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recuperating on the other side of the Atlantic, he hadn’t produced a face, a name, an incident—a shred of a memory that would take him from the shadows of uncertainty to the identity of the person who had assembled the bomb and delivered it to the home of three detectives.
    He’d have to face finding temporary housing when he returned to Boston. The triple-decker was badly burned and under repair. Bob O’Reilly was from Southie and knew carpenters, electricians and plumbers and was overseeing the work, but it’d be a while before any of them could move back in.
    Scoop eased off the stool, left enough euros to cover the tab and headed back outside. The village was quiet, the sun shining again, glistening on the rain-soaked sidewalk. Brightly painted houses lined both sides of the street. He half expected Sophie Malone to walk up from the harbor.
    It was eerie, that certainty that he hadn’t seen the last of her.
    He shook off his strange mood and turned onto a narrow lane that ran parallel to the bay, at the foot of the steep hills that formed the spine of the peninsula. A half-dozen brown cows meandered down the middle of the lane toward him. City cop though he was, Scoop had grown up in the country and didn’t mind cows. He stepped close to an ancient stone wall and let them pass. As he continued down the lane, he tried to pay attention to the details around him and not get lost in his own thoughts. He noticed a half-dozen sheep in a pen and heard more sheep baaing up in the hills.
    He came to the traditional stone cottage Keira had rented back in June and let him use the past two weeks. She’d come to Ireland to paint, walk, research her old story and delve into her Irish roots, but her summer hadn’t worked out the way she’d meant it to. The cottage was just the sort of place he’d have expectedher to stay. Getting blown against his compost bin and almost bleeding to death had helped him realize he could have fallen in love with her, but being here in Ireland had convinced him that he hadn’t—that it wasn’t meant to be.
    Keira was meant for Simon Cahill, the bull of an FBI agent who’d come here to search for her when she’d gone missing in the Irish hills.
    It’d been a hell of a summer, Scoop thought.
    A massive rosebush dominated the otherwise prosaic front yard, its pink blossoms perking up in the sunshine. He noticed the kitchen door was partially open and immediately tensed, although more out of force of habit than any real alarm. He wasn’t expecting company, and his rental car was the only vehicle in the gravel driveway. Most likely he simply hadn’t shut the door properly when he’d left for the ruin that morning.
    Wrong on all accounts, he observed as a man with medium brown hair eyed him from the small pine table where Keira had left an array of art supplies. He had several days’ growth of beard and looked exhausted, if also intense and alert. He wore canvas pants and a lightweight leather jacket. “I never could draw worth a bloody damn.” He spoke with a British accent. He leaned back in his chair and held up a sheet of paper with a crude pencil drawing. “What do you think?”
    “Is it a sheep?”
    “There you go. No. It’s an Irish wolfhound.”
    “I was just kidding. I knew it was a dog.” Scoop pulled off his jacket and set his backpack on the floor. “Myles Fletcher, right?”
    “Right you are,” Fletcher said matter-of-factly, setting his sketch back on the table. “Did you ever want to be an artist when you were a boy, Detective Wisdom?”
    “Nope. Always wanted to be a cop. I bet you always wanted to be a spy.”
    The Brit grinned. “Simon Cahill warned me you were no-nonsense.”
    “You’re SAS and British SIS. Secret Intelligence Service—MI6. James Bond’s outfit.”
    “All right, then.” Fletcher yawned, his gray eyes red-rimmed. Wherever he’d come from, he hadn’t had much sleep. “You’ll want to know why I’m here. I’ll get straight to the