Seconds later, she saw Vikki fire. The shot echoed in the quiet Sunday morning air.

One of the college guys nudged the other. “Dude! That chick just shot a guy.” The older couple stood still and gawked as Vikki fell to her knees and handcuffed the shooting victim. Only the man with the metal detector seemed to realize what was going on. He dropped his instrument in the sand and began running toward the scene.

Letty began to run, too.

“Joe, this is Special Agent Alex Garcia,” Vikki said.

Garcia removed the headphones and nodded a greeting to Joe DeCurtis. “You had me worried for a minute there,” he told Vikki.

“How was the sound?” she asked. “Did you get everything we were saying?”

“I think so,” Garcia said.

“Hey!” Evan protested. “I’m bleeding to death here. I need a doctor.”

“Relax, Wingfield,” Joe said. “Nobody ever died of being shot in the foot. There’s an ambulance on the way.”

People were beginning to gather in a ragged semicircle around them, gawking at the spectacle. Two of the college kids had pulled out phones and were shooting video.

“Hey, man! What’d that dude do? Why’d you shoot him?” A kid wearing jeans and a Nike hoodie walked toward them, holding out his phone to capture the scene.

“Whoa. Who are you guys even?” the college kid demanded.

Vikki Hill flashed her badge. “We’re FBI, assholes. And this dude is a murder suspect. Now why don’t you and your friends go film a TikTok dance or something?

“Let’s get him out of here,” she told the men. Garcia and Joe each took an arm and effortlessly dragged Wingfield back toward the road. Vikki Hill picked up the leather messenger bag.

“That’s my property,” Evan protested. “You can’t just confiscate my property.”

“Hold up for a minute,” Vikki said. “He’s got a point. Joe, let’s inventory this douchebag’s property, shall we?”

DeCurtis pulled out his phone and she unzipped the bag as he began to video. She carefully removed a folded black windbreaker and set it on the sand. A pair of matching black track pants were wrapped around something else. She unfolded the fabric and revealed stacks of currency.

Vikki looked up at the cop. “Are you getting this? Looks like the balance of the payment due for a murder contract to me. Should be forty thousand, unless he planned to stiff us.”

“That’s the down payment for a real-estate transaction,” Evan claimed. “And you can’t prove otherwise.”

“Tell it to the judge,” Joe said. “Anything else of interest in that bag?”

Vikki held up a bag of goldfish crackers, a juice box, and then, a pair of pull-up diapers and a child-size pale pink dress with matching pink leggings.