“Who did she mean by ‘them’?”
“I thought you might be able to tell me that,” I said pointedly.
“I am not one of these ‘them,’ if that is what you’re inferring,” he said. “Many seek the Sinsar Dubh, both individuals and factions. I want it as well, but I work alone.”
“Why do you want it?”
He shrugged. “It is priceless. I am a book collector.”
“And that makes you willing to kill for it? What do you plan to do with it? Sell it to the highest bidder?”
“If you don’t approve of my methods, stay out of my way.”
“Fine.”
“Fine. What else have you to tell me, Ms. Lane?”
“Not a thing.” I retrieved my cell phone, resaved the message, and jerked a frosty glance from him to the door, encouraging him to leave.
He laughed, a rich dark sound. “I do believe I’m being dismissed. I can’t recall the last time I was dismissed.”
I didn’t see it coming. He was nearly past me, nearly to the door, when he grabbed me and slammed me back against his body. It was like hitting a brick wall. The back of my head bounced off his chest, and my teeth clacked together from the impact.
I opened my mouth to scream, but he clamped a hand over it. He banded an arm beneath my breasts so tightly that I couldn’t inflate my lungs to breathe. His body was far more powerful beneath that fine suit than I ever would have guessed, like reinforced steel. In that instant, I understood that the open door had been nothing more than a mocking concession, a placebo he’d fed me that I’d swallowed whole. Anytime he’d wanted, he could have snapped my neck and I wouldn’t have gotten off a single scream. Or he could simply have suffocated me, as he was doing now. His strength was astonishing, immense. And he was only using a small fraction of it. I could feel the restraint in his body; he was being very, very careful with me.
He pressed his lips to my ear. “Go home, Ms. Lane. You don’t belong here. Drop it with the Gardai. Stop asking questions. Do not seek the Sinsar Dubh or you will die in Dublin.” He released enough pressure on my mouth to afford my reply, enough on my ribs to permit me breath to fuel it.
I sucked in desperately needed air. “There you go, threatening me again,” I wheezed. Better to die with a snarl than a sniffle.
His arm bit into my ribs, cutting off my air again. “Not threatening—warning. I haven’t been hunting it this long and gotten this close to let anyone get in my way and fuck things up. There are two kinds of people in this world, Ms. Lane: those who survive no matter the cost, and those who are walking victims.” He pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I felt his tongue where my pulse fluttered, tracing my vein. “You, Ms. Lane, are a victim, a lamb in a city of wolves. I’ll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way.”
He let me go, and I crumpled to the floor, my blood starved for oxygen.
By the time I picked myself up again, he was gone.
FIVE
I was hoping you could tell me something about my sister,” I asked the second-to-last instructor on my list, a Professor S. S. Ahearn. “Do you know who any of her friends were, where she spent her time?”
I’d been at this most of the day. With Alina’s e-mail schedule clutched in one hand, and a campus map in the other, I’d gone from class to class, waited outside until it was over, then cornered her teachers with my questions. Tomorrow I would do the same all over again, but tomorrow I would go after the students. Hopefully the students would yield better results. So far what I’d learned wouldn’t fill a thimble. And none of it had been good.
“I already told the Gardai what I know.” Tall and thin as a rail, the professor gathered his notes with brisk efficiency. “I believe it was an Inspector O’Duffy conducting the investigation. Have you spoken with him?”
“I have an appointment with him later this week, but hoped you might spare me a few minutes in the meantime.”
He placed the notes inside his briefcase and snapped it shut. “I’m sorry, Ms. Lane, I really knew very little about your sister. On those rare days she bothered to come to class at all, she hardly participated.”
“On those rare days she bothered to come to class?” I repeated. Alina loved college, she loved to study and learn. She never blew off classes.
“Yes. As I told the Gardai, in the beginning she came regularly, but her attendance became increasingly sporadic. She began missing as many as three and four classes in a row.” I must have looked disbelieving, perhaps a little stricken, because he added, “It’s not so unusual in the study-abroad program, Ms. Lane. Young people away from home for the first time . . . no parents or rules . . . an energetic city full of pubs. Alina was a lovely young girl like yourself . . . I’m sure she thought she had better things to do than sit in a stuffy classroom.”
“But Alina wouldn’t have felt that way,” I protested. “My sister loved stuffy classrooms. They were just about her favorite thing in the world. The chance to study at Trinity College meant everything to her.”
“I’m sorry. I’m only telling you what I observed.”
“Do you have any idea who her friends were?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?” I pressed.
“Not that I was aware. On those occasions I saw her, if she was in the company of others, I didn’t notice. I’m sorry, Ms. Lane, but your sister was one of many students who pass through these halls each term and if she stood out at all—it was through her absence, not her presence.”
Subdued, I thanked him and left.
Professor Ahearn was the fifth of Alina’s instructors that I’d spoken to so far, and the portrait they’d painted of my sister was that of a woman I didn’t recognize. A woman that didn’t attend classes, didn’t care about her studies, and appeared to have no friends.
I glanced down at my list. I had a final professor to track down, but she taught only on Wednesdays and Fridays. I decided to head for the library. As I hurried out into a large grassy commons filled with students lounging about, soaking up the late-afternoon sun, I thought about possible reasons for Alina’s unusual academic behavior. The courses offered through the study-abroad program were designed to promote cultural awareness, so my sister—an English major who’d planned to get a Ph.D. in literature—had ended up taking courses like Caesar in Celtic Gaul and The Impact of Industry on Twentieth-Century Ireland. Could it be she’d just not enjoyed them?