Free The Whisper by Carla Neggers Page B

bug her on the flight.
    He didn’t bug her, but he kept an eye on her while he read a book and drank the water she’d bought him. It was a long, skin-crawling seven hours across the Atlantic. He had smart, pretty Sophie Malone a few rows in front of him, a four-year-old kicking his seat behind him and, directly across the aisle, two old women who talked for all but about six seconds of the flight. Sitting still had never been his long suit, and almost getting blown up in his own backyard hadn’t helped his patience.
    His conversations with Myles Fletcher and Josie Goodwin hadn’t helped, either. Was Sophie onto something—deliberately or inadvertently—that would interest British intelligence? A professional, or even a personal, interest in Keira’s ruin was one thing. Keeping secrets was another.
    When the plane landed, Sophie jumped up and squeezed past a young couple with a toddler. If Scoop tried the same maneuver, he’d knock someone over, but she was slim, agile and muchfaster than anyone would expect just looking at her. She also had a big, friendly smile. Scoop was faster than he looked, but that was it. He wasn’t slim or agile, and he certainly didn’t have a big, friendly smile.
    He wondered if being back on American soil would help him lose that fairy-spell, love-at-first-sight feeling. So far, not so good.
    He caught up with her again at baggage claim. “Share a cab?” he asked as she lifted a backpack off the belt.
    She hooked its strap onto one shoulder. “Oh—no, thanks.” She motioned vaguely toward the exit. “Someone’s picking me up.”
    Scoop didn’t even have to be good at detecting lies to see through that one. Not that she was trying hard to hide that she wasn’t telling the truth.
    He could have taken the subway, too, but he went ahead and grabbed a cab.
    He’d be seeing Sophie Malone again. It wasn’t a question of if. It was a question of when and under what circumstances.
     
    Scoop had the cab drop him off in Jamaica Plain. He stood in front of the triple-decker he owned with Bob O’Reilly and Abigail Browning. It was a freestanding, solid house, one of thousands of triple-deckers built in the early 1900s for immigrant workers. It had character. Abigail and Owen were due back soon from their honeymoon. Bob was working. He and some of the guys from the department had boarded up the windows with fresh plywood and strung yellow caution tape across the front porch.
    Scoop had never figured his second-floor apartment would be the last place he owned, but he’d had no immediate plans to move. He, Bob and Abigail all hated that three police detectives had brought violence to their own neighborhood. Their street was semi-gentrified, with mature trees and well-kept gardens.There were young families with kids on bicycles, teenagers playing street hockey, professionals, old people.
    Scoop unlocked the side gate, left his carry-on and duffel bag on the walk and headed to the postage-stamp of a backyard. The bomb had set off a fire on Abigail’s first-floor back porch that burned straight through to her dining room. His porch, directly above hers, had also burned. The firefighters had gotten there fast and stopped the fire from spreading, but with the extensive smoke and water damage, the entire three-story house had to be gutted. Bob was in charge of figuring out what came next. It’d be a while before they could move back in.
    Abigail planned to sell her place and move with Owen into a loft in the renovated waterfront building where the new headquarters of Fast Rescue, Owen’s international search-and-rescue outfit, were being relocated from Austin. Bob had mentioned maybe he could take the top two floors and Scoop could move to Abigail’s place. Sounded good to Scoop, but it’d involve redesigning and probably more money.
    He squinted up at his boarded-up apartment. He’d done his mourning for any stuff he’d miss. Photographs, mostly, but his family had copies of a lot of