The Whisper. Carla Neggers

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СКАЧАТЬ had left little evidence that he’d been here at all, never mind for two weeks. Josie walked over to the front window and looked out at the stars and half moon. She wondered if Myles would have let Norman Estabrook and his thugs kill Abigail before he risked compromising his own mission. He would never have considered such a dire option. He tackled problems head-on and went after the outcome he wanted—in that case, Abigail Browning free and safe, Norman Estabrook and his thugs dead or captured and he, a British agent, with the key information he needed to carry on his mission.

      Josie could see Myles giving her one of his crooked, cocky grins. “No worries, love,” he’d say.

      She’d never met a man so certain he could achieve whatever he was after.

      She raked a hand through her hair. How could she blame Myles for the risks he’d taken—for his courage, his sacrifices?

      Because she bloody well could, she thought, forcing herself to smile at her two housemates—Lizzie in the kitchen, Keira heading for the bedroom. “You’d never know Scoop had ever been here, would you?”

      “That’s typical Scoop,” Keira said. “You should see his apartment. He had to get rid of everything after the fire, but he likes living a stripped-down life. He doesn’t need much more than a good colander for his garden harvest.”

      “I like how you say ‘fire,’” Lizzie interjected. “It was a bomb.”

      Despite her blunt comment, Lizzie was an optimist by both nature and conviction and every bit Will Davenport’s match. Josie had begun to doubt if he’d ever find the woman who was. Lizzie Rush not only knew her way around five-star hotels—she had taken on a billionaire and his professional thugs, and she’d held her own with Myles, Will, the FBI and the Boston police.

      Lizzie was joining Keira and her young cousins and their detective father for tea on Christmas Eve at the Rush hotel in Dublin. They’d invited Josie. She just might chuck London for a few days and go at that.

      Assuming she wasn’t in prison for killing Myles Fletcher in his sleep.

      Of course, that would require he avoid getting himself killed on his own first. Will and Simon had gone after him in part because they were convinced—as Josie was—that Myles was on the verge of getting himself killed. It had been a long, difficult, treacherous two years. He had done his share. Would he ever be able to return to a normal life? Would he even want to?

      Josie refused to go down that particular road. For a time, she’d thought Myles was, finally, a man who understood her, and she’d thought she understood him—including the challenges of being involved with him.

      Of loving him.

      She smirked to herself. That had been madness, hadn’t it? Fortunately, she had her son, Adrian. She’d gone outside before dark and called him. He’d had schoolwork to do. He was with his father, an accountant who hadn’t been pleased at all when he’d seen through Josie’s charade of a life. He hadn’t wanted a wife who was an intelligence officer in any capacity, even if it was largely behind a desk. He wanted a normal life. Who could blame him?

      Adrian adored Myles and had asked about him frequently in the initial months after his presumed death and betrayal. Josie had been prohibited from saying anything—that Myles was alive, dead, missing. And what had she known? Nothing, as it turned out. Just as well she’d stayed mum. Adrian had finally stopped asking, but only after telling Josie that he knew Myles would be back.

      Keira carried an armload of blankets and sheets from the bedroom. “It’ll be like a sleepover. Girls’ night. We can have a pillow fight.”

      Lizzie paused at the sink, and she and Josie both gaped at Keira as if she’d lost her mind. Girls’ night? A sleepover? A pillow fight?

      “Don’t look so shocked,” Keira said with a laugh, dumping the linens in a heap on the sofa, her pale hair hanging in her face. “I’ve never been one for troops of girlfriends, I admit, but I do like having you both here. Two of us can share the bed and one can sleep on the sofa, or one in the bed, one on the sofa and one on a mat on the floor. It’ll work.”

      “Of course it will,” Lizzie said, smiling.

      Josie angled Lizzie a sharp look. “If you polish that kettle for one more second, you’ll rub a hole in it. What is it, Lizzie? What’s on your mind?”

      Lizzie dropped her cloth and abandoned the kettle. She stared out the dark window above the sink. “I was just thinking about Sophie Malone.” She sighed and faced Josie again. “I’m forgetting something. I know I am, but I can’t think what it is.”

      “Something important?” Josie asked.

      “I hope not.”

      Keira sank onto the sofa next to her heap of linens. “Sophie’s a Celtic archaeologist originally from Boston, and she’s participating in the folklore conference. I can understand that she’d want to see the ruin. She just happened to pick a morning Scoop was there.”

      “Yes,” Lizzie said, “but that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it.”

      Josie stood by the fire, welcomed its warmth on her back. “These days, nothing is ever quite as it seems, is it?”

      Keira fingered the hem of an inexpensive sheet. “Sophie got to Scoop, don’t you think?”

      “Is our Dr. Malone attractive?” Josie asked.

      Keira blushed. “It’s not that.”

      “Nonsense. It’s always ‘that.’”

      Obviously preoccupied, Lizzie walked over to the pine table. “I didn’t know Sophie that well when she worked at our hotel in Boston.” She picked up a charcoal pencil from Keira’s array of art supplies, then immediately set it down again. “I know I’m missing something. I’ll remember, though.”

      Of that, Josie had no doubt. Both Lizzie and Keira had faced considerable danger and violence since June and had come out on the other side in good shape.

      Josie hadn’t faced anything more dangerous or violent than her email in-box.

      “Are you going back to London tomorrow?” Keira asked her.

      “I’ve no idea what I’m doing tomorrow,” Josie said, keeping any trace of bitterness out of her tone. “Today didn’t go as I expected. Why should tomorrow?”

      Lizzie, obviously as restless as Josie was, pushed aside Myles’s pathetic Irish wolfhound drawing. “We can all drive to Dublin in the morning and have tea and scones at my family’s hotel there,” she said.

      “You mean you want to talk to your cousin the doorman,” Keira said. “See if he can help you remember whatever it is about Sophie Malone you think is escaping you.”

      Lizzie stood up straight. “We need to know exactly what her interest in your stone angel is.”

      “It’s not my stone angel,” Keira said quietly. “It belongs to Irish legend now.”

      Josie had noticed Keira struggle with her emotions since Simon’s departure. The upheavals of the past three months had to be finally catching up with her. She’d encountered a brutal killer, fallen in love with an СКАЧАТЬ