"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.
Sophie 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."
"You're the archaeologist. I'm the FBI agent. You tell me. Do you know anything about Celtic artifacts showing up on the black market?"
This time, she was the one who didn't answer.
"Sophie?"
"My battery's dying. I'll call you later."
She disconnected and dropped her phone back in her jacket pocket. As if putting herself on the radar of one law enforcement officer today wasn't good enough, she'd had to call her FBI agent brother. She started her car and let herself off the hook. Calling Damian made sense. He was assigned to FBI headquarters in Washington. He could find out just about anything.
She wondered if she'd have a better chance if she told him about her experience last year.
"Probably not," she whispered as she drove back down the quiet street. The Irish authorities already knew about the incident. If she told Damian, he'd look into it, and she didn't want to send him and the FBI off on some wild-goose chase if she were totally off target.
More to the point, he'd tell their parents, and why get them all worked up over what could be nothing?
She had a few hours before they arrived. Her sister would get there sooner. Sophie decided to forget missing Celtic artifacts and jailed serial killers for the moment and head to the house and cook, clean and do what she could to make her life look as if her family didn't need to worry about her.
3
Beara Peninsula, Southwest Ireland
A wild hurling match was on the small television in the sole village pub. Scoop sat on a stool at the five-foot polished wood bar. He'd had soup and brown bread, then settled in with a Guinness during an afternoon shower. The peat fire was lit. The bartender's brown-and-white springer spaniel was asleep on the hearth.
Life could be worse.
"I miss my garden," he said to Eddie O'Shea, the wiry, energetic barman. In late June, Eddie had helped identify Jay Augustine as the man responsible for the sheep's blood up at Keira's ruin.
Eddie busied himself at the sink behind the bar. "Time to go home, is it?"
"Past time, probably. I might have some butternut squash I can save. The firefighters and paramedics trampled the hell out of my tomatoes and cauliflower. Of course," Scoop added with a grin, "they also saved my sorry life."
"And you saved Bob's daughter," Eddie said. He'd met Bob O'Reilly on Bob's trip to Ireland earlier in the summer. Bob'd had to see Keira's ruin, too. "A few tomatoes are a small price, don't you think?"
"No price at all." Scoop stared into his Guinness, but he was back in Boston on that hot summer afternoon, minutes before the bomb went off. Fiona O'Reilly, Bob's nineteen-year-old daughter, had dropped by to see her father. She was a harp player, as smart and as pretty as her cousin Keira and as stubborn as her father. "This wasn't Fiona's fight. She was an innocent bystander."
"Was it your fight?"
"Doesn't matter. It's my fight now." He thought of the special investigation back in Boston. Had his bomber been staring him in the face? Had he missed something? "I want to know who planted that bomb, Eddie. It could have been anyone. The meter-reader, the plumber, the mailman, a cab driver. Pigeons. Who knows?"
Eddie reached for Scoop's empty glass. "You go after police officers suspected of wrongdoing. Do you suspect it's a cop you're after?"
Scoop didn't respond, and Eddie didn't push him for an answer. Few of the handful of people in the pub seemed to be paying attention to the game on the television. Most were locals, but Scoop picked out a young couple who undoubtedly had come in on the bicycles he'd seen outside the pub. He could hear the pair chatting in German. They looked happy and carefree, but probably they weren't. There'd be issues back home--jobs, relatives, health issues. Something.