Breakwater (Cold Ridge/U.S. Marshals #5)

Donna returned with two mugs of coffee and set them on the counter. “Your breakfast will be right up,” she told Quinn, then took Huck’s order of eggs, home fries and wheat toast.

As she peeled open a thimble of half-and-half, Quinn was aware of him so close to her. “What exactly do you do at Breakwater?” she asked.

“Whatever I’m told.”

“You don’t give the orders?”

“No, ma’am,” he said with an undertone of amusement. “I take orders. I’m just a low-level bodyguard.”

“Whose body do you guard?”

His eyes settled on hers, then drifted lower, taking her in with a frankness she wasn’t used to. He shifted back to his coffee, drinking it black. Without looking at her, he said, “Makes no difference to me.”

“How does one get to be a bodyguard?”

“I fell into it.”

Quinn persisted. “How?”

“Harvard didn’t want me.”

“You’re using sarcasm to avoid answering my question. Is that your custom?”

His dark green eyes narrowed on her. “You’re asking questions to avoid thinking about your friend.”

She felt heat rise in her face. “I wouldn’t know if that kind of avoidance is typical for me because I’ve never had a friend drown.”

“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “That wasn’t very nice of me.”

“Are you a nice man?”

He gave her a quick, unreadable smile. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who hasn’t had breakfast. Aren’t you hungry?”

Donna returned with a plate of French toast and a glass shaker of cinnamon sugar, but this time she kept any comments she had to herself.

Quinn picked up a knife and spread butter across the golden toast. “Whatever training you did this morning must not have been too rigorous. You were a lot sweatier yesterday. And you don’t look as if you just got out of the shower.”

Sudden humor sparked in his eyes. “How would I look just out of the shower?”

Oh, hell. She set the knife down quickly, before she ended up dropping it. “More avoiding of the subject. My point is,” she went on, “that I don’t believe your story. I think you and your friend Vern saw Special Agent Kowalski coming in the front door and you went out the back door. So to speak. I don’t even know if the Crawford compound has a back door.”

Huck drank his coffee without responding.

As she sprinkled cinnamon sugar onto the melting butter, Quinn tried to regain her appetite. The smell of food combined with the tension of interrogating this man-who probably was armed, if not to the extent Donna assumed-had turned her stomach. “Why didn’t you tell me Alicia was at the Crawford compound early Monday morning? Never mind me-did you tell Special Agent Kowalski?”

“I didn’t see her.”

“Did Vern?”

“No.”

Donna brought his breakfast and refilled the two mugs, her knuckles white on the handle of the coffeepot. Quinn wondered how much she’d overheard.

After Donna retreated nervously, Huck picked up a slice of bacon. “What are you now, Kowalski’s helper? Think the FBI can’t investigate, and they need your help?”

“I was just making conversation.”

“No, you weren’t.”

She cut into her French toast. She needed a sugar boost. Something to help get her back to normal. “The police found Alicia’s car last night up on the loop road.”

“So I heard.”

“She must have taken the kayak up there-”

Huck turned to face her. “Quinn, just stop. Don’t do this to yourself. Go back home, resume your life and mourn your friend. Let the authorities figure out what happened to her.”

“She drowned.”

Quinn jumped off the stool, ready to bolt.

He touched her elbow. “I’m sorry. Sit down. Finish your breakfast. I’ll leave you alone.”

“I can’t eat. It’s not you…” Her throat caught. “Good luck with your job. I’m sorry we had to meet under such difficult circumstances. If you stay at Breakwater-” She didn’t know what she was saying. “Well, who knows.”

“You’re heading back to Washington?”

“Yes, as soon as I pull myself together. I have work today, and there’s nothing-I guess there’s nothing for me to do here.”

She left money on the counter for her breakfast and a generous tip. As she headed for the door, Huck didn’t stop her. Once she was outside, she let herself sob, brushing back tears as she started down the main street. She’d walked into the village, which meant she had to walk back. The gorgeous morning made her want to stay on the bay for a few days. Hide there, she thought. Pretend she was on vacation and Alicia was at work in Washington, not on a slab in some medical examiner’s office.

Pushing the image out of her mind before it could take hold, Quinn focused on the pretty scenery, walking along the loop road past the motel where she’d met Diego Clemente last night. She stood on the dock, pretending to look for birds, but she didn’t see him or his boat. She recognized Buddy Jones, the motel’s owner and a Yorkville fixture, a wiry, leather-skinned man in his late sixties, a cigarette hanging off his lower lip as he tied a boat with a thick, worn rope.