“At least two of Anita’s other people are women,” Edward added.

   “Nope, that settles it. Blake, you really are the better man.”

   That time I didn’t argue with him. I seemed to be winning Nolan over; never argue when you’re winning.

38

   MY FIRST SIGHT of Dublin was the sea. Nicky had gotten out first along with Kaazim because they were bodyguards and they were in the seats closest to the doors. I guess technically my first sight of Dublin was the paved road that I stepped out on, but I could see that at home. The first thing that let me know that I wasn’t home was looking past Nicky’s broad shoulders and seeing the gray rolling expanse of the Irish Sea. Nathaniel stepped out beside me and took my hand, and I let him, because I never expected to be standing in Ireland looking out at the Irish Sea; just saying it in my head sounded impossible, or exotic, or cool, or something. I let myself take a few seconds to appreciate the good stuff, before I turned to the bad stuff.

   Edward whispered, “Hold hands later.”

   Nathaniel let go of me first and turned to say, “Sorry. Is it bad that I’m enjoying being in Ireland with Anita when the crime scene is right here?”

   “It’s not bad,” Edward said. “You have to take the moments where you can with our job, or you start believing that the bad stuff is all there is in the world.”

   I turned and looked up the gentle slope toward the long line of cars and emergency vehicles that had pretty much blocked the street. The uniforms and crime scene tape were different, but a crime scene is a crime scene is a crime scene. Just by the number of people at the scene I knew either it was a murder, it was something important other than a murder, or the town I was in was small and didn’t get much crime. I was betting that the last one wasn’t true. Dublin was a major city and all major cities have enough crime to keep their police busy.

   We were looking at the sea in between a series of houses that weren’t so much perched at the edge of the sea as perched on the edge of the cliffs above the waves. A lot of the houses seemed to have glass-enclosed solariums, or just enclosed porches. It wasn’t much over fifty degrees Fahrenheit and the rain picked up as we stood there so that it went from a light sprinkle to a drizzle.

   “Welcome to Ireland,” Donahue said, “and before you ask, yes, it rains every day.”

   “Decide who’s going and who’s staying with the trucks,” Edward said, and his voice was all business Edward. Ted’s down-home drawl was totally gone. I wondered what in the last few minutes had made him give up on it.

   I left pretty much everyone at the trucks, except for Nicky, Dev, Jake, and Kaazim. We had an understanding that I wasn’t taking all four of them into the crime scene, but four seemed to be the bodyguard minimum for foreign soil, so rather than arguing I just told them not to get in the way of anyone else, and we followed Edward up the hill. He’d pulled his cowboy hat down snug to keep the rain off his face. I had pulled up my hood, though pulling it up far enough to keep the rain off my face meant I was limiting my peripheral vision, and the movement of my hair inside the hood would even mess with my hearing. Not great.

   Nicky had pulled out a billed cap and put it under his hood. It seemed to keep the rain off without him pulling the hood up as snug, which meant he didn’t have to compromise his side vision or hearing as much. He’d done this before. He’d done most things before when it came to crime and violence; he was just used to being on the other side of the equation.

   Kaazim just pulled his shemagh around his head and pulled his rain hood up over it; Jake did what Nicky had done with a ball cap. Dev had pulled up his hood and then slid it off again. I think he’d decided to get wet rather than compromise vision and hearing. Since he was supposed to be my bodyguard, I was okay with that. I was really wishing I’d put my hair in a braid, or at least a ponytail, before I shoved it all under the hood as I followed Edward and Nolan up the hill.

   People started to stare at us, and for once I didn’t think it was my fault. Nolan was in full tactical gear. It wasn’t just the civilian gawkers staring either. Apparently even the other police weren’t used to someone dressed in full battle rattle showing up at a crime scene. Nolan got stopped by a man in a suit who turned out to be a police bureaucrat. I would have said a detective—I never got a clear introduction and he talked like a paper pusher, not a policeman, because he seemed more interested in the fact that Nolan showing up in full gear was sending the wrong idea. People would think someone was armed inside the house, or holding hostages, or both, because that was the only reason to have someone like Nolan here. The suit never questioned the rest of us, so Edward kept moving and we moved with him. I hated leaving a man behind, but if Edward was okay with leaving his old frenemy behind, then who was I to question it? Besides, we hadn’t gotten me inside the actual crime scene yet and I was still expecting another suit to protest me, or the men with me. Until that happened we kept moving up the road in the persistent soft fall of rain. It felt like autumn though I knew it was still July here, just like back home. The air was damp and chilly, fresh with rain, and the constant murmur of the sea was like background music to the crackle of the police radios and the noise that always happens around a major crime scene. It was like we’d changed seasons along with countries. I’d have liked to ask someone if it was always like this in July, but I didn’t want anyone to hear my accent or figure out that I was new to the investigation. If I kept my mouth shut and just stayed at Edward’s side, I might finally get to help investigate something.

   Dev’s blond hair looked almost luminescent with rain by the time we got up to the top of the hill. Nicky’s and Jake’s hat brims were beaded with water, but it wasn’t heavy enough to actually drip off. Water was beaded all over Edward’s white cowboy hat, too. It was the same hat he’d had as Ted since I’d first met him as his alter ego, so the brim was worked well up with his hands and it fit his head just right. It still bothered me that he had a white hat. It just seemed like false advertising. In the rain the hat looked like old ivory, off-white, and that made more sense. Edward wasn’t a bad guy, a black hat, but he wasn’t exactly a white hat either; off-white would do.

   The neighborhood at the top of the hill was very different from the stretch of houses perched by the beach; though some of them on this side of the street probably had a great view of the sea, that wasn’t the main selling point. I think the point was more security, because almost all the houses up here had stone walls around them. The walls were all taller than I was, so they were like stone versions of the wooden security fences back home. The yards behind the fences were invisible from the road, or from the lower floors of their neighbors’ houses. The houses were close enough together on the sides that seeing over the fences and into the yards might happen depending on the height of the houses involved. The gates that I could see were mostly metal and looked as security-serious as the stone-walled fences themselves. From what few glimpses inside through the gates I got, the yards looked well planted and thick with lush vegetation. I didn’t know if it grew that way or if gardeners helped it along. Back in Missouri either you hired someone for that much nice yard, or you worked at it on the weekends yourself. It didn’t just magically grow that way.