Heather Graham - Heart Of Evil

He needed him alive until the time was right.

Every time he’d been at Donegal recently, he’d felt as if he were being pushed harder and harder. The past was the past—so they all said. But it wasn’t. The past created the present, and he knew now that he had to use the present to set the past right. It wasn’t crazy; he’d heard the voices in his head. A collective consciousness that seemed to scream through history.

Now, maybe, the voices would stop.

Car bombs didn’t exactly do it for him, but Jake indulged in a few anyway.

“Cheers!” Jenna said, dropping her shot glass into her Guinness, and swallowing down the mixture.

“Cheat!” Will said to Whitney. “You poured your shot in—you just drink the whole thing.”

“Hey, you drink it your way, and I’ll drink it mine!” Whitney protested.

“You’re not doing it the Irish way,” Will said, looking to Jenna for help.

“Drink it however you like!” Jenna said, smiling sweetly at Will.

There was a small room in the back of the bar, and Jake, Will Chan, Jenna Duffy and Whitney Tremont had it to themselves that night, so it was nice. Jackson Crow was back at the hotel with Angela Hawkins. They’d all just met for the first time on the Holloway case, and Jackson, the skeptic, had quickly fallen in love with Angela—despite their different approaches to their work. Go figure. The entire team respected and admired them both, and they were glad that the two were indulging in some quality time together.

And for Jake, it felt good to be in the bar with his coworkers.

During the Holloway case, they had gotten to know one another. Will and Whitney were excellent with cameras and sound systems; Jenna was a registered nurse, something that could always come in handy when traipsing through strange landscapes and old buildings. His own expertise was computers—and computer hacking. He could usually find any piece of information on any site, public, private or even heavily coded. Yet they’d all had certain unusual experiences in life that had led them to being excellent investigators—and, together, able to discern deeper, darker undercurrents to the event they researched. Now, they also had badges. After the Holloway case, it had been deemed that they would continue to work together, and they would do so with all proper credentials as FBI agents.

“Now, quit whining over the way a woman drinks her drink,” Jenna said and turned, leaning an elbow on their table, to talk to Whitney. She had brilliant green eyes and red hair, and a smile that could melt ice. “I want to know what else I’ve missed. The World War II museum, the Civil War museum, plantations, the zoo …”

“Shall we have another drink?” Whitney asked.

But before Jenna could answer, they all heard their phones buzz.

“Text from Jackson,” Whitney murmured.

“Meeting in the morning,” Jenna said, the slight Irish lilt in her voice grave.

“Hmm. Do you think that means that we’re not heading to Alexandria?” Will asked.

“It means something is up,” Whitney said, looking at Jake.

“I’ll pay the bill,” Jake told them.

They walked back to their hotel slowly and silently, each wondering what they’d discover in the morning. After they parted, Jake sat up a very long time.

It became morning at last. Ashley didn’t feel as if she’d slept at all. The dreams continued to plague her, only now she was Emma Donegal, leaving the house in the aftermath of the battle to find the bloody body of her husband. And when she woke herself from the dream, she could have sworn that deceased Confederate soldier was sitting in the wingback chair by the doors to the second-story wraparound porch. She was more tired from being in bed than she was from being awake.

A shower helped revive her a little. Dressed and ready for the day, she headed down to the kitchen. Once it had been a gentleman’s den, and then it had been an office, and then, when it was no longer deemed necessary to have the main kitchen in an outbuilding, it had become a wonderful, bright kitchen. The walls were a pale yellow. There was a center granite worktable with stools around it, and suspended racks that held several dozen shining copper cooking utensils. A breakfast nook held a table that sat eight.

Beth was just pouring milk from a carton into serving pitchers. “Coffee is on. None of the guests have made it in yet,” she said cheerfully.

“What’s for breakfast?” Ashley asked.

“Down-home comfort food this morning,” Beth said. “Corn bread, blueberry muffins, bacon and cheese omelets, and country cheese grits. Want to grab a plate and eat before it starts getting crazy?”

“Sure,” Ashley said. She watched as her beautiful friend made art out of an omelet and shook her head as Beth handed her the plate full of light, fluffy eggs.

“Grits are in the bowl, corn bread is sliced and in those baskets,” Beth said.

Ashley helped herself. “I’m going to waddle across the lawn soon,” Ashley told her.

Beth grinned. “I doubt it. You’re too fond of those awful creatures out in the stables. You get plenty of exercise.” She shivered.

“I can’t believe that you’re afraid of horses.” Ashley laughed.

“I told you—one of the bastards bit me when I was a child!” Beth said.

“Well, ours won’t bite you. You should try riding Tigger. She’s a twenty-year-old sweetie. She moves like an old woman.”

“Then she may be crotchety as one, too,” Beth said. “No, honey, you stick to your horses, and I’ll stick to cooking.”

Ashley dutifully bit into her omelet, and it was delicious. As she was finishing, guests began to stream by her, heading in for breakfast or stopping to clear their tabs. They’d be down to eight guests that night; the reenactment had taken place on a Sunday, and many of those who came for the reenactment managed to take off the Monday if they had a regular workweek. By Monday night, they were usually down to just a few guests.

She heard Frazier speaking with people on the other side of the stairway, his tone rich and filled with humor as he told old family tales and pointed out certain portraits on the walls.

Ashley took her place at the desk to fill out the registry and books—by hand; people actually signed her guest book, and she wrote personal thank-yous—and then could have sworn that someone had approached her. She looked up, but she was alone. For a moment, her brows knit in consternation, but people milled throughout the lower level of the house now and any one of them might have stopped nearby. She gave her concentration back to the project at hand.

She heard a throat being cleared then, and looked up—this time, someone was there. Justin.

He sat in the one of the period wingback chairs that faced the desk.

She frowned. “Are you checking out? I thought you were staying a few days.”

“I am staying another few days, Ashley. I just stopped to see how you’re doing,” he told her.

She liked Justin. At forty, he was a widower, though years before, he had brought his wife with him, and she had played at being a camp follower—with great relish. They had been married for years before he had lost her to cancer. But Justin still came.

“I’m fine, thanks. Nancy’s got the girls?” His mother-in-law, Nancy, now came along to help Justin with his ten-year-old twin girls. Hard to be a “fighting federal” and keep an eye on twins.

“Yes. Any word on Charles?”

She set her pen down. “No. But I haven’t tried calling anyone this morning. Everyone on that search party last night is weary of me torturing them, so … If he’s been found, I’ll be called right away.”