Circle of Bones

Maggie Riley sailed a thousand miles to ask a man she once loved one question.

Two years ago, in the smoke of the Lima embassy bombing, the Marine watched him walk away - leaving her with burn scars and a friend she couldn't carry out fast enough. Call it crazy, call it closure. She wanted an hour with the Ivy League son of a bitch, and one honest answer.

She never gets to ask.

Three miles off Guadeloupe, something is waving at her from open water: a half-drowned stranger wearing nothing but a gold coin on a chain. He says his name is Bob. It isn't. He says he lost his boat. He didn't. And the men hunting him have already turned toward her.

Cole Thatcher calls himself a maritime archaeologist. Everyone else calls him a crackpot. He is hunting a French submarine that vanished in 1942 with every man aboard - and he is closer than anyone knows. Then Riley gets his coin under a magnifier and reads three numbers etched beneath the angel's hand.

322.

The same three numbers her brother wrote on his hand the night he died.

Praise for Christine Kling

"A gifted writer. Christine Kling has created characters that are richly three-dimensional and a story that is both moving and full of suspense." - James W. Hall