“Right,” Pete said. “What a joke. You haven’t evenreadme my rights.”
“That’s because you’re not under arrest. This is just a courtesy ride.”
“But you just accused me of murdering her!”
“Was she giving you grief about your girlfriend?” Conor asked.
“You have no idea about Beth and me. We loved each other one hundred percent. We were devoted to each other.”
“I bet she loved the fact you have someone else.”
Tom watched the burning intensity in his brother’s face, the cold fear in Pete’s.
“You’re going to arrest me because I had an affair?”
“I wonder how Nicola would feel to hear you calling it anaffair. Doesn’t she think it’s a whole lot more than that? Didn’t Beth? But no, I’m not going to arrest you.”
Pete’s eyes widened as he took that in. He looked surprised, then relieved: a pinched smile, as if he was getting away with something. His eyes were pale, more gray than blue, the color of spit. Tom glanced at Conor. His younger brother was staring at Pete with laser focus.
Tom loved when he and Conor crossed paths on a case. Two, including this one, were related to the Woodward family. Twenty-three years ago, when Tom was a USCG lieutenant and Conor was in his first year as a Connecticut state trooper, the shoreline had been rocked by the violence and brutality of what had happened to Helen, Kate, and Beth at their family’s fancy art gallery in Black Hall. The fact that their husband and father had paid people to commit the crime had made it all the more horrific.
Conor was new to the Connecticut State Police after a stint as a town cop. Tom was a relatively seasoned Coast Guard officer after four years at the Academy and six years climbing the ranks. The crime scene swarmed with town and state cops, but very quickly the FBI took control of the case. The Coast Guard never would have gotten involved if, the same night as the gallery heist, Tom’s vessel hadn’t performed what had seemed to be a relatively random boarding operation.
It was a Monday in mid-November, just before dusk. The sea off Montauk was dark and calm, the sky the color of a black pearl. Most of the New England yachts going south for the winter had left weeks earlier. Winter in the north Atlantic was nothing to mess with, and decent skippers knew that.
Tom was aboardNehantic, a 270-foot cutter. Just a week before they’d had a successful narcotics operation and were still riding high from it. With a USCG helicopter hovering overhead, they had tracked a narco-sub, a semisubmersible reported to be stuffed with fifteen tons of cocaine.Nehantichad gone to battle stations, deployed two raid boats, and gotten to the sub just in time to catch the crew preparing to scuttle. They’d arrested six smugglers and confiscated the coke and a cache of weapons before the vessel sank, and they’d become cartel-busting heroes in the media.
Then it was back to regular patrol. With a lull in November’s often stormy weather and no reports of smugglers, they had a run of easy days. Cruising off Montauk Point, Tom stood on the foredeck looking west and saw the orange line of sunset just above the horizon. When he turned east, the sky was darkening from slate gray into night, and for just a moment, he thought he glimpsed the silhouette of a large sailboat.
He raised the binoculars to his eyes. There it was again—backlit by the loom of Block Island. It was completely dark, no running lights. The mast was bare, no sails hoisted. He had a good look and estimated the boat’s length at sixty feet overall with a graceful shear and an elegant waterline. At first, he thought the boat was becalmed, but after a few seconds, he saw that it was underway, motoring at a slow speed.
Seconds after spotting the sailboat, he lost sight of it. The vessel passed Block Island into the open ocean, and with no light behind it, the silhouette dissolved. Although the last three days had been calm, a gale was forecast, and by dawn the Atlantic would be roaring.
Glasses held to his eyes, Tom radioed Luis Santiago, the deck watch officer, up on the bridge.
“Twenty degrees off the port bow,” Tom said. “A sailboat running south-southeast without lights. I had her but I lost her.”
“I got her on radar. A smuggler or just a goddamn idiot?” Luis asked.
“Going south is the wrong direction for smuggling drugs,” Tom said.
“Then check box number two. A goddamned idiot who missed the September exodus. His voyage to Saint Barts or wherever will have to wait. We’re going to ruin his night.”
Nehanticsped toward the invisible boat and minutes later approached what appeared to be a ghost ship. The yacht glided across the glassy sea, its wake white and rippling in the floodlights of the cutter. Its transom was illuminated, and Tom read the name and port:Rembrandt, Newport, Rhode Island. The cockpit was empty, but the boat steamed along, obviously on autopilot.
“YachtRembrandt!” Luis said, his voice booming out the speaker. He didn’t have time to say anything else—two heads poked out of the companionway, and a man and woman scrambled up on deck.
“Hello!” the man called. “We’re fine! Everything’s okay.”
“Running lights,” Luis said.
“Oh, shit,” the man said. “Sorry—it got dark so fast we didn’t even notice. Flip them on, will you, Sally?”
And the yacht’s running lights—white masthead and stern lights, the red port and green starboard lights—came on. That should have been enough. Maybe a citation for ignoring rules of the road. It might have been stupid to be heading south in November, but it wasn’t illegal.
But in the spotlight’s glare, Tom spotted firearms, and not just any: just behind the nav station were two AK-47 assault rifles. They looked like the Chinese Norinco Type 56s they’d taken off the narco-sub a week before. The man glanced at Tom, noticed his line of vision, and inched toward the wheel, moving toward the guns. Tom drew his sidearm and pointed it at the captain and Sally.
“Hands up!” he said.
