Saint's Gate

by Carla Neggers

  “Luxurious. Yours?”

  “I slept at the airport.”

  She wouldn’t be surprised if he were telling the truth. They headed inside. Only the light above the kitchen sink was on. The house felt dark, cold and empty. Then Emma noticed a bag of apples on the counter and smiled. “You brought food?”

  Colin shut the porch door behind him. “Apples, cheese, bread, wine. Having seen how you live, I figured you wouldn’t think to stop at a grocery on your way back here.”

  “Sounds like a feast.”

  “And chocolate.” He tapped two Hershey bars on the counter. “I did not, however, pick the apples myself.”

  “There’s a great orchard in Rock Point.”

  “I know it well.”

  Emma debated between chocolate and an apple. “Yank’s not happy,” she said.

  Colin leaned against the counter. “Yank’s never happy.”

  Opting for an apple, she reached into the bag and chose one, quickly rinsing it off and toweling it dry. “I’m sure he wishes I’d told Sister Joan to call the local police and picked apples instead of going to see her. If this goes badly…” She didn’t finish. There was no point. It had already gone badly.

  “Yank still has faith in you. If he didn’t, he’d have found a way to keep you in Ireland.”

  “If he loses faith in me, I’ll be looking for a new job.”

  “You can always return to your family’s business.”

  Emma bit into her apple, a crisp Macintosh. “Not if my reputation is in tatters.”

  “What if their reputation is the one that ends up getting screwed up?”

  “I’m not speculating.” She ate more of her apple. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. “What would you do if you had to go to a desk job for real?”

  “I could always become a guide like my brother Mike and head to the Maine woods.”

  “Is that what you want—to be alone up in the wilds with the moose and mosquitoes?”

  His eyes darkened as he turned to her. “Some days.”

  “Today?”

  “Not today.” He opened a drawer, got out a knife and cut a piece of the cheese, then handed it to her. “It goes well with apple.”

  She felt as if she’d dreamed her Irish breakfast so many hours ago. She ate her apple and the cheese while Colin poured wine and divided a chocolate bar. He gave her half, studying her with an intensity she found unsettling. “What? Did you discover I have a secret obsession for Jane Austen movies when you searched my apartment?”

  “You don’t add up,” he said.

  “Nobody adds up. Look at you. Why would a man rooted in Rock Point, with a great family, disappear for months at a time to chase arms traffickers? Doesn’t add up.”

  “It just worked out that way.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  He frowned at her as if she made no sense. “Never mind. Let’s have a look upstairs. Your grandfather hadn’t been attacked when we found the bomb. Maybe we missed something.”

  He went into the dark hall. Emma grabbed another apple but skipped wine. She needed her wits about her when dealing with Colin Donovan with nothing to do after dark. She followed him through the empty rooms, then up the two flights of stairs to the attic, feeling the long day in her leg muscles.

  Colin turned on the dusty overhead, its light not reaching into all the corners under the eaves. Emma ducked over to the vault. “Why leave the bomb and take a chance it would be discovered before it went off? Why not just toss a match and set the place on fire?”

  “Not the dirtbag’s style.”

  Straightforward enough but she wasn’t satisfied. “It’s a busy street. The docks are right behind us. Running out of a burning house would draw attention.”

  “A bomb’s a statement to an FBI agent and world-renowned art detectives.”

  “Do you think this is about ego?”

  Colin seemed even taller under the slanted ceiling. “I wish I knew, especially if it can help us find who’s responsible.”

  “Ego, revenge—maybe this person blames my family for something.”

  “It’s tempting to jump ahead of what we know.”

  She opened a wooden file drawer next to the vault and pushed back a sudden flood of memories of her work side by side with her grandfather. She focused instead on the task at hand. How would a woman fleeing tragedy and an unhappy marriage have managed to transport an art collection of even a modest size to her family home in Maine?

  What if the art had already been there? Would that make any difference?

  “Piecing together the life of Claire Peck Grayson and her family could take time,” Emma said, half to herself. “Art theft and recovery investigations can go on for years. We don’t have years.”

  Colin knelt down and opened up a cardboard box. “First things first.”

  “I keep seeing Sister Joan lying in the tower entry. It was as if she didn’t matter. Her life, her work.” Emma shut the file drawer. There was nothing in there worth digging through.

  “Why did Claire Grayson come to your grandfather in the first place?”

  It was a good question, one that had been bugging her. Emma seized the moment and emailed her grandfather in Ireland. Thirty seconds later, he called her. “I’m still up,” he said, obviously welcoming the distraction.

  Emma sat on a stack of boxes with her cell phone. “I’m in the attic with Colin Donovan. We’re wondering how you first came to know Claire Grayson.”

  Her grandfather answered without hesitation. “She stopped by my office to ask how fine art and antiques are authenticated. That’s how we met. She didn’t have an appointment. She just walked in.”

  “Was she alone?” Emma asked.

  “Yes. I gave her the basics on the process. I’ve done it a thousand times. She never took it further. She told me she was a painter herself. A few days later she came by and said she was looking for a painting teacher.”

  “So that’s when you referred her to Mother Linden. Did Mrs. Grayson mention any particular artists?”

  “It was a long time ago.” He sounded exhausted. “I think I’d have remembered if she’d asked about specific artists, but I can’t be sure. She was sweet, eccentric, very pretty and very troubled.”

  “Sleep on it, Granddad,” Emma said. “You’re taking care of yourself?”

  “I don’t have any choice with your parents hanging over me. Be safe, Emma.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “You’ve got that tough FBI agent with you?”

  She laughed. “I do, indeed.”

  “Good. I like him.”

  “You met him for two seconds, and you had a concussion—”

  “No concussion,” he said, then added, his tone serious again, “Emma…”

  “We’ll figure this out. Get some sleep. Say hi to Mum and Dad for me. We’ll talk again tomorrow.” Emma disconnected and got to her feet, tried to smile at Colin. “He likes you,” she said, then repeated what her grandfather had told her.

  “It’s hard to know what Claire Grayson was up to.” Colin stood back, eyeing Emma. “You need to get some sleep, Agent Sharpe.”

  She nodded. “I know. You’re tired, too. Go. You don’t have to stay here.”

  “I think I will, though.”

  She felt a rush of warmth. “I’ll be okay by myself.”

  “You’d sleep well after finding a bomb in the attic?”

  “It was meant to burn up my grandfather’s old files and obscure the theft of the Sunniva painting. Any harm to me was secondary.”

  “I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  “Because Yank—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with Yank. Not anymore.”

  Colin started toward the stairs, and Emma took a quick breath, turned off the overhead and followed him down to her grandfather’s old office and back out to the kitchen.

  “We could go back to my place,” he said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know what it is
with you Sharpes and furniture. Your apartment in Boston is bare bones. Your brother’s house is bare bones. This place here’s practically empty and ready be gutted. I have furniture.”

  “There’s a cot in the attic.”

  “Uh-uh. I’m not sleeping in the attic and I’m not carting a cot down two flights of stairs.” He leaned in close to her. “Relax, sweetheart. I have a spare bedroom.”

  She busied herself putting away the wine, cheese and apples.

  “Emma? You’re thinking, aren’t you? Sometimes there’s nothing to be gained by thinking.”

  She shut the refrigerator and turned to him. “You rely on your instincts. Have they ever failed you?”

  His eyes darkened even as he smiled. “They might be failing me right now.”

  She opened the porch door behind her. “All right. No more thinking. We’ll go to your place. You and your brother drank up my cider and it’s going to be chilly tonight. I don’t want to turn on the heat.”

  Emma drove her own car to Rock Point. Her suitcase from her whirlwind trip to Ireland was still in back. Colin’s house was perfect—small, quiet, masculine, with classic Craftsman-style lines. A life vest hung on the back of a chair and framed photographs of Maine scenes were on the walls.

  Saying there was a spare bedroom, however, was a stretch.

  “I don’t have a lot of company,” he said, leading her to a study off the living room, behind the stairs. “There are two bedrooms upstairs. Mine, and one I’ve converted into a weight room—a dusty weight room.”

  “Who needs a weight room when you can haul lobster pots and kayak when you’re home.”

  “The couch pulls out in here. If you’d rather sleep on an exercise mat—”

  “This is great, thanks,” she said quickly.

  Too quickly. Colin leaned against the varnished woodwork, looking casual, amused and very sexy. “Safer to keep a set of stairs between us, maybe. A nice little barrier of pillows might not work tonight.”

  She felt an unsettling combination of sexual awareness and fatigue. “We’ve both had a long day. Those five extra hours between here and Ireland are catching up with us.”

  He winked at her. “I don’t get jet lag.”

  “Of course not. What was I thinking? Then sitting still for a seven-hour flight is catching up with you. I’ll take a wild guess that you’re not a man who likes to sit still.” Emma grinned at him. “Helps that you’re a man of supreme willpower.”

  “How’s your willpower?”

  Weaker and weaker, she thought. “You don’t happen to have a bottle of Bracken whiskey tucked in a cupboard, do you?”

  “I’m guessing the last thing you need right now is whiskey.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I need a bed. Are there sheets in here?”

  Colin’s eyes narrowed on her with an intensity that buckled her knees. She had to grab the doorknob to steady herself. He straightened and slipped a thick, muscular arm around her waist. “I’m revising the plan. Up you go.”

  Before Emma could figure out what he meant, he lifted her off her feet and scooped his other arm under her thighs. She was so startled, she grabbed his shoulder with such force she thought she’d draw blood. He didn’t seem to notice and just carried her to the stairs. She loosened her grip and sank into his arms, his fleece warm against her face.

  He mounted the steps as if she weighed nothing, and she didn’t weigh nothing. He walked down a short hall and toed open a door, a surge of cool air sweeping over her as he carried her into a dark bedroom.

  Still holding her in his arms, he leaned over a queen-size bed and whipped back the covers. “Sheets’ll be cold,” he said, then laid her on the bed, staying close, half on top of her. “You’re dead on your feet.”

  She opened her fingers that were still clenched on his shoulder. “You’re warm. I didn’t expect it to be so cold up here.”

  “I cracked the window. I’ll shut it before I leave.”

  His words penetrated. He was leaving?

  Her hand dropped from his shoulder just as he lifted her right foot by the heel and tugged off her boot. He cast it onto the floor and tugged off the other one.

  He leaned back down to her, dark shadows playing on his face. “I’ll leave the rest to you. Once I get started…”

  As far as she was concerned he’d gotten started the moment he’d lifted her off her feet. She smiled. “I can get my socks off myself.”

  “Funny.” But he was serious, and he brushed the knuckle of one finger over her forehead, then followed with a soft kiss. “Get some sleep. It’ll help you process what’s happened.”

  A mix of sensations boiled through her. “Have you processed it?”

  “It wasn’t my friend and it wasn’t my attic.”

  “So…. what? You’ll just go think about something else?”

  He smiled, tapping her chin. “Emma. Stop thinking.”

  She shuddered. “Damn. I’m freezing.”

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and rubbed them down her arms and back up again. “Your body heat will warm up the bed in no time.”

  “Colin…” She held back a yawn, wondering if she was past the point of making any sense at all. “I don’t want to take your bed.”

  “You can’t keep your eyes open.”

  “If you’re thinking of me as Sister Brigid—”

  He laughed softly. “Sweetheart, right now I’m not thinking of you as anything but naked.” He kissed her, her lips parting, even as he took in a breath. He drew back. “Sleep well.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m going downstairs and practicing my supreme willpower.”

  She caught his hand in hers and felt the calluses and nicks of the life he led, then sank back to the mattress. She could feel herself already drifting off.

  He tucked the blankets around her, shut the window and, in another moment, was gone.

  Emma let out a breath and managed to wake up enough to sit up and peel off her clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor. Then she crawled back under the covers, tucking them around her the way he had.

  She liked his bed. The sheets were both soft and a little rough. Just like their owner, she thought, smiling to herself.

  Colin was right. As soon as she got under the blankets, she was asleep.

  29

  FINIAN DIDN’T SLEEP AND FINALLY GOT UP IN THE dark before dawn. Declan, his twin, was awake early, too, making coffee in the kitchen of his contemporary house in the hills above Kenmare Bay. His wife, Fidelma, and their three small children were still asleep upstairs. They’d all spent yesterday together, enjoying one another’s company and catching up after three months apart.

  Declan poured coffee. “Why don’t you give up on this Maine adventure and come home, Fin?”

  “I will.”

  “But not today.” He handed Finian a mug. “What have you learned?”

  “I spoke to friends in Dublin. Old friends, from before I entered the priesthood. They had information. A house near Wexford owned by friends of theirs was broken into earlier this summer, and the security guard—an old man, is all he was—was hit on the back of the head. He was only knocked out, not killed.”

  “Thank God,” Declan said.

  “The thief got away with cash and a small, obscure but potentially quite valuable Albrecht Dürer etching the wife inherited from her family.”

  “Who in blazes is Albrecht Dürer?”

  “I had to look him up, too. He was a prominent fifteenth-century German painter and engraver. Here’s what’s interesting. The etching isn’t authenticated and its provenance is uncertain. My friends believe it came from America.”

  His brother frowned over his coffee. “By way of this dead woman?”

  “Perhaps,” Finian said, “or her family.”

  “The FBI must have information on this theft, Fin, especially given the violence.”

  “They might. The owners hadn’t yet gone to the trouble of a
uthenticating the Dürer. In some ways, it could have created more hassles for them.”

  “Did the thief break in to get it, do you think?” Declan asked with interest. “How would he—or she—know it was there?”

  Finian sighed heavily. “I don’t have the answer, I’m afraid.”

  “And you won’t get one. You’ll leave this to the authorities.”

  “Of course.”

  His brother scrutinized him in the morning shadows. “There’s more, Fin?”

  “A tenth-century pagan Scandinavian silver bracelet was stolen from the London town house of a banker friend of a friend in August. Luckily no one was injured. It’s a gorgeous work of art, apparently, but our banker friend—”

  “Let me guess. He never had it appraised, and it’s of uncertain provenance.”

  Finian nodded. “He figures it’s gone now and isn’t concerned about recovering it.”

  “Another American connection?”

  “His father bought it on a trip to Chicago some years ago, from a couple in dire financial straits.”

  Declan was silent as he paced on the tile floor. “Fin, a killer’s at work. This isn’t just an ordinary burglar. Even if every break-in isn’t accompanied by violence—”

  “I know, Declan,” Finian said, looking out into the darkness. “I want to get on the road before sunrise. Don’t worry about me. Be safe, and keep Fidelma and the children safe.”

  His brother winked, as fearless as ever. “No worries, Fin.”

  Finian drove on the winding N71 to Moll’s Gap and Ladies View, where, in 1861, Queen Victoria and her ladies-in-waiting had marveled at the breathtaking views of the Black Valley. The Brackens had been poor farmers then. They’d been poor farmers when Declan and Finian were boys.

  No one would fault him if he didn’t go back to Maine, Finian thought as he pulled over in his rented car. The sky had lightened in the east. The air was cold, windy. He zipped up his jacket and followed a rock-strewn path to the Old Kenmare Road, part of the Kerry Way walking route that encompassed more than a hundred miles of the Iveragh Peninsula. This section went through Killarney National Park with its ancient woodlands and beautiful lakes.