The Angel Page 17

  4:00 p.m., EDT

  June 23

  A part of Keira knew she was dreaming again. Another part was convinced that Simon was making love to her. That the feel of his hands on her was real. His mouth, his tongue. They’d come together in the sunlight—somewhere. She didn’t know where, but it didn’t matter. He was unrelent­

  ing, caring, so incredibly sexy. He thrust deeply into her, and she gave herself up to a thousand different sensations, a want that was as emotional as it was physical. A noise jolted her awake.

  “We’re landing,” Simon said next to her. Keira sat up straight, still aroused. He was working a Sudoku puzzle. He gave no indication she’d cried out in orgasmic ecstasy in her sleep—which meant she hadn’t, because otherwise, he’d have said so.

  “Dreaming?” he asked.

  “Not about slugs and spiders.” She noticed he’d nearly 192

  CARLA NEGGERS

  erased a hole in one of the squares on his puzzle. “You’re not supposed to guess, you know. It just messes you up more.”

  “I didn’t guess. I just was wrong.”

  “Well, it’s a seven.”

  He glanced at her. “You can’t know that in two seconds.”

  “No, I can. Look. There’s a seven in the box above and a seven in the box below and—”

  “Right. It’s a seven.” He smiled at her. “I hate this game.”

  In ten minutes, they were on the ground. Keira set her watch back on Eastern Daylight Time. She hadn’t been in Ireland long enough for her body to adapt to Irish Summer Time, but it wasn’t on Boston time, either. Two flights across the Atlantic in one week—never mind the rest of what she’d experienced—had taken a toll. So had sitting thigh-to-thigh with Simon on a plane for seven hours. Every nerve ending in her body seemed electrified. He, on the other hand, struck her as completely unaffected by their proximity.

  Suddenly hot, she slipped off her sweater. “I hope you and Owen have Fast Rescue business you can discuss. I wouldn’t want you making this trip for nothing.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not that involved with Fast Rescue business.”

  “What about your job?”

  “I’m between assignments.”

  “Do you have a family you could visit?” She grabbed her bag from under the seat, trying to stave off a sudden sense of panic at having Simon attach himself to her. “A father, mother, brothers, sisters, ex-wives, pets, estranged children—someone?”

  He shut his Sudoku book. “None of the above.”

  “You’re not all alone in the world, are you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  THE ANGEL

  193 “What about girlfriends, a fiancée, an ex-fiancée you owe money?”

  His vivid green eyes sparked with amusement.

  “Panicked at the idea of having me around, are you, Keira?”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard, and I’m sure you have better things to do—”

  “Not today I don’t.” He got to his feet, easing into the center aisle. As big as he was, he moved gracefully. “Relax. It’s not unusual for someone to bond with their rescuer.”

  “You didn’t rescue me.”

  “Did I or did I not pull you out of that place?”

  “You did, and I’m grateful, but I’m sticking to my story that I would have gotten out of there on my own.”

  “Tell it to your grandkids.”

  He didn’t relent as they got off the plane. By the time they went through customs and met Owen, Keira had let go the last of her erotic dream. But she still made sure that Simon sat up front with Owen and not in the backseat with her.

  “Your uncle’s invited you to dinner,” Owen said.

  “Summoned or invited?” Keira asked.

  “Is there a difference with him?” Owen merged into a line of traffic exiting the airport. “He won’t say so, but he’s glad you got out of Ireland in one piece.”

  “I was never in any real danger.”

  Neither man in the front seat responded, and Keira sat back, jet lag and erratic sleep gnawing at her. And nerves, she admitted. She was accustomed to being on her own, not having anyone fretting about her. She could be smart, stupid, reckless, cowardly—who would care? She had friends and colleagues, but no one who’d even think to sound the alarm when she didn’t call from Ireland as promised. Having Bob O’Reilly as an uncle when she lived in San Diego was very different now that she was in the same city with him. 194

  CARLA NEGGERS

  And men, she thought, noticing the black waves of Simon’s hair in the late-afternoon east-coast light. She recalled the sensation of running her fingers through his hair as if it’d been real and not just an adrenaline-generated dream. She’d hardly dated since moving to Boston. Before that—the truth was, there’d never been anyone remotely like Simon in her life. Which threw her more than the idea that her intense reaction to him was natural, expected even, under the circum­

  stances. Falling for him just wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Simon looked relaxed, not the least bit torn about having kissed her. “So, Owen,” he said casually, “have you and Ab set a wedding date?”

  Owen didn’t answer right away, then said simply, “No.”

  “What’s the delay?”

  Keira raised her eyebrows at Simon’s bluntness, but Owen kept his tone even. “There’s no delay. Abigail’s pre­

  occupied with her work right now. She can have all the time she needs. I’m patient.”

  “Don’t let her mistake patience for indifference.”

  “Words of wisdom from Simon Cahill?”

  “Damn straight. Marriage will change your lives. You’ll want kids, right? You’ve got places here, in Austin, in Maine. You come and go as you please right now. Ab dives into a case. She’s a dog-with-a-bone sort of detective.”

  “Simon, you’re giving me a headache.”

  “Ab’s got all this on her mind, Owen. Mark my words.”

  “She hates being called Ab.”

  “What about Abby?”

  “Hates that, too.”

  Simon grinned. “Good to know.”

  Abigail was pacing in her kitchen when Owen arrived with Keira and Simon. Despite Owen’s warning, Keira

  THE ANGEL

  195 was surprised at how preoccupied and agitated the BPD de­

  tective looked.

  Simon, undeterred, walked up to Abigail and slung a big arm over her shoulder. “Hey, Ab, when’s the wedding?”

  She gave him a dark look and slid out from under his arm.

  “Don’t think I can’t take you on, Cahill, because I can.”

  “Did I just get deleted from the wedding guest list?”

  “You were never on it.” Her expression softened as she turned to Keira. “Bob’s out back waiting for you. I’m waiting for a call.”

  They all took the hint and headed out to the small backyard.

  Scoop Wisdom was on his knees in his tidy vegetable garden. “Hey, Keira,” he said, rising with a metal colander of fresh-picked peas tucked under one well-muscled arm. He was a compact, bulldog of a man with a shaved head and a take-no-prisoners demeanor. “Welcome home. Good flight?”

  “It was long.”

  He glanced at Simon and grinned. “I’ll bet.”

  Bob O’Reilly thumped down the stairs from his thirdfloor apartment and sighed at Keira. “You look like you just got plucked from an Irish ruin in the nick of time. Scare the hell out of me, why don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry I worried you.”

  He grunted. “You’ve been going off like that since you were a little kid. You’d think I’d be used to it.”

  “I’ve also been very good at taking care of myself since I was a little kid.”

  “No choice, seeing how your mother was in another world half the time. A good thing you grew up in the country. When you were four years old, Eileen called me in a panic because she couldn’t find you. One minute, you’re drawing pictures on the back porch. Next
minute, 196

  CARLA NEGGERS

  you’re off in the woods. Packed yourself a couple of slices of bread and went in search of fairies or some damn thing.”

  “Frogs,” Keira said. “I remember.”

  Simon, looking amused, sat at the round plastic table and stretched out his legs, his hands folded on his stomach as he watched her and her cop uncle. She was too restless to sit. “I’m not four anymore, Bob,” she said.

  “Twenty-nine doesn’t seem so old to me, either.” He nodded to Simon. “Thanks for rescuing her.”

  Simon leaned back deeper into his chair. “Not a problem.”

  “I know Keira insists she was three seconds from getting out of there on her own—”

  “More like three minutes,” she said.

  Her uncle pointed a thick finger at her. “Don’t think you’re not like your mother, because you are. Instead of copying Bible verses on goatskin and living alone in the woods, you paint pictures of fairies and thistle and go off to the wilds of Ireland by yourself. No damn difference.”

  “She doesn’t use goatskin—she uses a beautiful cotton paper. The true illuminated manuscripts were done on vellum made from the skins of cows, goats or sheep, but the real thing is hard to come by these days and very expensive.”

  “You’re pushing my buttons, Keira.”

  Scoop stepped out of his tiny garden with his colander of peas. “What’s this about your sister, Bob?”

  “Nothing.” He snatched up a can of charcoal lighter fluid, squirting it over the heap of charcoal. “Forget it.”

  Keira noticed Simon’s eyes narrowed on her as if he’d just penetrated a secret corner of her life. She shifted her attention to Scoop. “My mother is a religious hermit. She lives alone in a cabin in southern New Hampshire.”

  “Since when?”

  “Last summer. It’s one reason I returned to Boston.”

  THE ANGEL

  197 Scoop’s shock was evident. Keira thought she under­

  stood. The younger detective had known her uncle for years. They’d worked cases together. But Bob had obvi­

  ously never mentioned that his sister had become a relig­

  ious hermit. “Is she—you know…”

  “Mentally stable? Yes, she is,” Keira said. “She’s a kind, good person. I drove out to see her before I left for Ireland. She’s doing well—she’s working on an illuminated manu­

  script, a mix of calligraphy and illustrations of Bible passages. The true illuminated manuscripts are centuries-old—”

  “Before printing presses,” Scoop said, pragmatic. Abigail emerged from her apartment, her expression tight as she pinned her gaze on Keira. “I just got off the phone with the Irish Garda detective you and Simon met this morning—”

  “Seamus Harrigan.” Keira sank onto a chair at the round table. “What’s going on?”

  “The village barman, Eddie O’Shea, came upon the carcass of the sheep that presumably was the source of the blood at the ruin where you were trapped.”

  “Had the dog—”

  “No,” Simon said, serious now, as he got up and stood behind Keira, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It wasn’t the dog, was it?”

  Abigail shook her head. “No. Someone deliberately brutalized the sheep. It was a female—she was carved up pretty bad.” Abigail looked away a moment, staring at the ground as if she didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone in the yard. “I guess it was a gruesome sight.”

  “The poor animal,” Keira said, her stomach lurching as she thought of the blood, the entrails, the bits of wool at the ruin. She met her uncle’s eyes, but he didn’t say a word, and she shifted back to Abigail. “How’s Eddie?”

  198

  CARLA NEGGERS

  Abigail gave a curt sigh. “Shaken up, according to Harrigan. O’Shea’s been around sheep all his life, and he’s never seen anything like this.”

  “Where was the sheep in relation to the ruin?” Simon asked.

  “About three hundred yards above it. It was on a steep hill among a lot of rock, I gather. After you and Keira and the police all left, O’Shea went up to see the ruin for himself. He took a different route on the way back and spotted the sheep.”

  “So whoever it was—” Keira paused, picturing the beautiful, rugged landscape. “Whoever mutilated the sheep either gathered blood and entrails and took them down to the ruin or dragged the body up the hill.”

  “It’s possible,” Abigail said, “that this person was using the ruin as a hideout, or even a base for his games. Harrigan said they’re looking for other mutilated animals and checking for any reports of similar acts elsewhere Ireland. But they’re keeping an open mind. They have to.”

  “Did Eddie see anyone?” Keira asked.

  “Not that he’s told the police, no. If you mean fairies—”

  “I don’t mean anything or anyone.”

  But even as Keira resisted Abigail’s sudden scrutiny, Bob picked up a bag of charcoal and dumped a heap into the grill. “So, Abigail,” he said, his tone deceptively mild.

  “What were you doing talking to our friends in the Garda?”

  “Harrigan called.”

  “How’d he get your number?”

  “I called and left it. I didn’t know Harrigan would be the one to call me back. At first I had trouble understand­

  ing his accent, but hearing it just makes me want to check out Ireland one of these days.”

  “Abigail.”

  THE ANGEL

  199

  “I wanted to know what was going on, and I called. Simple.”

  “There’s no connection between your drowning in the Public Garden and a bloody sheep carcass in Ireland.”

  Abigail ignored him and turned to Keira. “Would you mind taking us through what happened in Ireland? I know you’ve already spoken to Seamus Harrigan—”

  “I don’t have a problem going through it again,” Keira said. She expected her uncle to comment, but he didn’t. Simon dropped into a chair next to her. Abigail, still visibly tense, sat in an Adirondack chair next to Owen, whose focus was almost entirely on her. Keira couldn’t help but notice just how much he was in love with Abigail—and she with him. She’d automatically gravitated toward him. But her difficult mood was impossible to miss. She was just a year or two older than Keira but had pursued a single-minded dedica­

  tion to law enforcement since the murder of her husband on their honeymoon eight years ago. Keira had never experi­

  enced such tragedy and violence in her own life. Scoop settled at the table with his colander and, using his fingers, snapped off the ends of the peas one by one. Bob lit the coals and stood back, watching his grill, listen­

  ing. Keira was most aware of Simon, sitting as still as he had throughout their flight, watching her as she told the story of how she’d ended up trapped in a ruin on a stretch of windswept Irish coast.

  She kept to the facts and didn’t elaborate, left out her emotions and questions. If she’d learned nothing else during her brief stay at the police academy, she’d learned how to talk to cops.

  When she finished, Scoop, halfway through his colander, shook his head. “I don’t see how this ruin spontaneously col­

  lapsed. It must have had help.”

  200

  CARLA NEGGERS

  “Maybe the fairies did it,” Bob interjected. Keira noticed a change in Abigail’s expression. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  Abigail nodded. “I wanted to hear your story first. The barman says he found an old shovel at the ruin—before he ran across the sheep.”

  Simon sat forward. “Where?”

  “Propped up against a tree where he couldn’t miss it. Harrigan says it wasn’t there this morning, or he’d have seen it.”

  “It wasn’t there last night, either,” Simon said. Keira felt the late-day sun hot on the back of her neck. “I didn’t see it. Do the police think someone went out to the ruin after we left this morning, before Eddie go
t there?”

  “Possibly,” Abigail said.

  “I’m not going to get worked up over a shovel,” Bob said, then glared at Abigail. “You’re chewing on some­

  thing else. What is it?”

  She settled back in her Adirondack chair and addressed Keira. “Eddie O’Shea also discovered your backpack on a picnic table outside his pub.”

  This news got to Keira. “How did it end up at the pub? It was in the ruin—it got caught in the collapse. I don’t know if it was buried in rubble or not. The police tried to look around inside this morning, but they didn’t get far. Too risky.”

  “You’d just been through a difficult twenty-four hours,”

  Abigail said, “and you were focused on the stone angel and then on the sheep’s blood. Is it possible the backpack was within easy reach of the entrance, even with the collapse?”

  “I don’t know.” Keira jumped to her feet, restless, more shaken than she wanted to admit. “The key to my rented cottage was in my backpack.”

  THE ANGEL

  201 Abigail gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

  “It’s not there now.”

  Scoop tossed the last of his snap peas in the colander.

  “That probably explains the unlocked door and missing note. Our guy lets himself in, finds the note, gets rid of it and forgets to lock up on his way out. He dumps the backpack, and some hiker finds it and leaves it at the pub.”

  “Maybe,” Keira said. “But there was no way anyone could have known I wrote that note, and I didn’t notice anything else missing.”

  “Harrigan plans to talk to Eddie O’Shea again tomorrow,” Abigail said. “He’ll go back up to the ruin and take another look.”

  Bob sighed at Keira. “I can’t believe you went to Ireland chasing a fairy story.”

  “It’s a great story, and I went to Ireland to do my work. You investigate homicides. I investigate old stories.” Not investigate, precisely, but she’d made her point. Her uncle stood back from the flames. “When I inves­