The Angel by Carla Neggers Page B

Ireland.
    Keira Sullivan.
    The flaxen-haired fairy princess with a penchant for trouble.
    “You met her the other night in Boston,” Owen said.
    “I remember.” Simon pictured her floating into the drawing room in her long skirt. “She was off to Ireland to look into an old story. What’s going on?”
    “She was supposed to call her uncle this morning from the pub in the village where she’s rented a cottage. When he didn’t hear from her, he checked with the pub. The barman said he’d expected her to stop in last night, but she didn’t, and no one’s seen her today. She doesn’t 102
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    have a cell phone, and there’s no phone at the cottage she rented.”
    Simon felt the muscles in the back of his neck tighten.
    “Why doesn’t her uncle ask someone from the pub to go knock on her door?”
    “He did. She wasn’t there. Her rented car’s in the drive
    way.”
    “She’s an adult. She’s in Ireland on her own. How do we know she didn’t just jump on the bus and go to Dublin for a few days?”
    “We don’t. Bob’s not panicking, but he’s got this thing about the summer solstice. It’s bad luck for his family or something. I know it’s a lot to ask as a favor, but if you’re at a loose end and could take a look, you’d have a cop in Boston in your debt.”
    “Always a good idea.”
    “I’ve e-mailed you a file on Keira. Link to her Web site, directions to her cottage.”
    Simon was more accustomed to diving into rescue missions following major disasters, not tracking down some flaky creative type who’d taken off into the Irish country
    side. As attractive as this one was.
    “All right. I’ll see what I can do.” He started to hang up, but added, “I haven’t rescued a damsel in distress in a while.”
    “Bob said for me to tell you Keira’s also a dead shot with a Glock.”
    “Is she now?” It was obviously a warning from the uncle for Simon to behave, but he was more amused than intimidated. “Even better. And she’s pretty.”
    “Alas,” Owen said, “that she is.”
    Simon also knew—as Owen and Bob O’Reilly would also know—that if something had gone wrong and Keira
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    was in trouble, the sooner they got started looking for her, the better her odds of surviving.
    After he disconnected, Simon returned to his stool at the bar next to his latest partner in debate, a London banker he’d just met, also friends with Will Davenport. The banker had ordered another martini and seemed ready to settle in for an evening of putting an upstart American in his place. He was Simon’s age but dressed as if he’d just stepped from tea with Edward VIII. If not for the hotel’s dress code, Simon would have been in jeans. Instead, he’d opted for black slacks and a charcoal pullover that barely passed muster.
    “Sorry, mate,” he told the banker. “Duty calls.”
    “The fake English accent is annoying, Simon.”
    “That’s the idea.”
    Simon headed up the elevator to the elegant suite where he was supposed to be keeping a low profile while the FBI and other law enforcement entities went after Norman Es
    tabrook and his pals.
    Would John March consider taking off to Ireland to check on an artist late for a call to her cop uncle a way of keeping a low profile?
    Probably not, Simon thought, turning on his laptop and opening up his e-mail.
    “Whoa.”
    Having met Keira Sullivan, he’d expected pretty, but in the publicity shot on her Web site, she was smiling, with flowers—pink roses and something purple and frothy—in her shining flaxen hair. She had gorgeous, black-lashed blue eyes, and she wore a dark green velvet dress that gave her the look of an elf princess out of Tolkien—one with a very nice cleavage. He couldn’t help but notice, although the flowers in her hair had momentarily distracted him. 104
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    “Now that can’t be a good sign,” he muttered, clicking the link to her bio.
    She was born in South Boston and raised in