Carla Neggers - The Whisper

"But it wasn't you," Myles said.

O'Donovan sighed heavily. "No, it wasn't. She saw branches smeared with blood--or what looked like blood--and she hid deeper in the cave. She hit her head somehow and lost consciousness. When she came to, there were no more whispers. I came for her the next day, as agreed. I had to look for her. By the time I found her, there was no sign anyone else had been on the island."

Josie shuddered. "Frightening. Was Sophie in the cave all night?"

"She was," Tim O'Donovan said tightly. "She believes whoever stole the cauldron left her for dead."

"Do you think she made up this story?" Myles asked.

"No, but that doesn't mean it happened the way she believes it did."

Myles frowned, the gray of his eyes now a deep slate. "Fairies? Ghosts? What are you suggesting?"

"As a boy, I heard tales the island's haunted. Sophie could have been pulled there by dark forces." Tim rose, shrugging his big shoulders. "The island's very small. It took me less than an hour to find her. She was hurt, cold, angry, afraid. She doesn't remember how she got her concussion. More than likely she experienced something she couldn't explain and hid for her life in that cave, and she's tried to make sense of what happened ever since."

"What about you?" Myles kept his gaze steady on the fisherman. "Did you sneak back to the island and steal this cauldron filled with gold? Fake the blood to frighten her, then take it with you to make her look less credible?"

Josie could have pushed Myles off the pier herself, but O'Donovan didn't seem to take offense. "I did not."

"You believed Sophie's story enough to call the guards," Josie said. "Did they look into boats that might have passed the island while Dr. Malone was there, anyone who might have heard her discuss her trips there, or this particular trip, or might have seen her--"

"Ask Seamus."

"Seamus said Sophie wasn't seriously hurt and there was no evidence a crime had been committed. Unintelligible whispers, blood and gold only she saw--the guards had nothing to go on."

"She survived, thanks be." O'Donovan abandoned the rope and rose again, his movements smooth for such a large man. "I don't even know you and here I've told you more than anyone else since that day. Do people always voluntarily tell you things, Josie Goodwin?"

She smiled. "Not always voluntarily."

He didn't smile back. "I wish I knew more." When Josie started to thank him, he cut her off. "Just see to it no harm comes to Sophie."

"We'll do our best."

Josie didn't know why she included Myles in her statement, but Tim O'Donovan nodded and said, "If there's anything I can do to help..."

"Call Seamus if you remember anything else about Sophie's experience on the island," Josie said.

He jumped down into his boat. The worsening conditions didn't seem to faze him. Myles started toward the road, and Josie lingered a moment, watching the fisherman go about his routines to set off down the bay, hoping she hadn't missed anything--even just a question that could help jog his memory.

She joined Myles at her car. She glanced back at the harbor, O'Donovan's boat chugging along in the wind and rain. "I've not the smallest urge to go to a tiny Irish island on my own."

"Would you go with someone else?" Myles asked as he climbed into the car.

Josie got behind the wheel again. "Not with you, Myles. The two of us alone in a car is enough tension for me, thank you."

"You're going to torture me forever, are you?"

"I haven't decided." She pulled off her damp coat, struggling with it, but he didn't offer his help. She must have looked as if she'd elbow him in the head if he did. She might, anyway. She balled up the coat and shoved it in back with his rucksack. "You could have trusted us, Myles. Will and me. If not me, then Will. If not Will, then me."

"It wasn't a question of trust," Myles said quietly, with none of his usual cockiness, "and to tell one of you what I was into was to tell the other. You both were emotionally compromised by our friendship. I couldn't take the chance."

Josie started the car. "Whether you could or couldn't, you didn't. Lizzie and Keira wouldn't wait two years for word on the fates of the men they care about."

"Do you think so, Josie?"

No, she thought. They'd wait forever. They'd wait until they knew for certain.

"Did you believe I was dead?"

"I'd hoped you'd lost your memory and opened a bake shop in Liverpool."

He laughed suddenly, unexpectedly, and at first she wanted to stop the car and kick him out the door, but she found herself laughing, too.

"Damn you, Myles. I suppose if you hadn't gone off--" She shook her head, abandoning her thought. "Never mind. I was going to say Will wouldn't have found Lizzie, but I don't believe that. I believe they were destined for each other."

"Josie Goodwin, the romantic?"

"Don't choke on your tongue, Myles. I'm a human being. A woman , believe it or not. Lizzie's the woman for Will. You've seen that for yourself, haven't you?"

"I have, indeed."

Josie felt a stiff wind buffet the small car. "Keira and Simon were destined for each other, too. You should see them together. He's an utter charmer--he does an amazing fake Irish accent and will argue with anyone over anything, and everyone still loves him." She turned on the windscreen wipers, the rain coming down hard now. "They'll both come back, won't they?"

"I'm sure of it."

"You're always sure. It's your nature."

"What Simon and Will are about needs to finish this way."

"Their way, you mean."

"And yours, Josie. Don't tell me you're not staying out of London for a reason. You don't want to have to answer a lot of questions about what Will and Simon are up to yourself." Myles leaned back in his seat. "Now we have this Sophie Malone and her mad island adventure."

"Nothing is ever simple with Will and Simon and their friends, is it?"

"As if it is with us?"

She came to a stop at the end of the road out to the pier and gave him a sideways glance. Those dove-gray eyes. The lines etched in his face. The hard edges that were Myles Fletcher. Of course she'd had to fall for him. How could she not have? But her life would have been so much less complicated these past few years if she hadn't.

He touched a finger to her lips. "Don't say anything more, love. Let's just keep sparring a while longer, shall we? I can't go where you want to go."

"Repressed bloody bastard," she said.

He looked relieved. "Where to next?"

"Dublin," Josie said without hesitation. "Sophie met with an art theft expert there. I'm developing a theory."

"She's after her missing artifacts."

"The whispers, the blood--she must be wondering if Jay Augustine was responsible for what happened to her in that cave. At least he's where he can't harm her or anyone else."

"Suppose he had help," Myles said quietly.

Josie gave him a sharp look, the chill back in her spine. "Myles--what do you know?"

"Drive on, love. It's a long way to Dublin."

11

Boston, Massachusetts

Bob O'Reilly shoved a hand through his hair as he stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of Cliff Rafferty's house and glared at Scoop. "You and your archaeologist haven't been back in town twenty-four hours, and you find a cop swinging from a beam in his dining room. Hell of a homecoming."

Scoop didn't blame him for being annoyed and frustrated, but his focus was on Sophie. She'd finished talking with two homicide detectives--who hadn't known Rafferty--and was in the shade of the oak tree at the edge of the walk. She'd stood up well to the pressures of the past couple hours. He had secured the scene before the first cruiser had arrived, but with the bomb-making materials in Rafferty's dining room, the FBI and ATF had rolled in right behind the BPD. The medical examiner was there. The crime lab. The district attorney's office. Onlookers from the neighborhood were behind yellow tape.