Carla Neggers - The Whisper

"What's next?"

"Getting fired if I'm not careful with you. It's not going over well, Sophie, this not telling me everything."

"I just told you--"

"It wasn't everything."

"I haven't lied to you, Scoop."

"Omitting pertinent information is equivalent to lying." He had lined up his questions. "What about your octogenarian art theft expert?"

He saw a flicker of surprise in her face. "Ah. Wendell Sharpe." With one foot, she straightened a ragged doormat. "Your British friends are enterprising if they've learned about him. He's such a gentleman, as well as brilliant. I went to see him in Dublin--"

"After you talked to Colm Dermott about Keira's experience," Scoop said.

"I asked him if Irish Celtic artifacts had turned up on the black market in the past year. I assumed the guards would know if they had and would have said something, but..." She gave the doormat one last shove with her foot. "It was a good opportunity to talk to an expert. He gave me a tutorial on his world. It was fascinating."

"I'll bet it was." Scoop could see her energy was flagging. "Your mums need water."

This time she did manage a smile. "I guess I can't pretend to be a gardener, can I?" But she wasn't ready to quit. "I've heard a bad cop's like an infection that spreads in ways you can't control or predict."

"I can't go there, Sophie."

She stepped up to her apartment door, its dark green paint almost black in the shadows. "I still don't believe Cliff Rafferty killed himself." She paused, one hand on the brass knob as she turned back to him. "I wouldn't be surprised if the autopsy shows he was unconscious or already dead when he was hanged. I have theories, just as you do."

Scoop was right behind her, a yellow mum brushing his leg, but he didn't move. "No freelancing, okay?"

"What about you, Scoop? Are you sure you're not blinded by your friendship with Bob O'Reilly and Abigail Browning--with other detectives in the department? You've been out of the country for a month. What if one of your fellow police officers is involved with Rafferty's death?"

"You speak your mind, don't you?"

"Most academics don't get far if they don't."

She pulled open the door and stalked back into her apartment. Scoop scratched the side of his mouth. He guessed she'd told him. He walked over to the door and raised his hand to knock, but she opened it up. "Anyone who can stay with you?" he asked.

"I'm not worried."

"You can stay at the Whitcomb for a few days. Let things settle down."

"I'll stay here."

He touched her hair. Craziness. "This morning was bad. I'm sorry you saw that."

"It wasn't your fault."

"Didn't say it was."

He raised his eyebrows.

She let out a breath. "Sorry. You're trying to help. I know that."

"You're smart, you're well educated and you tend to be stubborn in your views and theories. Am I right?" He winked at her. "You don't have to answer that. Tell me something about you that doesn't involve artifacts and blood-soaked branches."

"I listen to traditional Irish music, I light candles when I work and I do yoga." Her defensiveness eased, and he saw her smile reach her eyes this time. "I'm not very good at kicking butt."

He laughed. "And you don't do well in the sun."

"Are you unafraid?" she asked him quietly.

"I don't let fear get into the equation. I focus on what I have to do--which is what you did in that cave. You calculated the risks as best as you could and did what you had to do to survive." He lifted a hand to her. "I'm two minutes away. Call me anytime. Don't hesitate."

She slipped outside, took his hand in hers and kissed him on the cheek, her lips soft, cool. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for not letting me go alone this morning, and thank you for listening to my story."

"Sophie--"

But she'd already fled back inside and shut the door.

Scoop found Jeremiah Rush at his desk in the lobby, checking in a mother and teenage daughter on a Boston shopping trip. They regarded Scoop as if they expected him to fix their drain, too.

Once they were in the elevator, Jeremiah stood up in his expensive, wrinkle-free suit. "Is everything all right with your room, Detective?"

"I'm still willing to give Yarborough's sofa bed a try."

"You're welcome to stay here as long as you like."

"Your cousin alerted us to a bomb seconds before it went off. We owe you all, not the other way around."

"I didn't do anything. Did you see Lizzie in Ireland?"

"Briefly the night before I left."

"She and Lord Davenport..." Still on his feet, Jeremiah reached down and tapped a few keys on his computer. "Everything happened so fast between them. Will strikes me as a man with a lot on his mind."

"That's one way of putting it. I don't know Lizzie well, but she strikes me as a woman who doesn't like being bored."

"No kidding," Jeremiah said with a touch of affectionate exasperation. "In fact, I talked to Lizzie a little while ago."

Scoop kept his expression neutral. "What did she have to say?"

"She was trying to remember..." He looked uncomfortable. "Sophie knew FBI Director March from her days working here."

"March, huh?"

"Lizzie asked me if I remembered anything else about their relationship, and I do--I don't know that it's significant, but Sophie's brother is an FBI agent. Damian Malone. He's in D.C."

"Is he close to March?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him in a long time."

"How long?"

"Since early spring, maybe. Damian's not as--I don't know how to say this. Sophie's an archaeologist. Taryn's an actress. He's..."

"He's an FBI agent," Scoop said. "Explains it all."

Jeremiah didn't argue, and Scoop trotted downstairs to Morrigan's. Bob O'Reilly was at a table with a beer. "It's an O'Doul's," he said. "Nonalcoholic. I think of myself as being on the job right now, but you and I are in the same leaky boat, Scoop. We're supposed to stay a thousand miles from this thing."

Scoop sat across from him. "No way Cliff killed himself."

"Nope. No way."

"Think the bomb-making evidence was legit or planted?"

"I don't know. I'm getting information on the side but not all of it, seeing how it was our house that was bombed. If Cliff isn't our guy, someone wants him to be. If he is our guy--"

"Then if he was strung up, whoever did it wanted him exposed as the bomber but not talking to us."

"It's been a bad damn day," Bob said, watching Fiona, his nineteen-year-old harpist daughter, slim, blonde and blue-eyed, bound into the pub with her college musician friends, all of them with instrument cases slung over their shoulders. "Let's listen to a little Irish music, Scoop, while you tell me everything you know about our Dr. Malone."

15

Sophie watered the mums, using a hose everyone on the courtyard seemed to share. It belonged to Taryn's landlords, the outdoor faucet located under the stairs that led up to their main floor. The courtyard was cast in shadows, chilly and still, the autumn flowers a cheerful counter to the fading light--and her own mood, she thought, getting a dribble of the extra-cold water from the hose on her pant leg. She didn't care. She needed to cool off, relax and pull herself together after telling Scoop her story.

Had she really given him that little kiss on the cheek?

"Gad," she said, dragging the hose back under the stairs. "What were you thinking?"

She shut off the faucet and wound the hose into an ancient-looking pot. She knew exactly what she'd been thinking. Here was a solid, physical, intelligent man who wasn't as rigid and rules-bound as she'd expected--who was self-controlled without being controlling.

And here was she, an archaeologist fresh from postdoctoral work in Ireland, a woman who'd taken him to a grisly scene of death and who now had told him about a horrible experience in her life--one that her own family didn't know about.