Carla Neggers (10 page)

“Kitty has a son by her marriage to a banker in Dublin. They’re divorced. Aoife is single.” Finian studied Andy across the table. “You’re worried about Julianne, aren’t you?”

Andy shrugged, really restless now. “I didn’t like this trip of hers yesterday, and I like it even less today.”

“She’d already booked her flights when she told me her plans.”

“It’s okay, Fin. It wasn’t up to you to talk her out of this trip. I know it’s at least in part because of me. Her brother says she thinks Ireland will heal her broken heart.”

“I hope it can,” Finian said quietly. “You’re the one who broke things off between you, then?”

“It was mutual, but if that’s what she told you, I’m good with that.”

An easy answer, Andy thought. The truth was, he hadn’t been ready for Julianne to whisper she loved him in the dark of an autumn night. He hadn’t responded. He still didn’t know why. He’d never been in love before. How the hell did he know what it felt like? How did she, for that matter? In the morning, she’d called him a heartless rat bastard and told him she’d had too much to drink and hadn’t meant what she’d said. But she hadn’t had too much to drink, and she had meant it.

“Julianne would kill us both for talking about her this way.” Andy tried to keep any frustration—any worry—out of his voice. She had her own life, and, as she’d pointed out to him more than once, she didn’t need a Donovan breathing down her neck. He stood abruptly, grabbing his jacket and managing a grin. “This sheep farmer. Murphy. He’s good-looking?”

Finian smiled. “He’s Irish, isn’t he?”

* * *

Andy walked from Hurley’s to his apartment on the top floor of—purportedly—an old sea captain’s house on the waterfront. The owners, a pair of schoolteachers who lived on the bottom two floors, had decorated the porch with pumpkins, cornstalks and mums and hung a scarecrow in the front garden. Cheerful sorts. They were expecting a baby in the spring, their first. Sometimes their domestic bliss and stability got to him, made him look at his own life, see what he was missing—thirty years old, banging around his hometown, cobbling together a living. No responsibilities. No commitments.

Other times he looked at his landlord and figured he was in no hurry.

He dropped his jacket on a chair at his kitchen table. Julianne had said she liked his apartment. She’d never asked him when he’d buy his own place or what his plans for the future were, but he knew she’d wanted to. She was a go-getter. She liked to plan. She
was
in a hurry.

His shoulder ached. Yesterday’s long drive to Boston and back had taken more of a toll than he’d wanted to admit. Probably good for him to test its limits, give it a workout. He’d done a number on it when Colin’s thugs had blindsided him and left him for dead.
“You never leave someone for dead,”
his brother Mike had said.
“You always make sure.”

Mike had added it was a definite positive the thugs hadn’t been as thorough as he would have been. Andy didn’t remember the attack, just waking up to Julianne tucking her sweater around him. He’d been cold, wet, semiconscious. When he’d been hit, he’d gone into the water, taking several lobster traps with him, and would have drowned or died of hypothermia if Julianne hadn’t spotted him and yelled for help. Mike and Colin had dragged him to shore. He’d sustained a concussion, but it was his shoulder that was keeping him off the water.

He didn’t do well being idle. He was tempted to call Kevin and review the goings-on in Ireland from the point of view of a law enforcement officer. A decade-old Irish art heist, a marine science field station in development, Finian Bracken, Lindsey Hargreaves, the Sharpes. What could he or Kevin do on the opposite side of the Atlantic?

Not much.

Andy put a burrito in the microwave and turned on the television, imagining Julianne snuggled up next to him as they watched a movie together. He knew he was right and she’d gone to Ireland to get over him, and he’d just have to make peace with it.

He turned off the television. He’d hoped watching it would keep him from worrying about Julianne, but it didn’t. He ate his burrito and got out his laptop. He figured he’d check the weather in Ireland and see what he could find on Finian Bracken and Bracken Distillers and any connection between them and the obscure Irish village of Declan’s Cross.

Finian was close-mouthed, and Andy had no doubt his Irish priest friend hadn’t told him everything.

10

JULIANNE WALKED INTO
the village for dinner and decided that was a
huge
mistake when her thighs gave out on her on the hill back up to her cottage. Then it started to rain. Not a soft rain, either. Fat, cold raindrops pelted her bare head. She pulled on the hood to her raincoat.
Always
take a raincoat. Wasn’t that what Father Bracken had advised her? Maybe it had been Granny. Either way, she was all set.

Just as she was about to lose cell service, her iPhone dinged, and she saw she had a text message from Andy:
Heard from Colin. You okay alone in that cottage?

She debated stuffing her phone back in her raincoat pocket and not texting him back, but if she didn’t, he’d hound her. He’d call her, or, even worse, he’d sic his FBI brother on her. She paused by a stone wall in the dark. She could hear the ocean washing onto the rocks at the base of the cliffs to her left. She had omitted a flashlight from her packing list. A mistake, but the light from her phone helped. She quickly typed:
Yep. Thanks.

She read her message. It was enough. She hit Send.

She continued up the hill, the lights from the village below disappearing as the lane twisted farther out onto the headland. The rain didn’t let up. Clouds overtook the stars and sliver of a moon. Sheep bleated intermittently in the dark fields.

Watching her feet, Julianne did her best to avoid puddles, ruts, sheep droppings and any other obstacles she might encounter on a quiet Irish lane. She didn’t regret her trek into Declan’s Cross. She’d sat in a booth in a pub and enjoyed a crock of steaming shepherd’s pie, made with local lamb, and a glass of Smithwick’s. She’d resisted dessert because she’d been too tired, and because she’d eaten every crumb of the brown bread that had come with her shepherd’s pie.

She promised herself she’d indulge in every dessert on the menu before her two weeks in Ireland were up. Apple crumble. Bread-and-butter pudding. Guinness cake. Sponge cake. She’d need the long uphill walk to her cottage if she kept inhaling food.

As she’d paid for her dinner, she’d overheard two men at the bar, realized they were Lindsey’s diver friends and introduced herself. In their email exchanges, Lindsey had mentioned Brent Corwin, a good-looking American and an occasional diver for Hargreaves Oceanographic Institute. The other diver was Eamon Carrick, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed Irishman. Both men had greeted her enthusiastically and apologized for Lindsey not meeting her at the airport. They’d seemed to take her behavior in stride. A great person but a flake. A lot of fun. No way for Julianne to know not to count on her.

Brent and Eamon had both agreed that with her father’s unexpected arrival in Dublin, Lindsey had simply lost track of what day it was. They wouldn’t have been surprised if she planned to meet Julianne at the airport
tomorrow.

That didn’t explain why no one could reach Lindsey, or why she hadn’t responded to emails, voice mails and text messages, but her friends didn’t seem concerned.

Julianne came to a long driveway that wound through a field to a plain farmhouse, a single front window lit against the dark night. It appeared to be the only other house on Shepherd Head. Did Sean Murphy live there alone? Did he have a woman in his life? She hadn’t asked Father Bracken many questions about his farmer friend.

When she reached her cottage, she realized she hadn’t left a light on, an oversight she blamed on jet lag and lack of sleep. She could have found Colin and Emma and asked them to give her a ride up from the village, but she already felt a little foolish having them—two FBI agents—interrupt their vacation to check on her. Let them enjoy their fancy hotel. She’d see enough of them at home in Maine.

The wind blew cold rain in her face as she unlocked the front door and went in, trying not to think about Granny’s dark fairies. Julianne felt on the wall for the overhead switch, found it, flipped it and breathed out in relief when the light came on.

She shivered in the cold air. She could build a fire, or she could turn on the heat.

“Heat’s faster,” she said aloud, peeling off her dripping raincoat.

She found the thermostat and turned the knob to a respectable but not overly generous twenty degrees Celsius—sixty-eight Fahrenheit. Being a scientist, she could do the conversion in her head, automatically, even exhausted.

She stood in the middle of the living room and glanced around at the attractive furnishings, the warm-looking throw over the back of the couch, the stack of tourist maps and brochures.

Didn’t help. She was totally creeped out alone in her Irish cottage.

She would never admit as much to Granny, her parents, her brother or especially a single Donovan—and probably not to Emma or even to Father Bracken.

She kicked off her trail shoes. Her wool socks were still dry, toasty warm. She told herself that Colin and Emma would never have left her to her own devices if they didn’t believe she was safe.

Well.
Emma wouldn’t have. Julianne wasn’t sure about Colin. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t want her to be safe but that he’d figure she’d made her bed, she could lie in it. She hadn’t exactly made him feel welcome.

Nevertheless, he and Emma were FBI agents and would feel a certain duty to her. They might think she was out of her mind for coming to Declan’s Cross, insisting on staying out here by herself after her housemate hadn’t shown up, but that was different from thinking she wasn’t safe.

She regretted biting Colin’s head off, but he’d get over it—assuming he’d even noticed. She couldn’t remember how many times she’d apologized to Andy and he’d given her one of his clueless looks, as if he had no idea in the world what she was talking about. She’d say, “I’m sorry for biting your head off,” and he’d say, “You didn’t bite my head off.”

Sometimes she’d been glad that he hadn’t been offended, because things didn’t always come out of her mouth the way she meant them to. Other times she’d been annoyed that he hadn’t gotten it that she’d been mad at him. Andy had told her that honesty to the point of rudeness was fine with him. Colin was the same. All the Donovans were. Everyone in Rock Point knew if you wanted an honest opinion, ask a Donovan.

Didn’t mean they didn’t keep things to themselves. Especially anything deep. Andy never wanted to have a deep conversation about anything.

Never.

Julianne pulled the shades on every window in every room in the cottage. Living room, kitchen, both bedrooms, both bathrooms. She didn’t pause until she was back in the kitchen, eyeing the as-yet untouched bottle of wine. Surely she’d burned off her Smithwick’s by now. She had no regrets about venturing into the village. She’d wanted to experience Ireland her first evening there instead of sitting up here alone, fretting about her missing housemate.

Drinking alone didn’t seem right, and she left the wine where it was.

She heard a whoosh of wind and a spray of raindrops on the windows behind the pulled shades.

It’d be a long, dark night.

And lonely, she thought. Lonelier than she’d expected when she’d headed into the village a couple of hours ago. Now it was just after nine. Still early. Even earlier at home. If she were there instead of Ireland, she’d be gearing up for the dinner crowd at Hurley’s. Right after they’d broken up, Andy hadn’t stopped in as much, at least when she’d been working.

Julianne groaned. “Stop thinking about him.”

When she’d walked into the village, she’d emailed Granny and her parents that she’d arrived in Declan’s Cross safely and told them she was already in love with it. It was true, too. Maybe her cottage was dark and lonely, but she loved being there.

She hadn’t mentioned Lindsey. No point worrying them. If Colin wanted to tell them, that was up to him. If he told Andy—well, that would be it. Even if he didn’t say a word to anyone, Granny would sense it and drag it out of him.

Julianne went into the bedroom she’d chosen for herself. It was smaller than the other bedroom but looked out on the water, not that it mattered in the dark, with the shades pulled. She turned on the bedside lamp. Before leaving for the village, she’d unpacked her suitcase and shoved it in the small closet. She’d laid out her flannel pajamas on the bed. She put them on and rummaged in the bureau for a fresh pair of wool socks to keep her feet warm until the room—and the bed—warmed up.

It wasn’t as if she needed to impress some man with her sexy lingerie.

She hadn’t needed to even when she and Andy had been together. She’d tried once, and he’d made clear that he didn’t care if she wore flannel pj’s, a slinky nightgown or a ratty T-shirt, so long as whatever it was ended up on the floor.

The man was about as romantic as a crustacean.

“Sexy, though,” she said as she slipped under the warm duvet.

Her eyes felt as if they’d been rolled in sand, but she was too tired to get up for the drops Granny had insisted she pack. She shut off the lamp and turned on her relaxation playlist on her iPhone but only listened to ocean waves for a few seconds before switching them off.

The rain was steady now, rhythmic, soothing.

It was perfect.

* * *

A terrifying, unearthly shriek woke Julianne in the dark. She bolted upright in her bed, her heart pounding as she clutched her chest.
A banshee.
She held her breath but heard nothing, not even the hiss of the heat. The rain must have stopped. Now it was quiet, still, so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her.

Waking up to a banshee shriek couldn’t be good, whether or not she’d imagined it.

She took a moment to breathe deeply and remind herself that she wasn’t one who always believed the worst. She was an optimist. An abundance thinker.

She’d had a nightmare. That was all.

Feeling more grounded, less caught in the haze between sleep and wakefulness, she reached for the lamp on the nightstand. She knocked something off—her phone, she realized. It clattered on the tile floor. If it broke, there’d be no replacing it now that she was spending all her money on trips to Ireland.

She found the lamp and switched it on, the light an immediate relief. She sank back against her pillows, her heart rate easing again as she shook off the eerie screech. In Granny’s world, Irish saints and Irish fairies sat comfortably together. Julianne had never been as gripped by the history and folklore of her ancestral homeland as she had been by anything and everything to do with oceans. As far back as she could remember, she’d wanted to be a marine biologist. What kind of job that meant she’d have—where she’d live—hadn’t been a consideration until recently, now that she was finishing up her master’s degree. She’d assumed her future wasn’t in Rock Point but hadn’t given it much thought.

She rolled onto her side and felt around on the floor for her phone. If she fell off the bed and knocked herself out, she’d have to lie there until she came to on her own or Emma and Colin started wondering what she was up to.

Maybe that was why she’d heard the banshee. Maybe it had cried for
her.

She snatched up her phone, turned it on and saw that it was seven-thirty.
Morning? Already?
Why was it so dark?

Because you’re in Ireland
.

And because she had pulled all the shades and curtains.

She threw off the duvet and stood on the tile floor, still in her wool socks. She raised the shade on the window next to her bed. The sun was just coming up in a clearing sky, the stunning landscape taking shape in the morning mist. The window looked out on the back of the cottage, a lush green lawn giving way to rock-strewn fields where woolly sheep grazed idly among spikes of gorse and the occasional wind-bent, bare-limbed tree.

“So pretty,” Julianne whispered, her banshee shriek quickly fading from her mind.

She went into the living area and raised shades and pulled back curtains. She felt as if it were the middle of the night, a combination of not fully being on Irish time and the calendar. Sunrise was later in November. As she stood at the kitchen sink, she realized she liked being on her own here in her Irish cottage. It wouldn’t bother her that much, if any, if Lindsey had decided she didn’t want to stay here after all and was just avoiding Declan’s Cross so she wouldn’t have to admit it. Julianne rarely ran into people who’d rather leave others guessing than just say what was on their minds—not that she couldn’t do with keeping her mouth shut once in a while.

She filled an electric kettle with tap water and plugged it in, then added fresh grounds to a glass coffee press. The water boiled in no time, and she poured it over the grounds and replaced the filter. While the coffee steeped, she helped herself to orange juice. She’d have to get to a grocery store. She needed to stock up. In the meantime, she was starving and looking forward to scrambled eggs, toast, butter, jam and every drop of coffee in the pot.

As she dug out a frying pan from a lower cabinet and set it on the electric stove, she wondered if she’d done something to offend Lindsey. Had she found out about Emma and Colin and decided she didn’t want to hang around with someone who knew FBI agents? But that made no sense. Julianne’s training as a scientist and the many conversations she’d overheard among the law-enforcement Donovans while waiting tables at Hurley’s had warned her about the dangers of speculating.

She cracked a window to get a bit of air, a whiff of the sea, and fixed her breakfast, then ate it at the table with its view across the lane to the sea. Would her grandfather be proud of her for the way she was spending the mad money he’d left her? Was this what he’d had in mind?

“Miss you, Grandpa,” she whispered.

She left the dishes soaking in the sink and headed for her bathroom to take a shower. She welcomed the hot water on her tight muscles as she shook off her rude awakening.
A banshee.
Granny wouldn’t have needed convincing. If she’d ever heard a shriek like the one that had just awakened her granddaughter, no wonder she believed in banshees.

Once she was showered and dressed, Julianne felt more like herself. She washed her breakfast dishes and left them to air-dry in the drainer. A good walk would help her adjust to Irish time before she steeled herself for the drive to the village for groceries. She’d check out the field station at the same time. Maybe Lindsey had surfaced last night.