The Whisper Read Online Free PDF

point. I have information that a Boston police officer was involved in making and planting the explosive device that gave you those scars.”
    Scoop remained on his feet, silent, still.
    “This police officer worked with the men who engineered the kidnapping of Abigail Browning. Smart businessman that he was, Norman Estabrook delegated the job. He wanted Abigail. He didn’t care how he got her.”
    Scoop leaned against a counter. During Abigail’s three-day ordeal, he had been in the hospital, out of commission. Fletcher’s role in helping her wasn’t common knowledge even in the police department, but Scoop had managed to piece together various tidbits and drag more out of his friends and colleagues in law enforcement. The Brit had latched on to a connection between drug traffickers and a terrorist cell and following their trail had taken him to American billionaire Norman Estabrook. For at least two years, no one, including Fletcher’s own people back in London, knew Fletcher was even alive.
    In the meantime, the FBI was onto Estabrook’s association with the drug traffickers and had him under surveillance in the form of Simon Cahill. They arrested the hedge-fund billionaire in June. By late August, he was free again. He disappeared, and Myles Fletcher, still deep undercover, still on the trail of his terrorists, found himself in the middle of the angry, entitled billionaire’s elaborate scheme to exact revenge on the FBI for his downfall. Estabrook’s scheme included setting off a bomb as a diversion to kidnap Abigail, FBI Director John March’s daughter, a Boston homicide detective and Scoop’s friend.
    Caught between a rock and a hard place, Fletcher had done what he could to help Abigail. Once she was safe, he took off again.
    Now he was sitting in an Irish cottage kitchen drawing pictures of dogs.
    What a day, Scoop thought. First Sophie Malone, now Myles Fletcher.
    A coincidence? Not a chance. “You wouldn’t be here if the main thrust of your mission wasn’t completed,” Scoop said.
    Fletcher shrugged. “I suspect your bad cop is someone you know,” he said. “Someone you wouldn’t think twice to have over for a pint or two.”
    “Any names?”
    “No. Sorry.” Fletcher stretched out his legs, looking, if possible, even more tired. “I’ve done no research on my own. My focus has been on other matters. This is your fight. You were injured in the blast, and you work in internal affairs. Even if you don’t know this particular officer yourself, you’ll have instincts about those who go bad.”
    “Where did you get this information?”
    “Here and there,” Fletcher said vaguely as he rose, visibly stiff. “It’s my guess that these thugs, including your bad cop, were involved in other illegal activities in Boston, and that’s how they hooked up with Norman Estabrook.”
    Scoop stood up from the counter but said nothing. The Brit was the one doing the talking.
    Fletcher picked up a rust-colored pencil from the table. “But you were onto a connection between these thugs and a member of the department before Estabrook snatched Abigail, weren’t you, Detective?”
    Scoop thought a moment before he responded. “I had a few whispers. Nothing more.”
    “I imagine that’s the truth, as far as it goes. Frustrating, when you know some but not enough…” Fletcher let it go at that. “I expect that you’re very good at your job.”
    “So are you. You’re more adept than most at lies and deception.”
    “That’s why I’m alive, here, trying my hand at a sketch. Let’s spare each other, then, shall we?” He ran his thumb over the sharp tip of the pencil. “I’m impressed with what Keira can do with colored pencils. I’d always thought they were for children, not working artists.” He set the pencil back on the table and flipped through a stack of sketches Keira had started of various bucolic Irish scenes, pausing at one of a shovel laid across an old, muddy wheelbarrow in a garden.