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morning,” he agreed finally. “I know one of the pilots. I’ll call him.”
    Molly was determined to keep prodding him with ideas until his own instincts kicked in. “Shouldn’t you call the State Department and see if there have been any incidents along the Cuban beaches?”
    He shook his head. “We’ll know soon enough if there have been. Castro just loves to carry on about these imperialist attacks on his sovereign shores. In the meantime, I don’t want to stir things up in Washington and have them breathing down my aunt’s neck for information about his illegal plotting to invade Cuba. It’s a violation of the Neutrality Act. Washington issues warnings periodically just to prevent the exile groups from acting on their wild ideas.”
    “And when the commandos do it anyway, half the time Washington winks and looks the other way,” Molly pointed out.
    “Only if no one raises a fuss about it. No, I’ll handle this myself.”
    “What about work?”
    “I’ll take leave time. God knows, I have plenty of it built up. I haven’t taken a vacation day off in years.”
    “Have you officially reported your uncle as missing?”
    Michael shook his head.
    “How’d you get the evidence techs here, then?”
    “Called in a favor,” he admitted. “Look, I’m going to make that call to try to get those rescue flights in the air in the morning. At least I can pinpoint where we picked up the boat. It’ll give them a starting point for the search. If Ken and Felipe get finished inside, ask them to wait for me.”
    Molly nodded. She wanted to shadow him, but knew he would be infuriated by the overly protective gesture. She was surprised he’d tolerated her staying around as long as he had. Any second now she expected him to insist on her returning home. To which she intended to reply that he’d have to haul her out of his wagon kicking and screaming. It wouldn’t do a lot for his image as a cool, unemotional cop. She figured he’d grasp the improbability of shaking her loose fairly readily, once she’d explained her intentions to him.
    In the meantime, since the search of the boat was pretty much complete, maybe she could sneak in a quick peek before Michael returned to forbid it. She actually made it as far as the aft deck before she heard footsteps behind her.
    “Going someplace?” Michael inquired.
    “Just taking a look around,” she admitted. “Your guys are almost through so I won’t be disturbing any evidence now, right?”
    “And you honestly think you might spot something that two well-trained evidence technicians missed?”
    “You never know.”
    He gazed toward heaven with a familiar pleading expression, then sighed. “Fine. Look to your heart’s content. I’ll check with the guys, and then we’re out of here.”
    Unfortunately, Michael’s smug attitude appeared to be justified. Molly couldn’t discover one single clue to explain Miguel’s disappearance. She did, however, hear an odd noise coming from beneath the stacks of life preservers in a built-in wooden storage bin. The faint but unmistakable ticking gave her goose bumps.
    It was an unusual place to hide a clock, unless said clock was attached to a timing device. She’d seen enough movies to suspect that a crude bomb could be every bit as effective as one made by professional terrorists.
    “Michael!” Molly shouted at the top of her lungs, all the while inching away from the sound.
    Three policeman responded to the panic in her voice. She pointed toward the sound. “In there. A bomb, I think.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Michael said, just as Ken Marshall gently lifted out first one orange life vest, then another.
    “Holy shit!” he murmured, his freckled complexion turning even more pale. “Let’s get the hell off this tub and get the bomb squad down here.”
    The four of them clambered onto the dock. While the crisply efficient Marshall called for backup, Michael and Domínguez went up and down the slips to make sure