Carla Neggers - Breakwater

When she asked to use the cottage for a weekend getaway, Quinn hadn’t questioned Alicia’s motives. She’d simply handed her a key and told her to come and go at will.

Not once that night or in the next weeks did she sense that Alicia was seriously troubled or burned out.

“Alicia-where are you?”

Quinn spoke quietly into a cold breeze, shuddering at a sudden sense of loneliness. She’d always felt safe, comfortable, at her cottage. Now, she pictured an osprey swooping down to a fluffy little duckling, heard Alicia screaming in horror and prayed that her friend was all right. But darkness was coming fast, and Quinn knew there was nothing more she could do tonight.

When she took her tea out to the porch in the morning, Quinn told herself that Alicia must have shown up at her apartment last night and by now was on her way to work, yesterday’s drama behind her. Quinn had tried calling, but her cell phone was balky. She’d walk down to the water after her tea and try again.

She sat on a wicker rocker and pulled her feet up under her, cupping her mug with both hands to feel the warmth of the steaming tea. She had on her oversize sweater, a flannel shirt, jeans and just her socks. She expected the cool air and the cry of seagulls in the distance, the sounds of the tide washing in and out, but not, she thought, the very buff man in running shorts and a ratty T-shirt jogging on the road in front of her cottage.

He didn’t seem to notice her. When he reached the end of her road, just past her cottage, he did a wide turn and paused briefly to stretch. His dark hair was cut very short, not quite a crewcut, and he had a thickset build, with a flat abdomen and muscular arms, shoulders and thighs. He was obviously a physical man, not some guy dragging himself out for an early-morning jog to lose a few pounds.

When he reached the end of her stone walk, Quinn couldn’t resist calling out to him. “Nice morning for a run, isn’t it?”

She didn’t seem to have startled him. He stopped, not even remotely out of breath as he squinted at her on the porch. “That it is. I’m new in town. You live here?”

“It’s my weekend place.”

“Today’s Tuesday.”

She set her mug on a small table to one side of her rocker. “I was speaking in broad terms. My name’s Quinn-Quinn Harlowe.”

“Huck Boone.”

“Are you one of the new guys at Breakwater Security?”

Just a flicker of hesitation. “That’s right.” He nodded toward the dead-end road and the barbed wire. “I guess we’re neighbors.”

“No one but a seagull or an osprey would try to get to Breakwater through the marsh. It’s rough going. When did you get here?”

“Over the weekend.”

“This your first time jogging out this way?”

“No, why?”

He was calm and very direct, but obviously wondering why she was asking such questions. But she had dreamed about Alicia last night, not good dreams. “I got here late yesterday thinking a friend of mine who borrowed my cottage for the weekend might still be here. I guess I’m wondering if you’ve run into her.”

“Was she supposed to be here?”

“I don’t know where she’s supposed to be. It’s a long story.”

“Hope you find her.”

“Does that mean you haven’t seen her?”

He paused a moment. “What’s her name?”

“Alicia Miller. Her car’s not here, and none of her stuff’s here.”

And no suicide note, Quinn thought. In a fit of paranoia, she’d searched the cottage before going to bed last night and found nothing that eased her mind about Alicia-nothing, either, that indicated she’d had a complete mental breakdown. The place was clean and tidied up, not even a dish left in the sink.

Huck Boone, she noticed, hadn’t moved a muscle.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” she said quickly.

“You don’t sound sure.”

Quinn found herself wanting to tell him about Alicia’s odd behavior yesterday, but she resisted. “I’m heading back to Washington this morning. If you do hear of anything-” She debated her options. “Can you hang on a second? I’ll give you my cell-phone number.”

Boone shrugged. “Okay.”

She ran inside and grabbed a notepad and pen off the coffee table, where she’d spread out files and papers and had tried to work last night. She quickly scrawled down her number, folding the small sheet in half as she returned to the porch.

She walked along the stone path in her stocking feet, Boone meeting her halfway. His eyes, she saw, were a dark green, at least in the cool morning light of early April. Quinn tried to smile, but knew she didn’t quite manage. “Since you’re in private security…” She let her shoulders lift and fall in an exaggerated manner. “Never mind. I’m just covering all the bases I can think of, in case something’s happened to her.”

“Why do you think anything’s happened to her?”

“I don’t-”

“Yes, you do.”

She felt sudden tears in her eyes and hoped he would blame them on the cold air.

“Does she know Oliver Crawford?”

“Not well. They met briefly at a party last month.” Quinn blinked back the tears. “He and I have met a few times, but I don’t know him well, either.”

Interest rose in Boone’s expression. Little, she suspected, escaped this man’s attention, a skill that had to be a plus in private security work.

But she brought her mind back to the subject at hand, adding, “Oliver Crawford and my former boss-Alicia’s current boss-are friends. They went to college together.”

“And your boss would be-”

“Gerard Lattimore.” She didn’t know how she’d ended up giving him this information about herself. “He’s a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department.”

“What are you, a lawyer?”

“Historian.”

Boone took a second to digest that information but had no visible reaction. “You don’t work for this Lattimore anymore?”

“No. I left Justice in January.”

“He knows your friend’s missing?”

Quinn realized the tables had turned and now Huck Boone was interrogating her. He was a security type, she reminded herself, and such tactics probably came naturally to him. But she didn’t feel particularly reassured. “Alicia’s not missing. She’s just-I just haven’t accounted for her.”

Boone didn’t relent. “But Lattimore knows?”

“Yes.”

“And Mr. Crawford?”

“I have no idea. I haven’t talked with him.”

“You don’t socialize with him in Washington?”

“I told you, I don’t know him that well. And these days, Mr. Boone, any socializing I do is work related.”

He grinned unexpectedly and leaned toward her. “Then it’s not socializing, is it?” He straightened, his eyes softer now, not as intense. “Since we’re neighbors, you can just call me Huck.”

She felt a twitch of a smile. “Huck Boone. That’s quite a name, isn’t it? Makes me think of Huckleberry Finn and Daniel Boone-”

“My folks have a strange sense of humor. I should get rolling. You okay? Anything I can do for you?”

His concern took her aback, and she wondered just how tight and preoccupied she appeared. She glanced out at the osprey nest at the mouth of the cove and almost told him about Alicia’s pleas, but she’d told Boone, a man she didn’t know at all, more than she’d meant to as it was. “I’m okay. Thanks for asking,” she said. “Don’t let me keep you from your run.”

“Just getting loose. We’re getting put through our paces today at Breakwater.”

“Good luck.”

He winked at her. “Thanks.”

He jogged off toward the loop road at a moderate pace.

Quinn didn’t immediately return to her hot tea. The bay glistened in the morning sun, the water quiet and very blue under the clear sky. She wondered how many of Oliver Crawford’s guys would be jogging past her cottage now that he’d converted his estate into a private security outfit.