Aidan bolted for the cabin door and got three steps before two officers put him down, face into the wet wood.

Fiona simply folded, dropping to her knees in the rain with her hands flung up, shrieking.

And through it all, one man came down onto the deck unhurried and sure, unclipped his harness, and crossed straight to me — my father’s head of security, precisely when he’d promised, right where I needed him.

He pulled a heavy, dry blanket around my shoulders and crouched to look me in the eye.

I learned afterward how close a thing it had been, and how much of it had turned on that half hour I spent playing dead.