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practically in her face.
    “What about the crew?” she blurted. God, please, don’t let her have witnessed someone’s death.
    The officer shook his head. “Most of the crew was ashore. The two left on duty are in critical condition.”
    She hugged herself.
Please let them be all right. Please let them be all right.
“Where’s Ryan?”
    “Your friend, the police diver? The former Navy man?”
    “Your friend, the expert in underwater explosives?” added the female officer, lifting her eyebrows.
    Her friend, the expert in
what?
    Despite her shock, Mia found herself shooting to her feet. “My friend who saved my life!” she half shouted. Came within a hair of thumping a fist on the table as she said it, too. How could these cops possibly think Ryan was guilty of blowing up a ship? “He would never do anything like that!”
    “No one is accusing your friend of anything,” the man said, exchanging glances with his partner. Glances that said,
Yet. Not accusing yet.
    “This is ridiculous,” she huffed. “He was with the dive group the entire time.”
    “Believe me, we are checking out his alibi.”
    The woman’s look said,
Yours, too.
    Mia gaped at one police officer, then the other. Jesus, she wasn’t just a witness to them. She was a suspect.
    “But I didn’t do anything! Ryan didn’t do anything!”
    “Why don’t you just start at the beginning again?” the male officer suggested. His tone was even and patient, as if he had all evening to wait for her to trip over a lie.
    Her throat went dry; her heart pounded. She ended up recounting the events of the day so many times, it felt like a week had gone by. Descending, following the diver in the distance, getting attacked. Barely making it to the surface before the ship exploded.
    Her blood ran cold just thinking about it. The diver she’d tangled with had planted the bomb, but no one seemed to believe her.
    “Can you describe the diver?”
    “I told you! A man with dark eyes and UltraFlow fins.”
    “That’s it?”
    “He was wearing a hooded wetsuit and a dive mask!”
    The officers looked unimpressed. “Nothing else?”
    “I was too busy concentrating on other things!” she protested. “Like his knife.”
    The knife she could still picture flashing before her, even if she closed her eyes.
    The interrogation went on and on, followed by a long hour in which she was left to sit, wonder, and plan calls to her aunt the lawyer. Then finally — finally! — the door opened and she was released to Hans and Lucky, who’d been waiting outside.
    “I made a few calls,” Hans said, patting her arm. At least he believed her. “They’re letting you go.”
    “But they took my passport!”
    Lucky nodded gravely. “You’ll get it back. Believe me, we’ll clear this up.”
    “Let’s go.” Hans pointed to the door.
    She dug in her heels. “What about Ryan?”
    “They’re still questioning him.”
    “But he didn’t do anything!”
    Lucky cocked his head at her. “You know him, I think.” It was a statement, not a question.
    “You know him? How well?” Hans asked, sounding like a disapproving father.
    She got stuck, trying to answer that one. Should she say,
Biblically? Sort of? Just a little bit?
Over the month they’d spent together, she felt like she’d gotten to know Ryan well. Really well. Not so much the facts, maybe, but as a person. He preferred listening to talking. Open air to confined spaces. She knew that he held doors open for little old ladies and tipped like a man who knew what it meant to work long hours on his feet. That he took a long time to get to sleep some nights, when he held her extra close. That he didn’t laugh often, but when he did, it was like the sun coming out after a long, gray winter.
    What else did a girl need to know about a guy to decide he was all right?
    Other than the fact that he was a former Navy man trained in the use of underwater explosives and possibly other things, like killing giant squid with his