“Alex,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it. “It’s good to see you well. I’m surprised, though to see you.”
The concern in his eyes was touching, surprising in a way.
“Merci, Jacques,” she said, “but I’ve always been a survivor. I will survive this as well.”
Behind him she could see Adam getting to his feet, relief warring with another emotion as he saw Aidan’s hand at her waist.
Her heart twisted.
“Give me a moment,” she said, softly, “to talk to Adam.”
“I could use some coffee,” Jacques suggested. Aidan nodded.
Adam was already shaking his head, his face going still as Ali touched his arm. Given the circumstances…
His jaw worked. “You don’t owe me anything…”
“I do,” she said, drawing him down into the seat next to her as she sat. “I’m sorry. I would have done anything not to hurt you…”
Chapter Twenty Four
It was late afternoon and Sean was on his way out of the station, cutting between the desks when something caught his eye―and then riveted it. Caught, he turned and went back, snatching up the piece of paper, frowning at it. He couldn’t be seeing what he thought he was. And what was it doing at Declan’s desk?
“Declan,” he asked, something inside him going cold, “where did you get this? Where did this come from?”
Glancing up from the report on the brakes on the Dearborn case ― a clear case of tampering ― Declan looked at the piece of paper, then reached for it.
“The case I just pulled, the girl attacked at the hotel? She was drawing it as we were talking to her. Just idly. It’s trash.”
Sean’s pulled it back out of reach. His blood ran cold. No one drew something like this by chance. The detail was too exact.
“It’s not trash,” Sean said. “We need to talk to the lady.”
His attention fully on Sean Burke’s grim face, Declan said, “Why, what is it?”
Sean chewed on the inside of his lip, studying the sketch. “It’s a wiring diagram…”
Narrowing his eyes, something inside him going still.
Knowing Sean’s background, Declan asked, “For what…?”
It had been a time since those particular skills had been needed much. A long time. Given the times, though? Up in the North they were seeing signs of the Troubles again, and not long before they had broken up a terrorist ring here in the south. With folks out of jobs, the friction between the locals and the imports had already begun to chafe.
A pause and then Sean lifted his eyes to meet Declan’s. “A bomb.”
Declan looked at him. “Are you sure?”
“Hmmm. And it’s a fairly sophisticated one.”
Bombers and bombs had their signatures. As a member of the bomb squad, Sean studied both, studied those signatures, the tell tales, the tools, materials. New and historical. A variation of this bomb had been used before but there were differences.
“Well then,” Declan said, grabbing his jacket. “We might now know the reason why someone wants to hurt the lady. “
“We need to talk to her and soon,” Sean said, mentally saying goodbye to his quiet night at home.
On the way out Declan looked back at him, warily.
“Judging by the complexity, it’s a very big bomb.”
Declan swore softly.
The knock at the door caught Aidan by surprise. He wasn’t expecting anyone, much less not just one but two Gardai, Inspector Monaghan and now this new one Sean Burke. Both looked grim with an expression that sent a cold curl of fear through him. He looked back at Ali.
With a nod at both of them Declan spoke first.
“We need to know why you were drawing this,” Declan said, holding out her sketch, now sealed in a clear plastic evidence bag.
It had been decided in the car on the way that he would take the lead on this as he had already established a relationship.
Maybe this would all turn out to be nothing. Both the policemen hoped so but the attempts on Alexandra Dearborn’s life said it wasn’t. Still, she was clearly the victim. The whole thing was a puzzle, one they needed to sort out, and quickly.
Ali looked at him. “It’s something I saw, it bothered me because I couldn’t figure out what it was for, what it was supposed to do. Why?”
“What do you mean, it’s something you saw?” Declan asked.
She shook her head, helplessly, looking up at Aidan, trying to figure a way to explain it to them.
Frowning a little, Aidan said, “Like the seating chart for the Symposium?”
“Yes,” she said, “and nearly as recently…”
“I don’t understand,” Sean said, looking at them.
They weren’t being evasive, quite the contrary.
Letting out a breath, Ali said, “You’ve heard of photographic memory?”
Both of them looked at her cautiously.
“Well, it doesn’t really work quite that way,” Ali said, “but my memory works something like that. If I see something and it catches my attention, something catches my eye or my interest, I’ll remember it. It’s called eidetic memory.”
“So, where did you see this?”
Knowing her memory, Ali felt a cold trickle go through her.
“It doesn’t quite work that way,” she said, trying to think back to when she’d seen it.
Declan said, “It’s important, Miss Dearborn…”
“I know that,” she said, her tone urgent. “I saw this recently, loose….”
Paper fluttered in her memory, scattered across the floor.
Hope died quickly, gave way to apprehension.
“Miss Dearborn,” Sean said.
She couldn’t concentrate if they kept asking her questions.
“Shut up,” she said, desperately, waving at them to be silent, “let me think…”
How to explain? She didn’t think the way most people did, for her it was global, a series of facts that suddenly fell together…
Aidan gave a small shake of his head at the two Inspectors, knowing it wasn’t like Ali to be rude, and held up a hand for quiet.
Sifting through the memories, Ali went back through the days. She’d been upset. That memory was clear. She remembered the collision with the young man.
It was eerie to watch in a way, her eyes were open but focused inward, her head tilted this way and that, as if she watched what she remembered.
“I was rehearsing for the Symposium,” she said, “Upset, I returned to the hotel, walked around a corner…into a man. Papers scattered, diagrams, blueprint, documents with text. He was tense, a little nervous. He had very pretty eyes, but frightened… The diagram… Now that’s interesting but it doesn’t make sense since with those components you could only use it. That’s what caught my attention. When? The Symposium hadn’t started…I was rehearsing…”
Ali looked up at them. “I remember. It was about a week and a half ago, maybe. At the hotel…”
For a minute they all went quiet.
“At the hotel, a week or so ago,” Sean said, quietly.
She nodded.
He looked at Declan.
“You said there was a blueprint….”
Searching through the memory, Ali nodded, picturing it. “Yes, a big building.”
“Which one, do you know, did it say?”
Biting her lip, she pulled the image up in her mind and shook her head.
“No,” she said, quietly. “It looks like a hand-drawn copy.”
His voice quiet, Aidan said, “Tell us about the man…”
The soft familiarity of Aidan’s voice wasn’t jarring.
“Young, around my own age,” she said, turning the memory around in her mind so she could look at him. “Mid-twenties, maybe a little older. Mixed race but he’s been in Ireland long enough to have picked up some of the accent.”
Not Irish. Some part of all of them relaxed, not that it made it truly better.
With a si
gh, Sean looked at Declan. “We have to treat it as if this were real.”
“They won’t like this…” Declan said, with a matching sigh.
They being the higher ups. All of it complicated by her involvement with Aidan O’Connell, his money and power.
It was thin, hinging on a young woman’s memory, but if they didn’t act on it and a bomb did go off…lives would be lost.
Frowning, Aidan said, impatiently, “What’s this all about? You still haven’t told us.”
Declan and Sean traded glances.
Taking a deep breath, Sean nodded at the sketch. “What you’re looking at there? It’s a wiring diagram… For a bomb.”
“A bomb,” Aidan repeated, incredulously, looking at Ali as she stared in disbelief at the two Gardai Inspectors.
Bombs, buildings…
Something in Aidan’s stomach churned. It had been some time since the Peace Agreement had been signed, longer since the Troubles, but the memory of those times wasn’t that far away from any of them. No one was likely to forget those days. It couldn’t be happening again. Those were behind them, there was no reason… A bomb… Still with these economic times?
Ali felt his hand tighten around her waist and glanced up at him, seeing the concern. Knowing Irish history, she had a good idea what was going through his mind.
Sean looked at the sketch in his hand. If it hadn’t been so detailed, he would have found it easier to discount but he couldn’t.
“The blueprint, can you duplicate that as well?”
Ali looked at them, uncertainly. “The wiring diagram was easier, I work with those all the time, that’s why it caught my attention.”
“If we knew what the building was, it would go a long way to helping,” Declan said.
“I’ll try,” Ali said.
Both inspectors looked at Aidan and Ali.
“Say nothing about this to anyone,” Sean said, “until we know more.”
Until they were sure, but he didn’t say that out loud.
“Miss Dearborn we’re going to need you to work with a sketch artist and then look at some pictures. We’ll set that up, if you’d meet us down at the station?”
Ali and Aidan watched them leave.
She looked at Aidan, something inside her breathless, waiting. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
He looked down into her golden eyes. “Ali?”
Then he understood, his heart aching and settled his arms around her. No one had ever stood for her, stood beside her. How had it been when her mother died, a little girl with no one to lean on? When she had troubles at school or had her heart broken?
“I’m not going anywhere, achushla. I’m staying right here.”
Something, some tension inside her let go, and she leaned into him.
“Aidan,” she said, softly, “I’m scared…”
Laying his head on her hair, he said, “You’d be a fool not to be but you’re safe here. You’re safe with me.”
Chapter Twenty Five
The police artist was more patient than Ali would have been but they both knew how difficult it was to take one person’s memory, no matter how good, and turn it into an image. Although she did point out that Ali was easier to work with than many.
Ali had rejected the identi-kit almost immediately, shaking her head as she had looking at the photographs. “They’ll color my memory.”
She paced restlessly, trying to call up the image in her mind, comparing it to the sketch, trying to find something that stood out, something memorable about him but other than being somewhat attractive but there was nothing. It was the best she could do.
Patting her on the hand, the sketch artist smiled. “You did better than most.”
Aidan was with the two inspectors, trying to decipher the blueprint she’d recreated into something that they could use. Having designed his own offices he’d taken Ali’s recreation and translated it into a computer design program that would turn it into a three-dimensional image.
The three men looked up as she entered, Sean commenting in frustration. “This could be any number of buildings in Dublin.”
Aidan shook his head. “The dimensions are wrong. Most of these rooms are large.”
“We’re assuming they’re probably terrorists. Like Edinburgh, Madrid, or the first attack on the World Trade Center, they’ll likely be aiming for train stations, the airport, or a major public building,” Sean said.
Looking at the image, Ali asked. “Do you have access or can you get access to the blue-prints for public buildings?”
The two inspectors looked at her.
It was Aidan though, who mattered.
“Can you do that?” he asked.
He looked at her lovely face, at the fears and the doubts and could almost see the wheels turn inside her head, and smiled. Finally, he’d found the one woman who would challenge him on every level, one who would demand more from him than simple answers.
That smile erased the last of Ali’s fears and she found she could breathe again. Maybe now, maybe finally, she could stop hiding how very smart she was. Maybe she could finally be all of herself. It felt as if she’d grown wings, as if she had broken out of the egg and grown wings….
“I already started,” she said grinning and nodding at the sketch. “It’ll take hours, maybe longer to write the program. The search will take longer.”
Glancing at the clock on the wall, Aidan said, clearly torn. “I have to make an appearance at the Symposium, I’ve a presentation of my own to make.”
As the CEO of one of the major technology companies he needed to be seen supporting the Symposium at the very least and he could scarcely cancel his own presentation.
“I can do this anywhere,” Ali said, looking at all of them.
Declan and Sean looked at each other, weighing everything, including the request they wanted to make.
“We’d like you to keep that arrangement,” Declan said, carefully, “and for Miss Dearborn to go with you, certainly to any events at the hotel.”
That was where the first encounter had been and all the subsequent attacks had begun from there.
In some part of him Aidan had expected something of the sort.
It had been one thing when Ali had been the target of what they thought might be a random attack, for all of Aidan’s suspicions about the fall by the bus and the rental car.
This was another thing entirely. If everything they now suspected was true someone had serious designs on Ali’s life. If this unknown man was planning to bomb something here in Dublin, he had a reason to silence her. He likely didn’t know they’d made the connection and Ali’s reappearance at the hotel would reassure him ― but it would also make her a target once again.
“Bait,” he said, his heart heavy as he looked at Ali.
He wasn’t losing her now.
Pushing back from the desk, Aidan went to her.
Those molten golden eyes looked up at him.
The idea of being a sitting target sent a shiver through Ali but even she recognized there was no other choice.
Ali saw the concern in Aidan’s eyes and it eased her a little to see it. As much as she could have wished it different, it was a relief to know she wasn’t alone, but she also knew what it cost him to know she was afraid. She smiled, knowing he needed to see it.
“Do I get a front row seat?” Ali asked, looking up at him. “Will you be insulted if I work on this while I listen?”
Aidan smiled, sighed, and folded her into his arms. If she had the courage to do this, then so did he.
“No,” he said, in the face of that. “I won’t be insulted. And you can sit anywhere you choose.”
Declan and Sean looked away, giving them a moment.
She wouldn’t be safe but she would be close. Aidan couldn’t like it but there was little choice. They had no other connection to these people than Ali.
Aidan looked at the other two men. “You’ll have someone there?”
Both men nodd
ed.
It would have to be enough.
Chapter Twenty Six
As it had every day of the Symposium a lunch or brunch, catered by one of the best restaurants in Dublin, was provided in one of the larger rooms of the conference center. Given the nature of the place, it was something like having lunch in an elite country club back in the States, the paneled walls and thick carpeting rendering the room as quiet as a library.
The aromas that filled the room were marvelous and if Ali hadn’t been so tense, it would have been easier to enjoy the meal.
Traditional Irish meals tended to be as basic as Irish stew and oatmeal but Ireland’s restaurants were expanding the definition of Irish food.
Aidan was grateful, though, that he could still get a Guinness with his meal. With all else that was going on he needed it. Both he and Ali were still under an injunction by the Gardai not to speak of what was happening.
Both Jacques and Adam were there and a few other people that they knew, all familiar faces, joined them.
Ali wasn’t really worried, she’d seen the man at the hotel. She knew his face. It should be relatively safe here. A Gardai was somewhere nearby, doing a good job of being invisible. She didn’t let down her guard much but she did relax enough to enjoy herself.
Coding was tedious, boring and, to be honest, Ali hated it. However good at it she was she still couldn’t like it. What she was doing was simply adapting another software program to do what she wanted it to do. Still, that didn’t make it any less constricting. Doing this kind of work, adapting another program, always made her feel claustrophobic, trapped.
The one consolation was Aidan up on the stage, looking incredibly handsome in a simple white dress shirt, black slacks and a sport coat. It was a more casual look, a sexy captain of industry, with his thick dark hair curling over his collar.
His blue eyes caught hers as she looked up and she smiled.
Giving her a little nod, he continued pacing the stage, giving his own vision of the future of technology, universal access opening up vistas to everyone―as cell phones opened up communication everywhere. Joining the technologies together, giving even the poorest the advantages of the richest ― he was heavily invested in providing computers to impoverished children in Africa and Latin America, giving them a future they couldn’t even imagine. Look what had happened in Egypt. Opening up unimagined vistas to everyone, sharing knowledge, uniting people, erasing borders.
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