“We can hear—feel?—them, and we stay away. But we can also make a sound they don’t like, and warn others if they come to feed.”

“What sound?” Riley wondered.

Annika drew a breath, opened her mouth.

Though he heard nothing, Sawyer felt as if an ice pick had been jammed in his ear, and straight to his brain. In the distance, dogs began to bark.

“Wow. Okay.” Riley rubbed her ears.

“If they still come, you fight. Hit them here.” Annika tapped her nose. “Hard.”

“‘Sometimes the shark go away; sometimes he wouldn’t go away.’”

“Quint,” Riley explained. “Sawyer’s still on Jaws.”

“The seas are filled with easier prey. Here, in the painting, the bad guys are easier prey than we are.”

“Annika’s right.” Riley nodded. “Plus, thanks to Sasha we’re forewarned. How do we use it?”

“They’re looking to capture, not kill,” Doyle pointed out. “There’s blood, some of us, some of them are wounded. But we’re outnumbered more than three to one here, and we’re all alive. If they wanted us dead, at least one of us would be. Or more seriously wounded than this.”

“And we’re in a group,” Bran added. “A fairly tight one. Tight enough?” he asked Sawyer.

“Yeah, tight enough. The trick’s going to be getting to this point, letting them surround us, and holding it together.”

“We let them . . .” Calmer now, Sasha took the drink she’d refused. “Yes, I see.”

“Our instinct’s going to be to fight, not surrender. But, we let this happen?” Riley tapped the painting. “Their instinct’s going to be to take out the sharks, or try, or get the hell away.”

“We stay close enough to each other, I shift us back to the boat, and—”

“The sharks take the rest.” Riley lifted her glass toward him. “To Quint.”

“Not the rest,” Doyle corrected. “Odds are on a dive boat, and if I planned an attack like this, I’d have men stationed on the boat, and a couple, at least, on ours.”

“Buzzkill. Right,” Riley added. “But still. Those teams won’t be expecting us to pop out of nowhere. So, you or I get to the wheel, and fast. The others deal with the bad guys, if any, on our boat.”

“We’ll deal with it. All of it,” Bran assured them. “It’s what we’re meant to do.”

“What we’re meant to do,” Sasha agreed, “but we need to factor in one more thing. Abject panic. Those aren’t mechanical sharks in a movie. And it only takes one of them to decide, hmm, look at the delicious chewy center.”

“Good one. We’ve got Anni’s secret shark whistle as backup,” Riley reminded her.

“Even so, factor it in. Because I now have a list of my own—something I’ve lived my whole life without making. Being eaten by sharks is now number one.” Sasha gulped margarita. “With a bullet.”

Prepared for an attack, resolved to do whatever needed to be done, they set out to search the next morning. And the day after, and the day after that. No attack came, nor did they find the star or any new path toward it.

Restless, Doyle prowled the yard during combat practice.

“Use your feet, Sasha!” He snapped the order out when she ended up on her ass, again. “Stop going easy on her, Gwin, and go in for the kill.”

“She’s holding her own,” Riley shot back.

“Bollocks. You’ve a knife in your hand, Sasha, use the damn thing.” When Sasha sliced out, missed the mark by a foot, he strode forward, grabbed her arm. “Combat grip, downward stroke.”

He guided her arm, hard and fast enough to make the muscles still sore from the damn pull-ups twinge.

“It won’t cut her, or don’t you trust your man?”

“Yes, I trust him. I’m trying.”

“Try harder. She’s not that good.”

Riley cocked a hip. “Oh, really? Then bring it, big guy. Take me on.”

Obliging, in the mood for it, Doyle took the knife from Sasha, who muttered, “I hope she kicks your ass.”

He glanced over. “Put some of that pissed-off into your own practice next time.”

As he spoke, Riley hit him, dead center, with a flying kick, propelled him back a good three feet. She landed, set, smiled.

“Always be ready, always be alert. Isn’t that what you hammer at us? Looks like you forgot, Sir Dick.”

“As you forgot to go in for the kill.”

They circled each other. She dodged the swipe with the knife, but not the fist in the belly. She went down with it, jabbed the charmed knife at his thigh, rolled back and up.

“Missed the artery,” she said as they circled again. “Won’t next time.”

Jabs, feints, kicks, a punch.

Sawyer and Bran stopped their own practice battle to watch, and Annika lowered her arms as her practice balls hovered in the air.

Doyle swept Riley’s legs out from under her, but she rolled again, backflipped up, kicked out as she did, aiming—a bit harder than practice called for—at the groin.

Doyle set his teeth, went over the pain—she’d hit her mark solidly—scored a point on her left arm.