Sandra’s public relations firm—which consisted of, well, Sandra—was doing just fine, thank you very much. She’d done promotions for local hotels and fishing tours and organized plenty of conferences for midsized firms. But she’d never taken on something this big. A multinational company? Whose stock price was going through the roof? Whose CEO had made the cover of Fortune?

Welcome to the major leagues.

She’d had to pull together a team for this one. Not that her client hadn’t been looking over her shoulder the whole time. That Albert Ruskin guy, assistant to the president of Arrival Inc., was phoning, texting, and emailing her twenty times a day to make sure things came off without a hitch. She knew why he didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust her because she wasn’t attached to some big-name firm in New York or Chicago or LA. Sandra was not exactly Edelman, or Weber Shandwick, or Hill+Knowlton.

She was Montrose Strategies.

She was a local. A two-bit player, so far as Ruskin was concerned.

But Arrival Inc. had the political savvy to know it would score points by involving as many of the island businesses as possible. If they’d brought in caterers and techies and PR people from Manhattan—or, even closer, Boston—sure as shit that would have pissed off the islanders. And if there was one thing the Arrival people needed on their side, it was the islanders.

And as if all this were not enough to worry about, there was Archie.

God, Archie.

If he was this much trouble at twelve, what would he be like at fifteen? Eighteen? What the hell was he thinking, sneaking onto one of those historic tall ships in the harbor and scaling the mast on a rope ladder? Getting caught by the owner, having the cops called? Sandra had defied nature and given birth to a monkey who would fearlessly climb anything he could. Before the tall ship, it had been the local high school. Archie and his buddies, exploring rooftops.

Thank God it was Joe who answered the call about the ship. Talked the owner out of a trespassing charge, brought Archie home.

Sandra threw back the covers, swung her legs off the bed, and turned on the small lamp on the bedside table. Sitting on the edge, she did what she always did every morning, even before going into the bathroom.

She checked her phone.

It rested next to the lamp, charging. She’d muted it, but the moment she brought the screen to life, she wished she hadn’t. Five missed texts from Ruskin, the first of which had come in at half past four. Christ. Well, he was probably as stressed as she was. There was a hell of a lot riding on this.

His texts offered ample evidence of his state of mind: