She could imagine it, she could see him—a tall boy with long dark hair, eyes green like the hills, running over shale and sand, through the shallows with his siblings as boys had and would.

A good life, she thought as she leaned with him into a turn.

She shifted a little, looked out over the water, a rough and ready blue with tinges of green. Gulls swooped, white or gray, and farther out she saw the roll of a white fishing boat.

He slowed through villages decked with flowers, slapped the gas again once they moved beyond.

She tapped his shoulder, pointed when she spotted the little sign up ahead. He only nodded, then slowed into the turn.

The wind kicked harder now, and brisker as they took the narrow ribbon of road down. She smelled the sea, cool and briny, and the roses from the garden of a cottage, the smoke from a chimney of another.

Chickens, she thought. Though she couldn’t see or hear them, the scent of their feathers tickled her nose. She smelled the dog before it ran out and along a tumbling stone wall to watch them.

She tapped Doyle’s shoulder again when she saw the blue building with the long pier. She spotted the dive boat, a fishing boat, and a sweet little cabin cruiser with a man on deck patiently polishing its brightwork.

Doyle pulled up beside a pair of trucks and a compact, cut the engine.

“I’ve got this,” she said, slid off the bike, and strolled toward the boat where the man stopped, put his hands on his hips.

Her deal, Doyle thought, and walked over the shale to the thin strip of dark gold sand.

It would be here, wouldn’t it? he thought. Fate’s quick poke in the ribs. Here, where he’d come as a boy—of nine or ten, if memory served. A cousin had lived nearby. Christ, what was the name? Ronan, yes, Ronan had been the boy about his age, son of his father’s sister. And they’d come to visit, barely a hard stone’s throw from this spot.

His two sisters nearest his age chasing birds. The brother who came after them splashing in the shallows while a younger sister clung shyly to his mother’s skirts. His young, doomed brother barely toddling. Another babe—though he hadn’t known it then—in his mother’s belly.

All there, his mother and father, his grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins.

They’d stayed three days, fishing, feasting, playing music, and dancing late into the night. And he and Ronan had plied through the water like seals.

The following winter his aunt whose name escaped him died in childbirth. His father had wept.

Death unmans us all, Doyle thought.

Riley stepped over to him. “You’ve been here before.”

“Yes.”

“With your family?”

“Yes. Did you make the deal?”

She studied him a moment longer, then nodded. “Done. We can load the equipment.”

They didn’t speak again, or only of practicalities as along with Donahue they carted tanks, wet suits, equipment.

Riley addressed her conversation to Donahue, some talk, Doyle realized, of the dives a mutual acquaintance had taken a few years earlier.

When Donahue asked about the motorcycle, Riley just smiled and told him someone would pick it up later. And they’d be back to refill the tanks when needed.

Since she’d made the deal, she took the wheelhouse, eased the boat away from the dock with a wave to Donahue, already heading back to his brightwork.

“Making some small talk also causes fewer ripples,” she pointed out.

“You were doing enough for both of us. It’s a good boat.”

“The friend we small talked about is a marine biologist, and he’s partnered with a marine anthropologist. So Donahue came highly recommended. The anthro’s also a lycan. The daughter of a friend of my mother’s.”

“Small world.”

“Situationally.”

It was a good boat, and she knew how to handle it. She headed north, kept within sight of the coast until she spotted a cove.

“A good spot,” she called out, “for dropping four people out of the air.”

She navigated in, using the shelter of the cliff face for cover, then pulled out her phone.

“Latitude and longitude for Sawyer. I’ve got an app for that. You’d better come up here so somebody doesn’t splat on top of you.”

He moved up with her while she found the coordinates.

She still smelled of the forest, he noted, if the forest grew out of the sea.

“Hey, Sawyer, we’re about halfway between here and there.” She read off the coordinates. “Same type of RIB we’ve been using. Yeah, you got that. We’re in the wheelhouse, nosed into a cove, bow toward the cliff, so you’ve got the rest of the boat. Don’t miss,” she added, then pocketed the phone.

“They’ll be a minute. You know, given my bloodline and line of work, I’ve always been open to, we’ll say, the unusual. But up until recently I wouldn’t have seen myself hanging out waiting for four pals to pop out of thin air.”

“A small and fluid world.”

“Fluid works.”

Water lapped and rocked against the boat, and Doyle—who could go weeks happily speaking to no one—found himself restless with the silence.

“Do lycans tend to go into science?”

“I wouldn’t say so. I know teachers, artists, business types, chefs, lazy asses, politicians—”

“Politicians.”

“Yeah.” Now she smiled. “We’ve had a few in Congress, Parliament. There was this guy about twenty, twenty-five years ago I heard about who had higher ambitions. Leader of the Free World ambitions, but the council strongly discouraged him. You go for that, people start digging pretty deep. Better not to risk it. A shame really.”