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that was due to the work he’d chosen.
    He’d worked forensics in Miami, and what he’d seen there hadn’t been good. But he’d put in his time, and he’d been damn good at his job. But when he’d heard his brothers’ proposal to open an agency, he’d been ready. He’d told Aidan he was ready to throw in with them the same day a crackhead had decided that microwaving his infant son would make him quit crying.
    But there were decent people in the world, too, and he had to remember that. Like the woman who had helped Maeve. Like Sean O’Riley, who had been there after his parents had died, when Aidan was struggling to keep himself, Jeremy and Zach together as a family.
    The woman was still there helping Maeve when he made his way to baggage claim. She was the one who cried out when Maeve suddenly fell.
    There were no velvet ropes, gates or nationalities separating them then. Zach raced to Maeve’s side. She gripped his arm when he bent to help her, and he knelt by her side, his training kicking in as he loosened her collar, testing her pulse.
    She smiled up at him. “I’m almost home,” she said. “And it’s all right. I can hear the music, and the banshee’s whispered in my ear. It’s time. The luck o’the Irish be with you, my fine, kind lad.” She reached up and trailed a finger over his face, then shuddered, and her eyes closed.
    “Maeve?” He gently leaned his ear against her chest. She wasn’t breathing, and the quick pressure of his fingers against her throat told him that she had no pulse. He told the woman who had helped Maeve to call emergency services, then started counting, pinching Maeve’s nose shut and breathing into her mouth. He kept at it, but well before the emergency crew came to take over, he knew she was gone.
    He stood there, watching the men work, watching as the sweet woman was declared dead at the scene. She’d wanted to come home, he told himself, and she had.
    He had a sense of someone watching him, which was a little ridiculous. Half the people in the airport had been staring at him. But he turned and thought that he saw someone slipping around the corner.
    Of course, he thought irritably. Lots of people were slipping around the corner. They were leaving the airport.
    He spoke with the authorities about Maeve, and they thanked him for all that he had done, though he hadn’t really done anything, he thought in disgust. Maeve was dead.
    He told himself that it had been her time. She had lived a long and good life.
    Still, he couldn’t just shake off her death. He collected his luggage and headed around the corner himself, in hopes that the car he had reserved was waiting.
    As he exited the building, he saw the sign in Gaelic and English.
    Eire. Cead mile failte . Ireland. A hundred-thousand welcomes.
    Outside, he breathed a sigh of relief when he found his car. It was parked right next to a sign that advertised a pub whose slogan was Paddy’s! May the luck o’ the Irish be with you.
    He greeted the driver and slid into the back of the sedan, thinking that he didn’t believe in luck, Irish or otherwise.
    He did believe in the good and evil that resided in men’s hearts, and he was anxious to reach Sean, anxious to get him home, anxious to find Eddie. That was what he needed to concentrate on right now.
    He checked his phone for messages. There was a text from Aidan, who had contacted an old associate in Dublin, who was keeping an eye on things at the hospital. The man’s name was Will Travis, and he was posing as an orderly to see that nothing else happened to Sean while he was there. Zach clicked his phone shut. He enjoyed working with his brothers. Their past careers made for good contacts in their present one. Aidan, as a former FBI agent, had some particularly useful ones.
    He tried to keep his mind on the current problem, but as they drove to the hospital, he found that he was mourning Maeve, a woman he had barely known, and who had, in her own words, gone