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Then, nuzzling her nose into his neck, she kissed him.

What she began next had not stopped for a solid hour.

—

It was amazingly passionate, he had thought, sitting up and admiring her peaceful form beside him beneath the sheet, as if she was afraid it might be the last time it ever happened.

I should stick around and see what happens later.

Should—but my mind won’t stop racing.

Then, on the bedside table, his cell phone vibrated once but did not light up, which told him he had received an e-mail message.

He knew it would be futile trying to drift back to sleep. Not wanting to awaken Amanda by lying there tossing and turning, he’d decided to go to the boat and bang out on his laptop the list of things to do, then start knocking them out, with catching up on e-mails at the top.

He pulled on khaki shorts and a new T-shirt—an orange one that had stenciled in black: CONCH REPUBLIC CLUB FED, A GATED COMMUNITY, YOU MUST BE INDICTED TO BE INVITED—grabbed his phone and pistol, then, barefoot, slipped out of the cabana.

The sixty-one-foot Viking was essentially a floating mobile condominium, self-contained and self-supporting. It had four large staterooms, each with a queen-sized

bed and its own private head that included a stand-up shower. Its heavy-duty generators ran everything from the vast array of electronics (TVs, microwave oven, communications equipment) to the hot water heaters and washer/dryer, the air conditioners, even the desalination machine that daily could turn a hundred gallons of raw salt water into drinkable charcoal-filtered freshwater.

Matt had been impressed that the Viking also had its own Internet system, including Wi-Fi. Like the television signal, the Internet signal was provided by a satellite antenna. It was a separate, portable antenna about the size of one of the Travis McGee hardback novels he’d found onboard.

But more like a science fiction novel, considering what all it does.

Connected to a computer, the antenna hooked up from almost anywhere in the world with one of a dozen space-age birds that Inmarsat—for International Maritime Satellite—had in geostationary orbit twenty-two thousand miles above earth. Connection to the Internet usually took about three minutes. It was remarkably fast, though depending on various factors, such as weather, it could deteriorate to, at best, half the speed of a normal land-based connection.

But when at sea or sitting at anchor in some remote island cove, Matt knew that it was a helluva lot better than nothing.

Now tied up at the dock, the vessel had everything provided by shore lines. There were ones for electricity and for freshwater and for cable television and the Internet and more, leaving nothing to want.

I think I really could live on this boat, Matt thought. Maybe take up salvage work like Travis, which would be an interesting twist to what I’m already doing.

Wish I’d given the boat the really good shakedown cruise I wanted.

But the sooner we find Maggie McCain, the sooner I can . . .

As the pot of coffee brewed, the first e-mail Payne read was the one that had come in right after he’d bolted awake. It was from Corporal Kerry Rapier, a twenty-five-year-old blue shirt in the department’s Science & Technology section, which included Information Systems, Forensic Sciences, and Communications divisions. While Rapier was small in physical stature—some said impossibly so, causing doubt that he was actually old enough to be an officer, let alone a four-year veteran—Rapier was a genuine wizard with high tech. Which explained why he had been given the reins of the multi-million-dollar war room—the Executive Command Center—on the third floor of the Roundhouse.

The ECC could hold nearly a hundred law enforcement officers representing—depending on what quantity of proverbial fecal matter was hitting the fan at the time—the PPD, the State Police, the FBI and DHS and Secret Service, and Interpol. Its walls of large flat-screen TVs were linked to computer servers that accessed the department’s vast databases as well as tying into endless layers of real-time communication equipment, from the closed-circuit surveillance cameras mounted citywide to any digital device worldwide that could produce and send a video or audio signal.

The pop-up window filling Matt’s laptop screen showed:

From:

Date: 17NOV 0434

To: SGT M.M. Payne

Subject: MCCAIN, Margaret

Attachments: 4

Good morning, Marshal . . .

I got the amended e-mail from Lieutenant Washington on who to patch in for the video conference call at 0700. Glad to see your name added to the list. Was wondering where you were.

Am sending you some backgrounder information on the case.