Deadly Gift

  And so, with the “real” business—the private investigations firm he ran with his brothers Aidan and Jeremy—in good standing, Zach had planned on spending a chunk of December on his side business, checking out some of the musicians hitting the Boston clubs. Years ago, he’d begun investing in music studios, producing promising acts on his own label and watching with pleasure when they were picked by the major players. It had made a nice break from his job with the Metro police in Miami, and it was still a good way to wind down from his day job.

  He was exceptionally good with computers, and had become their three-man firm’s tech guy for his ability to hack into all kinds of systems. His street instincts were good, too, though, and he found his life fulfilling, even if not every case ended as well as Sam’s had.

  Then again, some of their cases would have made a statue smile, like the time Mrs. Mayfield, of the Mayfield Oil Group, had hired them on for a fantastic sum to find Missy.

  Missy was a cat.

  Easily done. Missy was found with six little puffs of fur, and the Flynn brothers were all offered kittens.

  Music was his love, though. Music was something that pulsed in his blood and echoed in his mind, not to mention the way it eased and cleansed his soul. It was something beautiful when he saw so much that was ugly.

  So he’d claimed December for himself—a chance to get back into that other world where no one went missing and no one died.

  Last night, after arriving in Boston, he’d started relaxing with a vengeance. Not that he got drunk, because he didn’t drink to excess, having learned long ago that the temporary high wasn’t worth the loss of control. But he’d run into a bunch of old friends at a pub on State Street and downed a few Boston lagers. Still, he was instantly aware at the sound of his ringer, and he answered the phone automatically. “Flynn.”

  “Zach, oh, Zach, thank God you’re there. Eddie has disappeared, and now Dad is in the hospital over in Ireland. I was going to fly over there, only Bridey said I shouldn’t, but Dad—”

  “Kat?” he asked, cutting across her uncontrolled flow of words.

  “Yes, it’s Kat. Oh, Zach, it’s awful, you have to help. We don’t know what’s going on, and my father is all alone over there with her. You have to go over and see what’s happening, Zach. I need your help, and so does Dad.”

  “Okay, slow down and start at the beginning. What’s wrong with your dad?” Zach asked, coming thoroughly, instantly awake. Sean O’Riley had been one of his father’s best friends. Even after his dad had passed away, though Sean had been in Rhode Island and the Flynns had been in Florida, Sean had been there, like an uncle, ready to offer a hand to Zach and his brothers. Then Zach had gotten involved with Kat. Not romantically, but she had the voice of a lark, so he’d given her some help professionally, put a band together for her, and now she was starting to soar. She was like a long-distance little sister, most of the time.

  “She did something to him.” Kat went on frantically. “She’s a monster with a bad dye job and veneers over her fangs.” She paused for breath and managed to calm down a bit. “Bridey said you should go over there right away and see what’s going on. She’s afraid for me to go. You know how she is, worrying that something will happen to me. Probably afraid I’ll wind up in jail for killing Amanda. Zach, please. You have to go and bring Dad home safely.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute. There are excellent hospitals in Ireland, and I’m sure—”

  “He needs to be here. So we can all be with him. Please. I’ll hire you. Zach, I’m scared. Eddie is missing, and I’m afraid he’s dead, and now someone’s after Dad, I’m sure of it. It’s got to be her. You know I’ve never trusted her, and now I think she’s really done something.” She had worked herself into a frenzy again and practically sobbed out the last words.

  “Kat, if Sean is in trouble, I don’t need to be hired. I would do anything for him. But you’ve got to calm down. And Bridey is right, you can’t start wildly accusing Amanda.”

  “But I’m right!”

  “Then you need proof.”

  “My father won’t believe me.”

  Zach understood Kat’s feelings about her stepmother. Amanda wasn’t much older than Kat herself was. But he hadn’t seen anything himself to suggest that Amanda meant to do away with Sean. Sure, she enjoyed the fact that he was well off and probably wouldn’t have given him a second look otherwise, but that was a far cry from murder.

  Frankly, he just didn’t think the woman had the brains to be capable of planning a murder.

  By the time Kat finished talking, he knew she was right about one thing. She should not go to Ireland—she might well wind up in jail—and he should. Actually, he thought, he should be heading straight to Rhode Island, where Eddie Ray and his boat had gone missing. But Sean was alive in a hospital in Dublin, and he needed to come home. Kat was too emotionally involved, too convinced that her stepmother was evil, to see to that. Sean, for whatever reason, loved his new wife. He also loved his daughter. And a blowup between the two women could be dangerous to his health.

  Zach picked up his watch from the bedside table. He could be in Dublin by morning. How soon he could head back, though, would depend on how well—or poorly—Sean was doing.

  “What about your father? Is he well enough to travel?”

  “Yes, with a nurse or something. I didn’t understand it all, just that, yes, he could come home. Please, Sean, bring him home. And when he’s safe—or at least at home, where I can keep an eye on that woman—you can find Eddie. I’ve talked to Dad, and he thinks he just ate something bad, but he’s worried sick about Eddie. Just book a flight to Dublin, then call me back and I’ll handle the rest of the details. You’re free right now, right?”

  There was a movement on the other side of the bed, and he winced. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the woman’s name. He did. But there was nothing between them other than the fact that she liked a dimly lit bar and some good music after a long day at corporate headquarters, and so did he, so he’d ended up here at her apartment. Truthfully, he was beginning to think he was meant to wander aimlessly and restlessly through life—focusing on work, but never finding what it was that he really wanted to come home to.

  He wished right now that he had woken up alone.

  “Yeah, I can leave today, and I will. I’ll get a flight,” he said to Kat, going over what she had told him and wondering if something dangerous really was going on, or if he was letting Kat’s suspicions get to him.

  He reminded himself of just how much hostility she bore Amanda, even though, for her father’s sake, she kept it hidden most of the time.

  It was perfectly possible that Sean had simply fallen ill or, as he’d said himself, gotten a nasty case of food poisoning. As for Eddie, well, that was worrying, but maybe he was just playing a prank.

  No. Eddie would never play that kind of a practical joke. Something else had to be happening, and once he got back, he would have to find out what.

  He started to tell Kat a quick goodbye, but she stopped him.

  “Wait, Zach.”

  “What?”

  “Please, I know I must sound crazy, but…God, I feel it. Like a chill in my bones. It’s like…like something evil is out there. An evil shadow. I’m worried sick about Eddie, and…I can’t let anything happen to my dad. I can’t.”

  “Kat, I’ll get to him as quickly as possible and I’ll get him home.”

  “Something really bad is happening, Zach. I don’t understand it, but I’m really afraid. And I’m not a coward, you know that.”

  “I know that, Kat. Just stay calm. I’ll get Sean home.”

  “And you’ll stay with us until you get this figured out?”

  “I’ll stay until it’s all figured out,” he promised, then said goodbye at last and hung up.

  He slipped from the bed, showered, then dressed in the bathroom. When he went back into the room, his bed partner was still stretched out on the mattress, a lithe and well-manicured thirty-so
mething blonde.

  “Call me when you’re back in my neck of the woods,” she said huskily.

  He ought to tell her he would. That would be the polite thing to do.

  But he didn’t want to lie, so he didn’t say anything.

  “You’re not going to call, are you?”

  “No,” he said softly.

  For a moment she stared back at him with tawny brown eyes that registered what was at least an honesty between them. Then she smiled, something dry in her gaze. “Nice night, thanks. Have a good life.”

  “You too,” he told her. It was the truth. It had been a nice night, and he wished her well, but their lives weren’t meant to intertwine.

  He dialed the airport as he left, and headed back to his hotel to pack up as quickly as he could.

  The air was soft and sweet, redolent of flowers, the sky blue, the hills emerald beneath the sun. She could feel the damp blades of grass beneath her bare feet, and she reveled in the sheer joy of being alive and feeling the silken breeze lift her hair until the sun kissed the back of her neck just so.

  She could feel the beat of her own heart, and she ran in her dream as she had once run in life. She laughed out loud at the promise she felt all around and in her love for the land itself. She had come from the city, just as she had when she was a young child, free and strong, believing that happiness lay ahead. She knew that when she crested the next hill, she would see the cottage with its neatly thatched roof where it waited in the valley. A fire would be burning in the hearth, and at night, the men would drink their ale, play their tunes, sing of the maids they had loved and lost, and speak of times gone by. The old cottage would be filled with those she had loved and everything she herself had lost.

  She realized that she was quickening her pace, and it troubled her at first. But then she decided to simply exult in the strength that filled her limbs. It was wonderful to run so, with her senses so alive and in tune with nature itself, the grass beneath her feet, the air, the sun, and even the distant sounds of music, like a siren’s song, beckoning her onward.

  Then she looked back—and she knew. Knew why she was running faster. Had to run faster.

  There was darkness behind her. The darkness of night, of billowing clouds, of shadows against the sun.

  The sweet music that had called to her gave way to a roll of thunder, and she knew that she had to run, for like the sweep of a tidal wave, the darkness was coming. In that thunder she began to hear the drumming of horses’ hooves, and when next she dared to look, something was breaking through the clouds, rushing ahead of them.

  A coach. Dark, massive and beautiful, yet terrifying, and drawn by huge, elegantly plumed black horses.

  And she knew—somehow she knew—it was coming for her.

  She turned away and began to run harder. She was young, she told herself, beautiful, and the world was hers.

  She saw someone there…ahead of her. She knew him, she was sure of it, but she couldn’t place him. There was a sad smile on his face, as if to welcome her. Something told her that he shouldn’t have been there. She knew him. A friend, not a lover. And yet a friend who did not belong here, not in this Ireland she had known and loved as a child. He waved, and she couldn’t tell whether he was welcoming her or warning her away.

  It didn’t matter. She had to escape the darkness, and the only way to run was forward.

  And the thunder of those hooves! She didn’t know, either, whether that great coach was meant to save her from the darkness or if it was part of it.

  And so she ran, picking up speed, her heart racing, her calf muscles burning along with her lungs. She prayed, as she raced to stay ahead of the darkness, that the coach was coming to save her. To hurry her onward toward the emerald-green beauty of the day, and the warmth and the love of the cottage and the one who waited for her there. He was speaking now, and though she couldn’t hear the words, somehow she knew they were a warning.

  “Eddie?” she cried out, recognizing him as she drew closer.

  “It’s all right, Bridey. I’m fine now. Fine where I am. But you have to watch out for the shadows and for the wind that howls.”

  “Eddie, for the love of God…what happened?”

  “Would that I knew. I saw the shadow.”

  And then he was slipping away from her, fading. Shadows were falling around him, but she needed to reach him.

  And so she continued to run….

  Eager and, despite her fear, so alive, so desperately alive.

  She could feel the dew beneath her feet. Feel the strength that powered her young muscles. Heart, lungs, mind: all were keen, and simply being alive was so sweet….

  Bridey O’Riley woke with a start.

  Barely had she blinked before she felt the arthritis crippling her hands, bowing her back, even as she lay in her bed.

  Ah, dreams.

  In dreams, a woman could be young again. Beautiful. Back in the Ireland of her youth, away from the strife of the city, just a lass playing in the hills and dreaming of love.

  She smiled as the light of day crept in through her windows. There would be no racing down the hills and across the velvet green dales of Ireland today. Her home there was as much a part of the distant past as her youth. If she were to rise and glance into a mirror, no brilliant eyes, radiant smile or porcelain skin would meet her stare. She would see an old woman, wrinkled and weathered, one who had lived, survived tragedy, known ecstasy, and knew now that death could not be far away. She could look out a window and see rocks, gray in the thin light of winter, jagged and wild and, perhaps, even exciting. This was America, the shore of Rhode Island, the place she now called home.

  And a fine home it was. Sean William O’Riley had done himself and his family proud. The sea was his heritage, sweeping through his veins, and he had come to this place, this granite shore, and made himself a fine living chartering beautiful ships with high masts and billowing sails. They lived in a stately mansion and wanted for nothing, and the respect he had shown her, caring for an old relation all these years, was proof that he was a good and loving man.

  He was a good businessman, too, working with that new young fellow, Cal, and with Eddie Ray….

  Her smile faded as she remembered seeing Eddie in her dream.

  Eddie Ray was missing.

  One of the best captains on the Eastern Seaboard, he had taken out his favorite vessel, the Sea Maiden, and he hadn’t been heard from since. He had disappeared.

  But he had been in her dream, standing in front of the cottage and warning her, though there was no reason for him to be there, when he had always lived here, in the States.

  Even as that thought came to her, the door to her room was flung open and Kat stood there for a moment, posed in the doorway, like a regal figurehead standing strong against the rise and fall of the sea. Katherine Mary O’Riley, her great-niece. She was Sean’s daughter, and as young and beautiful as Bridey had once been herself.

  “Oh, Aunt Bridey!” Kat cried, clearly upset.

  “What is it, child?” Bridey asked, sitting up against her pillows.

  Kat flew across the room and threw herself down next to Bridey on the bed.

  “They found the Sea Maiden floating out by one of the islands.”

  A tremor shook Bridey’s heart. Hadn’t she just seen Eddie, captain of the Sea Maiden, in a glen in Ireland, where he shouldn’t have been?

  And hadn’t he just been warning her about the shadows?

  “And Eddie?” Bridey asked softly, dread knowledge filling her mind.

  Kat looked down at Bridey with troubled blue eyes.

  “Not a sign of him,” she whispered, close to tears, and then she sat up straighter.

  “It’s her,” she said grimly, staring at Bridey through narrowed eyes. “That bitch. I don’t know how, but somehow Amanda did something to him.”

  “Ah, now, lass. Your own dear mother would’na’ mind that your father found happiness with another.”

  “Oh, Bridey,” Ka
t protested. “That’s a crock! Amanda is barely five years older than I am, thirty-one. She married my father for his money—you know she did. And now Dad is in a hospital in Dublin and the boat has been found, with no sign of Eddie, and I know—I just know—she did it….”

  “Now, lass, how can that be? Your da is in Ireland, and Eddie went missing here right before the party, and you know Amanda was with your da that day,” Bridey said softly.

  “I don’t care. She did it—somehow. She poisoned my dad,” Kat insisted. “She’s evil. Pure evil.”

  “Now, Kat.”

  Bridey tried hard not to betray any emotion in her face, but her mind was racing. Why on earth had Sean taken it upon himself to marry that young blonde…what was the word they used over here? Bimbo. That was it and it described Amanda O’Riley all too well.

  She couldn’t say such things to Kat, though, or she would only make things worse. She smoothed her great-niece’s hair. “Don’t you worry, now. Didn’t you tell me you were going to ask Zach Flynn to see that Sean comes home safe and well?”

  Kat nodded. “I called him this morning, and he’ll be on his way today.” Then she offered Bridey a smile. “And you were the one who said I should ask Zach.”

  “And you did right to listen to me,” Bridey told her. “He’ll get your da home, that he will.” She was grateful that Kat had practiced enough control to send Zach for Sean. Amanda was Sean’s wife. If he was incapacitated, she called the shots, and having Kat there spewing accusations wouldn’t help anything. Not only that, if there was something to be discovered, if there was a threat, Zach was trained to handle such a situation.