Carla Neggers - Breakwater

“Why not call them?”

“I tried earlier. They’re not home. Anyway, I don’t want them to feel obligated to find Alicia. If she’s there and needs help-maybe I can do something. I can take work with me if she turns up fine in the meantime.”

“Let’s hope she does.” Lattimore walked out into the hall, his footsteps silent on the thick Persian runner, also original to the building. “Going to show me your office?”

“It’s just down the hall-it’s in the Octagon Room.” Quinn could hear how stiff she sounded. “Gerard-”

“Maybe another time.” He rubbed the back of his neck in a rare display of awkwardness. “If you ever heard anything, knew anything, that would put me in a bad light, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? Rumors, people’s agendas. Whatever.”

She frowned. “Why? Is there something going on that I should know about? Does it affect Alicia-”

“No, nothing like that. Sometimes the vultures get to me. That’s all.” He gave her a fake smile. “Comes with the territory.”

Quinn followed him downstairs. By the time he reached Thelma’s desk, he was loose and smiling, and when he said goodbye, the starchy, lawyer-hating receptionist couldn’t maintain her neutral expression.

Outside on the steps, Quinn smiled at her former boss. “You charmed Thelma. That’s not easy to do.”

“Thelma? Oh, the receptionist.” He grinned. “Doesn’t like lawyers, does she?”

An answer wasn’t necessary. Quinn had no illusions about Gerard Lattimore. He didn’t like surprises, and he never revealed all he knew on any subject. It wasn’t a stretch to guess that whatever was going on with Alicia, he probably knew or guessed more than he was saying. If one of his people was going off the deep end, he’d find out-and he’d be careful. He was a political animal, alert enough, nimble enough, to jump out of the way before he got burned.

After he left, Quinn didn’t feel any better for having told him about Alicia. She returned to her office and stood at a leaded-glass window, staring down at a center courtyard with a formal maze of shrubs, flowering trees and stone benches. The pretty, sedate scene made Quinn wish she’d had coffee with Alicia there instead of down the street. The atmosphere might have calmed her and helped her to articulate what was wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The osprey, the osprey.”

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

“The osprey will kill me.”

What on earth did Alicia mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, right. Yeah.”

“You should have told me.”

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

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

“Not since she left here Friday.”

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

“To the point of calling the police?”

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

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

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

Steve was silent a moment.

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

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