Rock Point (Sharpe & Donovan)

by Carla Neggers

  “Get out of there, Becan. Now. At once. There’s a Garda station—”

  Becan cut him off. “I’m scared to death, Father. I’m caught in the middle. The guards will arrest me, and my friends will be mad at me.”

  “Your friends won’t just be mad at you, lad. You said it yourself—they’ll kill you.” Finian got out of bed, standing on a threadbare rug in the milky light of the simple bedroom. “I can’t help you from Maine.”

  “They’re here,” Becan said, his voice lowered, hushed with terror. “Father...”

  Finian could hear cursing in the background, but Becan disconnected without another word.

  Wide awake, Finian rang Sean, who picked up immediately. “Fin, I’m at the distillery. I know your friend is Becan Kennedy. Where is he?”

  “He’s there, in the back field, by an old shed. His smuggling friends set him up. You, too. Sean, I don’t know what to believe—”

  “You don’t have to know. Go back to bed, Fin. Don’t call your brother or anyone else in Ireland. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Are you alone? God in heaven, Sean—”

  The connection was lost, or Sean had disconnected. Finian tossed his phone aside. He put on jeans and a sweatshirt and went downstairs.

  He made coffee in his strange American kitchen. He knew he wouldn’t sleep until he knew Becan’s fate. Becan was a dead man if the smugglers got to him before Sean could. Finian had no question in his mind.

  And if Sean did reach Becan first? Did he have backup?

  What if the criminals he was after had outwitted him?

  “Not possible,” Finian said aloud, smelling the coffee as it brewed. “Just not possible.”

  * * *

  It was hours before he heard.

  Kitty O’Byrne Doyle rang him from Declan’s Cross and gave him the news. “Sean’s alive, thank God,” she said, her voice hollow, her strain evident. “But he’s in bits, Fin. Broken ribs, punctured lung, torn shoulder, cuts, bruises. They say it was an ambush.”

  “Any other deaths or injuries?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. It’s still an active investigation. They’ve broken up a smuggling ring. A nasty lot. A dozen arrested already.” Her voice steadied. “The reports don’t mention Sean by name, of course, but I know he was involved—I know that’s how he was hurt.”

  “Will you go to see him?”

  “No. I won’t. I can’t. Fin...”

  “How did you find out?”

  “His uncle—Paddy told me. I doubt he has the whole story, either.”

  Kitty wouldn’t say it, but Fin knew: given the nature of Sean’s work, it was unlikely any of them would ever know the whole story.

  She added, “Paddy didn’t want to be the one to phone you, but he said Sean told him to make sure you knew.”

  “I’ll say a prayer for him, Kitty.”

  “You do that. Say one for his body to heal and another for him to get some blasted sense.”

  “You think this was his doing, then?”

  “One way or the other, it was. I know it, Fin, and so do you. Sean’s always thought he was invincible.” Kitty sighed. “Maybe so did the rest of us.”

  Finian attempted words of comfort, but Kitty bounced back, suggested the best source for further updates would be Paddy or Sean himself.

  He walked down to Hurley’s, bustling although the sun wasn’t yet up. He ran into lobstermen and fishermen carrying out coffees and doughnuts fresh from the kitchen, getting up from plates of eggs and bacon. One of them muttered he was having an egg-white omelet next time, and his friends roared with laughter.

  Finian was suddenly starving. He sat alone at the back table in front of the harbor windows. He’d brought one of the folders of parish background materials that Father Callaghan had left behind in the rectory. It felt secret. Finian would have to make sure no one looked over his shoulder when he opened it.

  Worried, impatient, he ordered coffee and a cider doughnut. Just as they arrived, Sean phoned him from his hospital bed. “I’m in bits, Fin.”

  “That’s what Kitty said.”

  “Kitty...ah, Kitty. Did she sound scared?”

  “Annoyed. She says it’s your fault you’re hurt.”

  “That’s my Kitty. Did I say ‘my’ Kitty? Blast, Fin. It’s the drugs. I’m on morphine. I haven’t gone completely mad.” Sean paused, whether to picture pretty Kitty O’Byrne Doyle or merely to take a moment to cope with his pain, Fin didn’t know. “Things didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped, but all’s well that ends well, right, Fin?”

  “Becan Kennedy?”

  “It is his real name, in fact. He didn’t handle his end well, but he’d been on a razor wire for weeks—since he’d sought you out in March. He got cold feet when he talked to me. He thought he could extricate himself without our help.”

  “Had you been investigating these smugglers?”

  “For a while, but we had nothing. What Becan told me in March pointed us in the right direction.”

  “Sean...the distillery...Declan...”

  “In the clear. Not involved with the smuggling network. It was Becan’s idea to use the back field a couple times in February and early March, but they moved on to other sites. It had nothing to do with Bracken Distillers.”

  “Thank God for that. The drop the other night—that was a ruse?”

  “Yeah, Fin. A ruse. More like an ambush. They wanted Becan, and they wanted me.”

  “How did you get hurt?”

  “The bastards grabbed Becan, and I got good thrashing saving him, but the worst, Fin—the worst of it came when I ducked a gunshot and fell in your blasted health club.”

  His health club. Finian could almost see Sean’s devil-may-care smile, but he heard a grown of pain and suspected his friend’s attempt at humor—this call—had cost him.

  “I’ll let you get some rest,” Finian said. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “It’ll take another day or two before I’m glad of it.”

  A long recovery lay ahead. “Will you go to Declan’s Cross to recuperate?”

  “It would be a chance to further annoy Kitty,” Sean said, but his voice was weak, then the connection was lost.

  Finian didn’t know if someone else clicked off the phone for his garda friend. He settled back in his chair and watched the sun come up over Rock Point harbor, the sky glowing with pinks and purples, a glorious June day ahead. He wondered where Colin Donovan was right now.

  Not at a desk in Washington, for certain.

  Finian opened the folder Father Callaghan had left him. Inside, right on top, was a newspaper clipping from the first week in June—just before Finian’s arrival in Rock Point. He scanned the article, which featured the arrest of a notorious arms trafficker, a wealthy Russian, Viktor Bulgov, at the auction of a Picasso painting in Los Angeles.

  “Sources say Bulgov leaves behind a trail of bodies...”

  Finian flipped to the next page in the folder. This time it was a printout of a news article on the internet, with a photograph of Viktor Bulgov at a hotel in Los Angeles. He was a handsome middle-aged man in a well-tailored suit. The report hinted that an intensive federal undercover operation had led to Bulgov’s arrest at the art auction. He was now in FBI custody.

  Finian closed the folder and ordered another doughnut.

  So this was what his new American friend’s work was.

  Colin Donovan was an undercover FBI agent.

  Undoubtedly he’d dived back into his undercover role to tie up loose ends with the Russian’s colleagues.

  Despite his lack of sleep and his night of waiting and pacing, he felt surprisingly energized. Colin Donovan and Sean Murphy were very different men but both had tough, dangerous jobs—and Finian could see that part of his role as a priest was to be their spiritual advisor, but, most of all, he was their friend.

  His doughnut arrived warm from the oven, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Pure heaven, he thought with a smile, ready to begin his first full da
y serving the people of Rock Point, Maine.

  He looked out at the harbor, as lobster boats puttered out into the sunrise, and he knew that whatever trials and doubts lay ahead, he was where he was meant to be.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of Carla’s newest Sharpe & Donovan novel, DECLAN’S CROSS!

  Author’s Note

  I’ve heard from so many readers who are as captivated as I am by enigmatic Finian Bracken, and I loved having the opportunity to write this “prequel” about his departure from Ireland and his arrival in Rock Point, Maine.

  Finian plays a role in the first three books in my Sharpe & Donovan series. In Saint’s Gate, he’s instrumental in Colin Donovan meeting FBI art crimes expert Emma Sharpe when a nun at a Maine convent—in fact, Emma’s former convent—is murdered. In Heron’s Cove, Finian keeps the whiskey flowing when Emma’s world as a Sharpe and Colin’s world as an undercover agent collide. In Declan’s Cross, we’re back in the tiny Irish village, where Finian’s friends Sean Murphy and Kitty O’Byrne Doyle are dealing with a missing American woman...and, of course, FBI agents Emma Sharpe & Colin Donovan.

  Please join me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/carlaneggers) and visit my website (www.carlaneggers.com). We’ll have a lot of fun. I’ll be posting videos and photos of my latest trip to Ireland!

  Thank you, and happy reading,

  Carla

  Chapter 1

  Emma Sharpe paused atop a craggy knoll and looked out at the ripples of barren hills, not a house, a road, a car or another person in sight. She didn’t know what had become of her hiking partner. Maybe he had stepped up to his mid-calves in mud and muck, too, but she doubted it. It wasn’t that Colin Donovan wasn’t capable of taking a misstep. It was that she’d have heard him cursing if he had.

  A fat, woolly sheep stared up at her from the boggy grass as if to say, “You might be an FBI agent back in Boston, but out here in the Irish hills, you’re just another hiker with wet feet.”

  “This is true,” Emma said, setting her backpack on the expanse of rough gray rock. “However, I’m prepared. I have dry socks.”

  She unzipped her pack and dug out a pair of fresh wool socks. The sheep bleated and meandered off, disappearing behind another knoll, one of a series on the windswept ridge on the Beara Peninsula, one of the fingers of land that jutted into the North Atlantic off the southwest coast of Ireland. It had been centuries since these hills were forested. She could see peeks of Kenmare Bay in the distance, its calm waters blue-gray in the mid-afternoon November light. Across the bay, shrouded in mist but still distinct, were the jagged ridges of the Macgillicuddy Reeks.

  Emma kicked off her shoes, sat on the bare rock ledge and pulled off her wet socks. She glanced down at the narrow valley directly below her, a small lake shimmering in the fading sunlight. She and Colin were five hours into their six-hour hike. With the short November days, they would get back to their car just before dark.

  As she put on her dry socks, he came around the knoll where her sheep had disappeared. A light breeze caught the ends of his dark hair, and he had his backpack hooked on one arm as he jumped over the wet spot that had fooled her.

  He climbed up onto her knoll and dropped his pack next to hers. “I like having you walk point,” he said with a grin.

  “No fair. You saw my footprint in the mud.”

  “I’ll never tell.”

  Emma leaned back against her outstretched arms. She had on a wool hat, her fair hair knotted at the nape of her neck. She had pulled her gloves on and off over the course of the day. She didn’t know if Colin had even packed a hat and gloves. He was, she thought, the sexiest man she had ever met. Small scars on his jaw and by his left eye from fights he said he had won. She had no doubt. He was strongly built, rugged and utterly relentless.

  A good man to have on your side in a fight.

  She was fit and lean and could handle herself in a fight, and although she wasn’t tiny, he could easily carry her up a flight of stairs. In fact, he had, more than once.

  They had set out early. For the past two weeks, they had explored the southwest Irish coast on foot and by car, by mutual agreement avoiding talk of arms traffickers, thieves, poison, attempted murder and alligators. Colin would wink at her and say he especially didn’t want to talk about alligators, not that he had seen one on his narrow escape from killers in south Florida. Thinking about them had been enough.

  By unspoken agreement, he and Emma also avoided talk of their futures with the FBI—or even each other. His months of intense undercover work, in an environment where everyone was a potential enemy, had taken a toll, and he in particular needed this time to be in the present, to be himself.

  Emma’s needs were simpler. She just wanted to be with him.

  It was her life that was complicated.

  She sat up straight, noticing that Colin’s boots and cargo pants were splattered with mud but not wet like hers. She grinned at him. “You do know I’ve spent more time hiking the Irish hills than you have, don’t you?”

  “Beneath that placid exterior beats the heart of a competitive federal agent.” He made no move to sit next to her. “Your mishap gives me an excuse to run a hot bath for you when we get back to the cottage.”

  “Life could be worse. You’re not bored, are you?”

  “I can go more than two weeks without anyone trying to kill me.”

  As he sat next to her on her boulder, his smile almost reached his stone-gray eyes.

  Almost.

  He offered her a sip from his water bottle, but she shook her head. He took a long drink as he gazed out at the hills. Except for the occasional baa of the grazing, half-wild sheep, the silence was complete.

  “What are you thinking about, Colin?”

  “Guinness.”

  “A cold pint and a warm pub. Sounds perfect.”

  He leaned down and touched the curve of his hand to her cheek. “It’s been good being here with you.” He winked at her again as he stood straight. “Mud and sheep dung and all.”

  Emma sighed as she slipped back into her trail shoes and tied the laces. “No escaping sheep dung out here, is there? I wasn’t distracted when I stepped in the wet spot. I just misjudged. There’s a difference.”

  “But you do have a lot on your mind,” Colin said.

  She always did. Their jobs with the FBI attested to their different natures. He was an undercover agent. She specialized in art crimes. She was the thinker. Analytical, methodical, detail-oriented. He was direct, intuitive, quick and decisive—and independent to a fault. Six weeks ago, he had been assigned to her small team in Boston, if only because the senior agent in charge was determined to rein him in.

  Good luck with that, Emma thought. She stood, lifted her backpack and slung it over her shoulders. “The rest of the way is all downhill.”

  “Have you ever done this hike before?”

  She shook her head. “First time.”

  “It’s a good spot,” he said, tucking his water bottle in his pack.

  “I’m glad we did this before I go home.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  It was Tuesday. She had a flight back to Boston on Friday. She’d be at her desk on Monday. Colin had more time before he had to decide what was next for him. Not a lot more time, but he could stay in Ireland for a while longer, without her.

  She angled a look at him. “Anything on your mind, Colin?”

  “I had an email from Andy in my in-box this morning. He sent it last night. I didn’t read it until just now, while I ate an energy bar and admired the view. Reading email is against our hiking rules, I know.”

  “A sign it’s time to get back to work, maybe.” Emma gave him a moment but he didn’t take the bait and respond, and she let it go. “How are things in Rock Point?”

  “Andy says Julianne Maroney is leaving for Ireland tonight.”

  “Tonight? Isn’t that sudden? I thought I’d heard she was going in January.”

  �
�She accepted a marine biology internship in Cork that starts in January. This is something different. She decided to come for a couple weeks now and get herself sorted out. It’s sudden, but that’s Julianne.”

  “So, she’s staying in Cork?”

  Colin shook his head. “A village east of Cork. Declan’s Cross.”

  Declan’s Cross.

  Emma went still as a dozen images came at her at once. A pretty seaside Irish village of brightly colored shops and residences. A romantic mansion with sweeping views of cliffs and sea. Haunting Celtic crosses on a grassy hilltop.

  A tight-lipped old Irish sheep farmer.

  Wendell Sharpe, her grandfather, a renowned art detective, pacing in his Dublin office as he admitted he and Sharpe Fine Art Recovery were after a thief they couldn’t catch.

  A thief, Emma thought, who had first struck in tiny Declan’s Cross on a lonely, rainy, dark November night ten years ago.

  She’d only become involved in the case four years ago, in the months between her life as Sister Brigid at the coastal Maine convent of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart and her life as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For a year, she’d worked side-by-side with her grandfather, learning everything he knew.

  Not everything.

  Wendell Sharpe never told anyone everything.

  She was aware of Colin’s eyes narrowed on her He wouldn’t know about the thief. There was no reason for him to know.

  She pushed back her thoughts. “Why Declan’s Cross, Colin?”

  “Emma...”

  “Just tell me what you know. Please.”

  “All right.” He was plainly suspicious now. “A woman who’s launching a marine science research facility in Declan’s Cross stopped in Rock Point last week. She and Julianne hit it off. Now Julianne’s meeting her there.”

  “To help with this research facility?”

  “Andy doesn’t have any details. He hasn’t talked to Julianne himself.”

  “Then who told him?”

  “Her brother. Ryan. He’s in the Coast Guard, but he’s in Rock Point for a couple of days. He found out from their grandmother. Julianne lives with her.”