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wrong. It happens like that sometimes; you can’t see something like that coming. It’s nobody’s fault but the people who did it. Katie would see it that way; Jinx, too. That’s the way you’ve got to see it. You’ll go nuts if you don’t.”
    They both began crying. Cat got an arm around Ben, and they sat that way for a moment, sobbing. After they had composed themselves and Ben had gone, Cat knew he would not cry anymore. He couldn’t allow himself that much self-pity again, not if he was to go on living.
    His memory began to pluck at him, but he pushed it aside, blanked it out. He couldn’t bear to see that sceneon the yacht again. An image forced its way into his head, though, skirting his defenses. The handprint stood out, vivid and red. Then the anger began. And through the anger came a question: Why? Not just why him or why Katie and Jinx, but why at all? His best memory of the yacht after those people had left was that it was absolutely intact. All the expensive electronics were in place, the boat had no appearance of having been ransacked. They had many possessions on board that a thief would have wanted, but none of them had been taken. He had no enemies that he knew of, and anyway, this thing couldn’t have been planned, because the decision to sail into Colombian waters had been made on the spur of the moment. Not until the dawn of that terrible day had he, himself, known that they would be sailing into Santa Marta.
    To all appearances, these people had committed a wanton act of piracy and two murders—three, they thought—for no gain except a twenty-five-hundred-dollar Rolex wristwatch. It made no sense whatever, and that made Cat angrier still.
    He knew that Katie and Jinx were lost beyond hope, that he could never have them back, but almost as much as he wanted the people who had killed them, he wanted to know why it had been done.
    He began building toward a state of new resolve: He would spend every dime he had and the rest of his life, if necessary, to find out.

6
    C AT CLIMBED OUT OF THE POOL BEHIND HIS HOUSE AND walked up and down on the flagstones for a moment, breathing deeply. This was so much easier than it had been in the beginning, he thought. He’d been as weak as a kitten when he had gotten out of the hospital. He’d started swimming laps to stretch his chest muscles, damaged by the shotgun blast, and he’d learned to enjoy the workouts, as much as he was capable of enjoying anything. It was better than sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead. He’d done enough of that.
    He had lost thirty pounds in the hospital and nearly another twenty since. He weighed the same as he had the year he graduated from high school, and he felt in better shape, strong, tanned, and fit. He still surprised himself when he encountered a mirror—slim, clean-shaven, and close-cropped for the first time in years. He had gained the new fitness with swimming and with hitting tennis balls back at a machine. They were both suitably solitary activities. He had played tennis a couple of times at the club and discovered he didn’t want the company; he preferred to sweat in solitude.
    Someone called to him from the back of the house. Catturned to see Wallace Henderson, a retired Atlanta police captain, now a highly regarded private investigator, approaching. With a feeling of dread, he shook the man’s hand and offered him a chair at poolside while he got into a terry-cloth robe. He knew what was coming.
    “It’s come to this, Mr. Catledge,” Henderson said. “My people and I have spent nearly three months and a considerable sum of your money running down every conceivable lead and theory of this case. We have telephoned or seen every dentist in San Diego and the surrounding Southern Californian communities and found two who have a son named Denny; one was a junior in high school and one was three years old. We have checked the crew lists for the last ten years on the yacht races this Denny says he