“I’ve already been an easy target once this summer for a shark of sorts. It won’t happen again. And I have a pistol in my bag.” I sound a little winded.

“Don’t let them see it. They’d love an excuse to shoot us.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?”

Her house comes into view, timber and glass with a copper roof on a rise overlooking a part of the river as wide as a bay. The helicopter is over the woods again, very low this time and treetops churn in the downwash.

“What the hell are they looking for?” I ask.

“They want the recording.” Lucy says it matter-of-factly, and I’m shocked.

I stop on the driveway and stare at her. “What recording?”

“They think I have it hidden somewhere, maybe buried like treasure, maybe in some secret bunker. I mean really?” she says derisively. “They think I’m going to tuck the camera into a little metal box and dig a hole and whoaaa it’s safe? If I don’t want them to find something they won’t in a million years.”

“What recording?”

“I can guarantee you they’re using ground-penetrating radar, looking for geologic parameters that might tell them I have something hidden belowground.” Lucy’s attention is fixed on the helicopter, so loud and close we’re having to shout. “Next they’ll probably show up with fucking backhoes just so they can have the pleasure of destroying my landscaping. Because more than anything this is revenge, this is putting me in my place.”

“What recording?” I expect her next to admit that the Depraved Heart video clips were sent to her too.

“The one from Florida.”

She means the recording of my being shot while diving a shipwreck off the coast of Fort Lauderdale two months ago.

“There’s nothing helpful in it but I guess they don’t know that. It depends on what they’re really looking for,” she says as I realize she’s been lying to me, to everyone. “Or better yet what they’re not looking for, which is the more likely story. And I can’t give them that bonus. I’m pretty sure I know what it is and they won’t get it courtesy of me.”

MY SCUBA MASK with its embedded mini-recorder is missing. Or I thought it was. It was never recovered after Carrie tried to kill me. Or that’s what I’ve been led to believe.

The explanation I’ve been given is that finding it wasn’t the top priority. Saving my life was. By the time divers searched for the mask the current had moved it and possibly covered it with silt.

“They wanted that recording two months ago.” I’m careful what I say. “Why is this coming up now?”

“Before now it was theoretical. They’re convinced I have it.”