Fletcher lifted the rack from the triangle of balls and stood back. Abigail shot the cue ball across the table. It smashed into the racked balls and sent them spinning everywhere. Three solid-colored balls went into pockets. Pure luck. She had no idea what she was doing.
“You were right,” Fletcher said with a smile, “you’re not very good.”
She almost laughed as she lined up another shot. “You’re connecting dots that can’t be connected,” she said. “I can’t help you. I’ve been busy with my own job.”
“Who can help me, then, love?”
Her stomach lurched.
Fiona.
Abigail tapped a solid red ball into a corner pocket and forced Bob’s daughter out of her mind. Her name, her image, everything about her. But she could see Fiona just last night, playing a small harp with her Irish band at Morrigan’s Pub at the Whitcomb, the Rush hotel in Boston.
“This isn’t a good idea, Fiona.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t explain. Who do you know here? Who have you met?”
“No one, really.”
Fiona had blushed, and Abigail had noticed a young, cute, male Rush standing in the door and wondered if she’d overreacted and Fiona wasn’t about to stumble into one of John March’s labyrinths. As much as Abigail loved her father, she was well aware that he had left a complex trail behind him in his near sixty years on the planet.
Fiona knew every Irish bar in town that offered live music, and Morrigan’s would be one of the better paying and more prestigious. She could have found it on her own, but she hadn’t. She’d found it because her father knew Abigail, who was head over heels in love with Owen Garrison. And Owen’s family, with its strong ties to Beacon Hill, often stayed at the Whitcomb and put up friends there.
Abigail’s father had known the Garrisons even before she’d met Chris Browning, who had grown up just down the rockbound shore from their summer home on Mount Desert Island. But her father’s relationship with the Garrisons had nothing to do with her concerns about Fiona O’Reilly playing Irish music at Morrigan’s.
Her concerns had everything to do with the woman in whose honor the bar had been named-Shauna Morrigan, Lizzie Rush’s mother.
Even to think about any of them now, with Fletcher watching her, Abigail knew, was dangerous.
As she leaned forward, lining up another shot, she felt the strain of the last hours in her lower back. She was dehydrated and knew she needed to drink more water, but the thought nauseated her. “You’ll have to speak up,” she said. “My ears are still ringing from you bastards blowing up my apartment and smacking me in the face.”
“We have time.”
She concentrated on taking her shot, but she was too late.
Fletcher had already seen that she’d lied.
“Enjoy your game,” he said quietly, and left.
Chapter 16
Dublin, Ireland
7:23 a.m., IST
August 26
The bedroom door was still shut when Lizzie awoke, the early morning sun finding its way through the sides of the room-darkening window shade. She slipped into comfortable slim black pants, a black top and her new flats and dabbed on just enough makeup to convince people she’d slept okay.
Making as little noise as possible, she went out into the hall and took the stairs down to the lobby. She smiled at the woman at the front desk, who was new, and headed for the hotel’s small street-level restaurant, its tables covered in Irish lace. Lizzie chose one on the back wall that had a view of the door out to the lobby. She ordered coffee and scones and chatted a moment with her waiter, a college student from Lithuania. Last night on the Beara Peninsula suddenly seemed surreal, and she half expected her cousin to wander in and act as if she’d just arrived from Boston and none of it had happened. Her fight in the stone circle, the bomb, Abigail Browning, Norman ’s disappearance…the fair-haired Brit asleep in her suite.
Lizzie could blame her delusions on jetlag and go shopping.
But as she spread her scone with butter and raspberry jam, her handsome suitemate, dressed in another deliciously soft-looking sweater, joined her at her table.
Without waiting for an invitation, he sat across from her. “My sister loves Dublin. I’ll have to ask her if she’s stayed here.”
“She’s a wedding dress designer in London. Arabella. It’s a pretty name. You have an older brother, too. Peter. He manages the family farm, that being a five-hundred-year-old estate in the north of England.”
“All of which,” Will said, marginally impressed, “you could find on the Internet.”
“In fact, I did.”
She’d also done a bit of spying on the Davenports herself when she was in London in early July, but she chose to keep that fact to herself. Will had sparked her interest after she’d learned Simon wasn’t ex-FBI after all and remembered the two men were friends.
Will’s pot of tea and a steaming scone arrived. For a man who had slept only a few hours, he looked remarkably alert. And serious, Lizzie thought.
He poured his tea. “You’re playing a very dangerous game, Lizzie. It’s time to stop.”
She reached for more jam. She’d combed her hair and pinned it back, but she suspected there were still knots in it. It’d been a long night on the sofa. “If you were going to sic the FBI or the guards on me,” she said, “you’d have done it by now.”
As he set the teapot down, she noticed a thin, straight four-inch scar on his hand, perhaps from a knife fight that hadn’t gone as well as hers had last night.
“You’re not the dilettante you’ve pretended to be,” he said, lifting his cup and taking a sip as he eyed her over the rim. “You didn’t learn your fighting skills from reading a handbook. Who taught you?”
“I frequently travel on my own, and I decided it would be smart to take self-defense classes. But I do have the SAS handbook.” She sat back. “You’re not smiling, Will.”
“I woke up worried about you.”
“Ah. Maybe I should have given you the sofa instead. I slept just fine. Nothing to worry about.” She slathered jam on a chunk of scone and indulged, relishing the sweet, rich taste. “It’ll be back to mesclun soon. You and Simon are obviously good friends, but that’s not why you followed me here.”
“Do you have friends, Lizzie?”
“You mean in addition to my four cousins and Norman?”
Will still didn’t smile. “Correct.”
“Yes, I have friends, although I’ve neglected most of them lately.” She leaned back and studied him as he placed his cup in its saucer and broke off a piece of his scone. “No jam, no butter? You’re an ascetic.”
“I wasn’t the one who engaged in hand-to-hand combat last night.”
“Combat? When you put it that way…” But Lizzie couldn’t maintain her light mood, feigned as it was. “I’m not that hungry, having had a full Irish breakfast at midnight. How long have you known Simon?”
Will deliberated a moment. “Two years.”
“ Norman got very curious when he found out Simon was hanging out with you in London. Did you know he was working undercover, or did you think he was a former FBI agent with a grudge against Director March?”
“Simon and I didn’t discuss Norman Estabrook.”
“Then MI6 isn’t interested in him?”
Will gave her a slight smile. “Very clever, Lizzie. What are your plans for today?”
“Defying jetlag. Past that, I don’t know.” She abandoned her scone for her coffee, not meeting his eye as she said, serious now, “I asked Michael Murphy about one of your countrymen last night. I saw your reaction, Will, and I think he’s why you’re here in Dublin. You know him, don’t you?”
“As I indicated,” he said, picking up his teacup again, “you’re playing a dangerous game.”