Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

didn’t go to Rikki, he couldn’t. If he did, he doubted he would have gone through with the plan. He still was considering just shooting the bastard.
    Rikki watched Lev stalk across the yard and disappear into the trees. A bird called. Another answered. He was carrying his briefcase, and she knew he would be up in a tree somewhere, covering the house, but this was her world, and no one, not even some big-shot cleaner everyone was afraid of, was going to come onto her property and take what was hers. She was captain of her boat and she’d pulled Lev out of the ocean. That meant he was hers. She took the law of the sea seriously. She was responsible for him.
    She’d told him he would be safe with her, and he would be.
    She swung her foot back and forth, was slightly mesmerized by the small circles she made, deliberately allowing her mind to concentrate on the way the early morning sun poured like gold into the small puddles of water standing in the yard. The water seemed to gleam, diamond bright. She blinked to bring it into focus, or more precisely, out of focus, so the edges of the pool seemed to spread out like rays.
    At once she was lost in the beauty of the symmetry, those perfect crystalline streaks radiating from the center of the pool. The colors grew deep and vivid, and small waves sent ripples skimming over the surface as the breeze gently blew across it. The water dazzled her, so that little colored lights burst behind her eyes and she could see the puddle taking on its own life, growing into a three-dimensional image. A world had come alive in that small puddle.
    Living insects played above the water, and shadows swam below, patient and deadly, waiting for one of those fragile-winged gossamer 286

    creatures to make a mistake. The buzz of the bugs grew until they were musicians playing in time to the breeze blowing ripples in the puddle, driving the shadows into a frenzy of movement. Crevices and cracks held a myriad of creatures of bright colors wiggling arms and legs and tentacles in the search for food.
    “Rikki!” Jonas’s voice dragged her back from the edge of her fascinating world.
    She looked up a little vaguely, blinking rapidly. Her gaze avoided his and she kept her head down, looking past him, studying the second man out of the corner of her eye. She began to rock ever so gently. The official-looking man beside Jonas was carefully quartering the yard and surrounding grounds. As he walked past her truck, he looked inside and she had the feeling even in that quick glance, he’d noted every item.
    Jonas crouched in front of her, his voice very gentle. “Rikki, this is the man I told you about, the one who wants to ask a couple of questions about the yacht sinking. His name is Petr Ivanov. He’s with the Russian government and is investigating one of their people who had been aboard the yacht. I’ve explained that you’re autistic and you don’t like people around your house. He won’t touch anything and we won’t be here long. Okay?”
    She nodded her head repeatedly, increasing the rocking just a little more. Already her brain was very close to that place, her own world, where she was safe and no one could touch her—not even a master interrogator.
    Petr Ivanov studied her face for a long time. Her fingers were continually moving, spinning in strange little circles, and occasionally she’d lift them to her mouth to blow on them. Spin, one, two, three times, and then blow.
    “You’re a diver?”
    She nodded.
    “Sea urchin diver? And you were diving the day the yacht sank off the coast here?”
    She nodded again. The fingers continued to spin and she blew on them every third time, as if she was blowing out candles. Her gaze fixed on the puddle just past the stairs leading to the porch.
    Petr glanced at Jonas. The sheriff shrugged. “She doesn’t talk to people much, rarely to strangers, and she has a thing about people entering her house or going on her boat.”
    “I told you it was necessary,” Ivanov said. “This man uses women.
    He’s dangerous. I’ll know if he was near her.”
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    “I doubt she’d let a stranger close to her, and I can’t imagine she’d let him in her home. She’s been here nearly five years and I’ve entered her house once. Surely the other divers told you about her.”
    The conversation flowed around her. Rikki was immune to it, the words a vague whisper in the background as the insects and frogs took up the chorus of her song. The ripples