The Angel

by Carla Neggers

  cious sort. He could simply be worried that one of the

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  269 health club patrons would overhear him and question his discretion as a manager.

  But Abigail suspected Zytka’s nervousness had more to do with Victor Sarakis’s death and Liam Butler’s behavior that night. “We can talk in your office if you’d like—”

  “I checked the log, Detective Browning,” he said without looking at her as he unfolded the towel. “Liam Butler took out a membership two months ago. I can give you the exact date if you want. Since then, he comes several times a week, sometimes twice in the same day.”

  “If he was helping out upstairs—”

  “He shows up here on days he doesn’t work. I checked with my staff, and they’ve noticed. My opinion?” Zytka sucked in a breath and plunged ahead. “I think he’s been spying on the Augustines.”

  “He couldn’t just be training for a marathon?”

  “No. I know the difference.”

  Abigail stood back a moment. “Mr. Zytka, did Liam Butler or the Augustines ever discuss angels or devils or evil with you?”

  Zytka was so startled, his elbow jerked and struck the tower of towels, toppling several of them. He caught them as they fell and shook his head. “No—no, nothing like that. Detective, what—”

  “Listen, thanks for your time,” Abigail said, leaving her card for him on the counter. “If you think of anything else, call me, okay?”

  “I will.” He rubbed the back of his lean neck and suddenly seemed less sure of himself. “Listen, I don’t want to get Liam into trouble if he just—you know. If he didn’t do anything. I’m not accusing him…”

  Abigail thanked him again for his time, and left. When she got back out to her car, she called Tom Yar­

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  borough. She’d avoided him when she’d seen Simon. “Can you meet me at Victor Sarakis’s house?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sarakis’s assistant was at a health club down the street from the Public Garden the night he drowned. Liam Butler. He hasn’t told the truth.”

  “Give me the address,” Yarborough said. “I’ll get in touch with Cambridge PD and meet you there.”

 
  Near Mount Monadnock

  Southern New Hampshire

  12:30 p.m., EDT

  June 24

  Eileen Sullivan belted out the words to one Irish song after another as she stacked wood in front of her cabin. She could hear the Clancy Brothers in her mind, although she couldn’t remember the last time she’d played a CD, listened to a radio. Her voice was terrible—Keira couldn’t sing a note, either. They weren’t the ones in the family with the musical talent.

  A cool wind kicked up, and for a moment, Eileen let herself think it was a breeze off Kenmare Bay on her face. She shut her eyes and pictured herself dancing in an ancient stone circle above a quiet, gray harbor on the Beara Penin­

  sula, and she hugged a log to her chest as if somehow it could bring her there—back to Ireland, back in time. Before Deirdre’s death.

  That monster had Deirdre when I danced that night. 272

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  Eileen opened her eyes. She tried to sing again, but the words didn’t come. She’d hoped singing and sweating and praying would finally chase away the demons that had been crawling over her since Keira’s visit. Her distress wasn’t Keira’s fault—none of it was her fault. How could it be, when she didn’t even know about Deirdre? I should have told Keira about her. About Deirdre’s awful death, yes, but, even more so, about her life.

  “You’ll go to Ireland and have adventures. Oh, Eileen! I know you’ll have the adventures of your life there.You’ll have to tell me everything when you get home.” They’d laughed and planned some of the adventures Eileen would have—seeing the Cliffs of Mohr, kissing the Blarney Stone, finding long-lost cousins. Tracking down the village where Patsy McCarthy’s story of the three brothers and the stone angel was to be Eileen’s biggest adventure.

  “You have to go alone. You know you do, Eileen. You’ll never find the hermit monk’s ruin if you don’t. That’ll be half the fun of it, going alone will. You can feel it’s the thing to do, can’t you?”

  Deirdre had always had a gift of knowing. Not true prophecy in the way Eileen had been taught its meaning, but simply of knowing—of understanding people, opening herself to see into their hearts. Her intuition in those weeks before Eileen had left for Ireland had been keen, unrelenting.

  “If something happens to me while you’re in Ireland, promise me you won’t regret a thing. Please, Eileen. Promise me.”

  Eileen blinked back tears, remembering how she’d refused that one request on the grounds that such a promise would somehow jinx Deirdre. In the years since her death, Eileen had come to see that Deirdre hadn’t had a premo­

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  273 nition about her imminent murder. She hadn’t known she was being stalked. It was just Deirdre being Deirdre—she was a nurse’s aide, and she’d lost her father as a teenager, knew her mother had lost a sister young. Every day was to be treasured.

  She also had known Eileen, how hard she could be on herself—how undeserving she often felt. That was her nature, and Deirdre, with her uncanny ability to look into people’s hearts, had only wanted her friend to have a good time in Ireland. To trust herself to let go and come home with no regrets.

  What had Deirdre seen when she’d looked into her killer’s heart?

  “Stuart Fuller.”

  Eileen spoke his name aloud to remind herself of his humanity. A supernatural creature hadn’t murdered Deirdre. A man had made the deliberate choice to stalk her, kidnap her, torture, rape and kill her.

  Tears spilling down her cheeks, Eileen set the log on her woodpile. She needed to get back to work on the illumi­

  nated manuscript. She’d decided to shift to another, happier passage and leave aside serpents for the moment. For most of the past week, she’d been preoccupied with finding the perfect one to illustrate the Fall of Adam and Eve. No wonder I keep thinking about demons. Eileen brushed her tears with her sleeve. Seeing an ordinary snake curled up on a sunny rock that morning had helped perk her up. It was a part of the natural order of life out on her wooded hillside.

  She looked at the beautiful landscape, focusing on a robin perched on a hemlock branch. She found comfort in her solitude, in her routines and rituals. They quieted her mind and eased her soul.

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  To a point, anyway.

  “You have to look for the village, Eileen. Imagine if you find the angel! How happy Mum would be.” Eileen smiled now, shaking off her melancholy as she thought of her daughter in Ireland, having adventures of her own.

  She stacked the last of the wood and propped her splitter against the chopping block, then headed back into her cabin. She’d clean up, and then she’d sketch angels. She didn’t have Keira’s artistic gifts—her spark, her joy of drawing, painting, creating. It was all hard work for Eileen, but that wouldn’t have bothered her if the results were what she wanted. But they never were. She would put her heart and soul into this one illuminated manuscript, and that would be it. No more.

  She peeled off her zip-front sweatshirt and tossed it on the back of her work stool.

  A sound distracted her.

  She went still, listening.

  Music…

  The sound of a harp, playing a melody so sweet it seemed to pierce her straight to her soul, floated through her tiny cabin.

  Eileen placed a hand on her worktable, steadying herself. She heard a whisper now.

  “Deirdre Ita…she died for your sins, Eileen…you know she did…”

  And she turned, she gasped.

  A stone statue stood on the hearth of her woodstove. An angel.

 
  Kenmare, Southwest Ireland

  5:35 p.m., IST

  June 24
<
br />   Eddie O’Shea waited impatiently for Mary Feeney, his cousin Joe’s wife, to finish checking a middle-aged American couple into the midpriced inn right in the heart of Kenmare. It wasn’t as fancy as the busy town’s five-star hotels, but, with its sleek modern furnishings, it was fancy enough. Eddie liked Kenmare all right but couldn’t wait to finish his business there and get back home. The couple went merrily off to their room, and he stepped forward to Mary’s desk and gave her his friendli­

  est smile. “Do you believe in fate, Mary?”

  “No.”

  She was just twenty-nine and had the prettiest red hair Eddie had ever seen, but she’d always been a bit of a shrew as far as he was concerned. “Well, I do, and it’s fate that brings me here. I’ve never asked anything of you, have I? And I wouldn’t now, except I’ve no choice. The guards’ll 276

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  be coming for me before sundown if I don’t figure some­

  thing out.”

  She raised her pale blue eyes to him. “I hope they throw away the key.”

  He grinned in an attempt to soften her up a little. “Oh, come, Mary, what would you do without family?”

  “Enjoy my life,” she said, then sighed behind her elegant desk. “What can I do for you, Eddie?”

  “Look up an American who was here on the summer solstice.”

  “Name?”

  “I don’t have a name.”

  “Then I can’t help you.”

  “At least I think it’s a man we’re looking for—”

  “You’re looking for,” Mary said. True enough. “He wore a black sweater with a zipper, and he stayed here by himself. He ate dinner in your res­

  taurant. I have the receipt—”

  “You do? Well, then—”

  “Part of the receipt, I should say. It’s been torn.” By a mysterious black dog…but Eddie wasn’t going into that with someone as without imagination as Mary Feeney.

  “There’s no credit-card number or room number.”

  Mary rolled her eyes in clear disgust. “Eddie, I’m not a miracle worker. I can’t be expected to remember a man because of his sweater.”

  But Eddie was determined, and he smiled big for her.

  “What if I told you he lost his wallet and there’ll be a reward?”

  “It sounds as if he lost his sweater.”

  She could cover for her shrewish nature with wit and humor when it suited her. The sweater wasn’t lost, Eddie thought. It’d been ripped off its wearer by Keira Sullivan’s black dog, who’d bolted out of the roses in front of her

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  277 cottage not three hours ago and dropped the sweater at Eddie’s feet. It was torn and bloody, and Eddie wasn’t taking any chances by giving it to the guards and getting himself locked up. He’d collected Patrick and Aidan, and they’d smuggled him off to Kenmare.

  “If it was a wallet your man lost,” Mary said, all superior and sarcastic, “you wouldn’t need me to find out his name and address for you, now, would you?”

  “I’ve never been a good liar.”

  “Your only charm, Eddie.” She faced her computer monitor and clicked keys, her lips pursed in that sour way of hers. “In any event, this man’s not the sort who’d offer a reward for anything.”

  “Ah. You do remember him.”

  “I do, indeed,” she said softly, then eyed Eddie, a gray look to her fair skin now. “You’ll stand here all night if I don’t help you.”

  “You have a bad feeling about him, don’t you, Mary?”

  Before she could answer, a lean, fair-haired man walked up to Mary’s desk. She blushed, and, married woman or not, Eddie couldn’t blame her. The man was good-looking and obviously belonged in one of the five-star hotels, not Mary’s little inn.

  Instead of greeting Mary, he turned to Eddie. “My name’s Will Davenport,” he said, his accent identifying him as an upper-class Brit. “Simon Cahill sent me.”

  Eddie wasn’t as shocked as he might have been at mention of the big, black-haired Yank who’d come to Keira’s rescue.

  “You’re Eddie O’Shea, aren’t you?” Davenport asked. Eddie tried not to gape at the man. “How did you—”

  “You and your brothers are too honest not to leave a trail.”

  Somewhere in Will Davenport’s words was a compli­

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  ment, Eddie thought, but no matter. At least he was getting no more argument from Mary.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Eddie asked. Davenport didn’t hesitate or look miffed. “Simon got into an argument about Irish weather when he was at your pub the other night. He says everyone liked him, regardless.”

  That sounded like Keira Sullivan’s black-haired rescuer, but Eddie was still wary.

  “All right, then,” Davenport said. “Seamus Harrigan is the name of the Garda inspector looking into what happened in your village.”

  “That’s not hard to find out.”

  The Brit’s hazel eyes narrowed, and Eddie detected a seriousness about him—a competence that went beyond getting his brothers to rat him out. Davenport said quietly,

  “The woman who told Keira Sullivan the story that brought her to Ireland was found murdered this morning in Boston.”

  Mary gasped, and Eddie, an awful sickness in his stomach, stood up straight, and put out his hand. “It’s good to meet you, Will Davenport. I could use any help you have to offer before this devil strikes again.”

 
  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  12:40 p.m., EDT

  June 24

  As Abigail mounted the front steps to Victor Sarakis’s Cambridge house, she was struck by how abandoned the place looked. The grass was taller. Dandelions blew in the afternoon breeze. He was just a week dead, and his home looked more than merely neglected. It looked as if he’d died without anyone in the world who’d cared about him. Liam Butler’s car was in the driveway, but obviously he hadn’t worked up the energy or focus—or whatever it would take—to get out the lawn mower.

  Or shut the door, Abigail thought, noticing that it was slightly ajar.

  She rang the doorbell and waited a few seconds. When there was no answer, she knocked, the door swinging open about a foot.

  But as she started to announce herself, she heard music coming from the direction of the devil room. 280

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  Irish music.

  It was a kick-up-your-heels tune that sounded familiar but she couldn’t name.

  Why would Irish music be playing in Victor Sarakis’s house?

  The music paused, and Abigail could hear laughter and talking now—kids.

  “It’s just not there yet. Let’s go through it one more time, okay, guys?”

  Fiona.

  Abigail stifled a gasp, recognizing the voices of Fiona O’Reilly and her musician friends.

  A tape?

  Drawing her weapon, Abigail stepped into the foyer.Yar­

  borough and the Cambridge PD would be here any minute. The music started again, and she noticed the pocket doors to the devil room were wide open. She couldn’t see anyone…it had to be a recording.

  But where? And why?

  Pushing back an image of Bob if he’d been with her, she followed the music into the room with its disturbing col­

  lection of devil imagery. On the far wall, the door to the climate-controlled room stood partially open like an invi­

  tation—a temptation.

  Fiona shrieked with laughter, she and her friends finding delight in having just messed up the piece they were practicing.

  Abigail stepped into a small, dark, windowless room. With her free hand, she felt the side wall and switched on an overhead light. The room was obviously once a large closet that had been converted into this climatecontrolled space. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were crammed with more items that reflected Victor Sarakis’s interests.

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  281 The music a
nd the voices of Fiona O’Reilly and her friends were coming from a tape recorder set up on an oak desk. It was a trick, Abigail thought. A mind game by someone who’d expected her, who wanted to unnerve her. Oh, God.

  Photographs—a dozen of them, at least, tacked to a bulletin board propped against the leg of a desk. Fiona…Madeleine O’Reilly, Jayne O’Reilly. Bob’s daughters.

  There was blond-haired Fiona in front of the Garrison house on Beacon Street.

  Red-headed Madeleine at soccer practice. Little blond Jayne eating an ice cream cone in Lexing­

  ton with her friends.

  Abigail steadied herself. Where the hell was Liam Butler? She headed back out into the main room and reached for her cell phone with her free hand, dialing Scoop. “I need to put you in charge of finding Bob’s daughters. All three of them. Owen’s with Fiona on Beacon Hill. I have no idea where Madeleine and Jayne are.”

  “What about Keira?”

  “Find her, too.” There were no pictures of Keira on the bulletin board, but Abigail wasn’t taking any chances. As unemotionally as possible, she described the scene at Sarakis’s house. “Yarborough’s on the way with the Cam­

  bridge guys.”

  Scoop swore under his breath. “What else can I do?”

  “I haven’t told Bob yet.” It’d be tough, telling Bob, and she needed to stay focused on what she was doing. “Find him, Scoop. Find him now. Tell him.”

  “It’s done.”

  She stepped out into the main hall, her gun still drawn. 282

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  “Scoop, I don’t know what’s real and what’s a mind game. This creep—”

  “Doesn’t matter right now. We cover all the bases until we know what’s going on. Be careful, Abigail. Wait for Yarborough.”

  But she saw blood smeared on the hardwood floor and heard a moan down the hall. Butler? One of the O’Reilly girls? “I can’t wait.”