Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Nora Baron and her husband were jogging on the beach below their home when she noticed the two men watching them.
She and Jeff had traversed the entire stretch of sand three times already, keeping their pace slow to accommodate Jeff’s knee injury from a mission two years ago. They’d been swimming earlier, but now a breeze was drying their hair and bathing suits. This was their final lap, and Nora was beginning to think that things might not be so bad, after all.
Yesterday, July 21, had been her birthday—the dreaded Big Five-O—so today she needed this physical activity to reassure herself that age was an abstract concept and time was her friend. The vague depression she’d felt in the days leading up to the landmark was fading now; there was no sensible reason for it. She had a loving family, good health, good friends, and an exciting profession—three exciting professions, actually. The July sun glistened on Long Island Sound, the beach, and the grassy dunes. It was a beautiful day to be alive, no matter her age.
Their house was a two-story, wood-and-stone structure set well back above the dunes. She and Jeff had lived here since their wedding twenty-three years ago, and their daughter, Dana, had lived here all her life until she’d left for NYU four years ago. They had a widow’s walk on the roof and a long front drive to the beach road, and they’d added the flagstone patio behind the house, facing the water, where the two men in gray business suits and dark sunglasses had just materialized.
The men were African-American, and the older one was solidly built with close-cropped gray hair that matched his tailored suit. The tall, lanky young man beside him wore less expensive clothes and had a laptop case hanging from one wide shoulder. They watched the Barons from the patio—well, Nora assumed they were watching. It was hard to tell where they were looking through their sunglasses, which was the main point of these particular sunglasses.
Jeff saw the men, too. He and Nora slowed to a walk before stopping at the foot of the path leading up to the house. They looked up at the two men—or, rather, at the older man who was their employer—then at each other.
“What’s he doing here?” Nora asked.
“I don’t know, Pal,” her husband said. “He didn’t tell me he was coming.”
Nora shrugged. “And yet, there he is. Something tells me you’re urgently needed.”
Jeff grinned. “Or maybe you are.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” she said.
