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?”

“Definitely.”

“I hear Crawford hasn’t slept soundly since he got snatched last year. If this helps him, who knows.” Steve shrugged. “Maybe once he gets a few weeks of REM sleep, he’ll close down Breakwater Security and open up Breakwater Spa.”

“A spa.” Quinn moaned. “I could use a week at a spa.”

His expression turned serious, at least for him. “What about your cottage? Going back anytime soon?”

“I’ve been thinking about this weekend.”

“Quinn-”

“It’s not too soon. I need to go back. If I don’t-” She looked down at her espresso. “If I don’t, I’m afraid I never will.”

“You will, Quinn. You put your heart and soul into that place.” He sighed, pushing back his chair slightly. He hadn’t touched his drink. “Alicia was a very special person. She was smart, and she was beautiful, and she was looking in all the wrong places for happiness. If she committed suicide, directly or indirectly, I wish she’d turned to her friends for help first.”

“She did turn to me. I just couldn’t get through to her. She ran off, and by the time I found her…” Quinn took a heavy breath. “Damn.”

“If it was suicide, they say people just want to stop the pain. They believe that the people they love-who love them-will be better off with them dead.”

“There’s nothing to suggest it was suicide. She was so upset she had no business being out on the water, storm or no storm. She could easily have turned over the kayak by accident, then got so disoriented that she couldn’t get herself back into the boat.”

“No life vest, no emergency whistle, a storm brewing. It sounds deliberate, Quinn.”

“In her mental state, I’m not sure she was capable of planning her own suicide. She was a mess, Steve, and she drowned. It just happened.”

“Yeah. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

Quinn could feel the jolt of the espresso, and she looked out at the quiet street, could see Alicia running past the flowerpots, jumping into the Lincoln. “I’ve been doing a little research, more for my own peace of mind than anything else.”

“What kind of research?”

“Just checking out what’s on the public record about Oliver Crawford. He started Breakwater Security after his kidnapping. I’ve been looking into it. How it happened, when, why, where. Basic stuff.”

Steve picked up his drink, giving her a dubious look as she took a sip. “You checked only public records?”

“Well, I did talk to a few sources-”

“And?”

“Just in the past week, two of his kidnappers turned up tortured and executed.”

“Ouch. Where?”

“ Colombia.”

“I thought he’d been snatched in the Caribbean -”

“These guys weren’t Colombian,” Quinn said. “One was Puerto Rican and one was Dominican. Back in February, another of the kidnappers was also found tortured and executed. He was Mexican.”

“An international group of thugs, huh?”

“They’re all professionals. Low-level mercenaries. That’s all on the record, by the way. There just haven’t been any press releases-”

“Meaning the media haven’t gotten hold of it.”

If they did-if she put them on the trail-she wondered what they would uncover, and just how uncomfortable Oliver Crawford and his people would be. “I don’t see how these thugs could have planned the kidnapping, and I sure as hell don’t see what they could have known that would have prompted anyone to risk torturing them. Killing them-they were in a volatile area. But torture takes time. From that standpoint, it’s riskier.”

Steve grinned nervously. “I don’t like the idea of either one, thank you very much.”

“My sources haven’t run across these guys before.”

“Ah, a mystery.”

“Oliver Crawford’s an American citizen, even if his kidnappers weren’t. The FBI is investigating. He was rescued by his own people-they received a tip.”

“Wasn’t there a huge reward for credible information leading to his safe rescue?”

“There was indeed. Sharon Riccardi, who’s now running Breakwater Security, put out the word. His guys found him in the Dominican. They chose not to inform U.S. or Dominican authorities. They say they weren’t convinced the tip would pan out.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “And these are the goofs running Breakwater Security now?”

“I don’t know how involved they are with Breakwater.” Quinn picked up her biscotti, although she was no longer in the mood for it. “I haven’t gotten that far in my research.”

“You’re digging around in some dangerous files, Quinn.”

“As I said, most of it’s on public record. I haven’t done any more digging than your basic Post reporter would do.”

“But you have a mind for this shit,” Steve said.

She made herself smile. “Not these days. I’m just finding distractions. What about you? How’s work, how’s my erstwhile boss?”

“Oh, work’s just a barrel of laughs with you gone and Alicia drowned.”

“I’m sorry-”

“No.” He held up a hand. “No, I’m sorry. That was insensitive. Work’s fine. We’re all bearing up. Lattimore’s the same. He’s got steel balls, you know? Nothing rattles him. Me-I’m a coward.” But there was no self-pity in his tone. He winked at Quinn. “Not you, though. You’ve got brass tits, Harlowe. Especially for a page-flipping historian.”

“Easy for me to talk tough. I’m not on the front-lines.”

“You were last week,” he said softly.

When Steve finally headed back to work, taking the rest of his iced coffee with him, Quinn watched him pick up his pace as he rushed down the sidewalk. Not for a single five-second stretch had he relaxed. She realized now why Alicia had said she found him difficult to be around for any length of time. The poor guy had been half in love with her for so long, and yet he’d never stood a chance with her-he drove her nuts.

But his distress over Alicia’s death seemed genuine, and for Quinn, that was enough.

Steve was on Pennsylvania Avenue, on his way back to work, when his cell phone rang. He recognized the tight, controlled voice of the older of the two goons. “What, are you assholes spying on me?” Bravado-he was sweating like the pig he was. “I just had iced coffee with Quinn Harlowe. Or do you know already? Are you following her-or me?”

“Did she ask you to meet her?”

“No. I knew you’d be breathing down my neck and just showed up. She’s working up a dossier on you bastards.”

Silence.

“I’m serious. Your boss is Oliver Crawford, right? Are you the ones torturing and executing the guys that kidnapped him? I hope the feds are onto you. I hope they’re fucking all over you. I hope-”

“Calm down.”

“I am calm.”

But he wasn’t. He could feel the blood pounding in his arteries. His chest was tight. If he wasn’t so young, he’d be worried about a stroke or a heart attack. As it was, he thought he’d crack. Just collapse on the sidewalk and start blubbering. Was that what they’d done to Alicia? Scared the living shit out of her to the point she was drooling on herself?

“Where are you on the names we want?”

Steve wasn’t fooled by the mildness of the question. He was running out of rope with these bastards. “I’m working on it.”