Deadly Gift

by Heather Graham

  It was almost Christmas, and she was being forced to leave.

  To go far across the Atlantic.

  To find a would-be killer.

  And the man with the extraordinary eyes would be there—just as he would soon be here. And she was afraid, she realized.

  Afraid of being found out.

  No, she told herself. It would never happen. Michael would never let it happen.

  She took a deep breath. She was going to be a nurse in Rhode Island, and that was that.

  It would be fun, she told herself. This was the holiday season, and she was going to spend it in America.

  Oh, yeah. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas.

  She glanced at her watch again and knew that she had to hurry or she would be late for her other assignment.

  And there really was no such thing as being late.

  It simply wasn’t accepted.

  Not for this assignment.

  3

  Zach stared thoughtfully out the window as he felt the plane’s landing gear slip into place. Dublin. He hadn’t been here in a long time, but it was a city he loved, where the old mingled with the new, and history, some of it painful and all of it a lesson in the ways of man, seemed to be waiting around every corner. But there was one thing he especially adored about this capital city of the Irish Republic. The music. He’d encountered some of the most melodic voices he had ever heard in the Dublin pubs. There was real heart in Irish music, heart and passion. What could be wrong with coming to a city where he was guaranteed a good pint and fine music?

  Nothing.

  Still, it wasn’t the music that had brought him here, it was his friendship with Kat, and his fear that maybe she wasn’t overreacting because she hated her stepmother, that someone really was after Sean.

  Right now, as much as he loved Dublin, he was chafing to get Sean O’Riley safely home, then find out what the hell had happened to Eddie. He’d been just about to board the plane when Kat called him—hysterical—to tell him that the boat had been found, but Eddie had not been aboard, and there had been no obvious signs of what had happened to him.

  Zach had also talked to Sean, who was convinced that it was just exhaustion from the flight, combined with something he’d eaten, but nothing the least bit threatening, that had caused his illness. He knew his daughter distrusted his wife, but Sean himself was quite certain he was in no danger from Amanda.

  He was worried about Eddie, and that only made Zach worry more.

  He, too, was far more worried about Eddie than he was about the possibility of Amanda trying to kill Sean. The way he saw things, the woman didn’t have the intelligence or the nerve to be a cunning killer.

  “Ah, there’s my Dublin,” said the elegant older woman at his side, interrupting his thoughts.

  “It’s certainly a beautiful city,” Zach said, turning to her with a smile. She’d spoken only four words, but there was a lilt to them, a melody in every word that made the Irish accent different from all others.

  She smiled back, and he saw the plethora of wrinkles—many of them clearly laugh lines—in her face and wondered just how old she was.

  It was as if she read his mind. “I’m ninety-two. Old enough. And weary. But glad to be home.” She pointed out the window. “Many a protest was held there, and blood flowed in the streets, but that was a long time ago. We’re finding peace now. Even in the north, we’re finding peace.” She flashed him a knowing smile. “Can’t be havin’ tourism without peace, and can’t be makin’ good money without tourism.”

  “It’s the way of the world,” he assured her.

  “American-Irish?” she asked him, indicating his auburn hair.

  He laughed. “We’re all a bit Irish in America, I think—at least on St. Patrick’s Day. My name is Flynn, but my father’s family goes way back in the States. My mom was Irish, though.” He frowned suddenly, looking past her. It had seemed as if a shadow had walked by, down the aisle of the plane. It must have been a trick of the light, he thought, as the plane canted, turning for its final approach to the runway.

  “So are you coming home, then?” she asked.

  He shook his head, but something about her expression touched him. “I’m only here to travel home with a friend who got sick right after he arrived.” And whose daughter thinks her stepmother is trying to kill him.

  “I see. Bringing him home for Christmas,” she said softly.

  “Well, bringing him home, yes. And it is nearly Christmas,” Zach agreed.

  She offered him a hand. “I’m Maeve.”

  “Nice to meet you, Maeve. I’m Zach.”

  “Well, I’m comin’ home for Christmas,” she said. “The old music, the old ways.” She smiled at him. “Home is a fine place to be.”

  “Isn’t home where the heart is?” he asked her with a smile.

  She laughed quietly. “Aye, and my heart and home are both here, and that’s a fact, lad. Those I love are here, and Dublin…it’s what made me, and my lads and lasses are here, and their lads and lasses, and their little ones, so…”

  He nodded his understanding.

  “And where is home for you?” she asked him.

  He hesitated, surprising himself. Home. Where was his home now? Interesting question.

  “My folks passed away a long time ago,” he told her.

  “Ah,” she said softly, understandingly.

  “I have two brothers, and they both have great wives. We grew up in Florida, and now one lives in New Orleans, and one is in Salem, Massachusetts. I still spend a lot of time in Miami.”

  “And you miss your brothers,” she said sagely, nodding.

  He laughed. “No, I see them all the time. We work together.”

  “A family business,” she said with delight, then frowned, confused. “But however do you manage that, all livin’ in different places and the like?”

  “Computers. And…we were all in law enforcement, then left what we were doing to form an investigative agency, so we’re traveling all the time anyway,” he explained.

  “Delving into the unknown,” she said.

  “The unknown is usually known—by someone,” Zach said. “We find the things that someone else missed or overlooked.” He was startled when she reached for his hand and studied his fingers.

  “A musician, too,” she told him.

  He laughed, surprised. “Maeve, you ever need a job, you call me. You’re good.”

  “The singing detective?” she suggested.

  “Nothing like that. I play guitar. I suppose I can carry a tune. But I run a small record label and a few studios. That’s where my talents lie.”

  The flight attendant came on the P.A. to welcome them to Ireland. There was a jolt just as they landed, and Maeve, who still had his hand, grasped it tightly as her cheeks turned ashen.

  “It was just a gust of wind as we came in,” he assured her.

  She flashed him a smile. “Just felt a shade o’darkness there, that’s all, lad. A shadow on the heart.”

  He squeezed her hand in return. “It was just the wind,” he repeated.

  A shadow on the heart? he thought. Well, she was ninety-two, he reminded himself.

  Odd turn of phrase, though, considering that he’d thought he’d seen a real shadow in the aisle.

  Their flight had been an overnighter, and when he looked out the window again, the sun was coming up high.

  A few seconds later, the sound of a hundred seatbelts unbuckling was like a strange, offbeat chorus. He stood and helped Maeve get her small bag from the compartment above her seat, then bade her goodbye and good luck, and went for his own suitcase. He strode off the plane, thinking he would head straight to the hospital and check in on Sean before doing anything else.

  It had been several years since he’d been in Dublin, but the airport hadn’t changed. He headed for customs, and watched as Maeve made her way toward the line for nationals. He blinked, thinking that he saw a shadow hovering near her. A shadow? In the brightly lit airport?


  Jet lag. Had to be jet lag.

  He turned away, then turned back.

  Odd, out of the corner of his eye, he’d thought that he’d seen something else. An impression. A woman’s face. Beautiful, with pitch-black hair and cobalt eyes, and features like Helen of Troy, pure perfection.

  There were women all over the airport, he told himself dryly. A dark-haired woman rushing by Maeve, a young blonde excusing herself as she, too, moved quickly, and a fortyish matron who paused to speak. Zach couldn’t hear her from where he stood, but from the looks of things, he was pretty sure the woman had asked Maeve if she needed any help. He would have helped her himself, but he was a tourist and had to go through a different line.

  Maeve accepted a hand from the woman, and Zach smiled. Every once in a while you saw something that restored your faith in humanity. His smile faded. He hadn’t seen it all that often lately, though maybe that was due to the work he’d chosen.

  He’d worked forensics in Miami, and what he’d seen there hadn’t been good. But he’d put in his time, and he’d been damn good at his job. But when he’d heard his brothers’ proposal to open an agency, he’d been ready. He’d told Aidan he was ready to throw in with them the same day a crackhead had decided that microwaving his infant son would make him quit crying.

  But there were decent people in the world, too, and he had to remember that. Like the woman who had helped Maeve. Like Sean O’Riley, who had been there after his parents had died, when Aidan was struggling to keep himself, Jeremy and Zach together as a family.

  The woman was still there helping Maeve when he made his way to baggage claim. She was the one who cried out when Maeve suddenly fell.

  There were no velvet ropes, gates or nationalities separating them then. Zach raced to Maeve’s side. She gripped his arm when he bent to help her, and he knelt by her side, his training kicking in as he loosened her collar, testing her pulse.

  She smiled up at him. “I’m almost home,” she said. “And it’s all right. I can hear the music, and the banshee’s whispered in my ear. It’s time. The luck o’the Irish be with you, my fine, kind lad.” She reached up and trailed a finger over his face, then shuddered, and her eyes closed.

  “Maeve?” He gently leaned his ear against her chest. She wasn’t breathing, and the quick pressure of his fingers against her throat told him that she had no pulse. He told the woman who had helped Maeve to call emergency services, then started counting, pinching Maeve’s nose shut and breathing into her mouth. He kept at it, but well before the emergency crew came to take over, he knew she was gone.

  He stood there, watching the men work, watching as the sweet woman was declared dead at the scene. She’d wanted to come home, he told himself, and she had.

  He had a sense of someone watching him, which was a little ridiculous. Half the people in the airport had been staring at him. But he turned and thought that he saw someone slipping around the corner.

  Of course, he thought irritably. Lots of people were slipping around the corner. They were leaving the airport.

  He spoke with the authorities about Maeve, and they thanked him for all that he had done, though he hadn’t really done anything, he thought in disgust. Maeve was dead.

  He told himself that it had been her time. She had lived a long and good life.

  Still, he couldn’t just shake off her death. He collected his luggage and headed around the corner himself, in hopes that the car he had reserved was waiting.

  As he exited the building, he saw the sign in Gaelic and English.

  Eire. Cead mile failte. Ireland. A hundred-thousand welcomes.

  Outside, he breathed a sigh of relief when he found his car. It was parked right next to a sign that advertised a pub whose slogan was Paddy’s! May the luck o’ the Irish be with you.

  He greeted the driver and slid into the back of the sedan, thinking that he didn’t believe in luck, Irish or otherwise.

  He did believe in the good and evil that resided in men’s hearts, and he was anxious to reach Sean, anxious to get him home, anxious to find Eddie. That was what he needed to concentrate on right now.

  He checked his phone for messages. There was a text from Aidan, who had contacted an old associate in Dublin, who was keeping an eye on things at the hospital. The man’s name was Will Travis, and he was posing as an orderly to see that nothing else happened to Sean while he was there. Zach clicked his phone shut. He enjoyed working with his brothers. Their past careers made for good contacts in their present one. Aidan, as a former FBI agent, had some particularly useful ones.

  He tried to keep his mind on the current problem, but as they drove to the hospital, he found that he was mourning Maeve, a woman he had barely known, and who had, in her own words, gone home.

  “Hey there, you’re not looking so bad!”

  Caer had been sitting at Sean’s side, listening to his tales of Rhode Island, when she heard the voice. Deep, resonant, pleasant. A rich tenor. No real accent, other than American.

  At first he didn’t even seem to notice her. He just strode into the room and over to Sean’s side, which gave her a chance to examine him.

  Tall, lean, clearly well-muscled but not bulked-up. She knew him immediately, of course, from the photograph and the color of his hair. Like his voice, something about that deep, rich color was compelling in itself.

  “Zach, you’ve made it, lad. You didn’t need to come, you know. That girl of mine, such a worrier. Bothering you to come over here when I’m right as rain,” Sean announced. But his pleasure at Zachary’s arrival was evident in the broad smile and the fact that his eyes had brightened like diamonds.

  “Not a problem, Sean. Hey, who’s going to complain about a trip back to Dublin? It was just a good excuse for me to come over for a few days,” Zach said easily in reply to Sean. He, too, was smiling, and it was obvious that his words were genuine. Caring for an old friend was clearly not a bother for him but a pleasure.

  Finally his eyes lit on Caer.

  He started, as if he recognized her, as if he’d seen her before. Maybe not. Perhaps he was just startled by anyone else being there at all. Or because she was there, not Sean’s supposedly loving wife. Or maybe, there was just something about her that looked familiar to him.

  She recognized his eyes, though. They were the same true aquamarine she had seen in the picture, but even more powerful in person, as hypnotic as the sea, as deeply changeable. She felt as if he had the ability to look right through her.

  She stared back, forcing herself to remain serene, expressionless, and prayed that her own eyes were every bit as enigmatic as his. Still, it felt as if time had stopped for a moment, for just a heartbeat. Should she know him? He’d been in Dublin before. Maybe it was one of those things where she had passed him once in the street and somehow the image had remained in her mind.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Maybe she’d imagined the whole time-had-skipped-a-heartbeat thing. He sounded friendly but nothing more, certainly not as if he thought he should know her.

  She rose from the bedside chair, extending a hand. “Hello. Welcome to Ireland. I’m Caer Cavannaugh. How do you do?”

  “Zachary Flynn. And fine, thank you.”

  Naturally he had a great, firm handshake, she thought as she returned it.

  “Caer’s the world’s loveliest and most patient nurse,” Sean explained.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, her attention all for Zach Flynn, who was definitely studying her now. She felt as if she were blushing. Good God, how ridiculous. She didn’t blush.

  “Mr. O’Riley’s too kind,” she said smoothly. “Well, I’ll let you two get on with it. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Flynn.”

  “Zach,” he said.

  “Zach,” she repeated.

  “Caer is accompanying us home,” Sean told Zach. He sounded gleeful. Like a little kid who had just acquired a toy that would make all the other kids jealous.

  “Yes, Kat mentioned something about you tra
veling with a nurse,” Zach said, still looking at Caer. “Have you been to the States before?” he asked her.

  “Never. It will be quite a journey for me,” she told him pleasantly.

  “Quite an opportunity,” he said.

  Still that smooth tone to his voice. Lulling. But was there also a note of suspicion in it?

  “Indeed,” she agreed. “Well, if you’ll excuse me…?”

  She left the room, but as she slipped out, she heard Sean say, “This is foolish. You having to come all the way here, just for me.”

  She paused in the hallway, just out of sight, to listen.

  “Kat is worried about you.”

  “She should have come herself.”

  Caer sensed Zach’s hesitation. At last he said, “She didn’t feel it would be in anyone’s best interest if she came.”

  “Oh, that child! I love her, but she’s absolutely convinced that Amanda married me for my money and is just waiting for me to die.”

  Zach didn’t bother to deny it.

  “She’s overprotective,” Sean said.

  “She loves you,” Zach told him.

  Caer could see Sean, in her mind’s eye, waving a hand impatiently in the air. “She should have a little faith in me. I’m not a doddering old fool. I’m not desperate for love and affection—or sex.” He paused, then went on. “The thing is, you’re here—where you shouldn’t be—to protect me, when I’m not the one in trouble. Eddie is. You should be in Newport, trying to figure out what the hell happened to him.”

  Caer continued to hover just outside the doorway, listening.

  “Sean, the sooner we can get back, the better chance we’ll have of discovering what happened,” Zach said.

  Caer heard just a hint of impatience in the man’s tone, telling her that he felt he should already be on the trail of the man who had disappeared.

  “Eddie’s got to be all right,” Sean said.

  There was silence. She knew that Zach didn’t think Eddie was all right, and he wasn’t going to lie to Sean and say that he did.

  Sean spoke again. “Who the hell would want to kill an old geezer like Eddie? He’s never hurt anyone. People love him. Maybe he was swept overboard and picked up by someone else. Maybe he lost his memory.”