Clee appears in the doorway a few seconds later. “How did you get in here?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Clee. Have a seat.”

Mr. Clee, to his credit, does. “I wasn’t sure you would ever respond to my message. Friends told me you and your team were…picky.”

“Why reach out to us in the first place?”

“I was worried for Hannah and Brooke—they’re still in shock over the whole thing. And I was extremely fond of Paige. We just want to know what happened to her.”

“So does the FBI,” Quinn says.

“And they seem to be dragging their feet. Look, I’m not a man who’s used to waiting. If you want something done, you hire the best and get it done.”

Quinn stares at Clee. No visible emotion on his face, no reaction to the ham-handed attempt at flattery.

“Well?” Clee asks after a few uncomfortable seconds. “Are you going to take the case or not?”

“Yes. My team is already engaged.”

“Hey, that’s great!” he says, clapping his manicured hands together. “But, uh, we haven’t discussed terms or anything. How does this work?”

“We’ll take care of the details later. If you couldn’t afford our services, you would have never heard from me. But I am curious about one thing, Mr. Clee.”

“What’s that?”

“Why were you so fond of Paige? I mean, you’ve never actually met her.”

Clee stiffens. “She is a close friend of my girls, Mr. Quinn. They’re absolutely heartbroken. What father wouldn’t want to do everything possible to get to the bottom of this tragedy?”

Chapter 11

KATE (THE SOLDIER)

Matt, things are moving fast and I’m 95 percent certain that Jamie Halsey, the trust fund kid with the yacht, killed Paige Ryerson. And if that 5 percent chance is right and he didn’t do it—I’ll bet anything he knows who did.

I caught up with Halsey’s Squadron 60 yacht (named Hostile Wake-Over) at the El Conquistador Marina in Puerto Rico. Halsey thought he was being clever by altering his itinerary at the last minute, slipping down to PR instead of following the reservations his corporation had filed with various marinas in the Bahamas.

But I don’t track marina reservations. I track boats directly by GPS transponder. Easy enough to do when you pick up the right piece of software on the dark web.

As we discussed, my forged State Department credentials were enough to gain me complete access to the hotel and its marina. When I arrived, Halsey’s yacht was in the middle of the docking process, and his suite was still being prepared. So I headed in to the 35-slip marina to welcome him personally.

“Hey, I’m looking for Jamie,” I said, with the brightest smile I could muster. As if I was just a girl, looking for a cute boy I’d met. “I thought I’d surprise him.”

But the crew wasn’t having any of it. Clearly, they were used to “girls” stopping by for their boss.

“He in the Bahamas,” one of them mumbled.