The Whisper. Carla Neggers

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      Praise for the novels of Carla Neggers

      “Carla Neggers and her talents have not been

       more in evidence than in her latest…it’s big,

       bold and stunningly effective. Evidence of a writer

       at the absolute top of her game still climbing higher.”

      —Providence Journal on The Whisper

      “No one does romantic suspense better.”

      —Janet Evanovich

      “Readers have come to expect excellence

       from Neggers, and she delivers it here…

      extremely absorbing.”

      —RT Book Reviews on The Mist

      “Neggers’s passages are so descriptive that one

       almost finds one’s teeth chattering from fear and

       anticipation as well as from the cold…the chill from

       the emotionless and guiltless killers’ icy hearts is

       enough to cause frostbite to our very souls.”

      —Bookreporter on Cold Pursuit

      “Neggers has few peers when it comes to crafting this

       type of story. She combines a brain-teasing mystery

       and a steamy, compelling romance into

       a breathtaking reading experience.”

      —RT Book Reviews on The Angel

      “Here is intelligent writing

       that remains highly entertaining.”

      —Publishers Weekly on Betrayals

      “Carla Neggers writes a story so vivid you can

       smell the salt air and feel the mist on your skin.”

      —Tess Gerritsen

      The Whisper

      Carla Neggers

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      For Leo

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 32

      Chapter 33

      Chapter 34

      Chapter 35

      Acknowledgments

      1

      Beara Peninsula, Southwest Ireland—late September

       S coop Wisdom opened his daypack, got out his water bottle and took a drink. He sat on a cold, damp rock inside the remains of the isolated Irish stone cottage where the long summer had started with a beautiful woman, a tale of magic and fairies—and a killer obsessed with his own ideas of good and evil.

      The autumn equinox had passed. Summer was over. Scoop told himself it was a new beginning, but he had unfinished business. It’d been gnawing at him ever since he’d regained consciousness in his Boston hospital room a month ago, after a bomb blast had almost killed him.

      He was healed. It was time to go home and get back to work. Be a cop again.

      He set his water bottle back in his pack and zipped up the outer compartment. A solitary ray of sunshine penetrated the tangle of vines above him where once there’d been a thatched roof. He could hear the rush of the stream just outside the ruin.

      And water splashing. Scoop shifted position on the rock, listening, but there was no doubt. Someone—or something—was tramping in the stream that wound down from the rocky, barren hills above Kenmare Bay. He hadn’t seen anyone on his walk up from the cottage where he was staying on a quiet country lane.

      He stood up. He could hear laughter now.

      A woman’s laughter.

      Irish fairies, maybe? Out here on the southwest Irish coast, on the rugged Beara Peninsula, he could easily believe fairies were hiding in the greenery that grew thick on the banks of the stream.

      He stepped over fallen rocks to the opening that had served as the only entrance to what once had been someone’s home. He could feel a twinge of pain in his hip where shrapnel had cut deep when the bomb went off at the triple-decker he owned with Bob O’Reilly and Abigail Browning, two other Boston detectives. He had taken most of the blistering shards of metal and wood in the meatier parts of his back, shoulders, arms and legs, but one chunk had lodged in the base of his skull, making everyone nervous for a day or so. A millimeter this way or that, and he’d be dead instead of wondering if fairies were about to arrive at his Irish ruin for a visit.

      He heard more water splashing and more female laughter.

      “I know, I know.” It was a woman, her tone amused, her accent American. “Of course I’d run into a big black dog up here in these particular hills.”

      In his two weeks in Ireland, Scoop had heard whispers about a large, fierce black dog occasionally turning up in the pastures above the small fishing and farming village. He’d seen only sheep and cows himself.

      He peered into the gray mist. The morning sun was gone, at least for the moment. He’d learned to expect changeable weather. Brushed by the Gulf Stream, the climate of the Southwest was mild and wet, but he’d noticed on his walks that the flowers of summer were fading and the heather on the hills was turning brown.

      “Ah.” The woman again, still out of sight around a sharp bend in the stream. “You’re coming with me, are you? I must be very close, then. Lead the way, my new friend.”

      The ruin was easy to miss amid the dense trees and undergrowth on the banks of the stream. If he hadn’t known where to look, Scoop would have gone right past it his first time out here.

      A woman with wild, dark red hair ducked under the low-hanging branches of a gnarly tree. Ambling next to her in the shallow water was, indeed, a big black dog.

      The woman looked straight at Scoop, and even in the gray light, he saw that she had bright blue eyes and freckles—a lot of freckles. She was slim and angular, her hair down to her shoulders, damp and tangled. She continued toward him, the dog staying close to her. She didn’t seem particularly taken aback by finding a man standing