Now she just hoped he felt grateful enough for her help catching the thieves that he would be willing to do her a personal favor.
She identified herself, and he immediately said how pleased he was to hear from her. She drew a deep breath and explained her call.
“She really needs help, and I know she’ll appear at her trial and that you’ll get your money back. I’d stake my reputation on it. In fact, I am staking my reputation on it,” she told him.
“I’ll take care of it—anonymously,” he promised her.
“That easily?” she asked.
“Absolutely. I owe you,” he assured her.
“You don’t owe me,” she told him.
“Then just think of me as a humanitarian. Either way, consider it handled.”
She thanked him and rang off, then headed back into the office. “Day job,” she said to explain her absence.
“I rest my earlier point,” Kevin said.
She nodded. “Point taken. For now, I have to start looking for Joes,” she said.
“Joes?”
“Yep. Declan told me to go through the receipts and find anyone named Joe or Joseph.”
“Okay. Go for it.”
She booted up the second computer and had already found eleven possibilities when there was a knock at the door. It was Declan, escorting Detective Mayo.
She handed Mayo the list of what she’d found already. She’d annotated it with all the information she had, adding a note if it was a regular, even about how old they were and what they did for a living, if she knew.
“Excellent work,” Mayo said. “And I’ve brought my laptop, so if you’ll log me on, I can help.”
Declan left them to it, and for the next hour the three of them worked in near silence, except for the occasional pertinent comment.
When they finished, she printed out the results for Mayo, who folded them up and tucked them in his pocket.
“Thank you,” he said. “Wish I could stay for dinner, but there are a few other places in the city I want to look in on for myself,” he said. “Do some more investigating of my own.”
Kieran frowned. Something was definitely going on. Clearly Mayo wasn’t the one in charge of this investigation.
Kieran walked him to the door.
“Take care, Miss Finnegan,” he said with genuine concern. “I mean it.”
“I will,” she promised. Then she headed back to the bar, where she saw that Jimmy was still seated with his two new friends.
She stopped by their table. “Can I get you anything?”
“We’re fine,” Jimmy said. “I’m just talking music with these two fine fellows.”
“Great,” she said, leaving quickly.
She found Kevin at the bar talking to Declan.
They both looked up at her, and Declan said, “Kevin is going to go with you to your apartment, and then he’ll hop the subway back to his place.”
She looked at her twin. “You’re not going to stay over?”
He shook his head. “I have to get some things at my apartment.”
“Then it’s senseless for you to see me home,” she said. “I can just get a cab.”
“Not alone,” Declan told her.
Normally she would have argued with him, would have assured him that she knew which areas were safe and which weren’t, and that she knew how to watch out for suspicious people and stay out of the shadows. After all, she was a native New Yorker.
But things were different now that she knew someone wanted her dead. She could have told one of her brothers.
But they would have called in the cops, not to mention the FBI, and she would have been putting Tanya in danger, besides.
“Okay,” she said simply.
By the time Kevin opened the pub door for her, she was worried that she might be putting her brother in danger, as well. Maybe she should say something. No. She had talked to Tanya in confidence.
But this was her brother....
She sensed something, and turned to see the two musicians getting up and starting toward the door.
Following her.
She stepped out to the sidewalk, and then something snapped in her and she spun around, nearly slamming into the musician from Georgia. Without stopping to think how crazy she sounded, she demanded, “Why are you following me?”
“Kieran!” Kevin protested.
But suddenly she knew. It wasn’t anything in the way he looked.
It was his scent. The faint yet sensual scent of the aftershave he wore.
Her eyes widened, but she managed not to blurt out his name, something in her mind warning her that it might not be safe.
“You bastard,” she muttered.
“Kieran!” Kevin protested again.
A cab pulled up just then to let someone out, and she spun around, raced toward it and practically leaped inside, shaking.
Special agent Craig Frasier had been spying on her family—on her—just waiting for one of them to give themselves away.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
“KIERAN, PLEASE, LET ME IN.”
Craig stood outside her door, aggravated and yet kicking himself. She was no fool, and she’d jumped to at least part of the right conclusion the minute she’d figured out who he was.
He didn’t know what had given him away. He’d changed his voice, and he knew his accent had been good, not to mention his disguise was worthy of the big screen.