The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  Not terribly well, she had to admit. Her ears and nose were blocked solid, and her head felt three times its normal size. "Stay away from me," she croaked.

  He laughed and scooped her into his arms. "No."

  For the next several days, Kate was rarely out his arms. He'd paid no attention to her, thank God, because she couldn't have endured him staying away. She needed the constant reminder of his presence—that he hadn't gone from her, that he wasn't dead or missing or floating someplace where she couldn't find him. She never had to search for him. Intuitively, Conor seemed to understand what she needed, and was never far away.

  In addition to being grounded by her miserable head cold, he'd been strongly advised to stay off airplanes for the next seven to ten days. They returned to the house in Ventry, and she became the compliant invalid for a change while he heated up bowl after bowl of the most delicious vegetable soup she'd ever tasted—a national recipe, he assured her. One evening, she sat on the couch, wrapped in a quilt and drowsing on his shoulder, while he peeled an orange and chivalrously ignored her stuffy red nose and the reek of Vapo-Rub. In the background, the RTE's Lyric station was featuring a program of Sinatra music.

  "Now I have an idea of how your violin feels," Kate said. "I've always admired how beautifully you take care of her."

  "Have you?" He slipped a slice of the orange into her mouth. "Well, you're quite like the Pressenda. Rare. Beautiful. Full of old-world character, and not nearly as fragile as some might think."

  "I wish you had it here to play for me. I feel as though I need . . . something." She closed her eyes for a minute, listening to the music, and opened them to face the fire dancing in the open hearth—observing the shades of red, slivers of green, and a line of flickering blue along the bottom. What was it? That particular color? Smalt-blue. Yes. The earliest of the cobalt pigments.

  "Conor?"

  "Hmm?" He'd been about to feed her another piece of orange, but pulled his hand back.

  "I need paint."

  37

  He was the wonder of the modern age. The stuff of legend. The man who'd plunged from the Blasket cliffs and lived to tell the tale. Conor just thanked his lucky stars and Frank Emmons Murdoch that nobody in the world knew it was him. He heard the story at Eileen Graham's tiny grocer's shop in Ventry village, and at the pub where he got the soup Kate couldn't get enough of, and on the sidewalk outside the Dingle art supply store where she sent him on a regular basis, with a list.

  Sometimes, the story was romantic tragedy—it was a couple of lads from Ballyferriter, in a fight to the death over a girl. Other times, it was tragicomic—two drunk American eejits on a lark, stole the Dunquin ferry and brought out the Coast Guard and who was going to pay for that, now? Whatever the version, everyone was delighted to see him and fill him in on the news, too full of their own local wonders to question his vague report of his whereabouts over the past year.

  After a week at the house in Ventry, he and Kate had agreed to stay for another before heading back to Vermont. Conor estimated they were stretching to the limit what Abigail was willing to endure before catching a flight for Shannon and turning up on the doorstep. He'd needed all his persuasive charm to talk her out of doing exactly that when he'd called at the beginning of the week. Over the course of an hour-long conversation, he'd provided a general account—somewhat sanitized—of what had been happening, while she gave extensive instructions for the care of Kate, further advice on the treatment of concussion, and a recipe for her chicken soup, which he'd pretended to write down.

  "It's lonesome here without the two of you." Abigail's gruff emotion made him realize how much he missed her, too, along with everything else to do with the new life he'd begun in that spectacular country setting.

  "We'll be home soon, Abigail," he promised. "Keep the kettle on for me."

  Frank arrived at the beginning of their second week, unannounced and unexpected as always, presenting the deed to the house as he walked in the door.

  "With my gratitude, Conor," he said simply.

  They sat in the living room, in the same two chairs they'd occupied on the first day of their acquaintance, but this time Conor brought out the Jameson's instead of tea.

  "Where is our Kate?" Frank's expressive eyebrow lifted in concern. "I hope she's not unwell?"

  "She was pretty unwell last week, but better now. She's upstairs working in Thomas's old room." Conor handed Frank his drink. "She's started painting again."

  "Ah, marvelous."

  "I've been at the art store in Dingle half a dozen times now, collecting little aluminum tubes, canvases, brushes. I'd no notion how many different kinds of brush you need to paint anything."

  "I'd love to view some of her canvases." Frank smiled at Conor's dubious frown. "Won't she let me?"

  "I don't think she's ready to bring them out for general display."

  "But you've seen them."

  "I have.

  "And?" Frank asked.

  "Stunning, and I mean that literally. She's got incredible talent Frank, but Jaysus, these are pretty dark."

  "Does that worry you?"

  Conor considered the question. "No. I suppose not, actually. Better on a canvas than boiling away inside her. I think that's why she couldn't paint at all for so long. She must have had an idea it would come out like this—why wouldn't it? Kate doesn't trade much in darkness. She had to give herself permission."

  Frank took an appreciative sip from his glass, regarding Conor fondly. "The two of you are well suited."

  "Well suited," Conor repeated with a private smile. "I hope so. Feels that way to me, anyway. I hope you're planning to stay, Frank. I can't promise much for supper, we're neither of us any use in the kitchen, but you're very welcome. She'll be sore with us both if I interrupt her, but she'll be gutted if she doesn't get to see you."

  "I'd be delighted. I'll cook, I'm rather good at it."

  "I'm not surprised." Conor grinned, and then sighed. "So, let's have the rest, now. You didn't come all this way to cook for us. Please God, it won't give me a headache. Took me all of a week getting rid of the last one."

  "I've not come to test or torment you, but hopefully to tempt you." Frank removed a thick manila folder from his ubiquitous leather briefcase and laid it on the table. Just looking at the buff-colored card stock turned Conor's stomach. Frank covered the folder with his hand, recognizing his distress. "I beg your pardon, my boy. Thoughtless of me. It's nothing explosive, nothing at all to do with you. Only a few documents I'd like to leave for you to read at your leisure."

  "About what?"

  "Read them later. A matter of some interest to us in Eastern Europe. You've been to that region, I believe?"

  Conor gave him a jaded look. "You know I have. You're my biggest groupie. I did a recording session with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra."

  "Prague. Indeed." Frank beamed. "As it happens, Eckhard will be conducting in Prague next spring. He's in the market for a soloist. I am in the market for a cover agent. We've discussed this rather extensively, as a collaborative opportunity." He placed his glass on the table and straightened in his chair, discarding the light, bantering tone. "We want to work with you, Conor, both of us, obviously for different reasons. You are talented, magnificently so. Your combination of skills comes once in a generation in the intelligence community, if we're lucky. You needn't answer now, but will you at least consider the idea?"

  A devil's bargain. Sign on for undercover work and do things he probably wouldn't like, in exchange for the opportunity to do what he'd always wanted. Conor wasn't sure if he was tempted or not, but it wasn't a decision he'd make alone.

  "I'll think about it if you want me to, but I won't keep this from Kate. I won't ever keep anything from her again, so you should consider that before leaving your folder with me."

  "Fair enough." Frank tapped the manila folder. "Show her the file."

  "Seriously? I didn't think these things worked that way. Suppose she wants to come alon
g? I couldn't keep her home this time."

  "We'll train her," Frank responded immediately.

  Conor stared, horrified. "The hell you will. That's not what I meant and certainly not what I want."

  "Well. Rather up to her, don't you think?"

  Conor bit his lip, smiling. After all this time, he was still so naive. "You thought this all the way through before you came, didn't you? You've got some fairly impressive skills yourself, boss."

  "I do like to think so."

  On a cold, sunlit afternoon the day before they left, Conor dug a full-length oilskin coat out of the closet for Kate and drove them out along Dingle Bay, back around the hairpin turn at Slea Head, and brought them down to a spot on the shoreline where they could look out at the Great Blasket, lush and serene now under a cloudless sky.

  "I wanted you to see it in daylight," Conor explained. "It's where my mother was born. I took her over for the last time a year ago this July, when she was still feeling good. She still remembered everything. Seems like they had a name for every rock and gully on the whole island, and she knew them all."

  "We'll take it back," Kate said, giving his hand a squeeze. "We'll go out again someday and take it back for her."

  "Smudge sticks?" Conor smiled.

  "Definitely. We'll need a lot of them." After a moment she added, "What happened to you out there? Do you remember anything? We never talked about it."

  He'd asked himself the same question every day for two weeks, and still had no answer. "To be honest, I don't have a clue. We went over together. I remember crashing onto a ledge on top of him and then falling, and hearing a voice. I've thought about this a lot, because it went on way too long to make any sense. I should have hit the side of the cliff, or the rocks at the bottom. I should have hit something. But, there was only space, and the voice, and then nothing. Next thing, I opened my eyes and there was Sedgwick, blubbering over me."

  "What did the voice say?"

  "Muinín dom." Conor swallowed. "Trust me."

  He didn't need to ask. Kate gave him a quick kiss and left him alone. Walking down the sloping field to a large smooth boulder, she sat down facing the island. After a few minutes of wandering inside his own head he noticed her again. The dark copper gleam of her hair lifted in the breeze above the black oilskin, irrepressible, reminding him of how Kate seemed to be her own form of light—a new, undiscovered element illuminating the universe around her. Illuminating him.

  She slipped an arm around his as he joined her on the boulder. "I would have pulled the trigger," she said quietly. "You knew that, and didn't want me to. I've wondered why, and thought maybe you were trying to protect me. You didn't want me to have that on my conscience, his blood on my hands."

  "Oh." Conor scratched at his chin. "Ehm . . .”

  "That's not it?" She turned to him, surprised. "Well, tell me why, then."

  "It was point blank range, Kate. You'd have sent the bullet through him and straight into me. I thought I had a better chance with the cliff."

  She stared at him, at first appalled, but then gave a snuffling gurgle. He snickered, choked while trying to stop, and before long they had tumbled from the boulder together, paralyzed by laughter.

  "Oh dear," she groaned, wiping her eyes. "I have a lot to learn if I'm going to keep hanging around with you."

  Conor pulled her from the cold ground and rolled her up on top of him. "Ditto." He looked out again at the Great Blasket, thinking of everything he'd lost and gained, and about Frank's proposal for the future.

  A devil's bargain? Probably. So, what else was new?

  The End

  You’re still reading! I hope you enjoyed The Secret Chord and I’d be grateful if you would take a moment to post a rating and share a few thoughts on Amazon before moving on to Book Three - The City Of A Thousand Spies. More reviews help other readers discover the world of Conor McBride, and that helps your humble author enormously. Thank you!

  Click Here To Review

  Kathryn Guare

  Acknowledgments

  Book Three begins after this section

  I would like to thank the following people for their assistance in making possible this latest installment in the adventures of Conor McBride: Margaret Candelori, Holly Gathright, Christopher Gibbs, Coleen Kearon, Janet Krol, Susan Z. Ritz and Shelagh Shapiro, for their ears and eyes and insightful feedback; Richard Lawhern, PhD, not only for insightful feedback but for his expertise on sailing technique, holster clips and everything in between; Michael Murphy, Chief of Police in Boxford, MA, and FBI Special Agent Bob Ross (ret.) for advice on making an irregular scenario more plausible; and of course my mother, Claire Guare, for always believing I could do it, and for getting all her friends to read my book.

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  When people say that they do not remember what they do in a fit of fury, they talk nonsense. It is false. I remember everything.

  - Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

  1

  As soon as night falls, darkness becomes your weapon. Use it, or you’ll find it used against you.

  She scrambled up the steep incline, repeating the words to herself like a mantra, like a prayer she was trying to believe in, willing them to produce the effect she needed. Invisibility. Concealment.

  When Conor had offered this advice—his face solemn, as if reciting a piece of ancient wisdom—she’d tried to match his mood, but ended up annoying him with an ill-timed giggle. Kate wasn’t laughing now. The situation was more frightening than anything she’d prepared for, and her strategy was unraveling.

  Instead of heading for the summit she should have taken the last side trail to slip back along a different route. She’d realized her mistake a few minutes earlier, when the forested mountainside began dropping away. It seemed as though the unseen hand of an artist was rubbing at the scenery, thinning the composition. The higher she climbed, the fewer the trees. Eventually, there would be none. She would emerge like wild game flushed from its cover—a solid, unobstructed target.

  It was too late to double back now, but with the cloud cover of a March evening speeding its arrival, the weapon she’d been waiting for finally appeared. Darkness. It poured over the mountain, an inky tide arriving exactly on time. Within a shrinking sphere of visibility Kate paused to listen for a sign of pursuit.

  Earlier, she’d been able to detect it—a distant thump of booted feet on the trail, more vibration than sound. Methodical. Relentless. The beat of it in the ground under her feet had unnerved her, but its absence was worse.

  Pebbles from eroding stone shifted beneath her feet. She cringed at the rattle echoing through the otherwise silent forest. Scrambling up the final steep section of rock, she pulled herself onto an outcrop of ledge and stood motionless on the summit. At the corner of her eye something shivered in a thicket of evergreens, and she spun to face it. A bird? A rustle of wind? Something else? Kate focused on the indistinct shape of the trees, but the movement had subsided.

  She relaxed and took a long breath, wiping the sweat from her forehead, but when she turned he was right there, his dark figure filling the space in front of her, extinguishing what light remained. She screamed and reflexively took a step away, then felt herself toppling back over the ledge. A hand shot out and yanked her forward. She heard him grunt as one of her windmilling arms connected with his chin. Off-balance himself, he slammed her onto the ground and fell on top of her. Kate landed hard, flat on her back, and felt the air explode from her lungs like a shot being fired.

  In one fluid movement the figure rolled away and up onto his knees, then loomed so close she could feel his breath on her face.

  “Kate? Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”

  Trying to speak, she managed only an urgent hiccup and lay still, struggling not to panic at the clenched paralysis o
f her lungs.

  “Damn. Sorry, love.” Conor’s dark eyes flashed, wide and startled. “The wind’s knocked out of you. Try to relax. It won’t last long.”

  It felt like hours, though it was probably no more than a few seconds before her diaphragm relaxed and Kate sucked a gulp of air past the pain in her chest. He waited until her breathing grew less desperate, and then in a manner more clinical than either one of them was used to, he slipped his hands beneath her fleece jacket, watching her face while he probed her ribs.

  Once satisfied she wasn’t seriously injured, Conor gave her a cheerful smile. “No bones broken.”

  Kate pushed his hands away and sat up. “No thanks to you. What the hell was that, anyway? You told me this was a chase exercise. You were supposed to be behind me—chasing. You told me to evade and listen for signs of pursuit.”

  “I also told you to stay alert—and I did chase you, but then I peeled away to the right and got ahead of you.” Conor smiled. “I didn’t think it was going to work so well.”

  “You’re proud of yourself! For knocking me senseless!”

  “Ah, go on, you know that’s not true.” His face sobered. “Listen, I’m sorry, but this is what it’s like—and anyway, can I remind you that all this ‘getting a jump start’ business was your idea.”

  “I know, I know.” Kate scowled. “I should have seen you. I was just distracted by something in that tree over there.”

  “Sure that was me as well. I threw a stone into it, and you stood staring like you thought it would get up and walk away. That’s something to remember. You need to be able to look at more than one thing at a time.”