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“Guess all you want. Who’s asking?”

Matt showed her his badge.

“No offense,” she then said, “but you don’t look like you walk no beat. Never can trust who’s who coming round here.”

“I’m with the Homicide Unit,” Payne said, as he saw Byrth surveying the area.

The dirty living room, with a flight of stairs along the left wall leading to the upstairs bedrooms and baths, had a wooden floor worn bare. A mismatched pair of sagging threadbare sofas faced each other in the middle. A dozen plastic stackable chairs were scattered around a low table that held an old television with an antenna of aluminum-foil-wrapped rabbit ears and a picture that flickered between color and black and white. On the right wall, beyond one of the sofas, a dusty hand-printed poster with faded lettering read: NO SMOKING, NO DRINKING, NO DRUGGING, NO DAM EXCUSE!

“Someone dead?” the woman said, her tone matter-of-fact.

“From the looks of it . . .” Byrth muttered, looking toward the back of the room.

The woman’s eyes went to him, and not pleasantly.

Payne forced back a grin.

“We’re looking into that,” Payne said, “and need to ask some questions.”

She glanced over her shoulder toward the open doorway at the back wall.

“Eldridge!” she called out.

A moment later a muscular black male stood backlit in the doorway that obviously led to the kitchen. Eldridge wore a stained chef’s apron. With a practiced rhythm he was working a large carving knife up and down a foot-long sharpening rod. He had very short gray hair and looked to be in his forties. His bulging biceps stretched the sleeves of his black T-shirt.

The enormous black woman looked at Payne.

“He the man. Talk to him.”

[THREE]

Little Bight Bay

Saint John, United States Virgin Islands

Monday, November 17, 7:10 P.M.

After shutting down the Internet connection and finishing her traditional sunset glass of wine, Maggie had gone inside the cabin and thrown the lighting breakers on the electrical panel. Then, back on the well-lit deck, trying to figure out what she could possibly do next, she busied herself going around the boat methodically making sure everything was as it should be.

She neatly coiled all the lines on the deck—from the mainsail and jib halyards and sheets down to the last docking line—and then re-coiled ones t

hat she thought didn’t look exactly right. She went forward to where the anchor line was cleated, untied it, tugged hard on the line to ensure the hook was still secure in the bay bottom, then re-cleated the line, snugging each wrap before finally tightly cinching the line. Then she neatly coiled the remaining line.

And then she went around the boat a second time.

And then, frustrated, she leaned against the aluminum mast, sighing as she looked out.

Now what? I can’t keep spinning my wheels.

Ricky said two hours. And that was at five-thirty.

So—after what, the next twenty minutes?—he carries out his threat?

Who gets to die now?

Under the thin crescent of moon she watched the navigation lights of sailboats slowly moving in the distance. A blanket of twinkling stars reflected everywhere. Waves crashed just outside the mouth of the bay.

I’m just so damn far away.