The golden light of Fort Lauderdale Marina had curdled into a sickly bruised purple.

Richard Sterling didn't hesitate. He stripped off his tailored navy blazer, dropped his expensive silk tie onto a nearby bollard, and rolled up his shirt sleeves to the elbows.

"Captain Sam," Richard ordered, his voice dropping into the cold, surgical register that had built Sterling Atlantic Logistics from a single rented tugboat into a shipping empire. "Call the harbor police. Request an emergency underwater dive team and a marine bomb-disposal unit. Do it now."

Captain Sam’s face drained of color. "Sir, are you sure? If we call bomb squad units down to a private charter without concrete proof, the media will—"

"I don't give a damn about the media, Sam!" Richard roared, cutting him off. "A little girl just told me someone wired my family to a floating coffin. Make the call!"

Marina stood frozen on the gangway, her white silk dress fluttering in the damp evening breeze. Her hands flew to her mouth. "Richard, you can't be serious. You're letting a homeless urchin dictate—"

"Marina, look at her!" Richard pointed down at Luna, who was shivering violently in her oversized, tattered clothes, clinging to Peter’s small hand. "She has nothing to gain by lying to us. But someone out there had everything to gain by putting us all on that boat at seven o'clock sharp."

Peter squeezed Luna's fingers. "She's brave, Mom. Don't be mean to her."

Marina looked between her son and the shivering child, the reality of the threat finally piercing her denial. She turned pale and stumbled backward against the yacht's polished mahogany railing.

Richard didn't wait for harbor authorities. He grabbed a heavy-duty tactical flashlight from the marina security station, kicked off his Italian leather shoes, and dropped to his knees on the wooden pier, peering down into the dark, murky water directly beneath the Golden Hour’s stern swim platform.

The tide was low, exposing the damp, barnacle-encrusted hull.

"Dad, what are you doing?" Peter whispered, stepping cautiously to the edge of the pier.

"Checking, son," Richard murmured, clicking on the high-intensity beam.

He swept the blinding white light across the rudder, the twin bronze propellers, and the dark, submerged intake valves. At first, there was only the gentle lapping of saltwater against fiberglass and the smell of diesel exhaust drifting from a neighboring cruiser.

Then, tucked deep inside a protective fiberglass recess near the port-side stabilizer fin, something glinted.

It wasn't part of the boat's design.

It was a compact, matte-black Pelican case, held tightly in place by industrial magnetic mounts and wrapped in a tangled web of red and green communication wire. A tiny, faint LED light blinked steadily in the gloom: Green. Active.