Squinting into the glare, Steve could see there was no one on the fly bridge. A boat without a driver.

"C'mon!" Victoria cried out, starting to swim parallel to the beach.

Steve grabbed her by an ankle and pulled her back. They didn't have the speed or maneuverability. What they had were five seconds.

"Dive!" Steve ordered.

Wide-eyed, Victoria took a breath.

They dived straight down, kicking hard.

Underwater, Steve heard the props, a high-pitched whine that drowned out the roar of the diesels. Then, a bizarre sensation, a banging in his chest. Was someone smashing his sternum with a ball-peen hammer? A split second later, he heard the click-click-click of a bottlenose dolphin, but he knew it was the boat's sonar, bombarding him with invisible waves. Suddenly, the wash of the props tore at him, dragging him up and pushing him down simultaneously. He tumbled head-over-a.s.s, smacked the bottom with a shoulder, and felt his neck twist at a painful angle. Eyes open, he swung around, looking for Victoria, seeing only the cloudy swirl of bottom sand. Then a glimpse of her feet headed for the surface. He kicked off the bottom and followed her, surfacing a second after she did.

They both turned toward the sh.o.r.e just as the boat ramped off the sandy incline, going airborne, props still churning. Steve could hear screams from the beach, could see people scattering as the boat flew over the first row of beach chairs, then grazed the palm frond roof of the tiki-hut bar and crashed through a canvas-topped cabana. The wooden hull split amidships with the sound of a thousand baseball bats splintering, its two halves separating as neatly as a cleanly cracked walnut.

Victoria knew she would reach the beach before him. Her stroke was long and powerful, her kicks deep and fast as a hummingbird's wings.

She ignored Steve's shouts to wait. No, the senior partner would have to catch up on his own. She had seen the lettering on the stern as the boat lifted out of the water: FORCE MAJEURE IV. She recognized the name, remembered the first one, even after all these years.

How could it be?

In a place where most boats were christened with prosaic puns-Queasy Rider, Wet Dream-this craft could only be owned by one man. In the law, a force majeure was something that couldn't be controlled. A superior, irresistible force. Like a powerful yacht . . . or its powerful owner.

Steve was still yelling to wait up as she scrambled onto the sand and ran toward the fractured boat. The bridge had separated and was lying on its side in the sand, the chrome wheel pretzeled out of shape. Detritus was scattered in an elliptical pattern around the two halves of the boat. Shards of gla.s.s, torn cushions, twisted grab rails, the arm of a radar antenna. The fighting chair, separated from its base, sat upright in the sand, as if waiting for a missing fisherman.

Half-a-dozen Florida lobsters crawled across the sand, a shattered plastic fish box nearby. Something was impaled on one lobster's antenna. It took a second for the bizarre sight to register.

A hundred-dollar bill. The lobster's spiny antenna was sticking right through Ben Franklin's nose.

Then she saw the other bills. A covey of greenbacks, fluttering across the beach, like seabirds caught in a squall.

She heard a man's voice. "This one's breathing, but he's messed up bad."

The hotel lifeguard talking, bent over a middle-aged man in khaki shorts and polo shirt. The man lay on his side, motionless, his limbs splayed at grotesque angles, a broken doll. The lifeguard gently turned the man onto his back, then gasped. A metal spear protruded from the man's chest.

"Jesus!"

The poor man. But thank G.o.d, it's not him.

"Another one, over here!" A woman's voice.

Victoria navigated around a thicket of splintered teak decking. A female bartender was crouched in the sand over a thick-bodied man in a white guayabera. Rivulets of blood ran down the man's face from a wide gash on his forehead. "Don't move," the bartender ordered. "We're gonna get you to the hospital."

The man grunted. He appeared to be in his sixties with a thick neck and short, white hair. His eyes were squinted closed, either from pain or the blood running into his eyes.

Victoria came closer, trying to see if it was him. "You should put a compress over the wound."

The man opened his eyes, and Victoria recognized him at once, even after all these years. "Uncle Grif!"

"h.e.l.lo, Princess." Propping himself on one elbow, grimacing through the pain, Hal Griffin tried to push the bartender aside. "Let me alone. I need to talk to my lawyer."

SOLOMON VS. LORD.

end.