The last two days had been insane and he didn’t know whether he should be angry or frightened. He had slept the night at the NSA’s motel, fighting nightmares and bizarre dreams through a thin, exhausting sleep.

He found himself particularly irritated at the liberties Stratton and his cohorts had taken. Stratton’s cleanup crew had arrived at the dock just moments after they had hustled him out of the limousine. The crew had stripped his boat, taken it out to sea, and scuttled it. The items stripped from the boat, Stratton informed him, had been deposited in Ridgeway’s garage.

Seth knew that such measures would save him from answering difficult questions. Still, he was miffed that Stratton’s people had obviously been able to go through all his belongings on the boat in search of the painting. He wondered if Stratton’s men might have had some involvement with the previous burglaries that had occurred at his house while he had been living on the boat. It was obvious now that those had been someone looking for the painting.

He allowed himself an ironic smile as he got out of the car, walked over to the garage door, and opened it. The painting wasn’t here and never had been. Before this morning, he hadn’t even been aware of its existence, much less where it might be. But he knew now, and he knew it was safe. He didn’t intend to let Stratton or anybody else get their hands on it.

Seth surveyed the piles of sailing gear and personal belongings Stratton’s people had stacked on the garage floor. It looked like a nautical flea market. His eyes scanned the piles for a moment and came to rest on a small leather-bound volume the size of a thin volume of an encyclopedia. It was the ship’s log Zoe had given him for Christmas three years before. He bent down and picked it up. Drops of rain had raised dark splatters on the cover. A snapshot fell out when he opened the log’s cover. He caught it as it cartwheeled to the floor.

He closed the book slowly and stared at the photo in the half darkness. It was a picture of him and Zoe taken just before the Zurich trip. Doug Denoff, who had been the best man at their wedding, had snapped the shot as he and Zoe swabbed the Valkyrie’s deck following a long weekend sail to Catalina.

He felt the hollow void in his chest grow wider as he gazed at the picture. Zoe had a quiet beauty that didn’t advertise itself: it was just simply there, a subtle foreshadowing of the deep beauty that lay beneath the skin. He thought of that day now, how it had been one of those ordinary occasions whose remarkable nature remained undetected until much later. It had been the last time they had gone sailing together. He wished now that he had realized then how special that sail really was. But some special moments never announce themselves until it’s too late to savor them.