Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Moira shook her head, setting her coffee cup down on the table and turning toward the doorway to see Siobhan. “He did just get back. I haven’t heard from him this morning.” She looked at Kean for confirmation.

  “Me either,” Kean offered. “I’m sure he’s just on a case or something.”

  “His case docket is clear,” Siobhan replied, leaning up against the doorjamb and frowning, her arms crossed over her chest. “I have to say …we rarely see him around here at all these days. It’s been getting worse and worse, don’t you think?”

  Kean’s brow knit, and he set his own coffee cup down. “You’re not thinking he’s bailing on his work, right? Because Ronan isn’t that kind of person. You know that.”

  “No!” Siobhan said sincerely. “I don’t think he’s bailing. I’m worried about him. He’s under a lot of stress, managing the Dragon Clan generation that’s turning tradition upside down. Not everyone agrees with him, and if he doesn’t figure this out, then …there are pretty serious consequences at this point.”

  “Eamon is taking a more active role with him, I think,” Moira said. “Trying to ease his burden. But, then again, Eamon is basically a father of two now.”

  Siobhan bit her lip thoughtfully. “I just wish there was some way to get him to open up, but he’s so closed off about it all, not wanting to get anyone’s hopes up. Just …if either of you hear from him, tell him to return my calls, okay?”

  “You got it,” Moira agreed. “By the way, Kean and I are headed out in a minute. We’re tag-teaming a follow up on a case from a few weeks ago. So you’re in the office alone today. Anna and Rachel are still getting over that virus they came down with last weekend.”

  It was pretty common for Siobhan to be alone in the office these days, so it didn’t surprise her, or bother her. “Yeah, okay. It’s been slow around here anyway, so I’m just going to catch up on some old paperwork…and keep trying to track down Ronan. If I haven’t heard from him by mid-afternoon, I might stop by his place, or call his mom.”

  “Not his mom!” Kean gasped, joking with her. “Don’t tell on him!”

  Moira chuckled. “Honestly, he could be into some new girl. You know how Ronan is when he’s having a fling. He can disappear from time to time.”

  “Maybe,” Siobhan said hopefully. “Hey, maybe he’s found his human partner and he just hasn’t told us yet…”

  “Could be,” Kean said thoughtfully. “I hadn’t considered that, but maybe Ronan is personally invested in all of this now.”

  Siobhan grinned. “That means it’s definitely my turn next then.”

  “Oh my God.” Moira laughed, picking up her coffee cup and getting to her feet. “You are so ready for it. You must not be…getting any.”

  “What can I say?” Siobhan asked, shrugging and heading toward her office. “I’m not a patient woman…”

  She settled in at her desk and spent the next hour catching up on paperwork that she never could keep on top of. Siobhan was great in the field, and she was stronger and faster than almost anyone would give her credit for, even her fellow clan members. She could even shoot straighter than any of them. But when it came to sitting still and working on paperwork, she was severely lacking, and she knew it.

  When the front door of the office jangled open, announcing an arrival, Siobhan was relieved, no matter who it was.

  “Ronan?” She stood up from her desk, heading out of her office, hoping to meet her boss and friend in the hallway. Instead, she got all the way to the reception area, her eyes landing on a tall, well-built man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a perfectly chiseled face. He looked deliciously Mediterranean with his deeply tanned skin, crisp white polo, and navy slacks, and when he turned toward her, his perfect beauty hit her like a ton of bricks.

  The look on his face suggested that he felt the same way about her, and before he could stop himself, he had let his eyes travel over her from head to toe. It was a reaction that Siobhan was used to, given her long, tan legs, golden-blonde hair, and athletic body. Usually she wasn’t quite so receptive to the longing looks though.

  “Hi, I’m Siobhan MacFaddan,” she said, walking forward and holding out her hand, already anticipating the way that his skin would feel sliding along her palm. “What can I help you with?”

  He cleared his throat, closing his hand around hers and giving her fingers a quick, firm shake. The sparks she’d been anticipating flowed through her, but his hand released hers so quickly that she didn’t have time to linger in the sensation. “Julian Giordano. I’m here to speak with Ronan Connelly about a…situation.”

  “Ronan isn’t here. I work with him though. I’m one of the agents here.” Siobhan gestured around the room. “This is home base, so to speak. I’ll be happy to help you.”

  Julian continued to look uncertain, so Siobhan tried to break the ice, shoving her hands in the pockets of her khaki shorts and leaning up against the wall. “You look Italian. Well, you look Mediterranean, I mean. And your name sounds Italian. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Rather, yes, I have Italian heritage.” Julian cleared his throat again. “It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that I’m Italian, given that I was born here in the United States, but you’re correct that I have Italian heritage.”

  Siobhan’s tingling anticipation went a little bit limp, hearing the precise, nitpicky way that he answered her. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and the thought of what was under that fitted shirt made her mouth want to water, but he was clearly not her type. If that was how he answered a simple question meant to start casual conversation, then he was going to be way too uptight and proper for her typical style.

  Damn it. That would have been a sweet destiny

  “Yeah, I figured,” Siobhan said, once again gesturing for him to walk toward her office. “You want to come tell me what’s going on?”

  “I suppose so,” Julian said, following her somewhat reluctantly down the hall and into her office. She sat down across from him, watching as his eyes moved slowly around her office, drinking in all of the details. His brow furrowed slightly, and she wondered what he objected to. Was it the enormous picture behind her that showed her mid-air, having just jumped out of a plane? Or was it the collage of pictures to her left that represented the wild Australian trip she’d taken a few years ago? There were pictures of her standing just a few feet from a kangaroo and another picture of her swimming in a cage with a shark just on the other side of the bars. Her office was an homage to the way she loved to live her life—fast, big, and dangerous.

  Somehow, he didn’t seem the type to enjoy that.

  “How can I help you, Julian?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and giving him a polite smile. “This is a private investigation agency, just so you know. We handle all kinds of cases.”

  “I…know,” he said, crossing his legs, the shiny Italian leather of his shoes catching the fluorescent lights above them. “That’s why I’m here. Listen, are you a mandated reporter?”

  Siobhan arched an eyebrow. “Say what?”

  “A mandated reporter. Someone required by law to report to the appropriate officials any knowledge you have of someone who may be a danger to himself or others.”

  Somehow, this man just irked her. “I know what a mandated reporter is,” she said, annoyed that he would think that he needed to explain that to her. “I’m just not sure why you’re asking me.”

  “Obviously because I’m concerned that you may be required to report what I’m about to tell you.”

  He was staring back at her, inescapably polite but also incredibly frustrating at the same time. Siobhan wasn’t sure if he was genuinely this proper or if he was putting on some act with her. Proper wasn’t really part of her realm though, and she had grown up around three guys—and a girl, for that matter—who had only further developed her tendency for flippant jokes and a total disregard for social etiquette. “I’m not a mandated reporter,” she said, settling for trying to make this conversation as easy as possible and
therefore, hopefully, as quick as possible. “But if you’re concerned that you’re a harm to others or yourself, then maybe I’m not the person you need to be talking to. I’m not a psychologist. I just help people solve their problems.”

  “Well, I have a problem,” he said, smoothing a hand down his thigh in a nervous gesture. “But I can assure you—at least, I think I can—that I’m not crazy. But it’s going to sound like I am.”

  “Hit me,” Siobhan encouraged, leaning forward and resting her arms against her desk. This guy might be buttoned up, but that, at least, sounded like an interesting case. “I’m ready.”

  Uncertain still, Julian cleared his throat again before he continued. “I had an experience about six months ago. It was February, and one of my colleagues convinced me to take a week’s break from work and fly out to Arizona with him. He wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and I had never seen it either.”

  Siobhan cut in. “Where do you work?”

  “I’m an accountant.”

  That explained a whole lot, and she nodded, gesturing for him to continue. “’Kay, got it. Keep going.”

  “I was, before you interrupted me,” he said. “We rode mules into the Grand Canyon. It was his idea. I was uncertain about it, and with good reason, it turned out. My mule was particularly stubborn, and it threw me off on the way down. The way the path is orchestrated—”

  “Yeah, I’ve been there,” Siobhan said, interrupting him again. “It’s a switchback structure. You probably fell a good ways down.”

  He waited a beat before answering, and she arched her eyebrows, wondering if he was still listening.

  “Sorry,” he said, smiling slightly. “I wanted to make sure that you were done speaking first. I try very hard not to interrupt people. It’s a pet peeve of mine.”

  Siobhan’s answering smile was tight. “Well, I interrupt people all the time. Call it a bad habit.”

  “I will,” Julian assured her. “And, yes, I did fall quite far. In fact, I had to be airlifted out and taken to the hospital. I was proclaimed dead before we landed, but I was resuscitated minutes later, thanks to a persistent nurse.”

  Despite her irritation, Siobhan was genuinely shocked and sympathetic. “God. That’s awful. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “Thank you,” Julian said. “You would think there would be a long recovery, but there really wasn’t. I had hit my head quite hard, but I’m resilient, and I only missed a few weeks of work. But I don’t think I’m really…fixed.”

  “Well, I’m not a doctor,” she told him, resting her chin on the heel of her hand. “So how can I help you with that?”

  Julian uncrossed and re-crossed his legs before answering her, looking right into her eyes. “Actually, since you seem to like blunt and to the point, I’m hoping you can help me with the murders I’m seeing play out in my mind.”

  Chapter Four

  Julian

  He had shocked the gorgeous blonde sitting across from him, and he knew it.

  He’d meant to. She wasn’t being rude, per se, but she was abrupt and impatient, always lobbing a question before he was ready to have to answer it. There was no elegance or refinement to the way that she talked, and he got the impression that her mouth often got her in trouble, even if she had good intentions. It wasn’t the kind of working relationship he looked forward to, but it had taken him several days to decide that he was going to actually seek help, and now that he was here, he wasn’t turning back.

  The fact that she was a blonde bombshell had nothing to do with it, but Julian was a man, and the visual didn’t hurt. She was absolutely luscious, and a reminder of just how long it had been since he’d made time for a woman in his life. Caroline didn’t really count—she lived across the country and only called him when she was in Boston on business. Even she hadn’t contacted him in several months, now that he thought about it—not since he’d had to decline an invitation to meet up because he was still recovering from his accident.

  “Can you explain what you mean by that?” Siobhan asked, breaking into Julian’s thoughts. “When you say that you’re seeing murders play out in your mind…do you mean that you’re imagining murdering people?”

  “No,” Julian said quickly, and he hoped he was right about that. He really, really hoped that his visions were not the product of some secret, unknown desire that he held somewhere deep inside his inner sociopath. “No, I’m seeing things. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s as though I’m watching something happen but from the perspective of the person doing it. I’m not there. A few days ago, I was sitting in a restaurant, waiting for my food. Suddenly, I was somewhere else entirely—a warehouse, it seemed. Though I don’t know. I could only focus on the woman in front of me, chained to a pole, being struck again and again by hands that looked like my own. Only…they weren’t.”

  Siobhan was leaning back in her chair, studying him closely as one hand played with the ends of her blonde hair. “Okay, so you have visions of murdering women.”

  Again, her bluntness was off-putting to him. He was there, confessing his darkest secret to her, and perhaps it was his old-fashioned Italian upbringing, but he would like to have received a little bit of gentleness. His response was rather snappy.

  “I’ve told you—I see things happen. I do not have a personal desire to murder women. The visions aren’t about me.”

  Siobhan stopped playing with her hair, folding her hands in her lap. “Tell me how you think we can help you at Connelly Security. Not to be rude, but this seems like something you would want to speak with your doctor about. Not a personal investigator.”

  “Not to be rude?” Julian laughed slightly. “Have you been anything else but rude since we’ve sat down here?”

  She blinked at him in surprise. “I haven’t been rude at all. Maybe I just don’t speak as properly as you do.”

  “Yes, proper speaking. Who would ever want that?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Julian, what is it you want me to do for you?”

  With some effort, he reined in his irritation and tried to accomplish what he had come here for. “After this last vision, I began to seriously consider the possibility that what I was seeing was real. After my experience in the Grand Canyon—I was so close to the other side, if that exists. I’m concerned that something…latched on to me. That maybe I’m...different.”

  To his relief, Siobhan didn’t laugh at him. In fact, she seemed interested for perhaps the first time since he’d met her. “You think you picked up a gift of some kind. A psychic gift. That’s kinda presumptuous, but okay. I’m with you, in theory. That mule did a number on you.”

  Again, he ignored her blunt manner. “I tend to call him Fucker now, pardon my French.”

  Siobhan let out a laugh, loud and robust. “No shit. And don’t pardon my French. In fact, get used to it. By the way, I wouldn’t have pegged you for the kind of guy to go riding a mule into the Grand Canyon. Props.”

  “Props…” he smiled slightly. “Thank you so much. But why, exactly, would you not peg me for that kind of guy?”

  “What’s your job again?”

  “I’m an accountant. And a food writer on the side.”

  She snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “Yep. That’s exactly the kind of guy I would peg you for. An accountant.”

  Somehow, Julian felt offended on behalf of his profession, even though he wasn’t a huge fan of it himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, you know,” Siobhan said, waving a hand. “Buttoned up. By the book. Prim and proper. Anyway…you could be onto something with the idea that these visions are real. And if they are, then yes, I can help you with that. Any chance you have evidence that they could be real?”

  Julian contemplated her for a moment before answering, focusing on the first part of her statement. “I’m buttoned up, prim, and proper?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a bit of a bulldozer?�
� he asked, tilting his head as he studied her. “You don’t even know me, but you’ve already passed judgement on me? Not to mention pried into my personal life without much tact…”

  Siobhan pursed her lips, then stood up and rounded the desk, perching herself on the edge of it, directly in front of him. Having her so close did strange things to Julian’s nerves, and he felt electricity dance across his skin, her body an absolute field of temptation, even if her manner was hardly desirable. “Look,” she said, resting the heels of her hands on the desk as well. “You and I are probably cut from two totally different cloths. You’re very elegant and well-spoken, and that’s great for you. I’m not like that. You want to work with me, this is what you get.” She gestured to herself, standing there in khaki shorts, a denim-blue tank top, and tennis shoes. “I’m pretty direct, and I don’t have a lot of time in my life for sugarcoating things or smoothing out what I want to say with fancy words and social etiquette. But I’m a nice person, and I’m a lot tougher than you probably think I am. I keep things simple. You have a problem, and it’s my job to find a solution. You’re either in or you’re out. If you think you’re psychic, you need to be in.”

  “And I’m supposed to decide that now,” Julian said, keeping his eyes firmly on her face even as she moved one tanned leg to cross her ankles. “Do you have any other agents here?”

  “Yes, but they’re busy.”

  “I see,” Julian said, letting the silence hang between them for a long moment. When she seemed in no hurry to break the silence, he sighed. “You asked for proof that my visions are real.”

  “I did.”

  Reaching down, he slid his hand into the briefcase that was by his chair, withdrawing a clearly-labeled manila folder that he offered her. “I’ve done some research the past few days. In that folder, you’ll find a list of the visions I’ve had with dates and brief descriptions. Behind that sheet, I’ve printed out news stories that may coincide with the visions. For instance, I had a vision of a white sedan that took a corner too fast on a curvy road and smashed into the railing, rolled over it, and landed top-down in a ditch below. Four days later, there was a story on the news …about a white sedan …on a curvy road …that crashed into a ditch, top-down.”