"This week."

"There you go."

"My ancestors helped settle Goose Harbor in the seventeenth century."

"So did mine."

"You see? We could be cousins."

Bruce wasn't amused. "Yeah, right. Listen, McGrath-" Bruce sighed, staring at his nearly untouched beer. "Christina West's house was broken into today. The police think it was some idiot looking for cash, but I'm wondering-you didn't have anything to do with it, did you?"

J.B. shook his head. He hadn't heard about the break-in. "No." "Because, you know, some people think you're here because of her father's murder last year-" "Bruce, I'm on vacation. I know about the murder, but that's it."

Bruce rubbed a big hand across his face. "I know. It was stupid. I just-Chris is so damn young, and she's here on her own."

"What about her sister?"

But J.B. knew about the sister. Zoe West was a screwup. The rising star, the local hotshot pushed hard and fast because she made everyone else look good, too. She should have gotten her ass kicked along the way, but instead she got accepted into the FBI Academy for new-agent training. It was only natural she'd think she could solve her father's murder-only natural she'd come unglued and fallen apart when she'd had to face his death, her aunt's death, her own limitations, the kind of real-world experience she must have known was out there but hadn't had to confront herself.

Zoe West had bowed out of the academy, moved to Connecticut and got herself fired from what was likely her last job in law enforcement.

A screwup.

J.B. thought of the man he'd killed. The looks on the faces of his three children. Nine, eleven and fourteen. They were horrified, furious, filled with hate. J.B. didn't know what would become of them. Their father, a murderer and a rapist, a man who'd taught other people how to build bombs and convert legal weapons into illegal weapons, had attacked J.B. from behind, without warning, and stuck a knife in his throat, and J.B. fought back. It was self-defense. But nothing, he thought, was ever that simple.