He fixed his gaze on hers. If she wasn’t one of the vigilantes, she would have good reason not to put her trust in him. If she was-he needed to find out. “Law enforcement doesn’t have the necessary latitude to do what has to be done. They have to answer to politicians and protocols that don’t necessarily make any sense. We don’t.”
“We can’t break laws, of course,” she said, her tone difficult to read. As she adjusted her shawl, the V neck of her dress skewed to one side, exposing the soft curve of her breast. She smiled, touching the stem of her wineglass to her breast. “Oliver left us imported chocolate truffles. Care to indulge?”
Huck debated how to react. What if Sharon Riccardi didn’t give a rat’s ass what he thought about anything and just wanted to flirt? Or more, he thought.
But her husband walked out onto the porch. He was fully dressed and didn’t look at all as if he’d been sleeping. “ Sharon? What’s going on here?”
She didn’t so much as glance back at him. “We’ll have truffles another time, Mr. Boone. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
“Thanks. I will.” Huck addressed Joe Riccardi. “We were just chatting. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
When Huck got back to his room, he considered washing his mouth out with soap after all the nonsense he’d just spoken. His head pounded, and he dropped onto his back on his bunk, picturing ospreys and Quinn Harlowe’s quaint cottage and her pretty, hazel eyes, wondering what she was up to and why he didn’t think he and Diego had heard the last of her.
22
On a bright, warm Thursday ten days after Alicia had found her on the coffee-shop patio, Quinn took her espresso and almond biscotti out to the same table where she’d been sitting that beautiful afternoon. Returning was her way of signaling to herself that she was beginning to accept the reality of what had happened.
Alicia was dead, drowned, the autopsy on her body completed.
Her funeral had been two days ago in Chicago, a small, private affair. Alicia’s mother had all but asked Quinn not to attend, not out of any sense of animosity, she knew, but because they all would be tempted to rehash the last confused, troubled days.
“We want to celebrate Alicia’s life and remember her as she was.”
Nor, Quinn thought as she sank back in her chair in the warm sun, did anyone need to pretend that she and Alicia had remained all that close, the best of friends. The thaw that had started in March at Lattimore’s party had never had a chance to take hold. Now that the initial shock of Alicia’s death had eased, Quinn wondered how much borrowing the cottage had to do with her friend’s own ends and not with any conscious attempt to repair the strains in their friendship.
Yet, when she was frightened and melting down, Alicia had come to her, counting on the bond between them to see her through the crisis.
And I failed her.
As far as she was concerned, there were still unanswered questions-questions that she knew but couldn’t accept might never get answers.
Ivan, the coffee-shop owner, had told her that the mother and little boy hadn’t returned for their alphabet book. He said he’d heard about Alicia’s death and was sorry.
Quinn sipped her espresso but couldn’t work up any appetite for her biscotti.
The cherry blossoms had vanished, and the trees were leafed out, the shade welcome especially now as the temperatures climbed. With the afternoon temperature in the upper seventies, Quinn had worn sandals and a sundress-turquoise, another way to tell herself that she was better.
Someone pulled out the chair across from her, and she looked up, startled, as Steve Eisenhardt plopped down with an iced coffee. He gave her a disapproving sigh. “I go inside, I stand in line, I get my drink, I pay up-it’s a good thing you’re not a spy, Quinn. You never even saw me.” He grinned at her, his eyes crinkling in the bright sun. “I ducked out of work hoping I’d find you here. How’re you doing?”
“Preoccupied.”
“No kidding.”
“I’ve been spinning my wheels ever since I got back from Yorkville last week.” She drank some of her espresso. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I heard you’ve been invited to present a paper at an international crime symposium in Vienna.”
“That was easy. All I had to do was say yes, I’ll do it. It’s not until October.”
He leaned forward and said in a fake conspiratorial whisper designed to make her laugh, “I also heard you met Oliver Crawford.”
Crawford must have told Lattimore, who told Steve. Quinn smiled at Steve’s natural irreverence. “I’ve met him before.”
“But not at his estate. What did you do, just drive up and knock on the front door?”
“I kayaked and climbed over his barbed-wire fence.”
Steve grinned. “Only you, Quinn. Lucky someone didn’t shoot a hole in your boat.”
“I had a greeting party.” She thought of Huck’s dark eyes as he’d tried to talk sense into her, and Vern Glover, impatient, scary. “Breakwater Security seems like a legitimate enterprise. It’s still so new. The compound itself is gorgeous-I hate to see it get turned into a security training facility.”
“You’d rather see it turned into a country inn?”