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touching.
    Michael threw a rope across, then looped it through the railing of his uncle’s boat until the two were pontooned together. Only then did he leap from Raúl’s boat to the deck of his uncle’s.
    Molly’s breath caught in her throat as he made his way carefully from bow to stern. She nearly panicked when he disappeared inside the cabin and failed to return. She had one hand on the railing and was preparing to leap herself, when she heard the boat’s engine chug to life, then sputter off again. So, then, Molly thought in dismay, it hadn’t been a breakdown. Dear heaven, where was he?
    Finally Michael reappeared.
    “Michael?” she said softly, her heart hammering as she tried to read the expression on his face.
    He swallowed hard before he finally lifted his gaze to meet hers.
    “He’s gone,” he said bleakly. “The inflatable raft is missing, too. I can’t tell about life vests, because I’m not certain how many he carried.”
    “You’re sure he’s gone back to Cuba, though? Maybe the boat ran out of gas and he took the dinghy to get help,” she said, searching desperately for another explanation, even one that flew in the face of the sound she’d just heard of the engine running perfectly smoothly. “Maybe another fisherman picked him up.”
    “The boat’s fine. Besides, he would never have left it behind,” Michael replied with certainty. “We are in Cuban waters, or at least what they view as Cuban waters.” He looked to Raúl for confirmation. The fisherman nodded.
    “What does that mean?” Molly asked.
    “It means the Cuban government extends their territorial rights a couple of miles farther into the waters than international law usually dictates.” He sighed with obvious frustration. “Dammit, what has he done? Did he think he could get away with slipping into Cuba? The soldiers will shoot him on sight, either mistaking him for a rafter trying to escape or, if he is armed, seeing him for what he is, an enemy of Castro.”
    Raúl greeted Michael’s announcement with a barrage of Spanish. He hurriedly sketched a cross over his chest, his gaze flashing toward heaven. Though she could understand only about one word in ten, something in the fisherman’s voice told Molly he disagreed with Michael’s interpretation.
    Michael questioned him in impatient, rapid-fire Spanish.
    “What?” Molly said. “Michael, what is he saying?”
    “Estás loco,”
Michael said derisively to the other man.
“No es posible.”
    “Sí
,” Raúl said just as adamantly.
    “What, dammit?” Molly said, shouting over the pair of them.
    Michael finally looked at her. “Raúl seems to think it is not possible that my uncle went back to Cuba. He says he would have taken his boat all the way to shore if that had been his intention. He would have tried to land on the beach, not taken a chance crossing the strong currents between here and there in a tiny inflatable raft.”
    Molly found herself agreeing with Raúl’s logic. “Then what does he think happened?”
    “He thinks he was murdered,” he said in a clipped tone.
    “Murdered?” Molly repeated, unable to keep the shock from her voice.
    Michael waved a hand dismissively. “You see why I say he is crazy. Who would want to murder an old man who has never done anything to hurt anyone in his life?”
    To Molly the passionate disagreements of the exiles had always seemed incomprehensible, but she knew that emotions ran high. Murder was not out of the question, given the right circumstances.
    “Can you dismiss what he is saying so easily?” she asked gently, though she didn’t want to believe Raúl’s theory any more than Michael did. “You’re a homicide detective, Michael. You of all people know how important it is to look beyond the obvious. You know that people can be driven to kill for reasons that make no sense to anyone else.”
    He glared at her. “Maybe just this once I don’t want to think like a detective,” he snapped. “Maybe