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“Bye,” they both said.

As soon as he drove off, Anne said, “Well? Spill.”

Maisie smiled at her sister. “We had a great time. Everyone was very welcoming. It’s going to be really nice being part of the pack.”

“That sounds great. What about Jude’s phone? Did you have any luck with that?”

“Robert gave it to Grant, and he said he would try and find someone to crack the passcode. I’m sure it’s not something that the pack members are often asked to do, so it might take a while,” Maisie said. “Did you see any sign of trouble while I was gone?”

“No. Everything was just the same as usual. Guests checked out. Guests checked in. No problem at all. Though,believe me, I was keeping an eye out just in case Jude was sneaking around the inn.”

“Good. Maybe we’ll get word about the cell phone within a day or two.” At least Maisie could hope. Her imagination was truly running wild about it. She was dying to know why he had come to their place, and she was certain it had to do with her, but she couldn’t imagine why, after all this time, he would want to hassle her.

***

The next morning, Maisie’s ankle was feeling much better. She was still walking gingerly on it to make sure she didn’t sprain it again, but she was glad to ditch the crutches.

Anne frowned at Maisie as they wrapped up cooking their own food. “Are you sure you don’t need to be on the crutches still?”

“While we were cooking breakfast for our guests this morning, you never said anything,” Maisie reminded her, amused her sister hadn’t said anything earlier.

“Aye, but then I saw you wince while we were making our own breakfast—twice.”

“I just felt a twinge of pain a couple of times. Really, if it gets worse, I’ll use the crutches again. But I’m being really careful,” Maisie said. Or she was trying to.

“If you need to just sit down, I can do this.”

“We’re almost done.”

Then they dished up their eggs, bacon, chips, and toast and sat down at the table to eat it.

Once they ate their breakfast, they chatted while cleaning up.

“We need a couple of people to make breakfasts for guests when one of us is incapacitated or you’re off on photography jobs. I know you always try to do your shoots in the afternoon or evening so that you’re free to help me, but like now, with your ankle giving you trouble, it would be nice to have additional assistance. And we could use a person to manage reservations and the front desk part-time and somebody on standby to clean if we both are unable to get it done,” Anne said. “Oh, and don’t worry about doing anything at the inn today. I know you need to get the pet pictures for Robert’s vet clinic scheduled and done.”

“Okay, thanks. I’m going to work on the marine wildlife photos to submit them this morning.” If all the other excitement hadn’t happened—the lost dog included—Maisie would have already taken care of this, though she had until the weekend to send the photos to the editor. She downloaded her photos onto her laptop and combed through them while Anne headed out to the vacated rooms.

Maisie had gotten perfectly clear shots of several colorful starfish. Beautiful. A school of flounder—great. Seahorses, coral. She viewed them at 100 percent to see how clear they were and used a Photoshop tool to sharpen the images further.

The rock reefs were colonized by starfish, sea anemones, soft corals, hermit crabs, queen scallops, shrimps, squat lobsters, and congers. The eelgrass beds around the rocky outcroppings kept the mud and silt from stirring up, makingthe water clear to see in. The grass was wavering, beautiful, streams of sunlight penetrating the water, shadows of the plants moving across the sandy and rocky bottom.

Then she saw something odd in the seaweed, something that looked like glass. Was it trash, perhaps? It seemed to be floating. Her dive light had bounced off it, but when she viewed a closer shot of it, she couldn’t make it out.

She sent her best photos of marine life to the editor of the magazine, and he came back within the hour and told her he loved them and that he needed her to do a cave dive for some more pictures in a few weeks.

Awesome,she wrote back. She added it to her calendar that was getting booked, which she was truly thankful for. She called up Edeen.

“Hey, Edeen, my ankle is feeling much better, and I wondered if I might be able to take some photos of your animals this afternoon after lunch.” Maisie still wanted to do the transitional training with Conan too, but for now, she really needed to get the animal photos done for Robert’s clinic.

“Oh, absolutely,” Edeen said. “I don’t know how well they’ll behave, but I can’t wait to do this with you. It’ll be fun. We’ll have tea when you come.”

“Alright. Would two o’clock work for you?”

“Perfect. See you then.”

Maisie looked back at the photo of the floating glass and blew it up some more. It was too blurry then, and she just couldn’t tell what it was. Normally, glass was denser than water, and it shouldn’t have been floating, unless it was a small shard of glass and the currents were keeping it afloat.She couldn’t think of what else it would be that would reflect her dive light like that. She couldn’t help puzzling over it. Then she realized what was bothering her. If it was a piece of glass, her dive light would have reflected through the back of the glass. The light only reflected off the front. Which meant? It was attached to something solid, she thought.

She sighed and called Colleen next. “Hey, it’s Maisie. How are you doing?”