In the middle is Desi, and next to him is Janet, and I hear Jet Ranger before I spot him under the breakfast table snoring. I bend down to pet his head and silky ears, and he licks my hand and wags his stump of a tail as I walk to the kitchen counter. I make coffees as I take an inventory of my surroundings, starting with the sixty-inch flat screen on the wall.

It’s been switched from security to TV mode, and a Japanese sitcom is playing softly on the Tokyo Broadcasting System. No one is remotely interested. That’s not why the show is on. The flat screen is more than a TV or a monitor I decide as coffee streams loudly into a mug. What Lucy has in here is a device such as a base station that scrambles mobile phone communications, and whoever intercepts the encrypted data stream will hear nothing but static.

I look around at built-in speakers, at the thick cypress walls and triple-glazed glass that’s reflective from the outside so people can’t see in. I’ve been in here before, not often but on occasion and this is the first time it’s occurred to me that the boathouse isn’t merely a boathouse. Lucy has set up a sound-masking system, and I wonder if it’s a new addition like her rock garden. She’s anticipated for a while that she was going to be visited by the Feds. Since mid-June at least. Since I was shot. That’s my guess.

“They’ve not been in here?” I ask Lucy as I hand a coffee to Donoghue.

“They did a sweep. I told them they had to do it first and get out because we needed a quiet place for Desi and Jet Ranger.”

“How nice of them to accommodate,” Donoghue says wryly.

“I demanded a quiet safe place for them.”

“Yes how very kind and sensitive of the FBI to comply with your wishes,” I say pointedly because the FBI isn’t kind or sensitive and they don’t care about Lucy’s wishes. “Rather unusual, don’t you think?” I look around at the built-in speakers and up at the ceiling tiles. “They didn’t fight you on it or insist on having an agent in here with you?”

“No.”

“You’re saying they have no concern about your home improvements.” I speak euphemistically, still unconvinced that our conversation is safe.

“There’s nothing they can do about how I’ve chosen to construct my house and any associated outbuildings. A search warrant doesn’t grant them permission to destroy someone’s property,” Lucy says and she’s right but in theory only.