The Whisper f-4

by Carla Neggers

  A fat, woolly sheep appeared on the steep hillside above him. Scoop grinned. "Yeah, pal, it's me again."

  The sheep stayed put. Scoop looked out across Kenmare Bay to the jagged outline of the Macgillicuddy Reeks on the much larger Iveragh Peninsula. He'd driven its famous Ring of Kerry and done a few hikes over there, but he'd spent most of his time in Ireland on the Beara.

  He continued across the steep pasture to another fence. He climbed over it onto a dirt track that led straight downhill to the village. As he passed a Beware Of Bull sign tacked to a fence post, a movement caught his eye. He paused, squinting through the gray mist. Across the pasture, he saw a large black dog lope through the middle of an ancient stone circle and disappear into a stand of trees.

  It had to be the same dog he'd seen with Sophie Malone.

  The mysterious redheaded archaeologist was nowhere in sight, but Scoop knew--he couldn't explain how but he knew--he'd be seeing her again.

  He smiled to himself. Maybe fairies had put a spell on him.

  2

  Kenmare, Southwest Ireland

  Sophie didn't let down her guard until she reached Kenmare.

  She drove straight to the town pier, parked and pried her fingers off the steering wheel. As if the black dog hadn't been enough to remind her she was out of her element on the Beara, she'd had to run into a suspicious, absolute stud of a Boston detective.

  She exhaled, calming herself. Going out to Keira Sullivan's ruin would have been enough of a heart-pounding experience all by itself, without Scoop Wisdom. He was as tough, straightforward and no-nonsense as she'd expected from the accounts of the violence in Boston over the summer, but he'd looked as if he'd been awaiting the arrival of ghosts or fairies.

  He'd gotten her instead.

  And what was she?

  She hadn't lied. She was an archaeologist. But she hadn't told him everything--not by far--and obviously he knew it.

  Sophie got out of her little car and paused to watch a rainbow arc across the sky high above the bay. The yellow, orange, red and lavender-blue streaks deepened and brightened, tugging at her emotions. She'd miss Irish rainbows when she was back in Boston.

  She shook off her sudden melancholy. She was leaving tomorrow, and her parents and twin sister were arriving in Kenmare later that afternoon for a send-off dinner. In the meantime, getting weepy over Irish rainbows wasn't on her ever-expanding to-do list.

  She squinted out at the boats in the harbor. The Irish name for the village was Neidin, which translated as "little nest," an apt description for its location at the base of the Cork and Kerry mountains.

  "Aha," she said aloud when she recognized Tim O'Donovan's rugged commercial fishing boat tied to the pier. The old boat looked as if it would sink before it got halfway out of the harbor, but she knew from experience that it could handle rough seas.

  She spotted Tim by a post and waved to him. He was a tall, burly, Irish fisherman with a bushy, sand-colored beard and emerald-green eyes. He glanced in her direction, and even at a distance, she heard him groan. She could hardly blame him, given his unwitting involvement in her own strange experience on the Irish coast a year ago--months before Keira Sullivan's encounter with a serial killer.

  Whispers in the dark. Blood-soaked branches. Celtic artifacts gone missing.

  A woman--me, Sophie thought--left for dead in a cold, dank cave.

  Suppressing a shudder, she made her way onto the concrete pier. Tim had managed to avoid her for months, but he wouldn't today. She moved fast, determined to get to him before he could jump into his boat and be off.

  When she reached him, she made a stab at being conversational. "Hey, Tim, it's good to see you." She pointed up at the fading rainbow. "Did you notice the rainbow just now?"

  "If you want me to take you to chase a pot of gold, the answer is no."

  "I'm not chasing anything."

  "You're always chasing something." He yanked on a thick rope with his callused hands and didn't look at her as he spoke in his heavy Kerry accent. "How are you, Sophie?"

  "Doing great." It was close enough to the truth. "I gave up my apartment in Cork and moved into our family house in Kenmare. My parents and sister will be here later today. I've been here two weeks. I thought I'd run into you by now."

  "Ah-huh."

  "Have you been seeing to it I didn't?"

  "Just doing my work."

  "I've been back and forth to Cork and Dublin a fair amount. My father's family is originally from Kenmare. I've told you that, haven't I?"

  "Along the way, yes." His tone suggested that playing on their common Irish roots would have no effect on him.

  "Taryn's only staying for a night or two, but my folks will be here for at least a month."

  "You're going back to Boston," Tim said.

  "Ah, so you have been keeping tabs on me."

  He glanced up at her. "Always."

  She grinned at him. "You could at least try to look disappointed. We're friends, right?"

  He let the thick rope go slack. "You're a dangerous friend to have, Sophie."

  With the resurgent sunshine, she unzipped her jacket. "Yeah, well, you weren't the one who spent a frightening night in an Irish cave."

  "Oh, no--no, I was the one who didn't talk you out of spending a night alone on an island no bigger than my boat. I was the one who left you there."

  "The island is a lot bigger than your boat. Otherwise," she added, trying to sound lighthearted, "you'd have found me faster than you did."

  "I was lucky to find you at all, never mind before you took your last breath." He gripped the rope tight again but made no move to untie it and get out of there. Still, he regarded her with open suspicion. "I'm not taking you back there. Don't ask me to."

  "I'm not asking. That's not why I'm here. I don't want to go back." She fought off another involuntary shudder. "Not yet, anyway. Maybe one day."

  Or maybe not ever, but she wasn't telling Tim that. Whether she was being stubborn or just had her pride, she didn't want him to think she was afraid to return to the tiny island off the Iveragh coast where she'd encountered...she wasn't sure what. She knew she'd almost died there.

  "Do you still have nightmares?" he asked, less combative.

  "Not as many. Do you?"

  He grunted. "I never did have nightmares, but as you say, I wasn't the one--"

  "That's right, you weren't, and I'm glad of that."

  "I hear you finished your dissertation."

  She nodded. "It's been signed, sealed, delivered, defended and approved."

  "So it's Dr. Malone now, is it?" He seemed more relaxed, although still wary. "What will you be doing in Boston?"

  "Mostly looking for a full-time job. I have a few things lined up that'll help pay the rent in the meantime."

  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.'"

  Sophie laughed, enjoying the moment. She saw he was laughing now, too, and she felt better as she walked to her car.

  After their look around the island produced nothing--not even a drop of blood on the gray rock much less a bit of Celtic gold--the guards had asked her and Tim not to discuss the incident in the cave with anyone else, in order to avoid a rush of treasure hunters. She'd tried to put her experience behind her, even to the point of wondering if she, too, should just blame a concussion, dehydration, fatigue, isolation, overwork and imagination--if not ghosts and fairies, which, she suspected, deep down Tim believed were responsible for her ordeal.

  Then last week, she'd pulled her head up from her work and had lunch with Colm Dermott, back in Cork on behalf of the folklore conference, and he'd told her about the violence in Boston over the summer. She'd been vaguely aware that Jay Augustine, a fine art and antiques dealer who had turned out to be a serial killer, had latched on to Keira's Irish story in June and finally was arrested, after trying to kill Keira and her mother. His violence and fascination with the devil and evil had inspired Norman Estabrook, a corrupt, ruthless billionaire, to act on his own violent impulses, which had led to the bomb blast in late August that had injured Scoop Wisdom and culminated in Estabrook's death on the coast of Maine.

  Sophi
e couldn't shake the similarities of Keira's experience on the Beara to her own on the island. She had to know. Had Jay Augustine followed her a year ago and left her for dead? Had he made off with the artifacts--whatever their origin or authenticity--she'd seen in the cave? Without proper examination, she couldn't say for sure what they were, but she had a solid recollection of the pieces--a spun-bronze cauldron, gold brooches, torcs and bracelets, glass beads and bangles. She hadn't imagined them, even if Irish and American authorities had already reviewed her account of her night in the cave and decided it wasn't worth pursuing further.

  She climbed into her car. She was tempted to head to the village and settle in her favorite pub for the rest of the day, but instead she got out her iPhone and dialed her brother Damian, an FBI agent in Washington, D.C.

  "Hey, Damian," she said. "I was just watching an Irish rainbow and thought I'd call. Taryn's on her way, and Mom and Dad will be here in time for dinner and Irish music. We'll miss you."

  "I'll be in Ireland in two weeks."

  "I'll be in Boston then. I leave tomorrow. It's not as spur-of-the-moment as it sounds. I'm staying in Taryn's apartment on Beacon Hill. Doesn't that sound cozy?"

  "What's going on, Sophie?"

  "They teach you that in FBI school--how to turn someone saying 'cozy' into something suspicious? Never mind. I was just out on the Beara Peninsula where that serial killer struck. Would you know if he was involved in smuggling and selling stolen artifacts?"

  Silence.

  Sophie knew she'd struck a nerve but pretended to be oblivious. "Damian? Are you there? Are we still connected?"

  "We're still connected. Any kind of stolen artifacts in mind?"

  "Pagan Celtic."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's my area of expertise. Keira Sullivan's stone angel was Early Medieval Celtic from the sounds of it. I'm just curious if this Augustine character was into Celtic works in general."

  "He was interested in killing people, Sophie."

  She looked out at the pier, tourists gathering for a boat tour of the coast. "I get your point, Damian, but you know what I mean."