Andrew Gross - Andrew Gross 3-Book Thriller Collection 1 - The Dark Tide, Don’t Look Twice, Relentless

He was head of the Violent Crimes Unit on the Greenwich police force. People relied on him. Was that running away? Sometimes he took the boat out for an hour or so before work in the rosy predawn calm and fished for blues and striped bass. Was that?

He had grown up here. In middle-class Byram, near Port Chester by the New York border, only a few miles but a lifetime away from the massive estates that now lined the way out to backcountry, gates he now drove through to follow up on some rich kid who had tipped over his sixty-thousand-dollar Hummer.

It was all different now. The countrified families who had grown up there in his youth had given way to thirty-something hedge-fund zillionaires who tore the old homes down and built enormous castles behind iron gates, with lake-size pools and movie theaters. Everyone with money was coming in. Now Russian moguls—who even knew where their wealth was from?—were buying up horse-country estates in Conyers Farm, putting in helicopter pads.

Billionaires ruining things for millionaires. Hauck shook his head.

Twenty years ago he’d been a running back at Greenwich High. Then he went on and played at Colby, Division III. Not exactly Big Ten, but the fancy degree got him fast-tracked into the NYPD detectives’ training program, which made his dad, who worked his whole life for the Town of Greenwich Water Authority, proud. He’d cracked a couple of high-profile cases and moved up. Later on he worked for the department’s Information Office when the Trade Towers were hit.

So now he was back.

As he chugged into the harbor, the manicured lawns of Belle Haven to his left, a couple of small boats cruised past him on their way out—doing the same thing he was doing, heading to work on Long Island across the sound, a half hour’s ride away.

Hauck waved.

And he liked it here now, though a lot of pain had left its mark in between.

It was lonely since he and Beth had split up. He dated a bit: a pretty secretary to the CEO at General Reinsurance, a marketing gal who worked at Altria for a while. Even one or two gals on the force. But he’d found no one new to share his life with. Though Beth had.

Occasionally he hung out with a few of his old buddies from town, a couple who had made bundles building homes, some who just became plumbers or mortgage brokers or owned a landscaping company. “The Leg,” that’s what everyone still called him—with a soft g , as in “Legend.” Old-timers, who still recalled him busting two tackles into the end zone to beat Stamford West for the Lower Fairfield County crown, still toasted that as the best game they’d ever seen anyone play here since Steve Young and bought him beers.

But mostly he simply felt free. That the past hadn’t followed him up here. He just tried to do a little good during the day, cut people a break. Be fair. And he had Jessica, who was ten now, up on weekends, and they fished and kicked soccer balls around on Tod’s Point and had cookouts there. Sunday afternoons, in his eight-year-old Bronco, he’d drive her back to where she lived now, in Brooklyn. Friday nights in the winter, he played hockey in the local over-forty league.

Basically he tried to push it back a little each day—time, that is—trying to find himself back to that point before everything caved in on him. That moment before the accident. Before his marriage collapsed. Before he gave up.

Why go back there, Ty?

Hard as you tried, you could never quite push it back all the way. Life didn’t afford you that.

Hauck caught sight of the marina at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, where the dock manager, Hank Gordon, an old buddy, always let him put in for the day. He picked up the radio. “Heading in, Gordo …”

But the marina manager was waiting for him out on the pier.

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

Hauck yelled to him, “Summer hours, guy!” He reversed and backed the Merrily in. Gordo tossed a bowline to him and reeled him in. Hauck cut the engine. He went out to the stern as the boat hit the buoy and hopped onto the pier. “Like a dream out there today.”

“A bad dream,” Hank said. “Lemme take it from here, Ty. You better get your ass up that hill.”

There was something on the dock manager’s face that Hauck couldn’t quite read. He glanced at his watch—8:52. Usually he and Gordo shot the shit a few minutes, about the Rangers or what had made it onto the police blotter the night before.

That’s when Hauck’s cell phone started to beep. The office. Two-three-seven.

Two-thirty-seven was the department’s emergency code.

“You didn’t have the radio on, did you?” Gordo asked, securing the line.

Hauck shook his head blankly.

“Then you haven’t heard what the hell happened out there, have you, Lieutenant?”

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