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floating
raft gave him a private place from which to launch the shell. He’d had no
interest in rowing from a club, or competing again. He rowed for sanity now, not
sport.
    But it was impossible to row on the Thames at
Henley every day without encountering other rowers, and a few had recognized him
from his competition days. A few others remembered that he had a knack for
fixing boats, and as the months passed, he’d found himself taking on a repair
here and there.
    The jobs helped fill his days between morning row
and evening run, and when he wasn’t working on someone else’s boat, he’d begun
very tentatively to work on a design for a wooden racing single. He was, after
all, a furniture maker’s son. To him, wooden boats had a life and grace not
found in fiberglass, and the project was in a way a tribute to his father.
    But he’d had no one to talk to but himself, and
that small voice was little buffer against the memories that thronged inside his
head and kept him awake in the night.
    And then one day he’d gone to pick up a boat that
needed patching, and he’d seen the pen full of puppies in the owner’s
garden.
    He’d come away with the boat, and Finn.
    That fat, black, wriggly puppy had, in the two
years since, given Kieran a reason to get up in the morning. Finn was more than
a companion, he was Kieran’s partner, and that union had given Kieran something
he’d thought gone from his life—a useful job.
    Not that Tavie didn’t deserve credit, too, but if
it weren’t for Finn, he’d never have met Tavie.
    Finn, as if aware that he was the subject of
Kieran’s ruminations, spread his back toes in a luxurious doggy stretch and
settled his heavy head a bit more comfortably on Kieran’s knee.
    Shifting position, Kieran grimaced at the prickle
of pins and needles. His legs had gone to sleep. And, he realized, the storm was
passing. The rain was pattering now, not ricocheting, the shed was no longer
shaking in the wind, and his nausea had passed.
    “Get off, you great beast,” he said, groaning, but
he stroked Finn’s ears while he gingerly flexed his legs to get the circulation
back.
    He felt another tingle, but this time it was his
phone, vibrating in his back pocket as it binged the arrival of a text.
    “Shift it, mate,” he said, gently moving the dog
before scrabbling for his phone as he stood.
    The text was from Tavie—she was the call-out
coordinator that morning.

    MISPER. ADULT FEMALE ROWER. PLS AND LKP LEANDER.
REPORT AVAILABILITY FOR SEARCH.

    Kieran’s translation was now as automatic as
breathing. Missing person . . . Both the Place
Last Seen and Last Known Position, Leander Club . He felt a jolt of
adrenaline, and Finn, up now, whined and danced in anticipation. He recognized
the sound of a text, and he loved working almost as much as he loved Kieran.
    “Right, boy,” said Kieran. “We’ve got a job.” And
thank God the worst of the storm was over, and he was steady enough on his feet
to report in. But he didn’t like the sound of this, not one bit.
    In the year and a half he’d been working with
Thames Valley Search and Rescue, they’d conducted more searches involving the
river than he could count. That came with their territory. But they’d never had
a call out for a missing rower.

Chapter Three
    Humans constantly shed small cornflake-shaped dead skin cells known as rafts , which are discarded at the rate of about 40,000 a minute. Each raft carries bacteria and vapor representing the unique, individual scent of the person. This is the scent sought by the trained dog.
    —American Rescue Dog Association
    Search and Rescue Dogs: Training the K-9 Hero
    T avie had designated the Leander Club as the team call-out point. As well as being the last place the victim had been seen, it provided a centralized location for the search operations, including access to power and other necessary facilities for the team.
    When Kieran turned into Leander’s drive, he saw that the other team