The Angel (17 page)

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He wondered how much Keira hadn’t told him about her trip to Ireland.

She was self-sufficient and obviously not one to panic, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she’d come out to the south

west coast of Ireland thinking fairies would protect her. Who knew, maybe they had kept her safe in that ruin. From the outside, it looked as if no one could have lived through the cave-in, but not only did Keira live, she’d come through her ordeal relatively unscathed.

Simon had to admit that if he hadn’t come along, she probably would have managed to climb out of there on her own. But he wasn’t sure what she’d have done if he hadn’t been there when she’d stood up, covered in blood. She cried out in her sleep and dug her fingers into his chest. He felt her knee coming at him but deflected the blow, just as her other hand went for his head. Time to wake her up. In the close quarters his work often required, he had witnessed his share of teammates having nightmares. Usually he’d just toss his watch or a water bottle at the person and say, “Hey, pal, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.” But he was reluctant to be that perfunctory with Keira, not so much because he wanted to be gentle with her—he wanted her to be gentle with
him
. They were in the same bed, and she was in good shape. One well-placed blow would ruin his day.

And they were in a tricky mustn’t-touch situation that another well-placed blow could make even trickier. He placed his hand on hers—the one that had a grip on his shirt and some skin and hair he wanted to keep. “Keira.”

She bolted upright, holding on to his hand, clearly not awake. She was breathing hard, close to the point of hy

perventilating, and looked repulsed and terrified, haunted by whatever images were assaulting her in her sleep.

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“Keira, you’re having a nightmare.”

Her eyes focused on him, widened, and she dropped his hand and rolled back to her side of the bed. Simon didn’t know what had her more distressed—her nightmare, or waking up half on top of him.

“I was…” She raked a hand through her hair and inched a bit farther from him. “Spiders and slugs were crawling on me.”

Simon leaned back against his pillows. “Nasty.”

She blew out a breath, shivering. “It was awful.”

“Nightmares are normal after a trauma.”

She lifted her gaze to the window. The shade was up, and the lace curtains were pulled back, providing a view of a small sheep pen across the yard. “Do you have night

mares?” she asked without looking at him.

“Sometimes.”

“Your work with Fast Rescue—”

“I’ve had a lot of training to help me learn to process what I experience. There’s no training for what you went through in that ruin.”

Her very blue eyes shifted to him. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not at all.” He grinned at her. “It’s not a bad way to wake up, as a matter of fact. If I’d stayed in London, I’d have woken up in a big, elegant, empty bed. This is cozy, the two of us—”

“I’ll go into the other room. You can go back to sleep.”

“I’m good. Wide awake.” He threw off the duvet and got up. “Take your time. I’ll make coffee.”

“That’d be great. I’m still—” She waved her hand. “I’m still fighting off spiders and slugs.”

Her hair was tangled, and her shirt was askew. Now that she was safe, Simon knew, her mind—consciously or sub

consciously—could indulge in the fear, revulsion, claus

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trophobia and whatever other emotions it hadn’t let her access during the hours she was trapped. And he’d be a slug himself if he took advantage of her waking up from a stress-induced nightmare. He retreated to the kitchen and filled the electric kettle with water, turned it on and headed for the bathroom, changing into jeans and a sweater. His own hair was a mess. He wet his hands and ran them over his head, gave up and went back into the kitchen. He heaped grounds into a coffee press and poured on what looked like the right amount of water.

While the coffee steeped, he got down two mugs, and he imagined being here with Keira on an ordinary morning, making coffee, planning their day. He wouldn’t have jumped right out of bed after she’d clawed at him while having a nightmare, that was for damn sure. Simon indulged in those images for about five seconds before he pushed them far to the back of his mind, filled his mug with the strong, steaming coffee and headed outside. A dozen or so sheep stirred in the pasture on the other side of the fence. The sun dipped in and out of gray clouds, and the air was brisk, scented with roses, the damp grass and, he swore, the sea.

Keira joined him with her mug of coffee, and he nodded to the dramatic hills that swept up into the heart of the pe

ninsula. “It’s beautiful country, but six weeks is a long time to be out here alone.”

“I have a lot of work to do—and exploring,” she said with an unembarrassed smile. “I won’t be alone the entire time. I have friends from San Diego who’re vacationing in Ireland in a few weeks and plan to stop by, and Colm Dermott will be here in late July with his family. And being on my own gives me a chance to get to know some of the local people.”

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Simon eyed her. “Keira, I’ve called the Irish police to come have a look at the ruin. They’re on their way.”

“When did you call?”

“Early.You were still dreaming about slugs and spiders.”

“I suppose it makes sense, bringing in the police.” But she quickly sipped her coffee and winced. “Strong, isn’t it?”

“I just eyeballed the measurements.”

“It’s good—thank you.”

She’d put on jeans and an oversize rugby shirt and combed the tangles out of her hair, but Simon had to admit his heart had skipped a few beats at the sight of her. He figured half the men she met probably fell a little in love with her within seconds of setting eyes on her. So why the hell wasn’t she here with a man? He considered the prudence of asking her, then figured why not, “No boy

friend to take off with to Ireland?”

She didn’t avert her eyes from him even a millimeter. “No. As I said, I plan to get a lot of work done while I’m here.”

“A man would just get in the way?”

“That’s not what I said.”

She walked over to the fence and cupped her mug in both hands as she sipped her coffee and stared out at the pasture. Simon watched her, aware that she wasn’t fully there with him. She was either still in her nightmare or, more likely, back in the ruin. He stayed quiet, giving her time, recognizing that he wanted to dive into whatever world she was trapped in and rescue her. Slay her demons, if need be. It was kind of mad, but he’d be dishonest if he didn’t acknowledge the protective impulse, understand it for what it was. But Keira was a woman who went her own way, not out of defiance so much as disposition. It was just who she was.

His father had been like that, and he’d ended up dead. 160

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She took her coffee down the driveway to the roses and mishmash of wildflowers. Across the lane and down the hill, the harbor glistened in the early morning sun. She seemed to soak in the scenery, the life and movement of the new day. She had an unpretentiousness and clarity about her that Simon could appreciate, and hell if he didn’t want to scoop her up and carry her back inside for the rest of the day. Let the weather turn bad. What would they care?

“I don’t really know you at all,” she said abruptly, then turned to him.

Not a subject he wanted to get into. “What’s to know?”

“You’re a volunteer with Fast Rescue. Unless you’re in

dependently wealthy, that must mean you have a job. What do you do that you can drop everything to respond to a disaster anywhere in the world, live on a boat, go off to London—”

“I have my own business.” It was true, as far as it went.

“I work with various corporations and individuals on disaster preparedness and response planning. I also do some training. Some guide work.”

“Guide work?”

He leveled his gaze on her. “If an artistic type wants to search for a mysterious ruin on a remote Irish peninsula on the night of the summer solstice, I can get her there and back safely.”

“It wasn’t night. Sunset isn’t until ten o’clock here in June.”

“Let’s leave out night, then. Keira, you haven’t told me everything about why you’re here—”

“How did you end up as a Fast Rescue volunteer?”

He sighed. Obviously, she intended for them to do this her way. “A friend of a friend put me in touch with Owen.”

But it wasn’t that simple. That friend was John March, who’d put Simon in touch with Owen eighteen months ago

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simply because Fast Rescue needed search-and-rescue experts, and Simon, in the middle of sorting out what was supposed to be his post-FBI life, was one. At the time, March knew Owen only as the Maine summer neighbor of March’s murdered FBI agent son-in-law. Owen hadn’t yet fallen for Abigail, Chris Browning’s widow, March’s daughter. By then, Simon was back in the FBI fold, working under

cover and going after Norman Estabrook. Owen, who was thorough and protective of Fast Rescue and had extensive contacts of his own, figured out Simon’s personal history with March, his undercover status, that his mission likely involved Norman Estabrook.

With the imminent takedown of Estabrook and the dis

mantling of his network, Owen was left in the unenviable position of not being able to tell the woman he loved what he knew about Simon, her father, their friendship. That in

formation was all on a need-to-know basis, and Abigail didn’t need to know.

Neither, Simon thought, did Keira Sullivan. A brown cow meandered up to the fence in the enclo

sure across the lane. Simon walked over to her and patted her. She pushed her head against his hand, obviously enjoying the attention. “So, Miss Cow, what did you see the other day? Did you see Keira here go off into the hills? Did you see someone sneak into her cottage and steal her note?” He lowered his ear to the cow, pretending he was listening to what she had to say. “Ah. Fairies. I see. It was the summer solstice, and you saw fairies dancing.” He glanced back at Keira. “Don’t you wish cows could talk?”

“All right, all right.” Keira laughed, dumping out the last of her coffee into the grass. “Let’s go meet the guards.”

Beara Peninsula, Southwest Ireland
6:30 a.m., IST

June 23

Coffee and sunlight had Keira feeling more like herself as she tried to keep up with Simon as they crossed the open pasture in the general direction of the ruin. “Slow down,”

she said. “I’m tall, but your lope is still my run, and I can’t keep up with you, especially after my nightmare from hell.”

He glanced sideways at her, the wind catching the ends of his black hair. “I thought my coffee would put some zip in your step.”

“It did. I’d be crawling otherwise.”

Threatening clouds pushed down onto the hills. The wind was picking up, but Keira welcomed the brisk air and hoped it would help clear her head, stop her from thinking about waking up from her nightmare and finding herself more or less in Simon’s arms. Common sense warned her not to get too caught up in her physical attraction to him. He’d be on his way back to London soon. He lived a very

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different life from hers, and even if a one-night stand would have been fun, she wasn’t the type and never had been. When they came to another fence, Simon hopped over it, then turned and offered her a hand. She took it, resisted the impulse just to jump into his arms. But he caught her around the middle and lifted her down to the ground, giving her a quick, irreverent smile. “You were about to land in sheep manure.”

She glanced down, and sure enough, he wasn’t kidding.

“I see that your search-and-rescue skills are highly adapt

able.”

“Helps to know I’m dealing with someone who doesn’t look over her shoulder for trouble.”

Simon started down the hill to the muddy, thick under

growth along the stream. Keira matched his pace, not letting him get too far ahead of her. “I’m not paranoid. I’m not going to sit home because something bad might happen if I go out.”

“I can see that.” He came to the stream and pushed back the low branch of an oak that dipped almost down to the water.

“If the angel wasn’t just another hunk of Irish rock, how did it get onto the hearth? Why hasn’t anyone around here found it and sold it to a museum or put it on eBay by now?”

“I don’t know.”

“More important, where did it go?”

Keira shivered, wishing she’d worn a coat instead of just throwing a sweater on over her rugby shirt. “I don’t know that, either.”

Instead of putting her on the defensive, his questions—

fired at her ever since they’d started the hike back up to the ruin—had helped her to focus on the specifics of her ordeal and remember them with greater clarity.

“Tell me about the fairies in this story,” he said, thrash

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ing along the edge of the stream. “Are we talking about a solitary fairy—a banshee or a leprechaun or something—

or a fairy troop?”

“You know Irish folklore?”

“Not much. Enough to ask you a question.”

“And to spark a good argument in an Irish pub, I imagine. It’s a fairy troop, at least according to Patsy. They’re determined and relentless. They believe they’re entitled to the statue—”

“Because they insist it’s one of their own who’s been turned to stone.”

Keira smiled. “So you were paying attention last night.”

He winked at her. “Hard to resist a magical story told on a dark Irish night.”

“It’s easy to see out here how Ireland’s strong oral tra

dition took root, isn’t it? In any case, the fairies won’t take no for an answer. They want the statue back.”

“Patsy McCarthy obviously believes the statue exists, or at least wants to believe it.” Simon pushed back another low