Zoe West sat at the cluttered farmhouse kitchen table and stared out at the beautiful northwest Connecticut landscape, the hills dotted with brightly colored leaves, and she tried to piece together how she'd ended up here. It was as if one day she was headed to Quantico, and the next, she was here, canning beets and milking goats with Bea Jericho.

She knew she should be grateful. Charlie and Bea were incredible people, hardworking, determined to hang on to their land instead of chopping it up into mini-estates and making a fortune.

But Zoe didn't belong in Bluefield, Connecticut, and she knew it. She'd known it the day she'd arrived in town almost a year ago.

She needed to go home. It was just a matter of when. Goose Harbor hovered on the horizon of her life, like a fog bank she knew would engulf her in due time. Better to deal with it. Get it over with. The status quo was untenable, increasingly impossible to endure.

She'd had three calls in three days. Bruce Young, a lobsterman who'd graduated high school with her; her sister, Christina; and Greg Sampson, the one friend Zoe had left in the Maine State Police. They all wanted to tell her that an FBI agent was on the loose in Goose Harbor.

At least they said he was an FBI agent. Apparently he didn't want to advertise it but had slipped up with Bruce Young. His name was J. B. McGrath-Jesse Benjamin McGrath. It went right over Sampson's head but struck Bruce and Christina as suspicious, since Jen Per-iwinkle's evil nemesis was also named McGrath. Mr. Lester McGrath, a fictional character, but still. To them it was at best a weird coincidence.