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She reached in the canvas sail bag, removed a thick spiral notebook, and flipped back its well-worn cover. She began to carefully study the first page—then suddenly began sobbing, and curled up in the fetal position on the cushion.

[THREE]

Little Palm Island, Florida

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

“Okay, it looks like we’re finally all here again in one piece,” Matt Payne said, looking at the laptop screen and everyone’s images that were no longer pixelated.

Payne’s screen was divided into quarters, four big boxes with individual images, all live feeds, of Jason Washington, Tony Harris, Kerry Rapier, and Matt.

“Sorry for that electronic burp, gentlemen,” Corporal Kerry Rapier said, from his bottom left corner box.

Matt’s image was in the bottom right box. He carefully had adjusted the laptop so that the pinhole camera centered in the upper lip of the screen captured him from the chest—just above the CONCH REPUBLIC CLUB FED stencil—up over his head. Behind him was nothing but black.

Twenty minutes earlier, right after getting off the telephone with Jim Byrth, Matt had had what he considered one of his better ideas of the already long morning.

He had gone down to the master stateroom and grabbed one of the black pillowcases off the big bed. He hung it from the ceiling of the galley so that it would mask anything behind him. That way there would be no distractions in the background—sunrise causing glare, for example, or someone walking past on the dock—to interrupt their videoconference.

Perhaps more importantly, it would also have the added benefit of saving Matt from getting his chops busted about what a tough life it must be yachting in paradise.

What they don’t know, or see, won’t hurt them . . . or me.

—

The top left box with the image of Jason Washington showed him wearing a crisp white dress shirt with a nice blue necktie. Behind him on the wall were framed photographs of Washington with his wife and ones with other police officers, clearly indicating to everyone that he was sitting at his desk in his office in Homicide.

Tony Harris also had on a shirt and tie and navy blazer—all somewhat rumpled. He, too, was in his Homicide office, and holding a heavy china coffee mug just to the side of his head.

Matt had immediately recognized the mug. After tiring of trying to find who was swiping his personal plain coffee mugs in the office, he recently had had a dozen cheap ones custom printed with a representation of his Philadelphia Police Department Badge 471 on one side and, opposite that, also in gold, the words STOLEN FROM THE DESK OF HOMICIDE SGT M.M. PAYNE.

He had been convinced that that would stop his cup from disappearing.

He had been wrong.

Kerry Rapier, wearing his police uniform blue shirt with its three blue chevrons on the sleeves, was at the command console in the Executive Command Center. He also held what he called “a Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Collectible,” which when word of that got around only had served to accelerate the cups’ disappearance.

And they’re holding them up now to quietly taunt me.

“Jason,” Payne said, mock-serious, “when we’re finished here, be aware that I intend to be filing charges of petty theft.”

Washington, who of course had the same images of everyone on his screen, in his sonorous voice intoned, “To what might you be referring, Matthew?”

Then he raised to his lips a “collectible” and took a sip.

Tony and Kerry chuckled.

Matt shook his head and snorted. But he was smiling.

Washington then said, his tone unmistakably serious, “I understand that Kerry had the foresight earlier to send you the files?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve gone over them. A couple times.”

“That then makes you our set of fresh eyes. Anything in them jump out at you?”

Matt shook his head.

“Only that it’s remarkable how little there is. Except for the Gonzalez girl being executed in an unusual fashion, there’s next to nothing right now to go on.”