Breakwater (2 page)

Something was wrong.

Huck McCabe paused to do a few leg stretches, a couple miles into his midafternoon run. He’d come to the end of a narrow road, a short spoke off the loop road that encircled the small Chesapeake Bay village of Yorkville, Virginia. In his forty-eight hours there, Huck had discovered that getting around the picturesque village didn’t take impressive navigational skills. It had a main street lined with cute shops and an old-fashioned diner. It had the waterfront with lots of modest cottages. It had a couple of marinas and a smattering of restaurants that each served its own private family recipe for crab cakes, and it had three bait-and-tackle shops that offered up everything a fisherman could possibly need for anything from a weekend to a lifetime on the Chesapeake.

There were no giant trophy houses in Yorkville. Most of the houses-year-round or second home-were built in the 1940s and 1950s. If he ran the town for a day, Huck would outlaw chain-link fences. It seemed every house had one, and he thought they were damn ugly, the only real blot on the otherwise quaint town.

The cottage where Alicia Miller had spent the weekend was the second of two small, older cottages on the dead-end road. It had no fence. Its ground-level front porch was low enough not to need a balustrade, allowing an unimpeded view of the water from its clean white wicker chairs.

Huck had noticed there was no car in the short dirt driveway. Nor was there any sign of life inside, although he hadn’t gone so far as to knock on the front or side doors or peek in the windows.

He finished his stretches. He could have skipped them, but they gave him an excuse to check out the area. The road dead-ended at a salt marsh. On the other side of the marsh, about three-quarters of a mile farther up the bay, was Breakwater, known locally as the Crawford compound, the hundred-acre waterfront estate owned by wealthy Washington entrepreneur Oliver Crawford. Crawford had made his fortune in real estate and bought Breakwater five years ago. Most locals expected him to renovate the pre-Civil War house and retire there.

They were wrong. Crawford changed his plans for his bayside property after he was kidnapped off his boat in the Caribbean last December. His own security people rescued him after fifteen days of captivity. He was kept under grueling conditions and constant fear of a bullet in the head. His kidnappers got away. Traumatized, determined to help other businessmen avoid such horrors, Crawford decided to start his own elite private security company. Never mind that he knew little to nothing about the private security industry. He set about converting his bayside country estate into Breakwater Security, bringing in the people and equipment he needed, building the right facilities, sparing no expense.

Huck was a new Breakwater Security hire.

Ostensibly.

As he looked out at the water, he decided he could do worse than Virginia in springtime. He noticed that some kind of bird had built a giant mess of a nest on a buoy out at the mouth of the small cove. An osprey nest, he thought. The Northern Neck, a tidewater peninsula tucked between the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers, was on the Atlantic Flyway, making it popular with bird-watchers.

A Californian, Huck was getting used to the lay of the gentle land with its rolling hills, creeks, marshes, nature preserves, historic sites and small towns. Washington and Lee country. Life was slower here. He could picture George Washington and Robert E. Lee as little boys, fishing the same rivers, praying in the same churches that were still scattered across the landscape.

Or not-Huck didn’t know what Washington and Lee did as boys or if the places he’d seen on his way to Yorkville had existed in their day. History had never been his long suit.

He was better at catching fugitives.

It was, after all, a fugitive who had inadvertently led him to the Northern Neck in the first place.

But he shut off that line of thinking, as if it might betray him, and jogged back down to the loop road, passing the second cottage, a sister to the one where Alicia Miller had stayed. He kept his pace slow, following the wider, but still quiet, road along the water, feeling the humidity building in the midafternoon air.

He came to a small, old-fashioned motel with its own dock. A couple of old guys in baseball caps smoked cigarettes on two benches above the water, watching fishing boats tie up for the day.

At first, even Huck didn’t recognized Diego Clemente, his partner and backup, also an undercover deputy U.S. marshal. Clemente-also a Californian-looked as if he’d been fishing the Chesapeake Bay his entire life. He hopped off his boat onto the rickety dock wearing a New York Yankees cap, a bright yellow anorak, cargo pants and beat-up boat shoes. His brown skin and black hair set off a killer smile and killer eyes. Women liked Diego, but he and Huck had both sworn off women until they were back home, their current assignment behind them.

Breakwater Security wasn’t necessarily the legitimate security company it purported to be. Diego was posing as a guy from up North who’d taken a month off to fish and get over his recent divorce, a cover designed to explain why he kept to himself. Not that there was a hell of a lot to do in Yorkville, Virginia.

Locked in Diego’s boat, Huck knew, were state-of-the-art communications equipment, tactical gear and weapons, including, no doubt, Clemente’s favorite MP5. If things went bad at Breakwater Security, Huck knew he could count on Diego Clemente to help him kick ass and stay alive.

Huck pretended to pause to catch his breath, although it would take more than a five-mile run to really wind him. He worked his butt off on a regular basis to stay in shape.

Standing next to him, Diego tapped out a cigarette, then held up the pack to Huck. Huck shook his head. “Smoking’ll kill you.”

“So will women, and still the knowledge of my impending doom doesn’t stop me,” Diego replied.

In his regular life, Diego didn’t smoke. He was a nuts-and-seeds type. He pulled a small lighter from his pocket. “Storm’s brewing. You can feel it in the air, can’t you?”

“It’s East Coast air. I can’t tell.”

Diego lit his cigarette and inhaled, blowing out smoke. “I talked to Nate Winter.” Winter was leading the investigation into Breakwater Security’s activities. “I don’t have many answers for you. Alicia Miller is an attorney at Justice. She works under Deputy Assistant AG Lattimore.”

“Gerard Lattimore? Hell, Diego, he and Crawford-”

“Friends since they were roommates at Princeton twenty years ago.”

“The cottage?”

“It’s owned by a woman named Quinn Harlowe. Expert in transnational crime. She worked under Lattimore until January. Now she’s consulting. I heard she’s teaching a class or something at the FBI Academy.” Diego pointed toward the water, as if they were discussing fishing. “She helped get Alicia Miller her job at Justice.”

“So they were friends before they worked together. Any word on Miller?”

Diego didn’t answer.

That meant no.

Alicia Miller had turned up at Breakwater early that morning-just past dawn-and yelled incoherently at the front gate. A couple of Crawford’s existing security guys took her back to her cottage. They told Huck, who never saw Alicia, the basics-her name, that she’d spent the weekend in the cottage across the marsh and didn’t approve of Oliver Crawford turning his estate into a new private security firm.

Follow-up questions weren’t invited. Since he had a role to play, Huck shrugged off the incident and spent the morning settling in at Breakwater. At lunch, he took off for the village and found Clemente. They relied on face-to-face communication. It had its risks, but given the technical expertise of the people they were investigating, Huck and Diego both agreed-and got their superiors to agree-that primitive communication methods were safest.

Like Huck, Diego didn’t believe Alicia Miller had shown up at Breakwater at dawn just to make a protest, either. He promised to find out what he could about her. Huck had returned to Breakwater. Now, he was back, talking to Diego for a second time-a risk, but a necessary one.

“The Breakwater guys said Miller calmed down and went back to D.C.,” Huck said.

Diego took a token drag on his cigarette. “Maybe.” He tossed the cigarette onto the pavement, grinding it out under one foot. “She doesn’t fit the profile of the typical crack-of-dawn protester. How incoherent was she?”

“I don’t know. Nobody’s saying. What about her boss, Lattimore? What does he know about our investigation?”

“Nothing. He’s out of the loop. Nobody knows about you who didn’t know before this morning. You’re not compromised. Whatever Alicia Miller was up to at Breakwater-we’ll find out.” Diego cracked a small smile. “Maybe she was protesting.”

Not exactly reassured, Huck left Diego to his fisherman’s life and resumed his slow jog around Yorkville.

Very few people were aware of the existence of the task force looking into a particularly violent group of vigilante mercenaries operating in the U.S. and abroad, breaking the law when they saw fit. Their ends justified their means. They were responsible for kidnappings, tortures, extortion, smuggling, illegal interrogations, breakouts and murder.

Definitely bad guys, Huck thought.

Only a handful of the members of the task force had been informed of his presence in Yorkville. Very, very few people were aware that a federal agent was on the verge of penetrating the vigilantes.

Huck preferred it that way. The fewer people who knew about him, the safer he was. The law of averages. He wasn’t handpicked by the vigilante task force-he’d pretty much stumbled into the job. He’d gone undercover in California to search for a violent fugitive wanted by state and federal authorities. In the process of finding his fugitive and taking him into custody, Huck had managed to infiltrate the vigilante network. That brought him to the attention of the Washington-based task force. They offered him the most dangerous, tricky and bizarre assignment of his law enforcement career.

His lucky day, Huck thought with mild sarcasm.

That was back in January. For four long months he’d worked hard to earn the trust of the paranoid, ideological vigilantes and hard-core thugs who’d cheerfully slit his throat if they knew who he really was.

A half mile up the loop road from Diego’s motel, a black Breakwater Security SUV pulled alongside him. Vern Glover was at the wheel. Vern was Huck’s main lifeline to the vigilantes network. Scrubbed, freckled and auburn-haired, Vern was already half-bald at thirty and never would be anyone’s idea of good-looking. He was also one unpleasant individual.

He rolled down the passenger window. “Get in. Storm’s about to hit. You don’t want to get struck by lightning.”

Huck grinned. “Lightning bolts would bounce off me.”

Vern ignored him and rolled up the window. No sense of humor. Huck climbed into the passenger’s seat. Vern’s best buddy was Huck’s now-incarcerated fugitive, due to go on trial for drug dealing, rape, armed robbery and attempted murder. Although Vern had no criminal record, Huck presumed that his new friend hadn’t exactly led a clean and quiet life. Occasionally, Vern would bitch to him about the bastard who’d turned his buddy into the feds and how he was going to find out who it was and kill him.

But Vernon Glover saw himself as one of an elite cadre of mercenaries who would save the U.S. from its enemies within its borders and beyond. A tall order, but Vern seemed determined and confident-a scary thought as far as Huck was concerned, because it meant Vern and his cohorts either had plans or were completely delusional. Or both.

Thunder rumbled off to the west.

Vern turned around at the small motel, practically in front of Diego Clemente’s truck with its New York plates, and drove out toward Quinn Harlowe’s road, bypassing it since it was a dead end. Huck could see the cute waterfront cottage. Still no car, still no sign of life.

“That an osprey nest?” he asked, pointing to the buoy in the quiet cove, giving Vern a reason for him to be peering in that direction.

Vern made a face. “Yeah. It’s protected. Birds have more rights these days than people.”

Always the optimist, Vern was. Huck said nothing. He had the same feeling he’d had on his run. Something was wrong. He just couldn’t pinpoint what.

Quinn rang the doorbell to Alicia’s first-floor Georgetown apartment for a third time, but she instinctively knew her friend wasn’t there. When Alicia moved to Washington, as far as she was concerned, only one address would do-somewhere, anywhere, in Georgetown. With a trust fund her grandfather, a prominent Chicago doctor, had established for her, she bought a small condo in a black-shuttered brick townhouse on a narrow street of the historic, prestigious neighborhood.

Quinn realized Alicia wouldn’t be coming to her front door at all-let alone acting like herself again, explaining that the stress of her job had finally gotten to her and she’d simply freaked out that morning.

Quinn descended the steps down to the street, recalling her last visit to Alicia’s just after New Year’s, when she had broken the news that she was quitting her job at Justice and going out on her own. Alicia, adept at concealing her true feelings, had claimed she wasn’t surprised and wished Quinn well, then let it be known through mutual friends that she viewed Quinn’s departure as something of a betrayal and resented her ability to make the jump into working for herself.

Quinn noticed the flower boxes on the front windows, which last spring Alicia had planted with a mix of bright flowers but now were filled with dead leaves and stale, dry dirt. She loved her home. Jobs and men might come and go, she’d say, but she always had her refuge.

The neglected window boxes were just another sign, if a trivial one, of Alicia’s mounting burnout. In law school, she’d ended up in treatment for depression. The medication she was given didn’t agree with her, but therapy by itself did the trick, and she got better. The entire experience wasn’t something she shared with many people, but Quinn had been there. Now, given Alicia’s bizarre behavior earlier, Quinn wondered if her friend ought to seek treatment for whatever was going on with her-it might not be just some funk she could snap out of on her own. If she was suffering from depression or some other mental illness, she needed to see a doctor. Period.

But Quinn recognized she didn’t have the expertise to make a diagnosis herself.

Debating what else she could do, she walked back down to M Street, Georgetown ’s main commercial street. After giving up on chasing the black sedan, she’d stopped at her office, in case Alicia had asked her driver to drop her off there, but no luck. Now she wasn’t at her apartment, either. And Steve Eisenhardt, who worked with Alicia at Justice, hadn’t called back with any news of her.

If she called the police, Quinn knew they’d ask if Alicia had gotten into the black car voluntarily, and she would have to say yes. Alicia hadn’t screamed for help. She’d been agitated and semicoherent, but she’d somehow found her way from Yorkville to Washington and Quinn’s office, then her favorite coffee shop. If Alicia was having some kind of breakdown, she wouldn’t want the police involved. And Quinn wanted to help, not to make Alicia’s life more difficult.

She crushed the temptation to let her mind spin ahead of the facts and took the Metro Connection bus back to Dupont Circle, a few blocks from both her office and her apartment. She loved being able to walk to work in the morning, one of her favorite perks of self-employment.

She was so preoccupied with the bizarre scene at the coffee shop that she almost walked past the ivy-covered 1896 Italianate brick headquarters of the American Society for the Study of Plants and Animals. Her eccentric great-great-grandfather was one of the founders, and her slightly-less-eccentric marine archaeologist parents were directors, their latest project, funded by a private grant, having taken them to the Bering Sea for most of the past year.

During college and graduate school, Quinn had worked on and off for the Society, and when she decided to go out on her own, she negotiated use of a vacant second-floor office in exchange for modest rent and help with cataloguing the mountains of stray stuffed carcasses, drawings, journals, musty papers, old clothes and junk tucked in the building’s attic, basement and closets, a task the Society’s directors had meant to get to for decades. So far, she had filled more trash bags than Society treasure chests.

A cherry tree shaded the gracious building’s front entrance, its pale pink blossoms fluttering onto the sidewalk in a humid breeze. Quinn mounted the steps, waving to Thelma Worthington through the glass-front door. Thelma had served as the Society’s receptionist since John F. Kennedy was president, the only occupant of the White House to acknowledge its existence when he referred to it as one of the country’s great institutions. Nowadays, its well-managed endowment more than its contemporary relevance kept the American Society for the Study of Plants and Animals operational.

Thelma buzzed her in. When she tugged open the heavy door, Quinn entered another world, one of tall ceilings, ornate moldings, crystal chandeliers, Persian rugs, curving staircases and a respect-an encouragement-of eccentricity and risk-taking. Glass-fronted cabinets lined the center hall. As a child, Quinn remembered displays of glass jars of pickled organs and stuffed wild rodents and raptors. A new director, however, had replaced them with graceful porcelain figurines of wildflowers and songbirds.

Thelma took off the gaudy purple reading glasses she’d picked up at a drugstore. Despite the warm spring weather, she wore a sage-green corduroy ankle-length skirt and an argyle sweater vest over a white turtleneck. She had short gray hair and a Miss Hathaway face. Every summer, she picked ten mountains to climb.

“Any luck finding your friend?”

Quinn sighed heavily, suddenly tired. “Afraid not. Nothing new?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

Alicia had stopped by the Society first, apparently not as agitated as she was by the time she’d arrived at the coffee shop. Thelma thought nothing of telling her that Quinn was just down the street, but she’d already apologized for not having paid closer attention to Alicia’s frazzled emotional state.

“Did she go up to my office?” Quinn asked. “I wonder if she might have left a note, anything that could help-”

“She didn’t go any farther than where you’re standing right now. I almost didn’t recognize her. I’ve only met her once. She hasn’t seen your new office, has she?”

“No. We haven’t been that close lately.”

Thelma’s eyebrows arched, but she kept whatever questions she had about the friendship between the two younger women to herself. She leaned forward, glancing toward the stairs. “You have company. He got here about ten minutes ago. He said he’d wait for you. I don’t know how he has time-”

“Who, Thelma?”

She made a face. “Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lattimore.”

“What? You didn’t let him into my office, did you? All I need is for him to catch me cleaning out files on buffalo bones-he’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

“Relax. He’s in the library.” Thelma lowered her voice. “He’s even better looking in person than he is on television. If I liked lawyers…”

Quinn tried to smile. “Thelma, you are so bad. I’ll go see what he wants.”

Resisting the urge to run up the stairs, Quinn contemplated what she would say to Lattimore. Steve wouldn’t have told him about Alicia, but Gerard Lattimore was the type-alert, always waiting for the next shoe to drop-to have guessed.

She found her former boss in a high-back leather chair in front of the massive stone fireplace in the walnut-paneled library at the top of the stairs. He looked as if he belonged there.

“All you need are a pipe and slippers,” Quinn said.

He didn’t smile as he rose, studying her. He had on an expensive dark gray suit and looked every inch the high-powered Department of Justice official he was, but Quinn could see the strain in his eyes. Although he was only forty-two, he seemed ten years older this afternoon. He was the newly divorced father of three preteens and a talented attorney with awesome responsibilities. On most days, he had the ego, ability and ambition to meet all his obligations.

He took her hand. “It’s good to see you, Quinn.”

She reminded herself that he didn’t have to be there because of Alicia. It could be anything. She let her hand fall back to her side. “Mr. Lattimore-”

“Gerard. No more formalities.” He glanced around the old library, largely unchanged since the late nineteenth century. “What a great room this is. This whole building is like stepping into a simpler past.”

“I’m not sure it was that simple. We do tend to run into the errant skull around here.”

He laughed stiffly. “Museum-quality animal skulls only, I hope.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Ah, Quinn. We miss you in the department.”

“Thanks. I’d hate to have spent three years there and not be missed. I can just hear it: ‘Harlowe? Not a minute too soon did she get her arse out of here.’” But when she saw that her stab at humor only elicited a tense smile from him and realized how awkward and phony the banter felt, she gave it up. “What can I do for you?”

His gray eyes settled on her. “Alicia Miller.”

Quinn licked her lips. “What about her?”

“I’m worried about her. She spent the weekend at your cottage in Yorkville. She didn’t come in today. She didn’t call in sick. Steve Eisenhardt-you’ve met him, haven’t you? He says he tried to reach her on her cell phone, but she hasn’t answered or returned his calls.” He studied her a moment. “Quinn?”

“I saw Alicia this afternoon. Around one o’clock.”

He motioned for her to sit down, but they both remained standing. “Tell me,” he said, his expression even tighter.

Quinn resisted the impulse to pace. How much should she tell him? She’d promised Alicia to be discreet, but never expected her to bolt the way she did. If she was in any trouble, Lattimore needed to know. He was in more of a position to help than Quinn was.

“Quinn,” he said quietly, “I know Alicia hasn’t been herself recently. I’m worried about her mental health. She left early on Friday. She was agitated, anxious. She couldn’t sit still. I caught her crying, hyperventilating, before she left.”

“I didn’t realize how burned out she was until today.”

“What happened?”

In that split second, Quinn decided to tell him everything, including as much of Alicia’s ramblings as she could remember. He listened without interruption. When she finished, Quinn was relieved that at least someone else now knew what she knew and could help figure out what to do. “I didn’t recognize the car that picked her up or see who was inside. If you think I should call the police-”

“And tell them what? There’s no reason to think Alicia didn’t want to get in that car.”

“She was totally freaked out, Gerard. I don’t know that she was capable of making a good decision.”

“Let’s hope the people who picked her up were friends who understand she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown and can help her. Do you think she’d been drinking? Was she on drugs?”

“She didn’t seem drunk, no. On drugs-I just don’t see it.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I know she’s been preoccupied the past few weeks. She’s taken a few extra days here and there-to stay at your cottage, I presume.”

“I gave her a key after your party at the Yorkville marina last month and told her she could come and go as she pleased. I had no plans to use the cottage until later this month. When she first arrived in Washington, she helped me work on the place. We’re not as close as we once were…” Quinn wondered if she’d said too much. “I hoped the cottage might help to thaw things between us.”

“I understand. I know it must be hard for you, worrying about her. Alicia can be very distant at times, but she’s smart and capable-she’ll find her way through her problems. I’ll see what I can do on my end.”

“Alicia came to me for help. She never said what it was she wanted. Maybe there was nothing specific, but now…” Quinn shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re a good friend to Alicia, Quinn, but sometimes-” He took in a breath. “Sometimes there’s just not a damn thing we can do to help even a friend.”

“I’ve got time. I’ll drive down to Yorkville and see if she’s at the cottage. I don’t have a phone there-I can’t call and see if she’s there.” She thought a moment, liking this idea. “I can ask the neighbors what they know.”

“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.