behind vehicles. Police guns came out, radios crackled. People were yelling, “Everyone get down! Get down!”

It all stopped as quickly as it began.

The shot had come from up in the trees. From the grounds of the club. No car starting. No footsteps.

Guns trained, the officers looked for a shooter in the darkeness.

Shouts rang out. “Is anyone hurt?”

No one answered.

Freddy Muñoz got up and got on the radio to order the area closed off, but there were a dozen ways to get out from back there. Onto Hill. Deerfield. North Street.

Anywhere.

Hauck pulled himself up off Karen. His eye was drawn to the waiting police car. His stomach fell. “Oh, Jesus, God…”

There was a spiderweb of fractured glass in the rear passenger window. A tiny hole in the center.

Saul Lennick was slumped against it, as if napping.

There was a widening dark spot on the side of his head. His white hair was turning red.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR

Illegal search. Breaking and entering. Unauthorized use of official firearms. Failing to report a felony act.

These were just some of the offenses Hauck knew he might be facing from his bed in Greenwich Hospital. Not to mention misleading a murder investigation in the BVIs, but at least, for the moment, that was out of the jurisdiction here.

Still, as he lay attached to a network of catheters and monitors, recuperating from surgeries on his abdomen and leg, it occurred to him that a continuing career in law enforcement was pretty much of a morphine drip right now.

That next morning Carl Fitzpatrick came to visit. He brought an arrangement of daffodils with him and placed it on the sill next to the flowers sent by the local policemen’s union, shrugging at Hauck a bit foolishly, as if to say, The wife made me do it, Ty.

Hauck nodded and said, straightfaced, “I’m actually a bit more partial to purples and reds, Carl.”

“Next time, then.” Fitzpatrick grinned, sitting down.

He inquired about Hauck’s injuries. The bullet to his side had had the good fortune of missing anything vital. That would heal. The leg, however-Hauck’s right hip, actually-with all the running and limping around as he went after Dietz and Lennick, was basically shot.

“The doctor says those end-to-end rushes on the rink are pretty much a thing of the past now.” Hauck smiled.

His boss nodded like that was too bad. “Well, you weren’t exactly Bobby Orr.” Then after a pause, Fitzpatrick shifted forward. “You know, I’d like to be able to say, ‘Good work, Ty.’ I mean, that was one sweet mother of a bust.” He shook his head soberly. “Why couldn’t you have just brought it in to me, Ty? We could have done it by the book.”

Hauck shifted. “Guess I just got carried away.”

“Yeah.” The chief grinned, as if appreciating the joke. “That’s what you could call it, getting carried away.” Fitzpatrick stood up. “I gotta go.”

Hauck reached over to him. “So be honest with me, Carl, what are the chances I’ll be back on the job?”

“Honest?”

“Yeah.” Hauck sighed. “Honest.”

The chief blew a long blast of air. “I don’t know…” he swallowed. “There’ll definitely have to be a review. People are going to look to me for some kind of suspension.”

Hauck sucked in a breath. “I understand.”

Fitzpatrick shrugged. “I don’t know, Ty, whaddaya think? Maybe a week?” He curled a bright smile. “That was one fucking kick-ass of a bust, Lieutenant. I can’t exactly stand behind the way you went about it. But it was sweet. Sweet enough that I want you back. So rest up. Take care of yourself. Ty, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but you should be proud.”

“Thank you, Carl.”

Fitzpatrick gave Hauck a tug on the forearm and headed to the door.

“Hey, Carl…”

The chief turned at the door. “Yeah?”

“If I had done it by the book…If I had come to you and said I wanted to reopen the Raymond hit-and-run. Before I had something. Tell me straight, would you have agreed?”

“Agreed?” The chief squinted in thought. “To open it back up? On what, Lieutenant?” He laughed as he went out the door. “No effing way.”

HAUCK NAPPED A little. He felt restored. Around lunchtime there was a knock at the door. Jessie came in.

With Beth.

“Hey, honey…” Hauck grinned widely. When he tried to open his arms, he winced.

“Oh, Daddy…” With tears of worry, Jessie ran over and put her face against his chest. “Daddy, are you going to be all right?”

“I’m okay, hon. I promise. I’m going to be okay. Strong as ever.”

She nodded, and Hauck pressed her against him. He looked over at Beth.

She curled her short brown hair behind her ear and leaned against the door. Smiled. He was sure she was about to tell him, something like, Nice job, Lieutenant, or, You sure outdid yourself this time, Ty.

But she didn’t.

Instead she came over and stood by the bed. Her eyes were liquid and deep, and it took her a while to say anything at all, and when she did, it was with a tight smile and a fond squeeze of his hand.

“All right,” she said, “you can have Thanksgiving, Ty.”

He looked at her and smiled.

And for the first time in years, he felt he saw something there. In her moist eyes. Something he’d been waiting for for a long time. Something that had been lost and had eluded him for many years and now, with their daughter’s wet cheeks pressed into him, had been found.

Forgiveness.

He winked at her and held Jessie close. “That’s good to hear, Beth.”

THAT NIGHT HAUCK was a little groggy from all the medications. He had the Yankees game on but couldn’t follow. There was a soft knock at the door.

Karen stepped in.

She was dressed in her gray Texas Longhorns T-shirt, a jean jacket thrown around her shoulders. Her hair was pinned up. Hauck noticed a cut on the side of her lip where Dietz had slapped her. She carried a single rose in a small vase and came over and placed it next to his bed.

“My heart.” She pointed to it.

He smiled.

“You look pretty,” he told her.

“Yeah, right. I look like a bus just ran over me.”

“No. Everything looks pretty. The morphine’s kicking in.”

Karen smiled. “I was here last night when you were in surgery. The doctors talked to me. You’re Mr. Lucky, Ty. How’s the leg?”

“It was never exactly what you’d call limber. Now it’s just completely shot.” He chuckled. “The whole-”

“Don’t say it.” Karen stopped him. “Please.”

Hauck nodded. After a pause he shrugged. “So what the hell is a shebang anyway?”

Karen’s eyes glistened. “I don’t know.” She squeezed his hand with both of hers and stared deeply into his hooded eyes. “Thank you, Ty. I owe you so much. I owe you everything. I wish I knew what the hell to say.”

“Don’t…”

Karen pressed his fingers in her palms and shook her head. “I just don’t know if I can pick up the same way.”

He nodded.

“Charlie’s dead,” she said. “That’s gonna take some time now. And the kids…they’re coming back.” She looked at him. Amid all these tubes, the monitor screens beeping. Her eyes flooded over.

“I understand.”

She placed her head down on his chest. Felt his breathing.

“On the other hand”-she sniffed back a few tears-“I guess we could give it a try.”

Hauck laughed. More like winced, pain rising up in his belly.

“Yeah.” He held her. He stroked her hair. The fleshy round of her cheek. He felt her stop shaking. He felt himself start to feel at ease, too.

“We could try.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIVE

Two weeks later

Hauck drove his Bronco up to the large stone gate.

He lowered his window and leaned out to press an intercom button. A voice responded. “Yes?”

“Lieutenant Hauck,” Hauck said into the speaker.

“Drive up to the house,” the voice replied. The gates slowly opened. “Mr. Khodoshevsky is expecting you.”

Hauck made his way up the long paved drive. Even applying the slightest pressure on the gas, his right leg still ached. He had begun some therapy, but there were weeks ahead of him. The doctors told him he might never again walk without the trace of a limp.

The property was massive. He drove past a huge pond. There was a fenced-in field-for horses, maybe. At the top he drove up to an enormous redbrick Georgian with a magnificent courtyard in front, an ornately crafted fountain in the center, with water spilling out of sculptured figures into a marble pool.

Billionaires ruining things for millionaires, Hauck recalled. Even by Greenwich standards, he’d never seen anything quite like this.

He stepped out of the car. Grabbed his cane. It helped. He climbed up the steps to the impressive front doors.

He rang the bell. Loud choral peals. That didn’t surprise him. A young woman answered. Attractive. Eastern European. Maybe an au pair.

“Mr. Khodoshevsky asked me to bring you to the den,” she said with a smile. “This way.”

A young boy, maybe five or six, raced past him riding some kind of motorized toy car. “Beep, beep!”

The au pair yelled out, “Michael, no!” Then she smiled apologetically. “Sorry.”

“I’m a cop.” Hauck winked. “Tell him to try and keep it under forty in here.”

He was led through a series of palatial rooms to a family room at the side of the house, featuring a curved wall of windows overlooking the property. There was a large leather couch, a recognizable contemporary painting over it that Hauck took to be immensely valuable, though he wasn’t exactly sure about the guy’s use of blue. A huge media console was stacked against a wall, a stereo that went on forever. The requisite sixty-inch flat-screen.

There was an old-time Western movie on.

“Lieutenant.”

Hauck spotted a set of legs reclining on an ottoman. Then a large, bushy-haired body rose out of a chair, wearing baggy shorts and an oversize yellow T-shirt that read MONEY IS THE BEST REVENGE.

“I’m Gregory Khodoshevsky.” The man extended a hand. He had a powerful shake. “Please, sit down.”

Hauck eased against a chair, taking his weight off. He leaned on his cane. “Thanks.”

“I see you’re not well?”

“Just a little procedure,” Hauck lied. “Bum hip.”

The Russian nodded. “I’ve had my knee worked on several times. Skiing.” He grinned. “I’ve learned-man is not meant to ski through trees.” He reached for the clicker and turned down the volume. “You like westerns, Lieutenant?”

“Sure. Everyone does.”

“Me, too. This is my favorite: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Never quite sure exactly who I identify with, though. My wife, of course, insists it’s the ugly.”

Hauck grinned. “If I remember, that was one of the film’s themes. They all had their motives.”

“Yes.” The Russian smiled. “I think you’re right-they all had motives. So what do I owe this visit to, Lieutenant Hauck?”

“I was working a case. A name came up that I hoped might mean something to you. Charles Friedman.”

“Charles Friedman?” The Russian shrugged. “I’m sorry, no, Lieutenant. Should it?”

The guy was good, Hauck thought. A natural. Hauck looked back at him closely. “I was hoping so.”

“Although, now that you mention it”-Khodoshevsky brightened-“I do remember someone named Friedman. He ran some benefit in town I went to a year or two ago. The Bruce Museum, I think. I made a donation. I remember now, he had an attractive wife. Maybe his name was Charles, if it’s the one. So what did he do?”

“He’s dead,” Hauck said. “He had a connection to a case I was looking into, a hit-and-run.”

“A hit-and-run.” Khodoshevsky grimaced. “Too bad. The traffic up here is unbearable, Lieutenant. I’m sure you know that. Sometimes I’m afraid to cross the street myself in town.”

“Especially when someone doesn’t want you to succeed,” Hauck said, staring into the Russian’s steely eyes.

“Yes. I imagine that’s true. Is there some reason you connected this man to me?”

“Yes.” Hauck nodded. “Saul Lennick.”

“Lennick!” The Russian drew in a breath. “Now, Lennick I did know. Terrible. That such a thing could happen. Right in the man’s own home. Right here in town. A challenge, I’m sure, for you, Lieutenant.”

“Mr. Friedman was killed himself a couple of weeks back. In the British Virgin Isles…Turns out he and Mr. Lennick were financial partners.”

Khodoshevsky’s eyes widened, as if in surprise. “Partners? Crazy what’s going on around here. But I’m afraid I never saw the man again. Sorry that you had to come all the way out here to find that out. I wish I could have been more help.”

Hauck reached for his cane. “Not a total loss. I don’t often get to see a house like this.”

“I’d be happy to show you around.”

Hauck pushed himself up and winced. “Another time.”

“I wish you good luck with your leg. And finding who was responsible for such a terrible thing.”

“Thanks.” Hauck took a step toward the door. “You know, before I go, there’s something I might show you. Just in case it jogs something. I was down in the Caribbean myself a week ago.” Hauck took out his cell phone. “I noticed something interesting-in the water. Off this island. I actually grabbed a snapshot of it. Funny, only a couple of miles from where Charles Friedman ended up killed.”

He handed the cell phone to Khodoshevsky, who stared curiously at the image on the screen. The one Hauck had taken on his run.

Khodoshevsky’s schooner. The Black Bear.

“Humph.” The Russian shook his head, meeting Hauck’s gaze. “Funny how lives seem to intersect, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

“No more,” Hauck said, looking at him.

“Yes, you’re right.” He handed back the phone. “No more.”

“I’ll find my way out,” Hauck said, placing his phone back in his pocket. “Just one last piece of advice, Mr. Khodoshevsky, if you don’t mind. You seem to be partial to westerns, so I think you’ll understand.”

“And what is that?” The Russian looked at him innocently.

Hauck shrugged. “You know the expression ‘Get out of Dodge’?”

“I think I’ve heard it. The sheriff always says it to the bad guys. But of course they never do.”

“No, they never do.” Hauck took a step toward the door. “That’s what makes westerns. But just this once, you know, they should, Mr. Khodoshevsky.” Hauck looked at him closely. “You should. If you know what I mean.”

“I think I understand.” The Russian smiled.

“Oh, and by the way”-Hauck turned, tilting his cane at the door-“that’s one hell of a sweet boat, Mr. Khodoshevsky-if you know what I mean!”