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.

CHAPTER 5

"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?

I couldn't see that. Alina had always been curious about everything.

I sighed and instantly regretted the deeply indrawn breath. My ribs hurt. This morning I'd awakened to find a wide band of bruises across my torso, just beneath my breasts. I couldn't wear a bra because the underwire hurt too much, so I'd layered a lacy camisole trimmed with dainty roses beneath a pink sweater that complemented my Razzle-Dazzle-Hot-Pink-Twist manicure and pedicure. Black capris, a wide silver belt, silver sandals, and a small metallic Juicy Couture purse I'd saved all last summer to buy completed my outfit. I'd swept my long blonde hair up in a high pony-tail, secured by a pretty enameled clip. I might be feeling bruised and bewildered, but by God I looked good. Like a smile that I didn't really feel, presenting a together appearance made me feel more together inside, and I badly needed bolstering today.

I'll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way. The nerve. I'd had to bite my tongue on the juvenile impulse to snap, Or what? — you're not the boss of me, second only to an even more juvenile impulse to call my mom and wail, Nobody likes me here and I don't even know why!

And his assessment of people! What a cynic. "Walking victim, my petunia," I muttered. I heard myself and groaned. Born and raised in the Bible Belt, Mom had taken a strong position about cussing when we were growing up—A pretty woman doesn't have an ugly mouth, she would say—so Alina and I had developed our own set of silly words as substitutes. Crap was fudge-buckets. Ass was petunia. Shit was daisies and the f-word, which I can't even recall the last time I used, was frog. You get the idea.

Unfortunately, we'd said them so often as children that they'd become a habit just as hard to break as real cusswords. To my endless humiliation, the way it usually worked was the more upset I got, the more likely I was to fall back on my childhood vocabulary. It was a little difficult to get an out-of-hand bachelor party at the bar to take you seriously when your threat was they'd better "back off or the bouncer was going to kick the fudge-buckets out of them and toss their petunias right out the door." In this desensitized day and age, clean language got you laughed at more often than not.

I cleared my throat. "Walking victim, my ass."

Okay, I'll admit it; I'd been quaking in my proverbial boots by the time Jericho Barrons was done with me. But I'd gotten over it. There was no question in my mind that he was a ruthless man. But a murdering man would have killed me last night and been done with it. And he hadn't. He'd left me alive, and by my reasoning, that meant he would continue to do so. He might bully and threaten me, even bruise me, but he wouldn't kill me.

Nothing had changed. I still had my sister's murderer to find, and I was staying. And now that I knew how to spell it, I was going to find out exactly what the Sinsar Dubh was. I knew it was a book—but a book about what?

Hoping to miss the rush-hour crowds and conserve money by eating less frequently, I stopped for a late lunch/early dinner of crispy fried fish and chips, then headed for the library. A few hours later, I had what I was looking for. I had no idea what to make of it, but I had it.