and rain. 'I've not the smallest urge to go to a tiny Irish island on my own.'
'Would you go with someone else?' Myles asked as he climbed into the car.
Josie got behind the wheel again. 'Not with you, Myles. The two of us alone in a car is enough tension for me, thank you.'
'You're going to torture me forever, are you?'
'I haven't decided.' She pulled off her damp coat, struggling with it, but he didn't offer his help. She must have looked as if she'd elbow him in the head if he did. She might, anyway. She balled up the coat and shoved it in back with his rucksack. 'You could have trusted us, Myles. Will and me. If not me, then Will. If not Will, then me.'
'It wasn't a question of trust,' Myles said quietly, with none of his usual cockiness, 'and to tell one of you what I was into was to tell the other. You both were emotionally compromised by our friendship. I couldn't take the chance.'
Josie started the car. 'Whether you could or couldn't, you didn't. Lizzie and Keira wouldn't wait two years for word on the fates of the men they care about.'
'Do you think so, Josie?'
No, she thought. They'd wait forever. They'd wait until they knew for certain.
'Did you believe I was dead?'
'I'd hoped you'd lost your memory and opened a bake shop in Liverpool.'
He laughed suddenly, unexpectedly, and at first she wanted to stop the car and kick him out the door, but she found herself laughing, too.
'Damn you, Myles. I suppose if you hadn't gone off--' She shook her head, abandoning her thought. 'Never mind. I was going to say Will wouldn't have found Lizzie, but I don't believe that. I believe they were destined for each other.'
'Josie Goodwin, the romantic?'
'Don't choke on your tongue, Myles. I'm a human being. A
'I have, indeed.'
Josie felt a stiff wind buffet the small car. 'Keira and Simon were destined for each other, too. You should see them together. He's an utter charmer--he does an amazing fake Irish accent and will argue with anyone over anything, and everyone still loves him.' She turned on the windscreen wipers, the rain coming down hard now. 'They'll both come back, won't they?'
'I'm sure of it.'
'You're always sure. It's your nature.'
'What Simon and Will are about needs to finish this way.'
'Their way, you mean.'
'And yours, Josie. Don't tell me you're not staying out of London for a reason. You don't want to have to answer a lot of questions about what Will and Simon are up to yourself.' Myles leaned back in his seat. 'Now we have this Sophie Malone and her mad island adventure.'
'Nothing is ever simple with Will and Simon and their friends, is it?'
'As if it is with us?'
She came to a stop at the end of the road out to the pier and gave him a sideways glance. Those dove-gray eyes. The lines etched in his face. The hard edges that were Myles Fletcher. Of course she'd had to fall for him. How could she not have? But her life would have been so much less complicated these past few years if she hadn't.
He touched a finger to her lips. 'Don't say anything more, love. Let's just keep sparring a while longer, shall we? I can't go where you want to go.'
'Repressed bloody bastard,' she said.
He looked relieved. 'Where to next?'
'Dublin,' Josie said without hesitation. 'Sophie met with an art theft expert there. I'm developing a theory.'
'She's after her missing artifacts.'
'The whispers, the blood--she must be wondering if Jay Augustine was responsible for what happened to her in that cave. At least he's where he can't harm her or anyone else.'
'Suppose he had help,' Myles said quietly.
Josie gave him a sharp look, the chill back in her spine. 'Myles--what do you know?'
'Drive on, love. It's a long way to Dublin.'
11
Bob O'Reilly shoved a hand through his hair as he stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of Cliff Rafferty's house and glared at Scoop. 'You and your archaeologist haven't been back in town twenty-four hours, and you find a cop swinging from a beam in his dining room. Hell of a homecoming.'
Scoop didn't blame him for being annoyed and frustrated, but his focus was on Sophie. She'd finished talking with two homicide detectives--who hadn't known Rafferty--and was in the shade of the oak tree at the edge of the walk. She'd stood up well to the pressures of the past couple hours. He had secured the scene before the first cruiser had arrived, but with the bomb-making materials in Rafferty's dining room, the FBI and ATF had rolled in right behind the BPD. The medical examiner was there. The crime lab. The district attorney's office. Onlookers from the neighborhood were behind yellow tape.
It was a mess.
'I could have stopped her from coming over here,' Scoop said half to himself.
'How?' Bob asked, skeptical.
'I could have cited police business.'
'She's a Ph.D. She'd have seen right through you and come anyway.'
'I could have taken her car keys and flung them down a drain.'
Bob rubbed the back of his neck, looking less irritated and agitated. 'You didn't let her come out here alone. That's one thing, anyway.'
'Yeah, Bob. Sure.'
'So, Scoop,' he said, 'was Rafferty on your radar? You've been working on something. You were before this. Before the bomb.'
'If I'd had anything on Rafferty, I'd have arrested him. He wouldn't be dead.'
Bob had been a police officer for a very long time, and his eyes showed his experience as he narrowed them on Scoop. 'You were onto a cop connection to local thugs before Norman Estabrook set his sights on Abigail. Those bastards who grabbed her had someone on the inside. You had that in mind when you looked at the lists we compiled of people who'd been to the house in the days before the bomb went off.'
'Any ongoing special investigation changed the minute that bomb exploded and we became personally involved.'
Bob ignored him. 'Cliff's name get your attention?'
'There were a lot of names on those lists. There was no evidence.'
'There's evidence now.'
Scoop felt the warmth of the sun on his bare head. His exposed scars might as well have been on fire. 'Unless it was planted.'
'Another cop, Scoop?'
'I've been walking the Scottish and Irish hills for the past month. You tell me.'
Sophie turned, her skin grayish as her bright blue eyes focused on him and Bob. Scoop wondered how much she'd overheard. As obviously shaken and disturbed by Rafferty's death as she was, she'd maintained her composure, answering questions, keeping any theories to herself unless asked.
Bob crooked a finger at her, and she came over to them. Strands of her dark red hair fell in her face, but she
