Karen touched his arm. He flinched slightly. “You could have told me, Charles. I was your wife. We were a family. You could have shared this with me.”

“How could I share it with you, Karen? They sent me Christmas cards with the kids’ faces cut out. Would you have liked me to share that? They killed Sasha. They sent me this note saying the kids were next. How about that, Karen? These kinds of people, you don’t just send them out a report promising you’re going to make it up next quarter. Our home, that fancy life of ours-it all came at a price, Karen. Should I have shared that? Who I was? What I did? These people are killers, Karen. That’s the deal I made.”

“The deal you made? Goddamn it, Charlie, look at it now. Look at us. Are you happy with it?”

Charles drew in a deep, painful breath. “You know, I thought about leaving a hundred times. Taking us all. I even went as far as to get us passports. Fake ones. You remember, when I had us all take pictures? I said they were for visas to Europe, a trip we never took?”

Karen blinked, biting back tears. “Oh, Charlie…”

“So tell me,” Charlie went on, “should I have come to you, Karen? Is that the life you would have wanted? If I told you what I was and what we had to do, uprooting the kids, you, in days. Taking them out of school in the dark, away from everything they knew. Put all of you at risk. Made you all a part of this, too. What would you have said to me, Karen? Tell me, honey, would you have gone along?”

Charles looked at her, his gaze reflecting a shattered ray of understanding, answering the question for her. “These people have the means to track anyone, Karen. You would always have been at risk, the children… When the bombing occurred, it was almost like a gift. The answer suddenly seemed so clear. I know you can’t see it like that. I know you think there were ways I could have dealt with this, and maybe there were. But not one that was safer, Karen. Not for you.”

“But it hasn’t been safe for us, Charlie.” Harried, she told him about the visit of the people from Archer that first scared her, then the man who accosted Sam in her car. And recently how she’d been sent that brochure from Tufts, where Sam was going to go, with the words We’re still here. They keep demanding all that money.”

“Just who have you been talking to, Karen?”

“No one, Charlie. This detective who’s been helping me. Saul. That’s all.”

Charlie’s jaw went tight. He took her hand. “How did you find out about me here? How did you first know I was alive?”

“I saw your face, Charlie!” Karen’s eyes shone moist and wide, and she looked at him, fighting back a rush of tears.

“My face…?”

“Yes.” She told him about the documentary. How for a year she’d grieved for him, kept the parts of his life intact that she couldn’t put away, tried to heal the hole in her heart. “You don’t know what it was like, Charlie.” And then the documentary, on the anniversary. How she forced herself to watch but it was too much, and she went to shut it off.

And then the instantaneous flash of him. On the street. After the explosion. Looking away from the camera. “I saw you. Rushing by, in the crowd. I must have watched it a thousand times. But it was you. Impossible as it was for me to believe. I knew you were alive.”

Charles leaned back, his palms outstretched behind him. He chuckled, almost amusedly at first, in disbelief. Their lives, separated by death, crossing in a captured moment, despite a thousand precautions. “You saw me.”

“I didn’t know what to do. I was going crazy, Charlie. I didn’t tell the kids. How could I, Charles? They love you. They would die.”

Moistening his lips, he nodded.

“Then I found your safe-deposit box.”

His eyes grew wide.

“The one with your other passport, Charlie. In a different name. And all that money.”

“You found it how?”

Karen told him about the framed note sheet she’d received. From after the blast. Someone had found it at Grand Central. With all that scribbling on it. “Part of it was the information on the box. I had nothing else to go on, Charlie.”

Charles looked back at her. His face in shock. Almost ashen. A notepad. That had led her to him. Something that hadn’t been destroyed in the blast. Then he stiffened. His eyes grew hooded and dark. He squeezed her hand, but this time there was a coldness there, the pressure firmer than just support.

“Who else knows about this, Karen?”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

Anxious, Hauck decided to take a run, leaving the hotel’s grounds and heading up along the coast road in a steady jog. He had to do something. Sitting around watching the GPS, letting his mind wander to inescapable conclusions, he was going insane.

The GPS had stopped a while back. Fixed. 18.50° N, 68.53° W. Some tiny sand reef in the middle of the Caribbean. Twenty miles away. About the least public place she could be. He had told her to call him and let him know she was going in.

That had been two hours ago.

In his job Hauck had been partnered on dozens of stakeouts and surveillances. Waited anxiously in cars while partners put themselves on the line. It was always better to be the one to go in himself. Still, he had never felt so helpless or responsible as he did now. He ran up the long, unevenly paved road that traveled the circumference of the tiny island. He had to do something.

Move.

His strong thighs picked up the pace. There was a large rise that loomed in front of him, green with vegetation and sharply ascending, jutting out of the sea. Hauck headed up the hill toward it, his heart rate rising, a sheen of sweat matting the back of his T-shirt, building up on his skin. The sun baked down on him. Whatever breeze there was remained on the beach.

Every once in a while, he stopped and checked the screen of the GPS, which he had strapped to his waist. Still 18.50 and 68.53 degrees. Still at the same spot. Still no word. It was going on two hours now. He had tried to call. Just her recording. Maybe there was no signal where she was. What could he do, set out in a boat after her? He had given her his word.

So he ran. The seascapes were beautiful, vistas of wide-open stretches of green-blue water, a few verdant knolls rising precipitously from the beaches, an occasional white boat dotting the sea, the hazy outline of a distant island on the horizon.

But Hauck wasn’t absorbing all that. He was angry at himself for letting her go. For succumbing. The muscles in his thighs burned as the topography rose. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his waist as sweat coated his skin. C’mon, Karen, call… Call! His lungs grew tight.

Another hundred yards…

Finally he reached the top of the rise. Hauck pulled to a stop, doubled over, feeling angry, helpless, responsible.

He shouted out to no one, “Goddamn it!”

He doused himself with water. He seemed to be at the highest point. He looked back in the direction he had come from and saw the resort, tiny, far off, seemingly miles away.

Something caught his attention out on the sea.

Off the opposite side of the island. Hauck put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun.

It was a huge black ship. A sailing vessel. Like something he’d never seen before. Vast-it must have been as long as a football field, ultramodern, with three gleaming, metallic masts reflecting the sun. He was mesmerized.

He reached into his pouch and took out the binoculars he’d brought along. He looked out at the water and zeroed in.

Spectacular. Sleek and sparkling black. The name was on the stern. He focused.

The Black Bear.

The boat filled Hauck with awe, but also with a sense of unrest. From the edges of his memory, he knew he had seen it somewhere before.

He took out his cell phone and snapped a picture.