The Angel. Carla Neggers
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did tend to get along with people. He was at the reception as a favor to Owen, whose family, not coincidentally, owned the house where it was taking place. The Garrisons were an old-money family who’d left Boston for Texas after the death of Owen’s sister, Dorothy, at fourteen. It was a hellish story. Just eleven himself at the time, Owen had watched her fall off a cliff and drown near the Garrison summer home in Maine. There was nothing he could have done to save her.
Simon suspected the trauma of that day was the central reason Owen had founded Fast Rescue, an international search-and-rescue organization. It was based in Austin and operated on mostly private funds to perform its central mission to put expert volunteer teams in place within twenty-four hours of a disaster—man-made or natural—anywhere in the world.
Simon had become a Fast Rescue volunteer eighteen months ago, a decision that was complicating his life more than it should have, and not, he thought, because the Armenian mission had fallen at a particularly awkward time for him.
Owen, a top search-and-rescue expert himself, was wearing an expensive suit, too, but he still looked somewhat out of place in the house his great-grandfather had bought a century ago. The decor was in shades of cream and sage green, apparently Dorothy Garrison’s favorite colors. The first floor was reserved for meetings and functions, but the second and third floors comprised the offices for the foundation named in Dorothy’s honor and dedicated to projects her family believed would have been of particular interest to her.
Owen glanced toward the door to the house’s main entry. “Still no sign of Keira Sullivan. Her uncle’s getting impatient.”
Her uncle was Bob O’Reilly, her mother’s older brother and one of the two cops there tonight Simon was avoiding. Owen’s fiancée, Abigail Browning, was the other one. She and O’Reilly were both detectives with the Boston Police Department. O’Reilly was a beefy, freckle-faced redhead with a couple decades on the job. Abigail was in her early thirties, slim and dark-haired, a rising star in the Homicide Unit.
She was also the daughter of John March, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the reason Simon’s association with Fast Rescue had become complicated. He used to work for March. Sort of still did.
He’d decided to avoid Abigail and O’Reilly because both of them would have a nose for liars.
“Any reason to worry about your missing artist?” he asked Owen.
“Not at this point. It’s pouring rain, and the Red Sox are in town—rained out by now, I’m sure. I imagine traffic’s a nightmare.”
“Can you call her?”
“She doesn’t own a cell phone. No phone upstairs in her apartment, either.”
“Why not?”
“Just the way she is.”
A flake, Simon thought. He’d learned, not that he was interested, that Keira was renting a one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of the Garrison house until she figured out whether she wanted to stay in Boston. He understood wanting to keep moving—he lived on a boat himself and not by accident.
“Abigail’s bidding on one of Keira’s pieces,” Owen said.
“The fairies or the Irish cottage?”
“The cottage, I think.”
They were imaginative, cheerful pieces. Keira had a flare for capturing and creating a mood—a part-real, part-imagined place where people wanted to be. Her work wasn’t sentimental, but it wasn’t edgy and self-involved, either. Simon didn’t have much use for a painting of fairies or an Irish cottage in his life. No house to hang it in, for one thing.
Irish music kicked up, and he noticed an ensemble of young musicians in the far corner, obviously enjoying themselves on their mix of traditional instruments. He picked out a tin whistle, Irish harp, bodhran, mandolin, fiddle and guitar.
Not bad, Simon thought. But then, he liked Irish music.
“The girl on the harp is Fiona O’Reilly,” Owen said. “Bob’s oldest daughter.”
Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more about Owen’s friends in Boston, especially ones in, or related to, people in law enforcement. It was all too tricky. Too damn dangerous. But here he was, playing with fire.
Owen’s gaze drifted back to his fiancée, who wore a simple black dress and was laughing and half dancing to the spirited music. Abigail caught his eye and waved, her smile broadening. They were working on setting a date for their wedding. Whenever it was, Simon planned to be out of the country.
“You can’t tell her about me, Owen.”
“I know.” He broke his eye contact with Abigail and sighed at Simon. “She’ll find out you’re not just another Fast Rescue volunteer on her own. One way or the other, she’ll figure out your relationship with her father—she’ll figure out that I knew and didn’t tell her. Then she’ll hang us both by our thumbs.”
“We’ll deserve it, but you still can’t tell her. My association with March is classified. We shouldn’t even be talking about it now.”
Owen gave a curt nod.
Simon felt a measure of sympathy for his friend. “I’m sorry I put you in this position.”
“You didn’t. It just happened.”
“I should have lied.”
“You did lie. You just didn’t get away with it.”
The song ended, and the band transitioned right into the “The Rising of the Moon,” a song Simon knew well enough from his days in Dublin pubs to hum. But he didn’t hum, because if he’d been mistaken for an art critic—or at least an art snob—already tonight, next he’d be mistaken for a music critic. Then he’d have to rethink his entire approach to his life, or at least start a brawl.
“In some ways,” he said, “my lie was more true than the truth.”
Owen grabbed a glass of champagne. “Only you could come up with a statement like that, Simon.”
“There are facts, and there’s truth. They’re not always the same thing.”
A whirl of movement by the entry drew Simon’s attention, and he gave up on trying to explain himself.
A woman stood in the doorway, soaking wet, water dripping off the ends of her long, blond hair.
“The missing artist, I presume.”
Even as he spoke, Simon saw that something was wrong. He heard Owen’s breath catch and knew he saw it, too. The woman—she had to be Keira Sullivan—was unnaturally pale and unsteady on her feet, her eyes wide as she seemed to search the crowd for someone.
Simon surged forward, Owen right with him, and they reached her just as she rallied, straightening her spine and pushing a sopping lock of hair out of her face. She was dressed for the woods, but even as obviously shaken as she was, she had a pretty, fairy-princess look about her with her black-lashed blue eyes and flaxen hair that was half pinned up, half hanging almost to her elbows.
She was slim and fine-boned, and whatever had just happened, Simon knew it hadn’t been good.
“There’s a body,” she said tightly. “A man. Dead.”
That Simon hadn’t expected.
Owen touched her wrist. “Where, Keira?”
“The Public Garden—he drowned, I think.”
Simon was familiar enough with Boston to know the Public Garden was just down Beacon Street. “Are the police there?” he asked.
She nodded. “I called 911. Two Boston University students found him—the body. We all got caught in the rain, but they were ahead of me and saw him before I did. He was in the pond. They pulled him out. They’re just kids. They were so upset. But there was nothing anyone could do