Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

"Send me the details."

Glasses tapped again. March had sipped the wine once. He'd also eyed the pineapple juice.

Jenkins laughed and handed the glass to March, enwrapped his fingers. "Just don't mix it with Saint Estephe."

March let his boss's hand linger on his for a moment.

"Dinner?" Jenkins asked.

"Not hungry."

March never was, not at times like this. All the work, hoping it would pay off. The way he planned out the jobs, well, it was fragile. There was a lot that could go wrong. Wasting all that time and money, the risk. Anyway, what it came down to: When the Get was hungry, March was not.

"Oh, here. I brought you something." Jenkins dug in his Vuitton backpack. He handed over a small box. March opened it. "Well."

"Victoria Beckham."

They were sunglasses, blue lenses.

Jenkins said, "Italian. And the lenses change color in the sun. Or get darker. I don't know. I think there are instructions. You'll love them."

"Thanks. They're really something."

Though March's first thought was: Wearing bright blue sunglasses on a job, where you would want to be as inconspicuous as possible?

Maybe I'll go to the beach sometime. On vacation.

Would you let me do that, Get? Just relax?

He tried them on.

"They're you," Jenkins whispered, squeezing March's biceps.

March put the glasses away and picked up the remote.

Click. The hypnotic ballet of sea creatures resumed on the TV. "Extraordinary. Four-K," he said reverently. "Who shot this?"

"Teenager, believe it or not."

"Four-K. Hmm. Wave of the future."

Jenkins asked, "What's the plan?"

"We need to stop her."

"That investigator? Dance?"

"That's right." He explained that the attempt to injure her boyfriend, somebody named Boling, hadn't worked out. Now they needed to do something more efficient.

"We're leaving tomorrow. Why do anything? We'll be a thousand miles away by noon."

"No. We have to stop her. She won't rest until she gets us."

"You're sure?"

"Yes," March said, staring at the sharks.

"What do you have in mind?"