Impressive, Hauck thought, scrolling on. A page later, in an online boat-enthusiast magazine, he found what he was looking for.

Hauck pushed back from the computer. He paused a long time on the name. It hit home. Once he’d even been out to the house. Some house.

The Black Bear was owned by Russian financier Gregory Khodoshevsky.

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

We led them to him, Karen.

The whole first day back, after telling Paula and swearing her to secrecy, Karen racked her brain for how that might be.

Led whom?

She hadn’t told anyone where they were going. She’d made the reservations herself. Sitting around trying to divert her thoughts from Charles, she backed through everything from the beginning.

The documentary. The horror of seeing his face on TV. Then the note sheet from his desk she’d been sent-with no return address. Which led to the passport and the money.

Then the men from Archer, the creep who terrified Sam in her car. The horrible things Karen had found in Charles’s desk-the Christmas card and the note about Sasha. Her mind kept unavoidably flicking back to him. On the beach. Then the boat.

What was anyone trying to find there, Charles?

“Who? Charlie, who? Tell me?” Who were you running from? Why would they want to keep after you now? She knew that Ty had gone into the office, come clean. They’d have to reopen the hit-and-runs. They’d be able to find out now who his investors were.

Tell me, Charlie. How did they know you were alive? They must have seen the fee account drawn down, he had said. Followed the bank trail. A year later, what did they need from him? What did they think he had? All that money?

Karen let her mind run as she gazed out the office window. She’d been answering a couple of e-mails she’d received from the kids. Which excited her, made things feel normal. They were having a fabulous time.

The garage doors were open. She noticed Charlie’s Mustang, parked in the far bay.

Suddenly it came back to her. Just what Charlie had said: The truth, it’s always been right inside my heart, Karen.

Something did happen to you, Charlie.

Why weren’t you able to tell me? Why did you have to hide it, Charlie, like everything else? What did he say when she pressed him? Don’t you understand, I don’t want you to know, Karen.

Don’t want me to know what, Charles?

She was about to sign off on her message to the kids when her mind wandered back once again.

This time her whole body seemed to rattle.

The truth…it’s always been right inside my heart.

Karen stood up. A sweat came over her. She looked out the window.

At Charlie’s car.

You still have the Mustang, don’t you, Karen?

She thought he was just babbling!

Oh, my God!

Karen ran out of the office, Tobey trailing after her, and out the front door to the open garage.

There it was. On the rear fender of the Mustang. Where it had always been. The bumper sticker. She had seen it, passed it by-every day for a year. The words written on it: LOVE OF MY LIFE.

Written on a bright red heart!

Karen’s whole body seemed to convulse. “Oh, Charlie,” she moaned out loud. “If you somehow didn’t mean it like this, please don’t think I’m the biggest fucking idiot in the world.”

Karen knelt beside the rear bumper. Curious, Tobey nuzzled up. Karen pushed him away. “Gimme a second, baby, please.” She crouched down, her back to the ground, reached up underneath the chrome bumper, and felt around.

Nothing. What did she expect? Just a bunch of dust and grime, her hand showing black streaks all over it. She pretended she wasn’t feeling like a total fool.

It’ll explain a lot of things, Karen.

Karen reached up again. This time farther. “I’m trying, Charlie,” she said. “I’m trying.”

She groped blindly just behind the “inside” of the heart.

Her fingers wrapped around something. Something small. Fastened to the inside of the fender.

Karen’s heart started to race. She pushed herself farther underneath and stripped the object away from the edges of the chrome.

Whatever it was peeled off.

It was a small bundle, tightly bound in bubble wrap.

Karen stared incredulously at Tobey. “Oh, my God.”

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

Karen brought it into the kitchen. She went through the pantry drawer and took out a package blade and cut at the tape, carefully unfolding the protective wrapping. She held it in her hand.

It was a cell phone.

Not any phone she’d ever seen before. Thinking back, she remembered that Charlie used a BlackBerry. It had never been found. Karen stared at it-almost afraid to keep it in her hands. “What are you trying to tell me, Charles?”

Finally she pressed the power button. Amazingly, after all this time, the LCD screen sprang to life. HANDSET LOCKED.

Damn. Disappointed, Karen placed it down on the counter.

She ran through a mental file of what Charlie’s password might be. Several possibilities, starting with the obvious. She punched in their anniversary, 0716. The day Harbor opened. His e-mail name. She pressed enter.

Nothing. HANDSET LOCKED.

Shit. Next she punched in 0123, his birthday. Nothing, again. Then 0821. Hers. Wrong-a third time. So Karen tried both of the kids’ birthdays: 0330. Then 1112. No luck. It began to exasperate her. Even if her thinking was right, there could still be a hundred variations. A three-digit number-eliminate the zero for the month. Or a five-digit number-include the year.

Shit.

Karen sat down. She took a notepad from the counter. It had to be one of them. She prepared to go through them all.

Then it hit her. What else did Charlie say that day? Something about “You’re still beautiful, Karen.”

Something about “the color of my baby’s eyes.”

Charlie’s Baby.

On a whim Karen punched in the word-the color of his “baby.” Emberglow.

To her shock, the LOCKED icon on the readout disappeared.

CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE

Saul Lennick sat in the library of his home on Deerfield Road, on the grounds of the Greenwich Country Club.

He had Puccini’s Turandot on the sound system. The opera put him in the right mood, as he was going over the minutes of the most recent board meeting of the Met that he’d attended. From his leather chair, Lennick looked out at the expansive garden in back, tall trees, a pergola leading to a beautiful gazebo by the pond, all lit up like a colorful stage set.

His cell phone trilled.

Lennick flipped open the phone. He’d been awaiting the call.

“I’m back,” Dietz said. “You can rest a little now. It’s done.”

Lennick closed his eyes and nodded. “How?”

“Don’t worry your buns off how. It seems that your old friend Charlie had a penchant for the late-night swim.”

The news left Lennick relieved. All at once the weight he’d been carrying seemed to rise from his tired shoulders. This hadn’t been easy. Charles had been his friend. Saul had known him twenty years. They’d shared many highs and lows together. He’d felt sadness when he first heard the news after the bombing. Now he just felt nothing. Charles had long ago grown into a liability that had to be written off.

Lennick felt nothing-other than a frightening new sense of what he was capable of.

“Were you able to find anything?”

“Nada. The poor bastard took it to the grave, whatever he had. And you know that I can be highly persuasive. We searched his boat from top to bottom. Ripped out the fucking engine block. Nothing.”

“That’s okay.” Lennick sighed. “Maybe there never was anything. Anyway, it was due.” Perhaps it was just a fear. Survival, Lennick reflected. It’s truly astounding what one can do when it becomes threatened.