The Mist (3 page)

Beara Peninsula, Southwest Ireland
6:20 p.m., IST
August 25

L
izzie pulled off her bandanna, relishing the feel of the cool wind and mist in her hair. Eddie's dog had led her onto a narrow country lane that followed a stone wall between bay and mountains. She tried to enjoy her walk past rain-soaked roses, holly and wildflowers, fragrant on the wet summer evening. She smiled at lambs settling in for the night and stood for a moment in front of an old, abandoned stone cottage, a reminder of the long-ago famine and subsequent decades of mass emigration that had hit West Cork hard.

Up ahead, the spaniel paused and looked back, tail wagging. Lizzie laughed, dismissing any notion that he was trying to lead her somewhere or was connected to her strange encounter with the old farmer.

Too little sleep. Too many Irish fairy stories.

She came to a cheerful yellow-painted bungalow. A red-haired woman stood at the kitchen sink while a man, handsome and smiling, brought a stack of dishes to the counter and young children colored at a table behind them. Feeling an unexpected tug of emotion, Lizzie continued along the lane. If nothing else, the cool air and brisk walk were helping to clear her head so that she could figure out what to do now that Simon Cahill was in Boston.

She could hear the intermittent bleating of sheep, out to pasture as far up into the rock-strewn hills as she could see. Pale gray fog and mist swirled over the highest of the peaks, settling into rocky dips and crevices. Given her cover story, she'd stuffed her backpack with hiking gear, dry clothes, flashlight, trail food, even a tent. All she had to do now was get herself onto the Beara Way and keep going. Hike for real. She could leave her car in the village and follow the mix of roads, lanes and trails up the peninsula to Kenmare, or down to Allihies and Dursey Island.

How many times had she debated walking away from Norman Estabrook and all she knew about him? She'd met him when he'd been a guest at her family's Dublin hotel sixteen months ago. He was a brilliant, successful hedge-fund manager who had the resources to indulge his every whim, and as an adrenaline junkie, he had many whims. He was known as much for his death-defying adventures as his immense fortune. He wasn't reckless. Whether he was planning to circumnavigate the globe in a hot-air balloon, jump out of an airplane at high-altitude, or head off on a hike in extreme conditions, he would prepare for anything that could go wrong.

At first, Lizzie had believed he was hanging out with major drug traffickers because he was naive, but she'd learned otherwise. She now suspected that, all along, Norman had calculated
that if he were caught, prosecutors would want his friends in the drug cartels more than they wanted him, the financial genius who'd helped them with their money. He was rarely impulsive, and he knew how to leverage himself and manage risk.

Lizzie had been at his ranch in Montana in late June when he'd realized federal agents were about to arrest him. He was a portly, bland-looking forty-year-old man who'd never married, and never would marry. Shocked and livid, he'd turned to her. "I've been betrayed."

He'd meant Simon Cahill, not her. Norman had hired Simon the previous summer to help him plan and execute his high-risk adventures. He'd known Simon had just left the FBI and therefore might not be willing to look the other way if he discovered his client was involved in illegal activities, especially with major drug traffickers.

Turned out there was nothing "ex" FBI about Simon.

In those tense hours before his arrest, Norman hadn't looked at himself and acknowledged he'd at least been unwise to cozy up to criminals. Instead, he'd railed against those who had wronged
him
. Other than a few members of his household staff, Lizzie had been the only one with him. He had never had a serious romantic relationship that she knew of--and certainly not with her. The people in his life--family, friends, staff, colleagues--were planets circling his sun.

The rules just didn't apply to Norman Estabrook. He'd gone to Harvard on scholarship, started working at a respected, established hedge fund right after graduating, then launched his own fund at twenty-seven. By forty, he was worth several billion dollars and able to take a less active role in his funds.

Lizzie had paced with him in front of the tall windows overlooking his sprawling ranch and the big western sky and tried to
talk him into calling his attorneys and cooperating with authorities. But if she'd learned anything about Norman in the past year, it was that he did what he wanted to do. Most people about to be handcuffed and read their rights wouldn't get on the phone and threaten an FBI agent and his boss, but Norman, as he'd often pointed out, wasn't most people.

She'd watched his hatred and determination mount as he'd confronted the reality that Simon--the man he'd entrusted with his life--was actually an undercover federal agent.

That John March had won.

Retreating from the magnificent view, he had picked up the phone.

"Don't, Norman," Lizzie had said.

She wasn't even sure he'd heard her. Spittle at the corners of his mouth, his eyes gleaming with rage, he'd called Simon in Boston and delivered his threat.

"You're dead. Dead, dead, dead. First I kill John March. Then I kill you."

Lizzie remembered staring out at the aspens, so green against the clear blue sky, and thinking she, too, would be dead, dead, dead if Norman figured out that for the better part of a year she'd been passing information about him anonymously to the FBI. Until his arrest, she hadn't known if the FBI was taking her information seriously and had Norman's activities under investigation. She certainly hadn't known they had an undercover agent in position.

They didn't know about her, either.
No one
did.

Even with FBI agents spilling onto Norman's ranch--even when they'd interviewed her--Lizzie had kept quiet about her role. When she decided to head to Ireland, she'd taken steps to maintain her secret. Hence, the backpack, walking shoes and tale
about hiking the Beara Way. Let Simon think she was stopping in on him and Keira while she was in the area. Get him talking about Norman, their mutual ex-friend, and her belief that he already had people in position to help him when he'd called Simon from his ranch that day. That he was serious and had at least the beginnings of a plan in place, and the FBI should get it out of him. For the past two months, she'd expected "conspiracy to commit murder" to be added to the list of charges against him. The FBI had his threat against its director and one of its agents on tape. Surely they'd be investigating whether he could carry it out.

Maybe they were, but here she was, her jacket flapping in the stubborn Irish wind and Simon Cahill and John March across the Atlantic in Boston. Lizzie hoped they were consulting on how to keep Norman in custody.

She came to a track that wound up into the hills and noticed fresh paw prints in the soft, wet dirt. Assuming they belonged to the springer spaniel, she followed them up the steep track. She'd go a little ways, then head back to her car. She couldn't fly to Boston tonight. She could go back to Dublin or find a local bed-and-breakfast. She needed sleep, food and information on Norman in Montana and Simon and March in Boston.

The dirt track curved and leveled off brief ly at a hand-painted Beware of Bull sign nailed to a gate post. Lizzie paused and gazed out across the open pasture, where the distinctive silhouette of a prehistoric stone circle was outlined against the dark clouds.

Eddie's dog leaped from behind a large boulder, startling her. "There you are," she called to him, laughing at her reaction. "Hold on. I'm coming."

Not waiting this time, the dog pivoted and bounded up past scrubby junipers and over clumps of gray rocks toward the circle.

He obviously knew he had her.

Lizzie climbed over the barbed-wire fence and dropped onto the wet grass on the other side, dodging a sodden cow patty. Carefully avoiding more cow manure, she made her way across the rough, uneven ground of the pasture. In a sudden blur, the dog streaked back toward the fence and the dirt track, deserting her. She shrugged and decided to continue on to the stone circle, one of more than a hundred of the megalithic monuments in West Cork and south Kerry alone. As she came closer, she jumped from one rock to another, skirting a patch of mud. She entered the circle between two of the tall, gray boulders that had occupied their spots for thousands of years.

A breeze whistled softly up from the bay.

Lizzie counted eight heavy standing stones of different heights that formed the outer edge of the circle. A ninth had toppled over, and there was a spot for a missing tenth stone. A low, flat-topped slab that looked as if it had been turned on its side--the axis stone--made a total of eleven.

Below her, past green, rolling fields, the harbor was gray and churning with the last of the storm. She stood very still, absorbing the atmosphere. She had never been to a place so eerie, so strangely quiet. The ancients had chosen an alluring location for their stone circle, whatever its original purpose.

"I can understand how people see fairies here," she whispered to herself.

A shuffling sound drew her attention, and she turned just as a fat, brown cow edged slowly along the thick junipers outside the circle.

She felt uneasy, nervous even, and didn't know why.

A presence, she decided.

Another cow? The dog?

Was the old farmer out there in the shadows and fog? She remembered his strange words.

"You'll be wanting to go to the stone circle."

"For what?"

"For what you're looking for, dearie."

Lizzie noticed a movement in a small cluster of trees and took a shallow breath, listening, squinting toward the hills as she eased her pack off her shoulder.

Something--someone--was out there.

She wasn't alone.

Beara Peninsula, Southwest Ireland
7:10 p.m., IST
August 25

A
s she eased back between the two tall boulders, Lizzie felt her right foot sink deep into a low spot. She ignored the shock of water and mud oozing into her socks and placed a palm on one of the cool, wet stones.

The wind gusted and howled over the exposed hills and rocks, bringing with it a fresh rush of rain.

She shivered. Maybe that was all it was--a last gasp from the storm.

She heard a sound behind her and turned sharply. Across from her, a slender woman entered the ancient circle, her long, blond hair whipping in the wind. She wore an oversize Irish fisherman's sweater that hung almost to her knees and, Lizzie suspected, belonged to Simon Cahill, because this had to be Keira Sullivan.

She slowed as she approached the low axis stone.

"It's okay--I'm a friend," Lizzie said quickly, not wanting to startle her. Maybe
friend
was a stretch, but she could explain later. "I know Simon. Simon Cahill. You're Keira, aren't you?"

The other woman's eyes narrowed, her skin pale in the soft gray light. "I walked up here from my cottage. I came across the pasture--I've been restless. I was down at the old copper mines today and tried to blame the ghosts there, and the gale." She frowned without any obvious fear or panic. "What was that?"

Lizzie had heard it, too--rustling sounds toward the cluster of trees on the hillside. It wasn't the storm. Someone else was out there.

"It's not ghosts or the gale," she said, letting her backpack slip farther down her arm, ready to drop it and run, use it as a weapon--a shield. "We have to go."

Black clouds surged down the mountains. Rain, hissing and cold, pelted Lizzie's jacket and her bare head, soaked Keira's hair and wool sweater. But Keira didn't seem to notice the suddenly worsening conditions. "Who do you think is out there?"

"I don't know." Lizzie noticed the cow break into a run away from the trees. "We should hurry."

Keira pointed in the same direction. "There."

Lizzie had no time to answer. A man--compact, wearing a black ski cap--burst out into the open and charged through the gap in the circle.

"He's after you," Lizzie said. "Run, Keira. Run!"

"I can't leave you--"

"I can fight. Go. Please."

The man lunged for Keira, but she darted away from him, diving behind one of the standing stones.

He swore and pivoted after her. He had an assault knife in his right hand. Lizzie leaped into his path and swung her backpack
hard against the knife blade, using her own momentum to add force to the blow. With a grunt of surprise, he lost his balance and stumbled backward over a protruding rock. Before he could regain his footing, she hit his knife again with her pack, following up with a sharp, low side kick to his left knee.

He yelped in pain and dropped the knife. Lizzie knew she had to press her advantage and quickly got in another low kick, scraping her foot down his shin. She stomped on his instep, not thinking, relying on her instincts and training. She'd practiced these moves a thousand times.

The attacker went down onto his back, writhing in the mud, manure and wet grass. Lizzie snatched up his knife before he could get to it and dropped onto her knees, putting the blade to his throat as he rolled onto his side and tried to get up.

"Keep your hands where I can see them," she said, "and don't move."

He complied immediately, his breathing shallow, as if he were afraid she'd cut him with the knife if he gulped or panted. One side of his face was pressed into the mud.

Lizzie turned the edge of the blade so that he could feel it against the thin skin over his carotid artery. "Do as I say or you're dead. Do you understand?"

"Aye. I understand."

He spoke with an Irish accent. A local hire, maybe. He could be faking the accent. Lizzie could manage a decent Irish brogue herself, and she was born in Boston. He was in his early to mid-thirties, with a jagged scar along his outer jaw that looked as if he'd earned it in a previous knife fight gone bad.

"You've broken my damn knee," he said.

"I doubt that."

Despite his pain, he spoke without fear, as if he knew it was
only a matter of time before he'd get his knife back and complete his assignment.

Kill Keira Sullivan.

Lizzie had never killed anyone herself and hoped she never had to, but she knew how to do it. Her father had seen to that.

"I'll check him for more weapons," Keira said.

Lizzie nodded, breathing hard.

Keira knelt in the muck and patted the man down from head to toe with a steadiness and efficiency that didn't surprise Lizzie. Keira's uncle was a homicide detective in Boston, and Keira herself had stood up to a killer in June.

She produced another assault knife in her search but no other weapons.

Lizzie controlled her reaction even as her thoughts raced. Norman wasn't waiting. He was acting now. Had he specified what he wanted done to the woman Simon loved? How he wanted her killed?

Undoubtedly, Lizzie thought. Norman would relish such details and control.

Was he going after Simon in Boston? John March?

Who else?

She maintained her grip on the knife. "The man who hired you isn't just after Keira. Who's next?"

He hardly breathed. "I don't know anything."

"My friend, you need to be straight with me." She paused before asking again, "Who's next?"

He tried to swallow against the sharp edge of the knife. "It doesn't matter. You're too late. I can't stop what's going to happen. Neither can you."

"That's not what I asked."

He carefully spat bits of grass and dirt from his mouth. "Go to hell. I'll not answer a single question you put to me."

He was calling her bluff. Lizzie didn't know if she should cut him--if it would do any good in getting him to talk.

She heard a dog growl just outside the stone circle, a low, fierce sound that wasn't from Eddie's springer spaniel.

With her would-be attacker's spare knife in one hand, Keira stood back as a large black dog bounded into the circle and onto the prostrate axis stone next to her, directly in the Irishman's line of sight. He nervously eyed the hound. A knife to the throat didn't impress him, but a snarling black dog appearing out of nowhere obviously did.

Keira addressed the thug calmly. "Tell this woman what she wants to know. It'll ease the dog. He senses the danger you pose to us."

The man licked his lips. "I don't like dogs."

"Then answer me," Lizzie said. "Who's next?"

He hesitated a half beat. "The daughter of the FBI director."

"Abigail," Keira breathed, her blue eyes steady but filled with fear as she looked at Lizzie. "Abigail Browning. She's a homicide detective in Boston."

Lizzie knew all about Abigail Browning, John March's widowed daughter, but kept her attention focused on the Irishman. "What's the plan?" The rain had subsided to a misting drizzle, but she could feel mud and water soaking into her hiking pants. "Tell me."

"I can't. I'll be killed."

The dog gave a menacing growl and leaned forward on the ancient stone, lowering his head as if at any moment he might pounce on the man below.

"There's a bomb," the Irishman whispered, shutting his eyes, then quickly opening them again. He obviously didn't dare lose sight of the black dog.

"Where?" Lizzie asked.

"Back porch."

"It's a triple-decker. Whose back porch?"

Keira gasped, but Lizzie couldn't take the time to explain how she knew that Abigail Browning lived on the first-floor of a Jamaica Plain triple-decker she co-owned with two other Boston Police Department detectives, including Bob O'Reilly, Keira's uncle.

Their attacker didn't answer.

"Tell me now," Lizzie said.

The dog bared his teeth, thick white drool dripping from the sides of his mouth, and the Irishman responded with a visceral shudder.

Definitely not a dog lover.

He bit his lower lip. "First floor. Browning's place."

"When?" Lizzie asked.

He turned his gaze from the dog and fixed his eyes on her. "Now."

She stifled a jolt of panic. He wasn't lying. Between the thought of the dog ripping out his intestines and her cutting his throat, he wasn't willing to risk a lie. Her father had told her at around age fourteen there was nothing like the fear of bleeding out to motivate a man.

"We need to call Boston," Keira said.

Lizzie nodded in agreement, but her heart jumped when she saw a tall man crossing the pasture toward the stone circle.

Will Davenport.

Keira saw him, too, and cried out to him as he entered the circle. "Will! There's a bomb--I have to warn Abigail."

He sized up the situation with a quick glance. "All right. I'll call." He spoke with complete control. "Tell me the number."

"I don't have Abigail's number memorized. It's at the cottage."

"What about your uncle?"

She nodded. "It's easier if I dial." He passed her his BlackBerry. Keira had tears in her eyes, but her hands didn't shake as she hit buttons. "If they're all there...if Abigail's on her porch..." She continued to dial.

Will crouched next to Lizzie and placed his hand over hers on the knife. His hand was steady, warm. His eyes, the flecks of gold gleaming, leveled on hers. "Let me take care of him. You help Keira."

Lizzie didn't budge. "How do I know you're not going to take the knife and kill us both?"

"Because I don't need the knife."

There was that. Lizzie loosened her grip on the handle. "I have bungee cords in my pack. We can use them to handcuff him."

"It would seem you think of everything," Will said as she eased her hand out from under his and he held the knife at the Irishman's throat.

Rainwater streamed from Keira's hair down her face as she spoke to her uncle in Boston. "Bob. Thank God..."

She faltered, and Lizzie stood up. "The people in danger are your family and friends. Please. Let me do this." She put out a hand, and Keira gave her the phone. Lizzie forcefully addressed Keira's uncle on the other end. "Listen to me. Take cover. Take cover
now
."

"Who the hell is this?" O'Reilly demanded.

"A bomb's about to go off on Abigail's back porch."

He was already yelling. "Take cover, take cover! Scoop, Abigail, Fiona!"

The phone crackled.

Lizzie heard a loud booming sound.

An explosion.

"Lieutenant!"

The connection went dead.