“I didn’t notice anything unusual then, either. Cars, people. When I got here, I went out back. I didn’t knock or ring the doorbell or anything.”

“Your dad was expecting you?”

She nodded. “I’d called him on my cell phone when I got off the T. I went out back and yelled up to let him know I was here.”

“Gate to the backyard was unlocked?”

“Yes. I just walked right in. I told Dad I’d pick tomatoes and bring them up to him. Scoop had plenty. Has plenty.” She shot an angry look at Simon and then Bob as if she expected them to argue with her, but it didn’t last. She continued, less combative. “The firefighters and paramedics stomped on the tomatoes getting to us, but I think some of them are still okay. Scoop will be back in his garden soon.”

“All right.” Simon leaned against the SUV, not looking hot, tense or remotely exhausted, despite the guilt and tension he had to be experiencing. “You’re in the backyard. You give your dad a shout. Was he outside?”

Fiona shook her head. “He came onto his back porch when he heard me. He said hi, then went back inside.”

“And Scoop was in the garden?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he invite you to join him, or did you invite yourself?”

“I invited myself. I love tomatoes.”

“So you join him. Then what?”

She drank more water before she answered. “Abigail said hello.”

“Where was she, do you remember?”

“Her porch. I thought at first she was in her kitchen, but I…” Fiona’s hands trembled visibly. This was where her story took a turn from picking tomatoes in the summer sun to hell. “I was wrong. She was on her porch.”

“What exactly did she say?” Simon asked.

Fiona thought a moment. “She said, ‘Hey, Fiona, don’t let Scoop pawn off wormy tomatoes on you.’”

Simon smiled. “Scoop have anything to say about that?”

“He held up a gorgeous, round, red tomato and said, ‘See that, Browning? You can’t buy tomatoes that pretty.’”

“And she said?”

Fiona’s lower lip trembled in a way that reminded Bob of her as a baby. “Nothing. Not that I heard.” She scrunched up her face, concentrating. “A phone rang. I didn’t think of it until now. That must have been-that’s why she went inside.”

“To answer the phone,” Simon said.

“Then Dad yelled, and Scoop grabbed me.”

“So first the phone, then your dad, then Scoop.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“Scoop hurled me behind the compost bin.”

“Did he say anything?” Simon asked.

“Not a word. He knocked the breath out of me. I had just enough time to notice I couldn’t breathe when the bomb exploded. I had no idea what was going on. Then Scoop…” She was taking rapid, shallow breaths now, off in her own world of memory, fear. “Everything felt like it happened at once. The explosion, the concussion-it felt like the air was being sucked out of me, the whole backyard. Scoop grunted and then-there was so much blood.”

“It was pieces of the grill and the propane tank that hit him,” Bob interjected. “Scoop’s injuries had nothing to do with saving you. If he’d jumped behind the compost bin by himself, he still-”

“If I’d protected him instead of him protecting me, he’d be fine,” Fiona said stubbornly, adamant. “Just like I am now.”

Before Bob could respond, Simon stood up from the SUV. “That’s not the way it works. You’re a nineteen-year-old college student. Scoop’s a cop. He did what he’s trained to do.”

“He’s a hero,” she said.

Bob didn’t speak. He couldn’t now. He’d lose it, and that wouldn’t help his daughter.

And it wouldn’t help Abigail.

Fiona handed Simon her water bottle, her hands steadier. “I didn’t see anyone on the street or at the houses next door. I didn’t hear anyone. Nothing. Not even a dog barking or a television. It was all background noise to me. White noise. I remember humming ‘Irish Rover’ as I came into the yard.”

Bob had heard her, his sweet daughter humming one of her Irish tunes. He hadn’t remembered until now.

She smiled suddenly at Simon. “You and my dad both can sing. You should sing with my ensemble sometime.”

Fiona always said “ensemble,” Bob thought, never band.

Simon winked at her. “We can dance an Irish jig, too.”

“That’s right, yes! I had no idea until this summer. Dad kept his talents bottled up inside him for years.” She turned to Bob, strands of blond hair stuck to her pallid cheeks. “Because of Deirdre McCarthy and what happened to her.”

Bob grimaced at the mention of the girl who’d lived on his street when he was growing up and was brutally murdered at nineteen, changing his life forever. He said, “Deirdre had the voice of an angel. Mine’s nothing in comparison.”

“I keep thinking about her,” Fiona said. “I never knew her. She died-she was murdered-long before I was born, but it’s like her spirit’s been a part of our lives and I didn’t even know it.”

Bob didn’t want her thinking about Deirdre, but what could he do? By not talking about Deirdre McCarthy for thirty years, he’d kept the tragedy and horror of her death out of his daughters’ minds, out of their consciousness, and yet her long-ago murder had inspired the devil-obsessed serial killer who’d come after Keira in June.

Would his daughters and niece have been more prepared if they’d known about Deirdre, if he hadn’t tried to protect them?

He jerked himself back to the matter at hand.

Simon opened the back door of the SUV and tossed in the empty water bottle, then shut the door again, hard-just, Bob knew, to break some of the tension and refocus Fiona. He returned to his position against the SUV. “You said earlier you heard Abigail scream after the explosion.”

“I know that’s what I told you.” Fiona stared again at her hands. “But I didn’t hear her scream. I thought I did, but I didn’t. I don’t know what I heard. Everything really didn’t happen all at once. It was the phone ringing and then Dad yelling and then Scoop grabbing me and then the explosion. In that order. It was all so fast. I know people say that, but it was.”

“You’ve done well to break it down for us,” Simon said.

But she looked up at her father. “Did you see something, Dad? How did you know to warn us?”

He hadn’t told her about the call from Ireland. About Keira. The other woman on the line. He hadn’t told Lucas Jones or Tom Yarborough, either. They hadn’t asked him the question Fiona had just asked. They weren’t being patient or negligent. They were just taking things in order.

Simon knew, but he said nothing.

“Dad,” Fiona said, “if you warned us, someone must have warned you, right? Who?”

“You and your dad can talk in a bit,” Simon said. “Let’s go back to your practicing this morning at the Garrison house. Did you notice anyone there-”

“Who could have planted the bomb in Owen’s car? I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She was clearly fading, getting impatient, frazzled. “I can’t…I don’t know.”

“I have just a few more questions, okay? We’ll go through them without your dad.”

Bob didn’t protest. He kissed his daughter on the head and started back toward Theresa, but the ATF and FBI and state detectives and the whole damn lot pounced and dragged him down the street for another briefing.

The ATF guy, who was Bob’s age, was pontificating. “It was C4,” he said. “It’s ideal for this kind of bomb. Just a quarter pound will destroy a propane tank and the surrounding structure.”

The BPD bomb squad guy agreed. The fire department’s arson squad guy threw in his opinion.

Bob chewed a fresh piece of gum. “The bombs didn’t place themselves under Abigail’s grill or in Owen’s car, and she didn’t just evaporate.” He worked the gum harder. “Someone grabbed her and stuffed her into some kind of vehicle and got her out of here. Under my damn nose.”

No one said anything.

He continued, all eyes on him. “The phone call got her inside off the porch. These bastards didn’t want to kill her. Scoop, Fiona-didn’t matter if they died. Me. Who cares? The blast could have thrown Abigail off her feet. Stunned her, knocked her out. Whatever, the bad guys were ready and hauled her out to a waiting vehicle.” Bob nodded to the spot on the sidewalk on the other side of the crime scene tape where he’d noticed the blood earlier. “She got a piece of one of them.”