The Whisper f-4 Page 9

  Luckily she'd already set her coffee in the holder when Scoop Wisdom materialized by the passenger door. She hit a button to automatically roll down the window. "Good morning," she said. "Are you looking for me?"

  "Uh-huh. Where are you off to?"

  She didn't want to tell him, but she didn't want to lie, either. "Cliff Rafferty asked me to stop by his place."

  Scoop opened the passenger door and got inside. "Talk."

  "I don't want to be late."

  "Then drive and talk. Or I'll drive and you can talk."

  "It's my sister's car." Sophie noticed how close he was in the seat next to her. He had on a dark tan windbreaker, khakis and a chocolate-colored shirt that made his eyes seem deeper, richer. "Do you know where Rafferty lives?"

  Scoop shook his head. "No."

  She handed him the address. "I think I can figure out how to get there, but since you're a police officer--"

  "I know the street."

  She smiled. "Thought you might."

  As she drove slowly down to Cambridge Street, Sophie told him about Rafferty's visit.

  "You don't know what he has in mind," Scoop said.

  "Neither do you. If he'd meant me any harm, he could have run me over going for coffee."

  Scoop frowned at her, then shook his head. "I guess you can't be a shrinking violet digging up old bones."

  "I generally don't dig up bones. My field is the Celtic Iron Age with a focus on Irish and British Celtic art."

  "Such as?"

  "Not necessarily 'art' as we think of it today."

  "No sofa paintings?"

  "No sofa paintings." She made her way to Commonwealth Avenue. Driving on the left had become natural for her in Ireland, but she readjusted quickly. "Think in terms of the art of everyday items--cauldrons, weapons, tools, jewelry."

  "Is there a market for this stuff?"

  "For the right collector, definitely, but there are rules for anything that's found during an excavation. I can't just pocket an Iron Age gold brooch and put it up on eBay."

  "I read about that gold found in England by a guy with a metal detector."

  "Yes, that's an amazing discovery. He unearthed a major hoard of early Anglo-Saxon gold and silver buried in a farmer's field in Staffordshire. It'll take years for archaeologists and historians to assess the objects. Most are articles of warfare. A true treasure."

  "Who gets it?"

  "Since it's over three hundred years old, it's been declared the property of the Crown."

  "It'd be stealing if you tried to sneak artifacts out of Ireland?"

  She wasn't sure he was asking a question, but said, "Undoubtedly, yes."

  Scoop eased back in his seat as she drove past the sprawling campus of Boston University. "What happened to you in Ireland last year, Sophie?"

  "You mean--"

  "You called the Irish police."

  She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. "What did you do, call the guards yourself over a Guinness last night? Why? What did I do to pop onto your radar?"

  "I mentioned your name to friends in Ireland," he said.

  She glanced over at him. "That's an incomplete answer."

  "I'd get an F if you were grading me?"

  "I'd hand your paper back and ask you to finish your answer," she said.

  "That's because you would be the professor and I would be the student and therefore at your mercy. Right now--"

  "It's the other way around. I'm at your mercy."

  "We're just two friends talking in a very little car." He pointed at a throng of students about to cross from a Green Line MBTA stop on the track in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue. "Careful."

  "I won't run anyone over," Sophie said, "and last year I got in over my head on an adventure."

  "Treasure hunting?"

  She shook her head. "I just told you that I don't treasure hunt."

  "You didn't go off with a metal detector yourself?"

  "Ireland has the strictest laws in the EU against metal detecting at possible archaeological sites. To answer your question, no, I did not go off with a metal detector."

  She was aware of his dark eyes on her as they came to Allston. He directed her to Cliff Rafferty's street. She parked in front of a two-family brown-shingled house with a giant oak shading a small front yard, its roots breaking apart the sidewalk.

  Scoop unfastened his seat belt. "Do you think Cliff wants to see you because you're an archaeologist or because you're friends with Percy Carlisle?"

  "'Friends' is too strong."

  "Were you two--"

  "No," Sophie said quickly.

  They got out of the car. "You and I aren't finished," Scoop said, going ahead of her to the front door.

  Sophie mounted the steps behind him, checking the address Rafferty had scrawled on the slip of paper. "He's on the upper floor." She reached past Scoop's broad shoulders for the doorbell but noticed the door was slightly ajar. "He's expecting me. He probably doesn't want to come down to open up."

  Scoop pushed the door open and called up the stairs. "Cliff? Scoop here with Sophie Malone. We're on our way up."

  There was no answer. Sophie started up the steps, but Scoop put a hand on her hip and eased past her. She stayed behind him, observing that the injuries he'd sustained in the bomb blast didn't impede his ability to climb a flight of stairs.

  When they came to the second-floor landing, Sophie took a sharp breath and grabbed Scoop by the upper arm, her gaze riveted on the French door. Three realistic-looking replicas of human skulls had been tacked to the frame, one on each side and one directly in the middle of the lintel.

  "Scoop..."

  He glanced at her. "Stay close to me."

  She dropped her hand from his arm. "The ancient Celts revered the human head."

  Scoop grimaced. "Yeah. Great." He tapped open the door and called into the apartment. "Hey, Cliff. I jumped in the car with our Dr. Malone here."

  Again there was no answer.

  They entered a narrow living room that ran across the front of the house. A sentimental Irish tune was playing softly in the background. Sophie realized it was coming from the flat-screen television. A DVD was running, displaying familiar scenes of Ireland--the Cliffs of Moher, the Healy Pass, a rainbow over a lush, green Irish pasture.

  "Something bad has happened," Sophie said.

  Scoop withdrew his weapon. She hadn't even noticed the holster under his jacket. He touched her hand. "Just stay close." He squeezed her fingers. "Real close. Got it?"

  She nodded.

  Staying in the middle of the room, they stepped onto a worn rug and walked past the coffee table. It was piled with rolls of coated wire, wire cutters, plastic-coated blasting caps and a block of what looked like wrapped clay but Sophie assumed was probably C4 or another type of explosive.

  Bomb-making materials.

  Just beyond the coffee table, yellow and red glass beads were scattered on the hardwood floor at the edge of the rugs. "Scoop, glass beads are often found in Celtic graves."

  But she didn't go on. More skulls were arranged on the woodwork of the double-doorway between the living room and the adjoining dining room.

  Scoop stopped in the doorway and turned to her, grim, controlled. "Don't look," he said.

  It was too late. She could see Cliff Rafferty hanging from an exposed beam in the dining room. She recognized his too-short jeans, his scuffed running shoes, his jacket. She didn't want to look at his face but did. From his coloring, the position of his neck, his twisted features--there was no question he was dead.

  The rope had been tied to a heavy-duty eye hook screwed into the beam.

  Her breathing shallow, her heart racing, Sophie edged next to Scoop. A small, round dining room table had been pushed against the wall. More glass beads were scattered on the bare floor between the table and the hanging scene.

  A cast-iron pot was positioned directly under Rafferty's feet. He could have used it to stand on--or had been forced to stand on
it. Sophie leaned forward and saw the pot was filled with parts of a disassembled gun, each part damaged, as if the weapon had been systematically hammered and destroyed piece by piece. A police badge, also dented and distorted, had been placed on top of the gun parts.

  Next to the pot, on the floor, were two halves of a crude torc fashioned out of twisted gold wire, obviously deliberately cut in half.

  Sophie made herself exhale slowly through her mouth. "Scoop, these are ritualistic symbols--"

  "I see. You can tell me what they mean later." His dark eyes held hers for an instant. "Don't touch anything and stay right with me. Got that, sweetheart? Right with me."

  They checked the rest of the apartment--the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom--and headed out to the back porch, a robin perched on a nearby maple branch. Scoop dialed his BlackBerry. Sophie noticed even his hands weren't shaking. While he identified himself and gave his report, she watched the robin fly away and contemplated the grisly scene in the apartment behind her.

  "Backup's on the way," Scoop said as he disconnected.

  She stepped back into the kitchen. She was shaking now. She tried to stop but bit her lip, drawing blood. Rafferty's body was just out of view in the dining room. She controlled her emotion and said quietly, "He didn't kill himself."

  "Why do you say that?"

  She faced Scoop, his expression unchanged, nothing about him suggesting he was affected by the past few minutes--by the terrible death of a fellow police officer. "The pagan Celtic practices reenacted in the dining room and living room suggest ritual sacrifice, not suicide." She crossed her arms on her chest, trying to keep herself from shivering. She wasn't cold. In fact, quite the opposite. It was warm in the apartment. She saw that no windows were open. Had the killer shut them before setting to work? "Before you ask, no, I don't know anything for certain. This isn't an archaeological site. It's..." She didn't finish.

  "Sophie, easy--you okay?"

  "I didn't expect this."

  "Try to remember everything Cliff said to you. Don't try to draw conclusions on your own. Just remember."

  She forced herself to remain steady on her feet and focused on Scoop, his jaw set hard, nothing about him even close to relaxed. He was intense but under control. "I assume you saw the bomb-making materials on the coffee table," she said. "What if Rafferty asked me here to confess his involvement with the bomb at your house?"

  "Trust me, Sophie. It won't help to speculate."

  "Maybe his guilt was weighing on him, and he arranged a suicide that made sense to him." She felt a sting of pain on her mouth and realized she'd bit her lip. "Except I don't believe that, based on what I see and what he told me. He said he wanted my opinion on something."

  "Something to do with archaeology or with the Carlisles?"

  "I don't know. He wouldn't say. The glass beads, the skulls, the pot filled with smashed parts of a gun--the hanging itself--all could fit into some garbled, twisted notion of pagan Celtic rituals. I'm not talking about modern paganism--"

  "It's okay, Sophie. This scene means whatever the person who arranged it wanted it to mean, whether it was Cliff or someone else."

  Her gaze rested on toast crumbs on a plate in the stainless steel sink.

  Scoop touched her arm. "Don't try to make sense of things right now. You're an archaeologist. You're used to looking at evidence. You know how to be objective. You know you can't just assume a piece of glass you find in the dirt is some ancient artifact. It could be part of a beer bottle some drunk tossed."

  "I get your point." She pulled her gaze from the sink. "You're right. I shouldn't let myself be driven by assumptions and get tunnel vision. Do I stay here or--"

  She broke off, suddenly overwhelmed by the stifling heat in the apartment, by the proximity of death.

  She was gone, running out the back door, down the balcony steps. She didn't breathe until she was out on the street, just as she heard sirens and the first cruiser arrived.

  10

  Kenmare, Southwest Ireland

  Josie paused to admire the view of Kenmare Bay from the front steps of the Malones' Irish holiday house and found herself yearning for a few weeks on her own, with nothing more pressing to think about than whether to spend the afternoon on a long walk in the hills or curled up with a book.

  She'd missed Antonia and James Malone and Sophie's twin sister, Taryn.

  Not a total waste of a trip, Josie thought, but it was close.

  Keira and Lizzie had finally caught up with Colm Dermott in Dublin that morning. He'd told them he'd talked to Sophie recently. They'd discussed the panel she was doing at the folklore conference and a bit about the violence that had touched Keira and Lizzie--even him--over the summer. He hadn't taken Sophie's interest as anything but natural curiosity and her role as an archaeologist.

  Otherwise, he was clueless about what she might be up to.

  "Perhaps nothing," Josie said aloud, hopping off the steps.

  She started down the steep hill to her car. She noticed a man standing on the edge of the quiet road and faltered, hoping her sleepless night had got the better of her and she'd conjured him up.

  She wasn't that lucky.

  The man in front of her car was, indeed, long-lost, treacherous, sexy-as-hell-itself Myles Fletcher.

  Josie didn't say a word as she navigated a series of small puddles from an early-morning shower and collected her thoughts. When she came to the road, she stuffed her hands into her coat pockets and suppressed, at least for the moment, any emotional reaction to his presence. "Will and Simon?" she asked crisply.

  Myles opened the car door and dumped his rucksack in the back as if he had every right to do so. "They caught up with me and dinged me back here."

  "Did they, now?"

  He shrugged. "They're pursuing a different angle."

  "A dangerous one?"

  He grinned at her. "No more dangerous than me turning up here."

  "You're compromised," she said, ignoring his irreverent humor. "Whoever you all are after now knows you're a British intelligence officer. That's why Will and Simon sent you away."

  "I'm here because there's nothing more I can do. The next steps aren't up to me anymore." He stood in front of the open car door. "I arrived back in Ireland this morning and took the bus to Kenmare looking for you. I thought you could use my help."

  "How did you know to find me here?"

  "A fair guess."

  Josie wasn't convinced. Myles would tell her what suited him. She went around and yanked open the driver's door with a bit more force than was necessary. "Is anyone after you?"

  "Other than you, you mean?"

  Whatever his particular way of going about things, she had no doubt Myles wouldn't be here now were he not confident he hadn't been followed. She didn't need to waste her breath telling him what they both already knew: His dangerous, solitary work over the past two years had secured critical information that Will and Simon--British intelligence and American FBI--could now use to finish the job.

  In one brusque move, Josie climbed into the car and let Myles do whatever he meant to do.

  He got in beside her. "It's just you and me, love."

  "I have no illusions, Myles." She thrust the key into the ignition. "You're not here for me. Fasten your seat belt. I won't have you bloodied should I ram us into a tree."

  He pulled his door shut and clicked on his seat belt, settling back comfortably in his seat. "Where are we going?"

  "Doesn't matter, does it? I've already been to hell and back these past two years."

  She could feel his gray eyes on her as she started the car. He hadn't shaved. He looked exhausted, irresistible and perfectly capable of slitting an odd throat or two if necessary. Why, she thought, hadn't she simply stayed in London? She had a great deal of freedom with her job, and certainly no one had sent her to Ireland to chase after an American archaeologist.

  "Let me guess, then, love." Myles watched casually out his window as she pulled onto the road, maneuveri
ng through a large puddle. "You're looking into the Irish life and times of Sophie Malone."

  Josie groaned, nearly choking the engine. "There. I was right. You did provide Scoop Wisdom with information about her."

  "Only her name."

  "In what context? Not a good one, I imagine. And here he'd just seen her at Keira's ruin. No wonder Scoop wants to know all he can about her. It's not as easy as I'd hoped to find decent intel on her. Her sister's gone back to London. Her parents have trekked into the Irish hills with tents and rucksacks." Josie gave a mock shudder. "Will appreciates the charms of camping, but I do not. You, Myles?"

  "I could do with a real bed," he said, just a bit of huskiness to his voice.

  Well-trained intelligence officer that she was, Josie saw to it no color rose in her cheeks. "I met this morning with an Irish detective I know. Seamus Harrigan. Is he the one who told you I was in Kenmare?"

  Myles closed his eyes and didn't answer.

  "He's aware that the Malones own this house but only because he lives in Kenmare--not because of anything Sophie or her family has done."

  "Did Seamus direct you here?"

  "That's a bit too strong but I was able to fill in the blanks." She noticed Myles hadn't opened his eyes. "He wasn't pleased to hear from me, I have to say. Perfectly understandable. Three months ago we had Seamus crawling through a ruin in search of a serial killer. Last month we had him questioning a hired thug about a bombing and kidnapping in Boston."

  "He was doing his job," Myles said with a yawn.

  "Yes, that explains it, doesn't it?" Josie trod too hard on the gas and took a turn far more sharply and speedily than was necessary or safe, but she'd passed various defensive driving courses. Not that the Irish guards would accept that as a reason not to ticket her. She came to a stop and glanced over at Myles. He at least had his eyes half open now. "Sophie Malone was involved in some sort of incident a year ago. Seamus wasn't on the case but told me what he could."