of one of the biggest movers and shakers in this country, and all of a sudden a lightbulb goes on and you say, ‘Oh, that’s where the killers are! At a convent out in Carmel Valley.’” He laughed shortly. “Yeah, that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.”
Agent Kelley answered him in a scathing tone. “It does if your girlfriend is one of Alicia Gerard’s oldest friends—and if your girlfriend takes in women and children on the run.”
“Which you wouldn’t even have known if I hadn’t—”
“Confirmed it for us,” she said firmly. “We knew about Abby Northrup’s work long before you decided to enlighten us, Chief Schaeffer. We hardly had to rely on you to inform us—”
“Like hell,” Ben said, interrupting angrily.
“Easy,” Lessing said quietly. “Let’s keep personalities out of this.”
“This is not about personalities,” Kris said sharply. “It’s about not having an outsider at our meetings.”
“Chief Schaeffer is hardly an outsider,” Lessing reminded her, “any more than you are. And so far he’s been cooperating fully.”
“Fully? You may think so, but—”
“I cooperated because you told me that Abby and the Prayer House were in danger,” Ben said, interrupting again. “There wasn’t even time to find out who you were after.”
It was the fear that Abby might be hurt that had made him screw up, dammit. What a fool he was, confirming their suspicions about Abby’s work with Paseo when he’d made a promise a year ago never to tell a soul. And now, because he’d thought it was his duty to do so—and that the suspect might be a danger to Abby and the Prayer House—he’d blabbed to the damned FBI.
Abby would never forgive him.
“I’ve had enough,” he said, standing. “You’re welcome to stay here until you’re done, but I’ve got work to do.”
“Chief—” Lessing raised a delaying hand.
“No. From everything you’ve said so far, this is nothing but a plain and simple homicide. If that’s the case, I sure don’t need you to help solve it. In fact, it looks to me like you’re wasting taxpayers’ money with all this hoopla, but hey, don’t let me stop you.”
He stormed out, slamming the door. Papers on the table scattered from the breeze it created.
Lessing looked at Kris Kelley. “We’ve got to tell him,” he said heavily. “Everything.”
“Oh, hell,” she sighed. “I’ll go get him.”
7
Ben didn’t have to wonder long if his bluff had worked. He had barely leaned back in his chair, boots on his desk, when Kris Kelley sailed into his office.
“Look,” she said tightly, as if saying the words might choke her, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. We need you back in there.”
“You look,” he said, swinging his feet off the desk and planting them firmly on the ground. “This is my town. If anything bad happens to it or the people in it—”
“I know, I know,” she said irritably. “I’m trying to apologize, Chief!”
“And I appreciate that. But if you and the gang in there want any further cooperation from me, you’ll have to damn well tell me what’s really going on. You can’t expect me to sit there and listen to bunk about it being only a homicide when there’s a gaggle of government agents sitting around my conference table.”
Kris half smiled. “A gaggle?”
He didn’t smile back.
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “You’ve got it. We’ll tell you everything. But you’ll have to swear not to repeat anything you hear in that room. Not to anyone you work with, your friends, Abby Northrup…no one.”
Ben almost told her to forget it. For a few minutes in there his pride had been hurt, and he’d wanted to force them to take him into their confidence. Now that he’d won the point, though, he’d probably be better off to walk away and wash his hands of the FBI. Tell them to get the hell out of here, and let the chips fall where they may.
The only thing that kept him from doing that was the thought that being on the inside might be the only way he could protect Abby.
Hoisting his six-foot-two frame out of the chair, he rested his hands on his hips. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”
Ben took the same chair he’d had before, next to Lessing, who gave him a nod as if Ben had merely excused himself a few minutes to use the restroom. Kris Kelley’s expression was noncommittal as she took her own seat.
Lessing looked at a man halfway down the table. “Agent Bollam?”
“Sir.” The agent walked over to the light switch, flicking off the overheads. Pulling a cart that held a slide projector from a corner, he positioned it behind and to the right of Agent Lessing. Pointing it toward the far wall so that everyone could see, he said, “I’d like to begin with some background.”
He brought up a photograph of two people who looked to be in their twenties or early thirties. The woman had long, curly, strawberry-blond hair that looked windblown and covered half her face. It didn’t hide her smile, though, nor her beautiful large hazel eyes. The man had black hair, and his arms were around the woman from behind, holding her tightly and smiling, his cheek against hers.
“These are Alicia Gerard’s parents,” Bollam said, “Pat and Bridget Devlin.” Behind them was a sign that read Dublin Automotive Services, and in one of the open bays was a dark blue car that Ben, a classic-car nut, recognized as an Irish-built MG Midget, circa 1960s.
“That photo was taken about forty years ago,” Bollam said. “Pat and Bridget Devlin would be in their sixties now.”
He changed the slide to one that depicted the scene of an accident. There were police cars, ambulances and a crowd gathered along a highway with a steep cliff on one side. At the bottom of a ravine was wreckage.
“Some of you might recall hearing about a school bus being blown off the road in Ireland in the seventies. Twenty-eight out of the twenty-nine children aboard were killed.”
A few of the agents nodded.
“Pat Devlin was—is,” he corrected himself, “a brilliant man, a scientist with ties to the IRA. His specialty, in those days, was building explosive devices. After the school bus attack, fragments of the bomb were found, as were certain ‘fingerprints,’ as they say—details in its construction that led straight to Pat Devlin.”
“My God,” Ben said. “H. P. Gerard’s father-in-law? He blew up that bus?”
“Long before Alicia ever met H. P., of course. She would have been around five at the time. And while Pat Devlin did build the bomb the IRA used, he may not have known precisely what it was about to be used for. Reportedly, he was so sickened by
