Carla Neggers - The Whisper

Tim's skepticism was almost palpable. "What else?" he asked.

Sophie looked out at the water, dark blue under the clearing early-afternoon sky. Tim O'Donovan was no fool. "Did you know a Boston police detective's staying out on the Beara?"

"Sophie." Tim gave a resigned sigh. "You went to see Keira Sullivan's ruin, didn't you?"

"It makes sense. I'm an archaeologist. I've crawled through literally hundreds of ruins over the past ten years."

"This isn't just another ruin. It's where that Yank serial killer--" He stopped abruptly. "Ah, no. Sophie. Sophie, Sophie. You're not thinking he was responsible for what happened to you. Don't tell me that."

"Okay, I won't."

" Sophie ."

"It doesn't matter what I think. He's in jail. He can't hurt me or anyone else."

"I never should have told you that story," Tim said quietly.

Sophie understood. Over Guinness and Irish music one evening a year ago, he had transfixed her with a tale he'd heard from a long-dead uncle who had served as a priest in a small village on the Iveragh Peninsula across Kenmare Bay. A coastal monastery, Viking raids, a secret hoard of pagan Celtic artifacts--how could she have resisted? For centuries--at least according to Tim--the story had been closely held by the priests in the village. It was a tangle of fancy, history, mythology and tradition--with, she'd suspected, a large dose of Tim's Guinness-buzzed Irish blarney.

"I was procrastinating," she said to him now. "That's why I started going out there. I was mentally exhausted, and I just wanted to go on a lark."

"A shopping spree in Dublin wouldn't have done the trick?"

"I never expected to find anything, or end up in a dark cave with spooky stuff happening around me. It wasn't a dream, Tim. It wasn't a hallucination."

"You were knocked on the head."

She sighed. She didn't remember how she'd been rendered unconscious--whether she'd accidentally hit her head scrambling to hide, or whether whoever had been on the island with her had smacked her with a rock. When she'd come to, it was pitch dark, cold and silent in the cave.

Tim unknotted the rope automatically, as he had since he'd been a boy. There were seven O'Donovans. He was the third eldest. "My mother prays for you every night," he said. "She's afraid it was black magic at work, or dark fairies--nothing of this world, that's for certain."

"Thank your mother for me."

"I try not to mention your name to her. I should never have told her what happened. She's the only one who knows--"

"It's okay, Tim."

They'd set off a year ago on a warm, clear late-September morning--Sophie remembered how calm the bay was, how excited she was. She'd had her iPhone and everything she needed for less than twenty-four hours on her own. Tim had returned to pick her up the following morning. When she wasn't at their rendezvous point, he'd set out on foot to look for her. At first he'd assumed she'd got herself sidetracked and was annoyed with her for delaying him. Then he'd found her backpack in a crevice near the cave. She remembered the panic in his voice when she'd heard him calling her, and the relief she'd felt knowing he was there and she would survive her ordeal.

Of course, he'd wanted to kill her himself when she'd crawled out of the cave.

He'd called the guards. By then, there was nothing for them to find. They believed, in spite of Sophie's academic credentials, that what she claimed to have seen and heard was the product of a concussion, dehydration, adrenaline, a touch of hypothermia and no small amount of imagination. They'd made it clear they thought both she and Tim were nuts. She for going out there, no matter how experienced and well prepared, he for letting her talk him into leaving her alone overnight on the thimble of an island.

"How long are you going to stay mad at me?" Sophie asked Tim now.

"Until I'm explaining myself before St. Peter, should he have me."

She smiled. "He'll have you because the devil won't."

He grinned back at her, a glint of humor in his green eyes. "True enough. Don't think I don't know why you're here, Sophie Malone. You want to know if anyone's asked me about you, and the answer is no."

"You're sure?"

"Oh, trust me, I'd remember."

"Keira Sullivan is romantically involved with an FBI agent--Simon Cahill--and her uncle's a Boston homicide detective."

"Bob O'Reilly," Tim said. "Yes, I know."

Sophie wasn't surprised. "They've both been out here this summer. There's the Boston detective out on the Beara now. Scoop Wisdom."

"None of them have looked me up. I fish, Sophie, and I play a little music. I stay away from trouble."

"I don't want to cause you any more problems."

Tim stood up straight and looked out at the sparkling harbor. "I believe you, Sophie. I do. I don't know how you hit your head, but I believe you found Celtic treasure. I believe you heard whispers, and I believe you saw hawthorn branches dipped in blood." He turned to her, as serious as she'd ever seen him. "I wish I could tell you who or what it was in that cave with you."

"I wish you could, too, Tim."

"They say the woman who hid the treasure died on the island."

If there ever were such a woman. No historical record existed of her that Sophie had been able to locate. Tim's story told of a woman fleeing to the island with her pagan treasure to escape Viking raids in the eighth century. Then again, he'd said, maybe it had been English raids in the seventeenth century, or maybe to trade for food for the starving in the famine years.

Hard facts were a little tough to pin down.

Sophie had no intention of arguing Irish tales with an Irishman, especially one who was still irritated with her for putting him through hell. She shivered in a sudden gust of wind, but she knew it wasn't the cold she was feeling. It was the lingering effects of that night a year ago.

Tim put a big hand on her shoulder. "Let go of what happened to you." His voice was quiet now. "Get on with your life."

"I am. Don't worry about me, okay?"

"Worry about you?" He laughed, hugging her to him. "I want to drown you in the bay. Dragging me to that barren rock. No sign of you when I came after you. There I was with you gone and nothing but the wind, the waves, the crying birds. I get chilled to the bone thinking about it."

Sophie couldn't help but smile. Tim was dramatic. She glanced up at the brightening sky, no hint left of the rainbow. "I wonder if it was sheep's blood on the branches I saw."

Tim was thoughtful. "It was sheep's blood at the Beara ruin."

"Yes, but Jay Augustine left that blood for Keira Sullivan to find, assuming she lived through the night. The blood and branches I saw disappeared. If I'd managed to get a few drops on me, it would have corroborated my story. The guards could have tested it--"

"Don't, Sophie. What's done is done."

She looked down at Tim's battered boat, bobbing in the rising tide. "We could put all this out of our minds for a while and go sightseeing for seals and puffins."

Tim obviously knew she wasn't serious. "You're playing with fire, Sophie," he said heavily. "You know you are."

"The guards must have a report in their files on what happened a year ago, and obviously they know about Keira's experience on the Beara. They haven't come to reinterview me. I just keep wondering if I missed something...." She didn't finish and instead shook off her questions and smiled at Tim. "Stay in touch, okay?"

"Sophie--"

"All will be well."

"Yes, it will be, please God," he said, watching her as she headed back down the pier.

"Oh, and Tim," she called cheerfully, turning back to him, "if you want to get anywhere with my sister, trim your beard and bone up on your Yeats."

He jumped into his boat, as comfortable at sea as he was on land. "' Tread softly because you tread on my dreams, '" he recited, crossing his hands over his heart. "' A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love .'"