Eternal. V.K. Forrest

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СКАЧАТЬ it sit or pass it on to someone else.” He opened the blue file and then glanced across his desk, in search of something. Spotting a small note pad, he ripped the top page off and offered it to her. He was already looking at the file again.

      Fia accepted the sheet of paper and read the address. A chill rippled through her as she read it again, thinking her eyes were playing tricks on her. She had, after all, been up all night.

      “This…this says the homicide took place in the post office in Clare Point.”

      “Yup.” He scribbled something in the file, not really paying attention.

      “I…I grew up in Clare Point, sir.”

      “Yup.”

      She started to speak again, but stopped when he frowned at her. “Look, Kahill. I don’t like it any better than you do, but when Senator Malley’s office calls—”

      “I know,” she interrupted. “How high?” She pulled open the door and walked out of the office. Bobby McCathal dead?

      It was impossible.

      Literally.

      Chapter 2

      The cell phone on the car seat beside her rang, but Fia didn’t pick it up. The little screen identified the caller as máthair. It was the fifth call from her mother in the last two hours. One of her brothers had also called, as had her uncle. She hadn’t even known Uncle Sean had her number; he probably hadn’t, until her mother gave it to him.

      The phone stopped ringing, was quiet for a moment, then chirped accusingly, signaling that yet another message had been left. The screen flashed. Seven messages. “Fine,” she muttered. “Perfect.”

      Fia downshifted hard, engine-braking the BMW down the exit ramp off Route 1 before stomping on the gas pedal out of the curve. She had decided it would be better that she not speak to her mother, or her uncle, or anyone from Clare Point until she saw the crime scene. Her first loyalty had to be to the Bureau. She knew some family members wouldn’t understand, but if she was going to find out what happened to Bobby McCathal, she had to be an FBI agent first, Kahill sept member second. She had to follow investigative protocol, and that meant not allowing her mother to cloud her thinking with any doomsday proclamations, or her uncle with his armchair Discovery Channel police procedures.

      As Fia left the interstate behind, the terrain changed quickly from soy beans, corn, and sorghum to pine and hardwood forest. The road surface morphed from pale cement to shiny blacktop, then crumbling blacktop as the woods crept closer until it surrounded her. She flew past a state sign marking the west boundary of the Clare Point Wildlife Preserve. The needle on the speedometer slipped up over eighty-five. Littering in the preserve was a three-hundred-dollar fine. Speeding was practically a Kahill birthright.

      Fia turned up the air-conditioning in the car and pushed her sunglasses back up her nose. Shadows from the trees fell across her windshield; patterns of light and dark danced on the glass. It was the last week of August. Central Delaware was still hot as hell, but at least the humidity was not ungodly high. The tourist season was almost over. Most of the students had gone back to college or school or begun sports training so there would be few visitors on a Wednesday. The fewer the better.

      She followed the winding road, wondering what could have happened to Bobby McCathal. She needed to get to the bottom of this quickly, but absolutely nothing was coming to her. Possibilities flitted through her mind, but she was having a difficult time focusing as she fought that familiar feeling of inadequacy that was always part of returning home.

      What was wrong with her? She was thirty-five years old, well respected in her field, and yet she allowed these people to make her feel like a child. As if she wasn’t good enough, as if nothing she did would quite meet their approval. “Sweet Mary,” she breathed softly.

      The woods opened up, the road widened, and Fia passed the hand-carved wooden sign, embellished with a shamrock and a cattail, welcoming visitors to Clare Point. The state road fed directly onto Main Street, which ran west to east, straight down to the bay. Both sides of the street were lined with Victorian houses, pink—Sorry, Aunt Leah, salmon—baby blue, pale yellow, their gingerbread molding painted in contrasting pastels of peach, teal, and lavender. The colors were silly, like a bag of Jelly Bellys spilled on carpet. But the tourists, especially the blue-haired ladies, marveled at the authentic turn-of-the century houses. The hometown atmosphere they helped to create brought in ninety-five percent of the town’s annual income in three short months.

      There were no parking meters in front of the Clare Point post office; it was a friendly town that welcomed visitors…well, at least from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The post office was the only stone building on the street. Built in the thirties, with gray sandstone slabs hauled south in pickup trucks from Pennsylvania, it had originally been a bank. It was an auspicious building, solid, formidable, secure. From its WPA “historical building” cornerstone, to its ever-present American flag flying overhead, it had always seemed like a safe place to Fia. As an old woman, she had even spent a night here during Hurricane Hazel.

      Where had that protection been last night when Bobby needed it?

      Uncle Sean’s blue police cruiser was the only vehicle parked in front of the building. She pulled the parking brake, grabbed her cell phone and digital camera, and climbed out of the car, tucking the items into her suit jacket pockets. Yellow crime-scene tape danced in the bay breeze, blocking the stone steps leading to the double doors. She wondered where the tape had come from. They hadn’t needed crime-scene tape in Clare Point since its invention.

      Glancing up, Fia saw Anna Ross and her sister, Peigi, both in their mid-sixties, at the far end of the sidewalk, talking quietly. She turned away quickly, not wanting to catch their eye. When they spotted Fia, they hurried toward her, calling her name, but she ducked under the tape and made it up the steps ahead of them. Inside the post office, she swung around, closing and locking the doors behind her. She pulled down the old-fashioned shade.

      “How long it take to drive here?” Sean Kahill still had a slight Irish brogue, even after all these centuries.

      Fia turned around. The question caught her off guard. It just seemed, well…bizarre, under the circumstances. But her Uncle Sean had always been that way. He’d never been very good at focusing.

      “I’m sorry it took me so long.” Less than five minutes in town and she was already apologizing. “I had to stop by my place. Grab some clothes and get someone to feed my cat.” She pulled off her dark sunglasses and tucked them into her breast pocket. As she walked toward him, the heels of her boots clicked crisply against the polished stone floor, and echoed off the walls of the lobby.

      She could smell the blood in the building. Taste it.

      And smoke was there too, with a putrid, undeniable undercurrent. She swallowed hard. Of course, she had known. But still…she hadn’t been prepared. How did one prepare for the stench of burnt flesh?

      She met her uncle’s gaze. Sean Kahill was a tall man, like all the other Kahills, probably six-five in his prime, now with a slight paunch. In his early sixties, he had salt-and-pepper hair he kept cut short, military style. His dark blue uniform, with short sleeves and a shiny gold badge, was slightly rumpled.

      “Tell me what the hell happened here, Uncle Sean.” Fia already had had enough small talk. “And let’s keep this strictly business. Strictly police protocol.”

      There СКАЧАТЬ