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A shame, really.”
    Simon looked at Adler, who suddenly went red and bolted into the crowd, mumbling that he needed to say hello to someone.
    A lot of his arguments ended that way, Simon thought as he finished off his champagne, got rid of his empty glass and grabbed a full one from another tray. The event was catered, and most of the guests were dressed up and having a good time. From what he’d heard, they included a wide range of people—academics, graduate students, artists, musicians, folklorists, benefactors, a couple of priests and a handful of politicians and rich art collectors. And at least two cops, but Simon steered clear of them.
    “Lloyd Adler’s not that easy to scare off,” Owen Garrison said, shaking his head as he joined Simon. Owen was lean and good-looking, but all the Garrisons were. Simon was built like a bull. No other way to say it.
    “I’m on good behavior tonight.” He grinned, cheekily putting out his pinkie finger as he sipped his fresh cham
    pagne. Owen just rolled his eyes. Simon decided he’d probably had enough to drink and set the glass on a side table. Too much bubbly and he’d start a fight. “I didn’t say a word.”
    “You didn’t have to,” Owen said. “One look, and he scurried.”
    “No way. I’m charming. Everyone says so.”
    “Not everyone.”
    Probably true, but Simon did tend to get along with
    THE ANGEL
    35
    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.”
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    CARLA NEGGERS
    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 De
    partment. 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 compli
    cated. 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