Patricia had her gun out in front of her as she stalked back and forth along the railing of the re-created schooner, her eyes scanning the oily black water of the harbor where Katie—Hailey—had gone in only moments ago. As she searched the choppy surface, she used all of her training to siphon out anything that might break her focus; the lapping of the water against the boat’s hull, the noise of the light late night traffic on nearby Congress Street, the odd shriek of a seagull in the air above. But it didn’t matter—Hailey—Katie—was smart, and obviously a good swimmer. She hadn’t broken the surface of the water yet, and there was no way to know which direction she’d gone.

When the young woman had first gone over the side, Patricia had considered diving right after her. Physically, she knew the girl would be no match for her, even submerged; but chasing a motivated target in ocean water—in near perfect darkness—was a low-percentage endeavor. If Patricia had lost her in the harbor, she wouldn’t have just let the woman, and the eagle, get away. She would have also lost precious time, and perhaps the ability to regain the girl’s trail.

As it was, the girl’s dive into the water had only delayed the inevitable.

Patricia gave it one last scan, then pulled her focus away from the water, lowered her gun, and turned back toward the entrance to the museum. She knew she didn’t have long before the Boston Police—and the FBI—arrived. Not just because of the gunshots that would surely draw a law enforcement response; Patricia was only steps ahead of the FBI’s own hunt for her surprisingly troublesome loose ends.

Though the phone conversations Patricia had intercepted with her StingRay device between the FBI agent in charge—Zack Townsend—and his IT surveillance team had only provided hints toward the fugitives’ destination (the Tea Party Museum), which Patricia had been able to fill in with her own knowledge of what they might be looking for, Townsend would eventually make enough connections to point him in the right direction. Though it would take him longer to decipher what he had overheard via his phishing operation into Hailey’s cell phone—snippets of her, Nick, and the professor’s deconstruction of Thomire’s diary—eventually he might zero in on the “book with the red cover” that had led Patricia to the right destination. Which meant, even without the gunshots, she only had minutes to spare. Hailey was in the water, but she wouldn’t stay in the water; where she was heading next was the only thing that mattered.