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Adrian adored Myles and had asked about him frequently in the initial months after his presumed death and betrayal. Josie had been prohibited from saying anything—that Myles was alive, dead, missing. And what had she known? Nothing, as it turned out. Just as well she’d stayed mum. Adrian had finally stopped asking, but only after telling Josie that he knew Myles would be back.
Keira carried an armload of blankets and sheets from the bedroom. “It’ll be like a sleepover. Girls’ night. We can have a pillow fight.”
Lizzie paused at the sink, and she and Josie both gaped at Keira as if she’d lost her mind. Girls’ night? A sleepover? A pillow fight?
“Don’t look so shocked,” Keira said with a laugh, dumping the linens in a heap on the sofa, her pale hair hanging in her face. “I’ve never been one for troops of girlfriends, I admit, but I do like having you both here. Two of us can share the bed and one can sleep on the sofa, or one in the bed, one on the sofa and one on a mat on the floor. It’ll work.”
“Of course it will,” Lizzie said, smiling.
Josie angled Lizzie a sharp look. “If you polish that kettle for one more second, you’ll rub a hole in it. What is it, Lizzie? What’s on your mind?”
Lizzie dropped her cloth and abandoned the kettle. She stared out the dark window above the sink. “I was just thinking about Sophie Malone.” She sighed and faced Josie again. “I’m forgetting something. I know I am, but I can’t think what it is.”
“Something important?” Josie asked.
“I hope not.”
Keira sank onto the sofa next to her heap of linens. “Sophie’s a Celtic archaeologist originally from Boston, and she’s participating in the folklore conference. I can understand that she’d want to see the ruin. She just happened to pick a morning Scoop was there.”
“Yes,” Lizzie said, “but that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it.”
Josie stood by the fire, welcomed its warmth on her back. “These days, nothing is ever quite as it seems, is it?”
Keira fingered the hem of an inexpensive sheet. “Sophie got to Scoop, don’t you think?”
“Is our Dr. Malone attractive?” Josie asked.
Keira blushed. “It’s not that.”
“Nonsense. It’s always ‘that.’”
Obviously preoccupied, Lizzie walked over to the pine table. “I didn’t know Sophie that well when she worked at our hotel in Boston.” She picked up a charcoal pencil from Keira’s array of art supplies, then immediately set it down again. “I know I’m missing something. I’ll remember, though.”
Of that, Josie had no doubt. Both Lizzie and Keira had faced considerable danger and violence since June and had come out on the other side in good shape.
Josie hadn’t faced anything more dangerous or violent than her email in-box.
“Are you going back to London tomorrow?” Keira asked her.
“I’ve no idea what I’m doing tomorrow,” Josie said, keeping any trace of bitterness out of her tone. “Today didn’t go as I expected. Why should tomorrow?”
Lizzie, obviously as restless as Josie was, pushed aside Myles’s pathetic Irish wolfhound drawing. “We can all drive to Dublin in the morning and have tea and scones at my family’s hotel there,” she said.
“You mean you want to talk to your cousin the doorman,” Keira said. “See if he can help you remember whatever it is about Sophie Malone you think is escaping you.”
Lizzie stood up straight. “We need to know exactly what her interest in your stone angel is.”
“It’s not my stone angel,” Keira said quietly. “It belongs to Irish legend now.”
Josie had noticed Keira struggle with her emotions since Simon’s departure. The upheavals of the past three months had to be finally catching up with her. She’d encountered a brutal killer, fallen in love with an FBI agent and learned of family secrets—the mysterious circumstances of her own conception here on the Beara Peninsula, a terrible murder thirty years ago that had haunted her mother and uncle. Before she’d had a chance to absorb all that, her life was again disrupted when Norman Estabrook decided to exact revenge. He’d trusted Simon, never once thinking he was an undercover FBI agent. As payback for what Estabrook regarded as Simon’s betrayal, he’d sent a killer after Keira. She and Lizzie had stopped him in the ancient stone circle just down the lane.
And now here we are again, Josie thought. Lizzie, hotelier and daughter of a spy. Keira, artist and folklorist. The two women were in love with dangerous men, and not a little dangerous themselves.
And me?
She was the enigmatic British spy, she thought with amusement and just a touch of bitterness. After Myles, she’d given up hope of having a normal relationship with a man.
Any relationship at the rate she’d been going for the past two years.
Now what? Myles was alive and he wasn’t a traitor, but nothing would ever be the same between them. There was no going back to their lives prior to his supposed death and treachery. He’d made his choices.
Lizzie sighed, shaking her head. “Stop kidding yourself, Josie.”
“What?”
“You’re as in love with Myles Fletcher as ever.”
“As ever? I’ve never been in love with him—”
Lizzie and even Keira burst into laughter. Josie suppressed a flicker of impatience. What did these two women know about her life? But she knew her mood had nothing to do with them and everything to do with those few minutes with Myles that afternoon. Being near him again after two years hadn’t been what she’d expected. She could almost feel his mouth on hers, his hands on her—the path to ruin, that sort of thinking.
“All right, then,” she said briskly. “It’s late and I’m hungry. What shall we fix for supper?”
Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “You’re blushing. A stiff-upper-lip MI6 agent—”
“I keep Will Davenport’s calendar,” she said with a mock sniff, “nothing more.”
“Myles will come back to you,” Keira said softly.
Josie snorted. First the bloody bastard had to live through the week. But she smiled and reached for her coat. “Shall we just head to the pub before Eddie O’Shea closes up for the night?”
Keira slipped on a long, thick sweater. “You’re not going to tell us where Myles, Simon and Will have gone, are you, Josie?”
“You’re assuming I know.”
“They’re not fishing in Scotland, that’s for sure,” Lizzie muttered.
She led the way out into the night. She looked as if she could have slept on bare rock in a gale and awakened fresh and ready to go. Josie found herself wanting to tell her new friends more about herself, but she knew she wouldn’t. Let them wonder about the true nature of her work without any confirmation or elaboration from her. That she wanted to chat with them just proved how comfortable she was with these two women.
Quite scary, actually.
Discovering Myles wasn’t dead or a traitor had thrown her off completely. She’d become so accustomed to shutting off any thought of him—any feeling. She couldn’t bear thinking about him. Then all of a sudden…there he was, mixed up with a dangerous American billionaire and chasing terrorists.
He’d never expected to survive this mission. She’d seen that in his gray eyes just a few hours ago.
Couldn’t she have found an easier man to love?
It was almost ten o’clock when they arrived at the pub. Eddie O’Shea was closing up, but he let them in and served them fish soup and warm brown bread that he said his no-account brother Patrick had made. Josie sat with Keira and Lizzie at a table by the peat fire, Eddie’s springer spaniel sleeping soundly on the hearth.
“You look worried,” Lizzie said.
Josie nibbled on one last bite of bread, liberally spread with Irish butter. “I have this terrible sense of foreboding.” She realized what a ridiculous and unhelpful thing that was to say and attempted a smile to cover for herself. “Perhaps it’s just due to an impending bad night on the sofa.”
“Don’t worry about Keira and me, all right? Do what you have to do.” Lizzie leaned back, as at ease in the simple Irish pub as she was in one of her family’s hotels—or Will Davenport’s mansion in the Scottish Highlands. “Keira and I can check with Colm Dermott in Cork on our way to Dublin and ask him about Sophie. We’ll be fine.”
Josie had no doubt about their abilities, but they would also follow a lead if one came to them. They were curious about Scoop Wisdom’s archaeologist. Just because he was a police officer who’d just recovered from serious injuries sustained in a bomb blast and just because Myles had been at Keira’s cottage didn’t mean there was any danger in asking questions about Sophie Malone.
Didn’t mean there wasn’t, either, Josie thought, tempted to order Irish whiskey to go with her soup and bread.
Keira twisted her hands together, as if they’d gone too long already without holding brushes and pencils. “It’s not as if I don’t have time to kill,” she said wistfully. “I haven’t a single image in my head to draw or paint.”
Josie recognized her new friend’s malaise for what it was—painter’s block. Perhaps a trip to Cork and Dublin would be a good distraction. It certainly wasn’t on the face of it unsafe, but as they headed out onto the dark, quiet lane, Josie couldn’t suppress what she could only describe as a chill up her spine.
She blamed Myles Fletcher and wished she’d ordered that whiskey after all.
6
Shannon, Ireland
S coop eased into the security line at Shannon Airport before the long flight back across the Atlantic. He’d stayed in a lousy hotel a few miles from the airport, its saving grace a full Irish breakfast that had helped chase off his bad dreams about scary dogs and mean fairies.
Definitely good to be heading home.
He spotted red hair about ten people ahead of him and immediately thought of Sophie Malone—not a reassuring sign of his state of mind before a seven-hour flight. He took another look, figuring he had to be wrong, but there she was—the redheaded archaeologist he’d met yesterday morning and a British spy had warned him about yesterday afternoon.
She grabbed a bin, turned and waved, smiling as if she’d expected to find him behind her in a line at the airport.
Scoop got through security and caught up with her in the busy duty-free shop. She wore slim black pants and a long dark gray sweater, a contrast to her muddy hiking clothes and bright blue rain jacket of yesterday. Her hair was pulled back but still had a wild look to it. He’d showered, shaved and put on his most comfortable khakis and lightweight sweater.
“We must be on the same flight,” he said.
“Lucky us.” She opened the glass door of a cooler and reached inside. “Water?”
“Yeah, thanks. Did you drive in this morning?”
She nodded. “My folks are staying in Kenmare. I took their rental car back, and they kept my car. They’re taking off for a few days to hike the Kerry Way. Doesn’t that sound idyllic?”
“You mean more idyllic than spending the day on a crowded flight across the Atlantic?”
“You have a wry sense of humor, Scoop,” Sophie said, leading the way to the cash registers with two bottles of water. She’d bought the biggest size. “The head-winds add time to flying west. It’s so much easier flying to Ireland than flying home from Ireland.”
“You seem like an experienced traveler.”
“I guess so. In some ways it feels as if I’m leaving home rather than going home.”
Scoop reached for his wallet, but she shook her head, insisting on paying for both bottles of water herself. As she fished out euros, his cell phone vibrated in the front pocket of his carry-on pack. He stepped out of the line and took the call.
“According to one of Will’s friends in London,” Josie Goodwin said, “Sophie Malone is booked on the same flight to Boston as you are.”
“So she is,” Scoop said.
“Standing right there, is she?”
“Yep. What friend in London?”
“Lord Davenport knows all kinds. I also learned that Dr. Malone met just last week with an octogenarian expert in art theft.”
“Is he another of Davenport’s London friends?”
“Not exactly. Our octogenarian’s name is Wendell Sharpe. He frequently consults with INTERPOL. He and Dr. Malone had tea at the Rush Hotel off St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin. Odd coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Not after yesterday. What did they discuss?”
“I don’t know yet. She’s a legitimate academic. Quite well respected. She recently completed her dissertation and a postdoctoral fellowship here in Ireland. Her field is the Celtic Iron Age, particularly in Ireland and Great Britain. She’s an expert in Celtic visual arts.”
“Does she like sugar in her tea?”
“Lemon,” Josie said.
Scoop had no idea if she were kidding. “Who does she know in Ireland? Who are her friends here?”
“We’re working on that.”
“We?”
Josie sighed. “Keira has painter’s block, and Lizzie’s bored.”
“They aren’t law enforcement,” Scoop said. “Or spies.”
“Neither am I. I work for a British aristocrat. I plan his fishing and golf trips.”
“Where are you three now?”
“Keira and Lizzie are en route to Dublin via Cork. I’m still at Keira’s cottage.”
Collecting reports from her spy friends, no doubt. Scoop noticed Sophie had finished paying for the water and was heading toward him. He had a sudden bad feeling about her—Myles’s visit, what she was holding back. “Stay put,” he told Josie. “Get Lizzie and Keira back there. You can all chase rainbows and drink Guinness.”
“You can be quite annoying, can’t you, Detective Wisdom?”
“What? I wouldn’t mind chasing rainbows and drinking Guinness.”
But Josie Goodwin had hung up.
Sophie joined him and handed him his bottle of water. “Try to drink every drop on the flight,” she said, shoving her own bottle into an outer compartment of her shoulder bag. “It’ll help.”
“Mostly I was passed out on pain meds on my flight from Boston to Scotland.” Except when he and Bob O’Reilly, who was in the seat next to him, had discussed how a bomb had ended up on Abigail’s back porch. Scoop slid his phone back in his carry-on. “Guess who that call was about?”
“No idea.”
