The Satellite Beach community center was not the sort of place to require an armed agent guarding the coffee machine. It was located in a former auto supply warehouse. The four bay doors had been replaced by walls of glass. The view was over a parking lot, a lawn shared with the neighboring church, and the inland waterway. That Monday evening the setting sun turned the bay into a burnished copper shield.

Charlie Hazard stood in what had become his normal station, midway between the coffeemaker and the jukebox. His job was to make sure the local surfers didn't totally freak out the old-timers. There were nights when he would have rather faced incoming fire.

The center was situated three blocks from the home he had inherited from his father. Charlie had been dropping by a couple of nights each week for nineteen months and he still didn't know why. He went off on a job, got it done, came home, and a night or so later he was back. The place suited him. It was safe. Charlie liked safe. And sane. A lot of his life away from this place wasn't either. Lately he found himself looking forward to coming back. He was comfortable with little triumphs these days — another day staying clean, another night without sweats and fever dreams.

Julio, a Hispanic kid in his late teens, hit the button on the music machine. Immediately the place was invaded by rap. Julio was a local surfer, tall and handsome despite his baggy jeans and prison tats.

Charlie had every reason to dislike him and his attitude. But something about Julio hit him at gut level. What was more, Charlie's best friend here was the youth counselor, a retired Orlando detective named Irma Steeg. Irma had a definite soft spot for the kid. So Charlie kept his voice mild as he waved Julio over and said, "Think maybe you could hold off for another hour?"

Julio gave him attitude. "What's your problem, man?"

"See the old people over there by the windows? Forty-five minutes, they'll leave for their nightly meds. Then you can play the track that sounds like a bad day in Baghdad."

Irma settled a hand on Julio's arm, halting his comeback. She asked, "How about something from Ol' Blue Eyes?"

Charlie walked over to the machine and ditched the rap. To the groans of everybody under twenty, Frank Sinatra and his horn section asked Charlie to fly him to the moon.

As Charlie returned to the coffee bar, Irma gave Julio her number-one smile. "Everybody likes Sinatra, right?"

Charlie knew Julio wanted to tell Irma exactly where she could put Sinatra and his entire big band. But Julio had enough street sense to notice the steel behind Irma's smile.

He told the departing kid, "One hour, tops. Then the place is yours."

"Whatever, man. Make yourself some oatmeal, why don't you.

Easier to chew, you don't got no teeth."

Charlie said to Irma, "Remind me why you put up with that lip."

"Julio has nothing and nobody. I always had a thing for strays." Irma offered him the same soft-hard smile. "As you should know."

He skipped his retort because an unfamiliar woman chose that moment to walk through the door. When her smile lit up the room, even the kids gave this new arrival thirty seconds of silence.

The strange thing was, the beautiful woman was not actually smiling at anyone or anything in particular. She seemed genuinely ecstatic to simply be here. In a former auto supply warehouse.

Maybe she had a thing for Sinatra.

Then she spotted Charlie, and the smile grew larger still.

Irma said, "Have you been holding back on me, sport?" Charlie tensed as the woman headed straight for him.

"Apparently so," Irma said.

Charlie guessed the woman's age at early thirties. She had almond eyes tilted at an impossible angle. Dark hair. A body that couldn't be masked by her tan skirt and jacket.

Charlie knew what the woman saw as she approached his end of the counter. His late wife had described him as an old soul trapped in an underwear model's body. Dark hair trimmed short. A single scar that rose from his collar to just below his left ear. Strong features.

Watchful grey eyes.

The woman stopped at the counter, stared at him for what seemed like a good year or so, then asked, "Is there somewhere we could have a private word?"

Her accent could only be described as seductive.

Irma slipped from her stool. "I was just leaving." From behind the woman's back she mouthed to Charlie a silent, Eeeooowwww.

Charlie asked, "You're here looking for me?"

"I think so."

"You think."

"Yes." She had lips like bruised grapes. Cheekbones from some forgotten tribe. She did not speak so much as gradually tasted each word. "Are you a policeman?"

"Sorry, no."

Her look of defeat was a potent force. "What do you do, please?"

"Where are you from?"

"Italy. Milan. But I live here now."

"Can I ask your name?"

"Gabriella." She smiled. "I should have introduced myself. Forgive me."

"No problem." For another smile like that, Charlie would have climbed on the roof and howled at the moon.

"You see, I am very nervous. Please, can you tell me what you do now?"

"I'm afraid that's confidential."

She pressed against the counter. "Your work, is it protection?" He hesitated, then said, "We call it risk containment."

Her pleasure at his response was as intense as her plea. "Will you come with me?"

"What, now?"

"It is very urgent."

He was out the door and into the fading dusk before it occurred to him. "Do you even know my name?"

"It doesn't matter." She beeped open the door to a brand-new Range Rover, then added, "Yet."

* * *

Gabriella took the coastal route south. She gave the road an intense focus. Cape Kennedy's rush hour was over, and traffic was light. In the high season, license plates along the coastal highway were from all over the country. Driving along A1A was like traveling through congealed grits. But this was May, and most of the snowbirds had retreated with the last northern freeze. Even so, Gabriella drove with a two-fisted grip on the wheel and watched the road with unblinking concentration. Charlie suspected it was her way of avoiding a conversation.

Like most guys who had known combat, Charlie had a welldeveloped awareness for trouble. Surviving the front line meant cultivating a second set of eyes, the kind that looked beyond what was visible to civilian senses. He had learned to trust this ability when entering new terrain. Afterward, when the cordite burned the throat and the muscles jerked with the drain-off of adrenaline rush, Charlie saw precisely what had given him that first life-saving alarm.

But when he used that extra sense now and tasted the air, he found no danger whatsoever. So he turned toward the sunset-drenched window and put his memory into rewind. He walked back through what had happened since the woman's appearance in the community center.

Taking it slow. Doing what he had been trained to do. What he was best at.

He said, "You were excited the minute you came in."

"Please?"

"You walked in and lit up the room with your smile. Like you had already found exactly what you had been looking for. Even before you spotted me."

Gabriella glanced over but said nothing.

"What, you were supplied with a photo of the center?" As soon as he said the words, he cast them aside. "You sent in somebody else. A spotter. You had gotten word —" She pulled up to the next...