Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

walked the beach. Pink sand foamed into a burst of white, the waves a dark green flattening into a purple so deep it looked inked. On the horizon a sailboat stood motionless.

      Grace cut him a look. He was slightly built, very black, his gray shirt and shorts still crisp despite the humidity. He was wearing sandals. His name on the tag read epsten and when he spoke his voice was a deep baritone. “Thaddeus Bartholomew. Does the name mean anything to you?”

      Grace shook her head.

      He glanced around. No one was close enough to hear. A man in a leg cast and crutches limped away from them down the beach, his wife walking ahead, holding a cooler and a blanket. The wife never turned to check on him, striding briskly away from her husband as if he was paying for something not quite current in the marriage account. She seemed to be picking the least steady ground, the softest sand. He followed, a resigned slant to his shoulders, his wedding ring a dull flash against sunburned fingers.

      “You received the message from FBI Special Agent Peter Descanso.” Epsten peered at Grace, his eyes bright.

      “I’m on vacation.”

      “Yes. With your daughter and her father.”

      Grace shot him a look of surprise.

      He said mildly, “Not all white people look the same, but those two do.”

      “She has my color eyes,” Grace said. A rogue wave washed toward them and Grace took a step back. “And a dimple. You can’t really see that from where you stood, but it’s there.”

      He started to speak and stopped.

      “Some people think that Mac’s the one with the dimple, but he really isn’t. His is more of an indentation.”

      He looked at her a long moment. “Thaddeus Bartholomew,” he repeated gently.

      “Name’s vaguely familiar but that’s as close as I can get.”

      She was still smarting that a stranger had immediately seen the connection between Mac and Katie. What if it wasn’t just physical? What if it transcended any bond she’d built with her daughter? And wow, the wrongness of that. Already putting Katie between them in a game of cosmic tug-of-war.

      “He died in Palm Springs two nights ago. He was a history professor at Riverside University. Somebody shot him with an arrow. A bolt, they call it, in the States.”

      “Special Agent Descanso—my uncle Pete—has been trying for years to get me to spend more time with him and his family. If you knew him—”

      Officer Epsten shook his head.

      “—but if you did, you’d understand this is so. Like. Him.” She was working up an aggrieved tone of voice. Soon she’d be able to thank Officer Epsten nicely and he’d leave, reassured that she’d done all she could, had nothing to offer. “Tracking me down on a family vacation so I could get pulled into something I know nothing about. Have no relationship to.”

      Epsten stopped walking. “Special Agent Descanso, he didn’t explain in the letter?”

      She shook her head.

      “Mr. Bartholomew left a clue, one investigators think does involve you. He was dying, but resourceful.”

      Epsten’s voice was measured and Grace realized in that instant she’d underestimated him. He wasn’t going away.

      She was.

      That’s what he’d come to tell her. She stared at the water. A teenage girl stood in the waves, her hair a springy golden mane against perfect skin.

      “He sent a message to his home phone right before he died. At first, they thought it was just clicks, a child perhaps, playing. He had an oldstyle cell phone, no text messaging.” He turned. “It was Morse code.”

      She snapped a look at him. He stared at the water. From the side, his profile was strong. A slight graying near his glasses betrayed his age.

      “He spelled out your name, Grace.”

      She licked a lip. “My first name? Because spelling out the word grace when you’re about to get killed by a maniac with a crossbow is probably standard stuff.”

      “Both names. Actually the exact message was Find Grace Descans. He was cut off before he could add the o. He picked you, and they’d like to know why.”

      He stooped and picked up a shell. It was small, fan-shaped, a soft purple and cream. He wiped off the sand and tucked it in the pocket of his shirt. “My granddaughter collects these.”

      “I don’t have any choice, do I?”

      “Not really.”

      The teen in the ocean turned. It was a woman in her forties who’d had very good work done. A little too tucked around the eyes for Grace’s taste, but still.

      “It’s bigger than somebody dying randomly in a field. Isn’t it?”

      Three horses picked their way carefully down a path toward the water, riders gripping saddle horns, and Grace turned back toward the Pink Sands cabana on the beach where a Bahamian attendant named Bolo smiled, waiting to offer a towel and a mauve-colored lawn chair. Grace smiled and shook her head and kept walking, taking the soft sand trail cut into the side of the hill that led back to the villa. Officer Epsten kept pace.

      “Are you going to answer my question?”

      “There’s an international agricultural convention hosted by the United States government that starts in Palm Springs tomorrow and runs through Monday night.”

      “Heard about it. Its official name is the International Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology.”

      He stared.

      She shrugged. “A friend has a friend who’s involved in it.”

      “Apparently Mr. Bartholomew was involved in it, too.” He scuffed the sand with the heel of his sandal. “He was not who he appeared.”

      “How so?”

      Epsten stared at her soberly. “You’ll have to ask Special Agent Descanso that.”

      The villa was coming into view and she could see Katie on the balcony. She waved, and Katie bounced up and down and waved back. Mac appeared on the patio and he put his arm easily around Katie’s shoulders and Grace felt hollowed out, light.

      “If you know about Katie’s father, then you probably know we haven’t had much time together.”

      “And I am sincerely sorry for that, madam.”

      Katie was laughing, Mac bending over her saying something only she could hear. Katie impulsively reached up her arms and hugged Mac hard.

      Whatever Grace’s uncle needed her to do in Palm Springs was far less important than the likelihood of Mac forging a bond with Katie that forever altered the relationship she had with her daughter.

      “I’ll be back to drive you to the water taxi, which will take you to Eleuthera. On Eleuthera, there’s transport waiting to drop you directly at the plane. They’re holding it for you.”

      “Am I supposed to go right to Palm Springs?”

      He handed her a sealed letter with an FBI insignia on it. “That, I do not know, madam.”

      “How much time do I have?”

      He glanced silently at the villa. Mac and Katie had disappeared inside, the balcony empty. He looked at her neutrally.

      “Enough to say good-bye.”

      “Mommy! Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy!”

      Katie threw herself at Grace. She was still in her swimsuit; her skin smelled of chlorine.

      “Daddy’s going to take me out in the golf cart later, just the two of us. We’re going