Drowned Ambitions

When Margaret Gaines arrives at the Waterford Haven Aquatic Center to watch her best friend's niece try out for the new competitive swim team, she expects nothing more than nervous parents and hopeful children. What she doesn't expect is to watch the visiting coach collapse on the pool deck. The police assume it's a heart attack—the man was overweight and had spent hours screaming at twelve-year-olds in the humid pool air. But when the toxicology report comes back, Margaret's instincts are confirmed. Coach Randall Price didn't die of natural causes. Someone made sure he'd never coach another swimmer.

As Margaret digs into Price's past, a disturbing pattern emerges. Behind the impressive credentials and championship trophies lies a trail of damaged athletes, silenced complaints, and careers destroyed by a man who believed rules didn't apply to him. Now the suspects are lining up: a former swimmer whose Olympic dreams he crushed, a father whose daughter he injured, a colleague haunted by her own complicity in covering up his abuse. Any of them had reason enough to want Price dead. But only one of them slipped poison into his water bottle and watched him die.