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is one tough bastard.”
    Clancy sighed. “You don’t know the half ofit.”

Chapter Two
     
    D uncan Flynn didn’t need to open his eyes to know where he was or how soon darkness would ease into dawn. His birthplace was many things, but subtle was not one of them.
    He heard the breath of the surf and the chime of sailboat halyards down at the new marina. He felt expensive cotton sheets cool against his skin. And right on schedule, nature’s alarm clock began to chime—the mellow baseline of their local horned owl combined with the never-ending twittering of a northern mockingbird perched on a turret outside the open window.
    After only a week, that little fucker was really starting to get on his nerves.
    With eyes still closed, from his fancy third-floor guest suite at the Safe Haven Bed and Breakfast, Duncan decided to deduce the time, right down to the minute. It was one of many contests he would have with himself that day, just one more measure of his progress. Was he getting quicker? Stronger? More observant? As it turned out, the game was too easy that morning. It had to be a Saturday between zero five fifty and zero five sixty,because Mellie’s freshly baked berry scones were about to come out of the oven the way they did every Saturday morning. The scent had already migrated up to his third-floor suite. He could almost feel the dense pastry dissolve in his mouth and taste the explosion of buttery sweetness on his tongue.
    He laughed at his own ridiculousness. Had all these months of recuperation turned him into a freakin’ poet? What was next—musing on how the scent of “sea spray” had slipped through the window curtains and filled his nostrils?
    Not hardly.
    He was no poet. He was a U.S. Navy lieutenant, a language and demolition specialist with SEAL Team 2, and he lived in the brutally real world, where exceptional men died and “sea spray” was just a flowery term for a mix of suspended salt particulates and microscopic organic matter so corrosive it would wreak havoc with planes, ships, aircraft carriers, and every other piece of equipment it touched. It was a time bomb that cost the Pentagon billions every year.
    But, oh boy, they sure loved that shit around here! Bayberry Island’s only local beer was made by the Sea Spray Microbrewery. There was a small, family-friendly state park on the South Shore called Sea Spray Beach, plus a “See” Spray Sunglass Boutique, a Sea Spray Day Spa, and, of course, a Sea Spray Automated Car Wash. The expression had just the right amount of fluffy delusion about it, Duncan thought, ranking right up there with “Great Mermaid,” and “true love.”
    Duncan stretched his arms toward the ceiling, clasped his fingers, and tucked them behind his head. He took adeep breath and focused on his lower body, cautiously stretching both legs beneath the sheets, judging how much stiffness he would be working with that day. He alternated pointing his toes and flexing his calves twenty-five times on each leg, a gentle warm-up that would please his newest physical therapist, no doubt. Then he lifted his left leg five inches off the bed, held it, and slowly set it down. He did it again. And again. And he’d do it a hundred times more by the end of the day.
    Pain radiated in all directions from his left hip. It cut across his abdomen, sliced down to his ankle, and shot up the side of his body to pierce his skull. No surprise there. He was used to it. In fact, some variety of pain had been his standard operating procedure since his first day of BUD/S training a decade ago. He understood physical pain. It was a no-nonsense function of cause and effect, and he’d learned that it could be contained and controlled—maybe not completely and maybe not every moment, but he could handle physical pain.
    Just by staying the course.
    But the guilt? That was something else entirely. It was a spiteful shape-shifter that lay in wait for him, crouched inside a dark cave in his brain,