Becket tipped his head toward her, almost more of a bow than a nod, and said, "Ms. Beenan, I presume."

She nodded, unwilling to trust her voice.

Becket glanced behind her and said lightly, "Ready to go?"

She nodded again.

"Very good." He looked out at the water, raised his hand over his head, and beckoned. A largish GE ElectraJet, free-floating beyond the gondoliers, started up and cut sharply around the mooring buoys before pulling neatly up to the pier.

Becket looked back over Patricia's shoulder and stepped smoothly around her, until he stood between her and the place where Geoffrey had gone over. "Unless you want to talk with that young man some more, I suggest we leave."

He was larger than she'd thought, not so much tall or heavy as broad, as if he had the shoulders of a larger man. As she walked to the edge of the pier, he moved with her, slightly angled as if listening to her, his broad shoulders presenting themaximum screen.

A casually dressed young man holding the boat to the dock started to offer her a hand as she climbed down, but she was in the boat and seated before he could reach her.

I know how to get in a boat, thank you. She looked back up the pier and saw Geoffrey on the dock, his clothes dripping while he looked around wildly. He spotted her as Commander Becket dropped lightly down into the boat.

"Hey! Come back here!"

Becket murmured, "Mr. Guterson, a little speed please."

Up on the pier Geoffrey started running toward them, pushing through the crowd roughly, heedlessly, but the boat was under way before Geoffrey reached them, accelerating smoothly, planing almost immediately.

Becket dropped to the other end of the bench seat and looked back. "Oh, my."

Patricia twisted in time to see Geoffrey shaking his hands vigorously at a group.

Angry voices drifted across the water, audible even above the sound of the electric jet and the boat's wake. Patricia looked away, pinched the bridge of her nose, and closed her eyes, but she couldn't help herself-she looked back just in time to see Geoffrey and two others topple into the water, entangled.

She winced and looked away again.

"I suppose I should explain," she said, turning toward Becket. Oh, my, that had to hurt. The scarring-it had been a horrible burn she realized-started below his shirt collar and rose up the right side of his face, warping the corner of the mouth and the corner of his right eye. It went back to the ear, which was withered and flatter to the skull than was his good ear. She presumed the scars went up under the hairline, but the hair, at least, had grown in normally. Unless he wears a wig.

Becket smiled slightly, a barely perceptible expression. "Depends." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Did that have anything to do with your discovery of the Open Lotus?"

She found herself smiling slightly in response. "Not really."

Becket shrugged. "Well, then, explain what you would like to explain, but there's no 'should' about it." He slumped in his seat and crossed his arms, yawning suddenly. "Excuse me."

"Certainly. Long hours?"

"Yeah."

She started to sit back, then leaned forward suddenly, speaking in a sudden rush, surprising herself. "Geoffrey's not really supposed to come near me. There's a court injunction to keep him away, but he saw me on the news-well, that tape-andit's stirred him up again. I don't know if it was coincidence on the pier or if he followed me from my hex."

Becket nodded, his face neutral. "How long ago were you involved with him?"

Involved. That's a nice unweighted term. "It's been three and a half years since I fired him, but the court order was just last year." She stared out across the water, seeing nothing. "I guess pride kept him away, initially, but then he started drinking more."

"So he was a disgruntled employee?"

She could've just agreed with him and dropped it. It was true, after all, but something compelled her to say. "I damn near married him."

Becket lifted his chin slightly and slowly dropped it. "Ah." Facing forward, as he was, she couldn't see the burned side of his face, and she wondered if he'd done it on purpose or if he was just as tired as he looked and couldn't be bothered to sit up, twist on the seat, and face her. She shifted to the backward-facing bench seat across from him and mirrored his pose, arms crossed, feet stretched out. He watched her, directly, both sides of his face visible.

"Geoffrey was the knight in shining armor. He was going to marry the princess and inherit the kingdom." She licked her lips. "Only when my dad died I discovered how much I'd tolerated from Geoffrey because Dad liked him. And the funny thing is, a friend of Dad's showed me one of my dad's old e-mail messages telling how much Dad had tolerated Geoffrey because I liked him."

"Ouch," Becket said.

This time Patricia shrugged. "It might still have happened-I really needed someone when Dad died-but Geoffrey wasn't the one. He was too busy trying to manage things. He was trying to manage the business, the properties, me. If he'd just waited or even asked before he started making decisions and commitments."

She smiled a bright, artificial smile. "I gave him a good severance package." She scratched her head. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I guess I'm just trying to explain that I don't knock people off docks every day."

He nodded. "I'll accept that." He grinned suddenly, a flash of white teeth oddly distorted on the right, but nonetheless pleasant. "Though I must admit it was very nicely done."

She shrugged. "Anything worth doing-"

Becket laughed, sitting more upright.

Are you sure you're INS? She stared down at the deck, suddenly uncomfortable.

You're a bigot, Patricia. She peeked up at him. He was watching her, extraordinarily still, the smile still lingering.

"What happened?" she asked, suddenly, reaching out and almost touching thescarred side of his face. She drew back at the last second, turning it into a gesture.

His face closed up and she winced. "I'm sorry, it's none of my business."

Becket sighed. "But you'd like to know."

Patricia was flustered. "That doesn't make it my business. You didn't ask about Geoffrey."

Becket smiled softly. "No. You gave me that freely." He looked to the starboard side, west. They were out in the middle of the municipal lagoon, and when Patricia looked in that direction she could see up Main Street, the central channel. "It was out there, at the Abattoir." His voice was casual, but his shoulders hunched in slightly.

His hands, previously flat on his thighs, bunched tightly.

"I was investigating a drug ring that targeted the refugee camp. Fishing boats from Colombia, transfers at sea to an INS patrol vessel, patrol vessel to INS camp guards, camp guards to refugee dealers, dealers to users.

"My unit worked on it, mostly undercover, for six months, but near the end they got wind of our investigation. They didn't know how much we knew and thought they could still do something to stop us." He looked back at her, then down at his hands, flattening them consciously. "It was a gasoline bomb, spark plug in a gas can wired to the ignition in the small boat we'd been issued. I was lucky. I was still on the dock when Eugene-Ensign Parnasos-turned the key.

"That was four years ago last month."

Patricia frowned. "August nineteenth."

Becket frowned back. "Yes."

"My father died a few days before that-I hope." She shook her head suddenly.

"That didn't come out right. My father went down in a new submersible that we were testing. It never came back up. When I said 'hope,' I meant that I hoped it was an implosion, not a failure of electrical and propulsion systems, because then he could've lasted for days, never knowing whether we'd find him or-" She shuddered.

"We never found the Cobia-the sub-but Geoffrey pointed out the news story-about the bomb-your bomb-to me. I think he was trying to show me something. That I wasn't the only one who'd lost someone that week, but he botched it, like anything he did involving feelings."

She smiled grimly. "That was the beginning of the end for us." She made a gesture with her hand, a closed fist releasing something into the air. "Anyway, I didn't remember the names, but I remember the picture of that boat, burnt to the waterline, barely afloat, with soot stains climbing up the wall and onto the dock."

Becket sat back, his hands lying loosely in his lap, still, his eyes distant. He cleared his throat. "Yes, that was the one." He looked even more tired than before.He sat up, looking past her. "We've got a map, but perhaps you could help Mr. Guterson find the proper landing."

They'd cut across the mouth of Copano Bay, and were approaching the multicluster of Palacios, a set of hex modules over a mile and a half across. The chambers were in the central tower, and though there was a covered waterway almost to the center of the cluster, it was still a hike to the elevator.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

Moses met them at the landing deep under central Palacios and jumped in before the beat cop chased them away. His face was still as Patricia made the introductions.

"Good to meet you in person." Moses had not been happy about the last-minute change in plans when she'd phoned from the boat.

Seaman Guterson kept the speed down, tooling gently along in the no-wake zone of the tunnel, then opening up when they passed out into the open air on the other side. It was a short dash across Chocolate Bayou to Cosas Muertas del Mar.

Guterson started to pull up to the restaurant landing, but Patricia directed him to a free mooring buoy in a thick cluster of parked boats. "They'll come get us. See?"

The restaurant greeter was already pulling out from the dock in the reception boat. The odors of burning charcoal, garlic, onion, broiling fish, and other unidentified but succulent things wafted across the water.

Guterson spoke quietly to Becket. "Should I stay with the boat, sir?"

Before Becket answered, Patricia said, "I told them we'd be four."

The reception boat pulled up beside them and the teenage girl driving smiled.

"Hey, Patricia. Mr. Santos said you were coming."

Becket breathed deeply through his nose. "You have to eat, Mr. Guterson." He waved Guterson across to the other boat.

A heavy, smiling man was waiting at the landing. "Bienvenidos, bienvenidos! Ha sido mucho tiempo." He pulled Patricia from the boat and hugged her before she'd properly set foot on the pavement.

"Tio Rodolfo! Yes, much too long." She hugged him back, then dropped free.

"I saw you on the news."

She winced. "Of course you did." Still holding on to Rodolfo's arm, she pointed toward the others. "My very good friend Rodolfo Santos. Do you remember Bill Moses? And this is Senor Becket and Senor Guterson."

"Of course I know the assemblyman. And I'm glad to meet your other friends."Becket smiled and said, "Mucho gusto. Tienes un restaurante bello."

"Gracias, gracias." Rodolfo looked around proudly. The restaurant was beautiful, a series of multilevel, rough-tiled terraces spilling down from the side of a hex, looking as if it had grown there, an illusion furthered by thatched roofs on rough wooden posts and beams. Every table was occupied, and waiters threaded among them with a calm urgency.

"Siganme, por favor."

Rodolfo led them up the terraces and into the kitchen, a more permanent building of seacrete. They went through it-past cooks, dishwashers, shouted orders, scurrying waiters, waves of heat, and mouthwatering odors-and then down a long narrow hall lined with storage rooms. At the end, they came out onto another patio, smaller in scale, tucked between the restaurant and the hex wall, perched a full story above the water.

A large table covered in rough linen stood out in the open, beyond the thatched roof, under the stars. There were low lights by the door and encased candles on the table.

"Are there any alergias-allergies-among you?" Rodolfo asked.

Becket and Guterson shook their heads.

"Then, if you do not mind, I will take the liberty of ordering for you."

Rodolfo vanished back into the restaurant. Almost before they finished sitting down, a waitress came through the door with two bottles of red wine and a pitcher of water. A second waiter brought glasses. Both of them greeted Patricia by name.

When they'd left, Becket said, "You're well known here."

Patricia, pouring wine into the glasses, nodded. "Yes."

"But you haven't come here recently?"

Patricia felt the blood rush to her ears.

Bill Moses interceded. "I don't think that question is pertinent to your investigation, Commander."

Patricia laid a hand on Moses's arm. "It's okay, Bill." She set a glass of wine in front of each of them. "Bill knows I've got painful associations with this place." She lifted her glass. "A los que se han ido antes."

Becket, noting Moses's confusion, said, "To those who have gone before." He clicked his glass against Patricia's. "A los muertos."

"To the dead." Patricia took a gulp of wine, sharp with tannin and rough on the throat. She noticed Becket only sipped his.She pointed at one of the many rough posts rising out of the tiled floor to support the thatched roof. "My father and I salvaged all of these beams and posts.

Most of them are telephone poles from the Port Aransas area; some of them came from drowned trees in public parks. It was one of the first jobs my father let me participate in fully. I was sixteen. Don Rodolfo finished the restaurant a terrace at a time, but there was always a crew out back scraping and sanding and shaping the posts and beams." She took another gulp of wine. "Don Rodolfo was from Tampico before the waters rose. Dad knew him from before the Deluge, when he'd eat in his restaurant there. Dad found him in one of the floating slums that lined the new coast and sponsored him for city membership."

The wine hit her empty stomach, and the sudden alcohol rush spread. She pushed the glass away from her on the table. "We practically lived here before Dad died."

Another waiter brought out a wooden platter of grilled prawns sprinkled with lime and red pepper, with a cloth-covered stack of fresh tortillas and a bowl of melted lemon-butter. Conversation stopped as the food was consumed.

"I'm surprised you could stay away from this, Ms. Beenan," Seaman Guterson said around a mouthful of shrimp and tortilla.

Patricia smiled. "It's not the food that kept me away." She glanced at Commander Becket out of the corner of her eye. He was chewing carefully, taking small bites. "You're not eating con gusto, mi amigo."

Becket patted his mouth with a napkin before he answered quietly, "It's delicious, but I have to be careful." He touched the scarred side of his face. "There was some nerve damage. If I'm not careful, I dribble out that side."

"Oh. I didn't mean to-"

He held up his hand. "No hay problema. Tell me why you came back here tonight."

She looked down at the table. The glib answer was on the tip of her tongue-for the food, of course-but she couldn't say it. "Part of it has to do with being stuck inside a minisub for three days. Part of it has to do with almost dying." And part of it has to do with you.

He looked at her for a moment, as if he was searching for something. "This does have to do with your find."

She nodded. They'd avoided it so far. Was that yet another reason she'd detoured them here? To put off his questions?

He looked down at the table, at the shrimp and the glasses and the tortillas.

"Later," he said.