Over time, he began to realize that Lily was just like him. She had been attacked by a shark too. She had gone into the water one fine day, and after that, nothing would be the same. Liam suspected that she ran the same thoughts through her mind as he did through his: What if I had been a minute earlier? A minute later? Maybe the shark would have gone swimming by, and she wouldn't have been attacked.

Edward might not have noticed her. He might have set his sights on the next woman to walk by—someone else wearing expensive shoes, a cashmere coat. The shark might have swum on to other waters, to menace someone else. But then she wouldn't have had Rose. And Liam wouldn't have met either of them.

Liam put his arm around Lily now. As they scanned the bay for Nanny, he knew that she was worried about court. They had to be there in an hour. Life as Lily knew it was hanging in a very precarious balance; she was about to enter into the court system, where men in black robes would soon be making decisions that would affect the way she raised her daughter.

Although a respectable scientist, Liam was also a northern renegade. He was descended from Cape Hawk whalers—Arctic explorers who had sailed from the Gulf of St. Lawrence around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, had survived shipwrecks and subsisted on rainwater and vegetation. They had gone one-on-one with the sea, and lived to tell about it.

What Lily didn't know was, Liam would do anything for her and Rose. And “anything,” to a man who'd had his arm ripped off by the shark that had killed his brother, was a big word. If Edward tried anything today—raised one hand to Lily . . . well, Liam would almost welcome it.

His cell phone rang, and he reached into his pocket to answer it.

“Hello?” he said.

“Liam, it's Pete Wayland.”

“Hi, Pete,” Liam said. Although he was on the way to court, immersed in all of that, he was grateful for the distraction. He stepped away from Lily and Rose to take the call. “Did John tell you what was going on? Patrick Murphy, a retired detective, thinks that maybe Gerard Lafarge is after a beluga—”

“Your friend's right,” Pete said. The connection was terrible, but even through the static, Liam could hear the excitement in his voice. “You'll never believe who came through.”

“Who?”

“Nick Olson—Captain Nick. He contacted me yesterday, told me that there was a beluga whale in the hold of—you guessed it—Mar IV. He gave us the ship's coordinates, and we went right out. Lafarge had a hold full of marine mammals—sick or dying dolphins.”

“What about a beluga?” Liam asked, his heart falling.