Its bank of windows overlooked the docks; its barn-board walls were decorated with wooden lobster traps, fake lobsters and framed black-and-white pictures of lighthouses and Maine days gone by. J. B. McGrath nursed a beer at a small corner table. He was thirty-six, tall, lean, black-haired, blue-eyed and had a face that would look right at home on a wanted poster. He was good at undercover work, and he'd been doing it a long time. Maybe too long. That was why he was in Goose Harbor, Maine. He was on vacation. Not his idea.

No darts tonight. He'd pissed off enough locals. He was from Montana but could handle himself in a lobster boat. He was an FBI agent but argued lobstering with people who'd done it all their lives. He was a guy on vacation who didn't have the grace to lose at darts once in awhile. None of which endeared him to the good people of Goose Harbor.

Bruce Young pulled out a chair and plopped down across from him with a frosty beer glass. "Eight o'clock and nobody's ready to kill you? Slow day, McGrath."

Bruce grinned and unzipped his Carhartt canvas jacket. He was built like a rock cliff, a big, red-faced man with scars and nicks on his hands from working his string of lobster pots day after day. His blue eyes were so like J.B.'s own, J.B. wouldn't be surprised if he and Bruce were distant cousins. But that was another thing- the locals didn't believe J.B.'s ancestors hailed from Goose Harbor. They thought he'd just made that up.

J.B. hadn't made it up. His grandmother was a Sutherland, as in Sutherland Island off the Olivia West Nature Preserve-as in Olivia's best friend, Posey Sutherland, who ran off with drifter Jesse McGrath after World War I and ended up in Montana and dead at twenty-seven.

Her father, Lester Sutherland, disowned her.

Hence, Mr. Lester McGrath, Jen Periwinkle's evil nemesis. A combination of two men Olivia West hated because of what they had done to her friend, Posey.

"I heard some of the guys talking about setting fire to your boat. They think you're obnoxious." Bruce took a long drink of his beer. "I reminded them it's my damn boat."