He put on his sunglasses and looked back through the gate at the convent, quiet in the shade, the women there committed to their order’s unique spirit and mission. As he got into his car, he heard a bird singing in a nearby tree, and then, as if in echo, a woman singing, unseen, among the stone buildings.
It would be a while, Finian thought, before the sisters came to terms with the violence that had occurred in their midst, but they would.
And there was no doubt in his mind that he could help find out what really had happened here, or at least try to help. He had resources, insights and knowledge. He had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and he’d had brushes with interesting and even dangerous people in his Bracken Distillers days.
He’d also spoken to his brother, Declan, already and had a plane waiting to take him to Dublin.
20
EMMA SLIPPED BACK TO HER APARTMENT TO PACK for Ireland. She didn’t bother trying to ditch Colin. He’d walked with her to the HIT offices and had stayed there all morning. He’d met with the ATF and FBI agents investigating the bomb in her grandfather’s attic, still insisting that defusing it hadn’t been a big deal—that anyone who grew up in Rock Point, Maine, could defuse a simple black powder and gunpowder explosive device.
Otherwise, he’d remained on the love seat behind her desk, pretending to be catching up on paperwork on a borrowed laptop.
“Having you in my office is like having the proverbial caged tiger pacing behind me,” Emma told him as she let him back into her apartment. “It’s distracting.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You didn’t have to. You’re restless, bored and frustrated.”
“And you would be what—just frustrated?”
She ignored his innuendo and dug her suitcase out of her bedroom closet. She’d been so anxious to get out of there that morning, she hadn’t made the bed. Since he was glued to her side, Colin hadn’t, either. She set her suitcase on the mattress, noticing that the barrier pillows were scattered and the duvet was twisted, dragging on the floor. If agents had to come in there now to search for a bomb, they’d be convinced she’d had quite a night for herself.
As it was, she’d awakened with Colin’s arm slung over her. He was on his stomach, mercifully not facing her. She’d stared at his tousled hair while she’d debated what to do. Waking him had struck her as simultaneously tempting and dangerous. She’d finally eased out from under his arm, then decided he was faking being asleep and giving her a chance to get free of him.
She’d changed in the bathroom and hadn’t said a word when she came out and found him awake, dressed and making coffee.
She unzipped her suitcase. “You don’t want to watch me pack.”
“Sure I do.” He picked up a lace-edged throw pillow that looked impossibly feminine against his dark canvas shirt as he held it football-style. “It’s more fun than watching you type.”
“You can imagine the reports I had to write.”
“Did you mention incorruptibles?”
She pulled open a drawer and grabbed whatever was clean to take with her to Ireland. She’d spoken to her grandfather in Dublin and her parents in London, and they were all relieved she was still coming to Ireland and would be leaving Boston that evening. They understood that she wouldn’t be able to stay as long as she’d planned, and that she hadn’t canceled in part because of the situation in Heron’s Cove. She wanted to talk to her grandfather in person.
Colin Donovan, she was quite sure, didn’t have a ticket to Dublin.
He flopped onto her bed, stretching out his long legs and crossing his ankles. “Yank said you wore one of those baggy tunics and skirts when you were a nun.”
“That’s right, I did.”
“Tights?”
She laid jeans, slim black pants and two tops in the suitcase. “Sometimes I wore tights, yes.”
“Did your inner Barbie want you to climb the convent fence and sneak down to Saks?”
“I never gave fashion a second thought until I moved to Dublin to work with my grandfather.”
“You also didn’t have any money,” he said, pointing the pillow at her. “The whole vow of poverty thing. Me, I vowed never to live in poverty.”
Emma put her hands on her hips and sighed at him. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I’m trying to make you smile.”
“A vow of poverty doesn’t mean living a life of deprivation. I wasn’t poor. I had food, shelter, money for personal expenses.”
“You’re still not smiling,” he said.
She scooped up a pillow off the floor and threw it at him. He caught it handily, laughing. She found herself laughing, too. “And your mother had four Donovan sons. I can’t imagine.”
“She and my father run an inn in Rock Point now. She’s as happy as she can be. He was a police officer for thirty years. Now he’s off the street, and she’s got him whipping up muffins with her every morning.”
Emma discreetly retrieved underwear from her dresser and tucked it in her suitcase, trying not to look to see if Colin noticed that she did, indeed, own a thong. “Does your mother worry about you and your brother Kevin?”
“She worries about Andy and Mike, too. Mike especially, because he’s alone up in moose country.”
“I meant worry about your safety.”
“Kevin’s job with the marine patrol is pretty safe.”
“And she thinks you work at a desk at FBI headquarters and have a normal life, with dinner dates, movie nights and trips to the mall.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes I do have that kind of life. No trips to the mall, though. What would I do at a mall?”
“Your father must guess you’re an undercover agent. What about your mother?”
“We don’t discuss my status.”
Emma added shoes, socks and a little bag of toiletries and zipped up her suitcase. “You trust your gut. Has it ever let you down?”
“You tell me.” He rolled off the bed, his eyes a dusky gray as he looked at her. “Right now my gut is telling me you wish I’d kicked down our little barrier last night and made love to you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You were sleeping the sleep of the dead. You needed it. You’ve had a rough couple of days.” He walked around the end of the bed, closing the distance between them. “I figured we’d have another chance.”
“It wasn’t thinking of me as Sister Brigid—”
“Oh, yeah. It was that, too. The tights,” he said. “I just can’t get over the black tights and sensible shoes.”
“Colin.”
“I guess you don’t have to be a nun to live a life of poverty, chastity and obedience.”
“I left that life behind me.”
“It’s not the same as when I look back on my three years in the marine patrol. Not even close, Emma.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t tell people. I don’t hide my past, but I don’t advertise it, either.”
“I must have sailed past the convent dozens of times while you were up there—doing what? Picking apples, teaching art?”
“I didn’t do much teaching. I worked in restoration and conservation with Sister Joan, and I finished my degree in art history. I did pick apples, though.”
He touched a fingertip to her lips. “I’m not afraid of you, Emma. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about you, but I’m not afraid of you.”
“That’s easy. You’re not afraid of anything.”
“Yank,” he said.
“Especially not Yank.”
He grinned and offered to carry her suitcase back to the HIT offices. She turned him down. She was accustomed to being on her own, and she didn’t want him to get the idea she couldn’t manage without him on her elbow.
“Was Yank your contact agent?” Emma asked as she lifted her suitcase, slinging the strap over one shoulder. “I heard he worked with someone in deep. Putting two and two together, I figured you’re the reason we got involved wit
h the Russian arms trafficker. He was yours.”
“Vlad the Purveyor of Nasty Weapons.” Colin ambled next to her as they passed the marina, crowded with boats and people on the beautiful early autumn Boston afternoon. “Vladimir Bulgov belongs under lock and key. I’ll say that much.”
“He wasn’t just after a profit. He enjoyed violence. He was also an erudite art collector.” Emma could feel the weight of her suitcase but didn’t mind. “People are complicated.”
“Not all of us. Some of us are simple.”
“Is there any chance Vlad had something to do with Sister Joan’s death?”
“Emma—”
“I discovered his interest in Picasso. That led you to him.”
“Bulgov’s arrest was a team effort, and he doesn’t know you were involved.”
Once they went through security at the HIT offices, she handed over her suitcase and let Colin carry it up the stairs.
“I cornered Yank this morning,” she said. “While you were telling that pretty, awestruck agent how you defused a bomb, I asked him if you were the deep-cover agent who brought down Vladimir Bulgov.”
“You’re fearless, Agent Sharpe.”
“Yank just gave me one of his looks and told me to get back to work.”
Colin set her suitcase by her desk. “I suppose when you’ve contemplated heaven, hell, saints and a life of poverty, obedience and chastity, a little thing like national security doesn’t intimidate you.”
“What do you think we do here? Knit sweaters and bake pies?”
He turned to her, and she saw the flintiness of his eyes and realized that the dangers he faced weren’t just theoretical—weren’t just classified admonitions and hints about preserving the cover stories of agents and safeguarding their true identities. He’d lived them. He had a family in Rock Point who didn’t deserve to be put at risk because of a slipup by one of his colleagues.
She hadn’t slipped up, and she wouldn’t. That wasn’t the point.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m careful. I promise you I am.”
“I know.” He winked at her. “Maybe too careful.”
Emma sat back at her desk, wondering how long Colin would stay idle. He was an action-oriented man who reacted to intelligence gathered in offices like hers.
After thirty minutes, he disappeared without a word.
Yank materialized next to her. “He’s restless on a good day. I’ve got him in my office. I’ll send him out in time to drive you to the airport.”
“I can take a cab,” Emma said.
“Bring me back a fifth of Bracken’s finest from Dublin.”
She pushed back her chair. “Yank, is the Bracken of Bracken Distillers the same Bracken as the priest in Rock Point?”
He withdrew to his office without comment and shut the door behind him. The past few days in Heron’s Cove had complicated his life.
Emma looked up Bracken Distillers on the internet.
Yep. The same Bracken.
21
COLIN TOUGHED IT OUT IN YANK’S OFFICE UNTIL he figured Emma was starting to itch to get to the airport. He’d finally taken Yank through every detail of his life since he’d dropped off the radar, skipping only the past few days. Yank already knew about Sister Joan, the missing painting and the bomb, and Colin didn’t want him to know about getting the summons from Finian Bracken or, especially, kissing Emma Sharpe.
“How did Emma figure out about Vlad and me?” Colin asked.
“She’s like that,” Yank said. “That’s why she’s here.”
A week ago, Colin would have balked at that explanation. Now, after a full day with Emma, he understood. She brought a unique perspective to her work with the FBI. It had helped lock up a dangerous, violent operator.
“You and me, Yank. Clean slate?”
“No.”
Colin grinned as he left Yank’s office. The team was still hard at work. They’d just discovered one of their own had been a nun and for the most part couldn’t care less. He figured it was because they hadn’t kissed her before they knew she’d once dedicated herself to a life of chastity.
He was used to skimming the surface of his emotions. It was too damn risky to go deep, but Emma was by nature deep—thoughtful, contemplative, reflective, meditative, prayerful. All of it.
He wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
He had one unbreakable personal rule while he was working undercover: no relationships. It didn’t mean no sex. It meant no falling in love.
It meant not looking into the deep green eyes of this woman and wondering if she’d had nightmares about someone trying to burn her to death in her sleep.
He was gruffer than he meant to be as he collected her and her suitcase and got them both into his truck for the short drive to Logan. Instead of being annoyed, Emma seemed relieved. Maybe she’d had the same conversation with herself about relationships versus sex.
Probably not.
“You’re not following me to Ireland?” she asked when he dumped her off at her terminal.
That was yet to be determined, but he said, “How much trouble can you get into in Ireland?”
She gave him a suspicious look, then smiled brightly. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, blowing him a kiss and heading off with her bag.
He drove back to her apartment and let himself in using a spare key he’d found while rummaging around for coffee filters that morning. He hadn’t found filters—she used a coffee press—but he had found the key.
Time to have a look at the life of Special Agent Emma Sharpe without her present.
The late-afternoon light gave the apartment a stark, empty feel, not so much as if Emma had just moved in but as if she didn’t know what kind of material possessions she wanted around her, or if she wanted any. Colin tried to imagine what her living quarters at the Sisters of the Joyful Heart had been like.
“Hell,” he said, “what do I know about nuns?”
But what did he know about priests, either? And yet he considered Finian Bracken a friend. Emma was a colleague, an experienced FBI agent and member of an elite special team. What difference did it make if she’d been a nun?
He walked into the bedroom. His physical reaction to seeing her bed gave him his answer. It wasn’t just that she’d been a nun—it was that he wanted to know what made Emma Sharpe tick. He wanted to sit with her in front of a fire and drink wine and talk late into the night. As he’d watched her work that morning, he’d realized just how hard and fast he’d fallen for this woman.
Yank had asked him bluntly if he was flirting with burnout.
Maybe he was.
Sleeping next to Emma had nearly done him in. Waking up to her warm, lithe body under his arm had tested his powers of restraint and self-discipline. If he hadn’t found out she’d been a nun, would he have made love to her?
“Doesn’t matter, ace,” he muttered. “You didn’t.”
And now she was off to Ireland.
He believed what he’d told her earlier. There’d be another opportunity. He’d seen in her eyes that she wanted one as much as he did.
For now, that was enough.
He didn’t feel guilty about searching her apartment. Since she owned so little, it didn’t take long. What she did own was neat and organized. She had shelves of art books, scrapbooks and photograph albums, CDs and computer disks lined up neatly.
He wasn’t looking for bombs. He was looking for anything that Emma’s bias as a Sharpe and a former member of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart had caused her to miss.
His brother Kevin called in the middle of his search of her junk drawer, which was more like a miscellaneous drawer since it was so tidy. “Father Bracken took off for Ireland a little while ago,” Kevin said.
Colin had asked him to check in on the local priest from time to time. “Taken off as in—”
“Bracken Distillers’ chartered jet. Quite a life he left behind.”
“So it is. Did he say what he’s up to?”
“Visi
ting family.”
Kevin’s tone suggested he didn’t believe that was the only reason. Colin didn’t, either. Finian Bracken was in a meddlesome mood, disturbed by Sister Joan’s death, wrestling with his own demons, whatever they were. He knew about the Sharpe connection to Dublin. Maybe he even knew Emma was on her way there.
An Irish priest who wanted to help find a killer. Colin grimaced. Just what he needed.
“Thanks, Kevin.”
“Where are you?” his brother asked.
“Boston,” Colin said, leaving it at that.
He found the Dublin address for Sharpe Fine Art Recovery and dialed Yank. “Looks as if I’m going to Ireland.”
22
THE IRISH MORNING WAS SUNNY AND COOL WHEN Emma stepped out of her cab onto her grandfather’s street in southeast Dublin. She’d headed straight from the airport to his apartment in a Georgian row house. She rang his doorbell, but she wasn’t surprised when she discovered he’d already left for the day. He’d always been an early riser.
Restless after her long overnight flight, she welcomed the chance to set off on foot through the city streets. She walked through St. Stephen’s Green, its twenty-plus acres of lawns, gardens and ponds glistening with dew and quiet in the morning sun. She hadn’t been to Ireland since last summer and loved being back.
She just needed coffee, and answers.
In ten minutes, she was on the cobblestone street where her grandfather had opened the Dublin offices of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery in a small corner building fifteen years ago. For a year after leaving the convent, Emma had taken this same route almost every day as she’d reacquainted herself with the mechanics of her family business and sorting out what she wanted to do with her life. Matt Yankowski, of course, had kept in touch.
She smiled and ran up the narrow stairs, eager to see her grandfather. When she came to the third-floor landing, she saw that the door to his office was ajar. “Hey, Granddad,” she called. “It’s me, Emma. I just got in from Boston….”
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