Chapters (82)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ONE
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- THREE
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- FIVE
- SIX
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- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
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- TWENTY-FIVE
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- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
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- THIRTY-SIX
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- FORTY
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- FIFTY
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- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- SIXTY-ONE
- SIXTY-TWO
- SIXTY-THREE
- SIXTY-FOUR
- SIXTY-FIVE
- SIXTY-SIX
- SIXTY-SEVEN
- SIXTY-EIGHT
- SIXTY-NINE
- SEVENTY
- SEVENTY-ONE
- SEVENTY-TWO
- SEVENTY-THREE
- SEVENTY-FOUR
- SEVENTY-FIVE
- SEVENTY-SIX
- Praise for Blood in the Water
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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“Oh no,” Carpio said. “The young soldier killed your husband. He did a very thorough job, as I instructed.” The smile grew even wider. “But I killed your son,” he said. Kit tried again to reach for her gun, but the guards grabbed her.
“You’re going to die!” Kit screamed. “I swear to god, I will make sure that you face justice, and you get what you deserve!”
SIXTY-THREE
Wednesday, February 13
Boston’s record cold snap surrendered early on Wednesday morning. The polar vortex that had pushed as far south as New York and trapped New Englanders in a deep freeze for more than six weeks retreated to Canada, chased northward by a shift in the jet stream that brought unseasonably warm temperatures from Texas up through the Mid-Atlantic. Within three hours, the temperature on Boston Common rose forty degrees, climbing above freezing for the first time since December. By nine o’clock, it was in the forties, and winter-weary residents poked their noses out of their doors and windows with an uneasy mixture of skepticism and relief. It felt as though a siege had been lifted from the city, and, as the reality took hold, the warmth was greeted by Bostonians like a liberating force. The shift was so drastic that stir-crazy children went to school in shorts and sweatshirts, oblivious to the fact that it would still be months before the temperature in the city would cross the fifty-degree mark. It mattered little to them. As far as they were concerned the worst was over. There was a sense of shared survival among the citizenry. They had taken the worst that Old Man Winter could throw at them, and they had endured and overcome. Now was a time to celebrate.
The sudden thaw caused some mild mayhem in the urban infrastructure. Water pipes that had cracked during the cold snap but had gone undiscovered because the water remained frozen, burst, flooding homes and businesses. Ice dams formed on peaked roofs, trapping two months’ worth of melting snow, causing leaks and several collapses. Giant icicles that had formed on high-rises snapped free, falling forty stories to the sidewalks below, killing two pedestrians and injuring dozens of others. Still, the break in the cold was viewed as heaven-sent by those who escaped the collateral damage from the thaw.
From his office on the sixth floor of the John Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse, Judge F. Barton Baylor could sense the warm front advancing from the south, up through Boston Harbor. The weather had started to change even before he rolled into the garage at five thirty that morning, but now the thaw was spreading in earnest, and it seemed that the waters were waging an open war against the ice floats that had choked the waterways.