Prologue
Dying to Decorate
Colleen Donegal looked around the parlor of the old Victorian house her grandfather had purchased for them to live in on the outskirts of Chicago.
They hadn’t moved; he’d assured her he’d come from Dublin and he would die there, too. But for the next few years, they’d live here while he worked with the several vice-presidents he and his partner, Chicago born Michael Antrim, made sure that their company, Donegal and Antrim Computers and Software, got off the ground to a fabulous start.
Sometimes it amused Colleen that her grandfather could be as proficient as he was. After all, he was old! He was almost sixty!
But she loved him. He’d had one son, Colleen’s father, and when her father and mother had been killed in a horrible accident she had been just a child. He had immediately taken her in, hired a nanny, and spent all the time with her that he could.
And while he was an extremely intelligent man, it didn’t take away from the fact that he was an incredible storyteller. Her youth had been filled with delightful stories about leprechauns, banshees, pixies . . . any supernatural creature that might have alighted on Ireland’s shores.
And now here they were, their first St. Patrick’s Day in America, far from the motherland. It worked out all right; she’dbeen ready to change schools and now she would go to high school here. When she graduated, she’d decide what she wanted to do, college here or there, and where she would be happy.
That mattered to him. And she was grateful.
So. St. Paddy’s Day was at hand!
But at least they were in Chicago where the holiday was celebrated grandly.
And for her grandfather . . .
She was decorating the house rather grandly herself. Charming shamrocks everywhere, green ribbons and bows on the drapes, over the doors . . .
She glanced at her watch.
He’d be home soon. He had an early morning meeting but was coming back to the house because the security company was due to come and set up their alarm and cameras and whatever else he wanted done security-wise for the house they had closed on just a few days ago.
The ribbon she’d been working with had been rustling. As she finished setting it up on the mantle, she realized there was another sound . . . she wasn’t even sure what, but something from the back in the kitchen.
Frowning, she walked through the giant archway to what was now a family room with the kitchen and dining hall to the left and her grandfather’s office to the right.
She moved into the dining room and was about to head into the kitchen when something moved by the great, period breakfront filled with dishes to her left.
Something green that moved with the speed of light and then . . .
She screamed, a scream that was muffled as something large and black came over her head, encompassing her whole body.
And as she gasped for breath, all she could hear was laughter and then a few words. “Ah, lassie, poor lassie, your green-bastard grandfather will hear the truth! ’T’was the leprechauns that did it!”
Then she knew nothing more because the darkness became overwhelming.
*
Jackson
“Almost St. Patrick’s Day. A day to honor a saint where people now wear a lot of green. And of course, do a lot of drinking. So, do you really think a leprechaun kidnapped the granddaughter of Sean Donegal?”
Jackson Crow asked Angela the question, arching a brow to her as they waited just outside their hotel, a pleasant place right on the Chicago River.
It was almost St. Patrick’s Day. Well, that’s why they were there; the incident had been heralded as “A Leprechaun Lunacy” in several media outlets, something rather horrible in Jackson’s mind since an innocent teenaged girl had been abducted.
And as of yet, no ransom had been demanded. Naturally, there was the fear that she had been killed. But Jackson agreed with what he’d heard from the point detective on the case, Conor Murphy. The display left behind suggested whoever had done the kidnapping had done so for a reason. Money was often the reason. But it might have been even more. Sean Donegal was a self-made millionaire, a man who had worked from the time he’d been a child, brought himself through school with scholarships. His work ethic led him to become one of the most brilliant men of their time, esteemed in his native Ireland and beyond. He’d recently started a company in the United States that was reputed to become hands-on, to allow even the saddest non-techy to getthrough all they needed for their day-to-day lives in the coming years.
Leprechauns. Right. Not that . . .
Well, he’d been to Ireland and knew a few things. Still . . .
