Carla Neggers: The Whisper

THE WHISPER

Also by CARLA NEGGERS

COLD RIVER

THE MIST

BETRAYALS

COLD PURSUIT

TEMPTING FATE

THE ANGEL

ABANDON

CUT AND RUN

THE WIDOW

BREAKWATER

DARK SKY

THE RAPIDS

NIGHT'S LANDING

COLD RIDGE

THE HARBOR

STONEBROOK COTTAGE

THE CABIN

THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

THE WATERFALL

ON FIRE

KISS THE MOON

CLAIM THE CROWN

CARLA NEGGERS

THE WHISPER

For Leo

1

Beara Peninsula, Southwest Ireland--late September

Scoop Wisdom opened his daypack, got out his water bottle and took a drink. He sat on a cold, damp rock inside the remains of the isolated Irish stone cottage where the long summer had started with a beautiful woman, a tale of magic and fairies--and a killer obsessed with his own ideas of good and evil.

The autumn equinox had passed. Summer was over. Scoop told himself it was a new beginning, but he had unfinished business. It'd been gnawing at him ever since he'd regained consciousness in his Boston hospital room a month ago, after a bomb blast had almost killed him.

He was healed. It was time to go home and get back to work. Be a cop again.

He set his water bottle back in his pack and zipped up the outer compartment. A solitary ray of sunshine penetrated the tangle of vines above him where once there'd been a thatched roof. He could hear the rush of the stream just outside the ruin.

And water splashing. Scoop shifted position on the rock, listening, but there was no doubt. Someone--or something--was tramping in the stream that wound down from the rocky, barren hills above Kenmare Bay. He hadn't seen anyone on his walk up from the cottage where he was staying on a quiet country lane.

He stood up. He could hear laughter now.

A woman's laughter.

Irish fairies, maybe? Out here on the southwest Irish coast, on the rugged Beara Peninsula, he could easily believe fairies were hiding in the greenery that grew thick on the banks of the stream.

He stepped over fallen rocks to the opening that had served as the only entrance to what once had been someone's home. He could feel a twinge of pain in his hip where shrapnel had cut deep when the bomb went off at the triple-decker he owned with Bob O'Reilly and Abigail Browning, two other Boston detectives. He had taken most of the blistering shards of metal and wood in the meatier parts of his back, shoulders, arms and legs, but one chunk had lodged in the base of his skull, making everyone nervous for a day or so. A millimeter this way or that, and he'd be dead instead of wondering if fairies were about to arrive at his Irish ruin for a visit.

He heard more water splashing and more female laughter.

"I know, I know." It was a woman, her tone amused, her accent American. "Of course I'd run into a big black dog up here in these particular hills."

In his two weeks in Ireland, Scoop had heard whispers about a large, fierce black dog occasionally turning up in the pastures above the small fishing and farming village. He'd seen only sheep and cows himself.

He peered into the gray mist. The morning sun was gone, at least for the moment. He'd learned to expect changeable weather. Brushed by the Gulf Stream, the climate of the Southwest was mild and wet, but he'd noticed on his walks that the flowers of summer were fading and the heather on the hills was turning brown.

"Ah." The woman again, still out of sight around a sharp bend in the stream. "You're coming with me, are you? I must be very close, then. Lead the way, my new friend."

The ruin was easy to miss amid the dense trees and under-growth on the banks of the stream. If he hadn't known where to look, Scoop would have gone right past it his first time out here.

A woman with wild, dark red hair ducked under the low-hanging branches of a gnarly tree. Ambling next to her in the shallow water was, indeed, a big black dog.

The woman looked straight at Scoop, and even in the gray light, he saw that she had bright blue eyes and freckles--a lot of freckles. She was slim and angular, her hair down to her shoulders, damp and tangled. She continued toward him, the dog staying close to her. She didn't seem particularly taken aback by finding a man standing in the doorway of the remote ruin. Scoop wouldn't blame her if she did. Even before the bomb blast, he had looked, according to friends and enemies alike, ferocious with his thick build, shaved head and general take-no-prisoners demeanor.

For sure, no one would mistake him for a leprechaun or a fairy prince.

Her left foot sank into a soft spot and almost ended up in the water. Mud stains came to the top of her wellies. "I saw footprints back there," she said cheerfully, pointing a slender hand in the direction she'd just come. "Since I've never run into a cow or a sheep that wears size-twelve shoes, I figured someone else was out here. A fine day for a walk, isn't it?"

"It is," Scoop said.

"I don't mind the outbreaks of rain." She tilted her head back, letting the mist collect on her face a moment, then smiled at him. "I don't do well in the sun."

Scoop stepped down from the threshold and nodded to the dog, still panting at her side. "Yours?"

"No, but he's a sweetheart. I suppose he could be aggressive if he or someone he cared about felt threatened."

A warning? Scoop noticed she wore a rain jacket the same shade of blue as her eyes and held an iPhone in one hand, perhaps keeping it available in case she needed to call for help. It would be easy to think it was still 1900 in this part of Ireland, but that would be a mistake. For one thing, the area had decent cell phone coverage.

"Looks as if you two have bonded."

"I think we have, indeed." She slipped the iPhone into a jacket pocket. "You're the detective who saved that girl's life when the bomb went off at your house in Boston last month--Wisdom, right? Detective Cyrus Wisdom?"

He was instantly on alert, but he kept his voice even. "Most people call me Scoop. And you would be?"

"Sophie--Sophie Malone. We have friends in common," she said, easing past him to the ruin. The dog stayed by the stream. "I'm from Boston originally. I'm an archaeologist."

"What kind of archaeologist?"

She smiled. "The barely employed kind. You're in Ireland to recuperate? I heard you were hurt pretty badly."

"I ended up here after attending a friend's wedding in Scotland a few weeks ago."

"Abigail Browning's wedding. She's the detective who was kidnapped when the bomb went off."

"I know who she is."

Sophie Malone seemed unfazed by his response. Abigail was still on her extended honeymoon with Owen Garrison, an international search-and-rescue expert with roots in Boston, Texas and Maine. Will Davenport had offered them his house in the Scottish Highlands for their long-awaited wedding, and they'd accepted, quickly gathering family and friends together in early September. Scoop, just out of the hospital, had had no intention of missing the ceremony.

"Wasn't it too soon for you to fly given your injuries?" Sophie asked.

"I got through it."

She studied him, her expression suggesting a focused, intelligent mind. He had on a sweatshirt and jeans, but she'd be able to see one of his uglier scars, a purple gash that started under his right ear and snaked around the back of his head. Finally she said, "It must be hard not to be in Boston with the various ongoing investigations. You have all the bad guys, though, right? They're either dead or under arrest--"

"I thought you said you were an archaeologist. How do you know all this?"

"I keep up with the news."

That, Scoop decided, wasn't the entire truth. He was very good--one of the best in the Boston Police Department--at detecting lies and deception, and if Sophie Malone wasn't exactly lying, she wasn't exactly telling the truth, either.