Keeper's Reach

by Carla Neggers

  Colin watched the fake burning logs. He had assumed Emma had told Yank about her plans for the weekend. But assuming anything with Emma was dangerous. “She’s staying at the convent tonight and tomorrow night,” he said, keeping his tone neutral.

  Yank was clearly surprised. “For old times’ sake?”

  “I guess.”

  “Kind of like sleeping with an old boyfriend, isn’t it? Never mind.” Yank waved a hand. “Forget I said that. I should get moving, too.”

  “You done for the day? Off to plaster nail holes?”

  “One more meeting. Then I plaster nail holes. I’m looking forward to unloading this house.” Yank stood but made no move to head back to the revolving doors. “You hold your own with Van Buren. She’ll do right by you. She knows you’re not her private police force.”

  “I have always adhered to the principles and procedures of the FBI,” Colin said. “I read the handbook cover-to-cover the other day.”

  Yank’s eyes were flinty. “I’m serious, Donovan.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You’re on my team because I shoehorned you in to keep an eye on you while you got your head screwed on straight. My opinion, you did the bidding of the previous director without enough oversight.”

  “Excuse me, I was a deep-cover operative on a sensitive mission to break up a network of dangerous international arms traffickers. I wasn’t doing anyone’s bidding. I’m an independent thinker. It comes in handy when you’re being chased by alligators.”

  Yank sighed. “There were no alligators.”

  “It was South Florida. I was in the water. There were alligators as well as guys who wanted to kill me.”

  “Are we done here?”

  Colin was half-serious. Maybe not even half. He got to his feet. “We’re done. Good luck with the house. Will you miss it?”

  “More than I will miss my old apartment. It was a daily battle with the roaches.” Yank gave an exaggerated shudder. “Some of those bastards were the size of rats.”

  Colin kept his mouth shut. Yank had no sense of humor where roaches were concerned. He hadn’t counted on his wife balking about moving to Boston. Lucy Yankowski’s reluctance to leave her home in northern Virginia had thrown their marriage into turmoil as well as kept her husband in his roach-infested apartment longer than he had planned. Colin had watched Yank slowly come to realize he had made assumptions that could cost him the woman he loved. Whatever he had done to win Lucy back, she was in Boston, getting the keys to their new Back Bay apartment.

  “Lucy’s serious about opening a knitting shop,” Yank said.

  “Knitting as therapy, maybe.”

  “Whatever makes her happy. We don’t have kids. We can afford to live in Back Bay and for her to explore a career change.”

  “Glad things worked out,” Colin said.

  “Yeah. Any worries about Emma returning to the convent?”

  “She’s sleeping in the quarters used for retreats, not in the novitiate.”

  “I guess that’s something.” Yank waved a hand. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. Emma was a novice when I recruited her. It’s not news to me.”

  “That’s right.” Colin started out of the nook, away from the fire. “You saw her in her sensible nun shoes.”

  “I did.” Yank’s mood visibly lightened as they continued across the lobby. “I’ll see you back in Boston on Monday.”

  “Good luck with your meeting. This morning’s meeting was fifty-seven minutes too long.”

  “It was an hour,” Yank said.

  “First three minutes we stirred our coffees.”

  Yank made no comment and headed out through a revolving door. He was better at navigating the treacherous waters of Washington, but he had decided to base his new HIT team in Boston. Colin had never heard him explain why and doubted he ever would.

  * * *

  When Colin reached his room, he packed and texted Mike: Where are you?

  The response wasn’t instant. Hurley’s.

  A favorite Rock Point restaurant on the harbor. It meant Mike had left the Bold Coast early. Should I be worried about you?

  No.

  That was Mike. A man of few words. Kavanagh?

  FBI.

  Meaning, he was Colin’s headache. Reed Cooper?

  My problem.

  No argument from Colin. Not yet, anyway. Stay in touch.

  This time, there was no response. He hadn’t expected one. Mike had always been taciturn but was more so since leaving the army and moving out to the Bold Coast.

  Colin stared out his window at a gloomy alley. Emma would be at the HIT offices at least through lunch. He wouldn’t be interrupting her long weekend on her own if he called.

  She answered on the first ring. “Hey, what have you been up to?”

  “Just got out of another meeting.”

  “Ah.”

  He wasn’t sure she believed him. He told her about Mike’s call about the gathering at the Plum Tree. “He’s in Rock Point,” Colin added.

  “If the man Oliver spotted in London was Ted Kavanagh, he has his own agenda. We can’t have him spooking Oliver if we want those two Dutch landscapes returned.”

  “They’re his last leverage.”

  “Exactly. He’ll hold on to them until he knows what’s next. He wants to keep Scotland Yard off his doorstep.”

  “He’s never threatened to dump them in the Thames.”

  “That’s a plus,” Emma said. “I don’t think he’s worried about getting arrested at this point. It’s more like MI5.”

  “Our friends in the British Secret Service.” Colin knew a number of British agents, although not well enough to mention Oliver York. “With Oliver’s contacts and skills, he can maneuver in a wide variety of worlds. Think of the bad guys he could stop. Has MI5 been in touch with you?”

  Emma didn’t answer right away. “Sort of.”

  “I can see York as James Bond.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Packing. I’ll be back in Boston tonight. You?”

  “Leaving for Maine as soon as I can get out of here.

  “Say hi to the sisters for me.”

  “I will.”

  He heard a brightness in her voice—an eagerness to be at the convent again. Many of the current crop of religious sisters had been there when Emma had been Sister Brigid, young, eager, not so much confused as figuring things out. Specifically what things Colin didn’t know. At nineteen, he’d been figuring out how to keep himself in cash and women while he got through college. He’d majored in criminal justice, but he’d never been a deep thinker. He swore Emma had been born thinking deep thoughts.

  As he disconnected, he noticed pigeons huddling on a trash can. They looked cold.

  What would his life be like if he’d stayed in the Maine marine patrol, or if he had never volunteered for undercover work? Would he and Emma have ever met? They’d grown up a few miles apart from each other but hadn’t met until last September, despite both being with the FBI.

  It didn’t matter, he thought. If he’d been a lobsterman, a Maine cop or a bartender at Hurley’s, somehow he and Emma would have met. He knew it in his gut.

  They were meant to be together.

  He would arrive in Boston after she’d left for Maine, probably while she was singing vespers with the sisters.

  He wanted her to enjoy her time at the convent.

  He finished packing and headed to the lobby. He had time for lunch, then he would take a cab to the airport and catch his flight.

  7

  Near Stow-on-the-Wold, the Cotswolds, England

  Thursday, 4:00 p.m., BST

  For the first time in hours, Martin felt warm again. Now all he had to do was get rid of Ruthie Burns, the housekeeper. She liked to fuss. She had insisted on lighting a fire for him in his cottage on the York farm, up from the dovecote and down from the main house. The cottage was constructed of stone and timber, small and cozy, perfect for his needs. He
had sent Johnny, the farmworker who had come to his aid, back to work with a stern admonition not to call an ambulance.

  “I’ll be right as rain in no time,” he told Ruthie.

  “I’ll finish preparations for Mr. York’s arrival,” she said, ever eager to be of greater assistance. She was a stout woman, a widow with two grown sons and four grandchildren. “I’d just started to look for you this morning when Johnny told me about your tumble. It’s a stroke of luck this woman found you, but we wouldn’t have left you out there.”

  “Thank you, Ruthie. I’d have managed whether or not anyone found me. I fell late in the afternoon. It’s no wonder I wasn’t missed until today. No worries.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need to see a doctor?”

  “Positive,” he said, coaxing her out the door.

  He managed to stay on his feet until she withdrew, clearly unconvinced. Knowing her as well as he did—she had worked for the Yorks for nearly as long as he had—he waited, one hand on the entry table to keep himself upright.

  Sure enough, within thirty seconds she knocked on the door again, then pushed it open, obviously expecting to catch him dead on the floor. “I forgot to tell you the courier service picked up the package at the dovecote yesterday. It must have been after your tumble. The driver rang the house to let me know, since you weren’t there. It didn’t occur to either of us you were lying outside in the wet and the cold.”

  “No reason it should have.”

  “Reason enough, as it turned out.” She eyed him warily. “Promise me you won’t keel over when I shut the door.”

  “If I do, best you not witness my demise.”

  “You’re not a bit funny.”

  Martin reassured her of his well-being and once again sent her on her way. When the door shut behind her, he frowned, wobbly and uncertain.

  Package? What bloody package?

  A sharp pain pierced from the back of his head straight through his nose. The stress of trying to remember seemed to worsen the pain. Medical attention was undoubtedly a sound idea, but he didn’t want to risk the scrutiny, especially when his memory was so uncertain. Ruthie’s hovering was bad enough. Johnny had been more matter-of-fact. Falls in wet, slippery conditions weren’t unheard-of.

  Martin gave a small groan. He couldn’t remember a damn thing about his fall. Ever since the American woman had discovered him, his mind had been wandering, unfocused, frustratingly ill-equipped to provide him the details of what had happened to him at the dovecote.

  Nothing good, obviously.

  A sheep? Had the bloody ram knocked him on his arse?

  He remembered the cold ground, the sodden leaves, the dark night. Bits and pieces of it all, at least. That had to be a promising sign. He had vague memories of nausea and pain and shivering, the panicky sense that he would die if he didn’t find a way to stay warm enough to ward off hypothermia.

  He couldn’t say how much of what he remembered was a dream, the fog of semiconsciousness—the tricks of the mind as the body fought hypothermia and coped with a head injury.

  He settled into a chair by the fire and put his feet up on a cushioned stool his grandfather had made back before World War One. The Great War, he had called it. The war to end all wars. Would it had been such.

  Martin lifted a bottle of Scotch on the table next to his chair and splashed a dram into his glass. He needed to remember what had happened to him at the dovecote, but patience and rest would help him more than force and frustration.

  Should he know who the woman was who had come to his aid?

  Hadn’t there been another American?

  A man...

  His head ached.

  He swallowed some Scotch, smoky and strong, and closed his eyes, glass in hand as he listened to the crackle of the fire and the spray of rain on the windows. A passing shower, darkening the afternoon.

  Another sip of Scotch and he set the glass on the table.

  He sank into the soft, worn cushions of his chair.

  Best to relax now...sleep...right here by the fire, where he was warm...and safe.

  8

  London, England

  Thursday, 4:30 p.m., BST

  “Are you certain, Fin?” Declan Bracken asked.

  Finian smiled at his brother with a confidence he didn’t feel. They were in the lobby of Claridge’s, not far from Oliver York’s London Mayfair apartment. “Oliver is a curious fellow,” Finian said. “It will be interesting to see his farm. I’ve never been to the Cotswolds.”

  Declan looked dubious. They were fraternal twins, always close. Dreamers, too naive to fully realize what they were getting into, they’d launched Bracken Distillers at twenty-two. Now, seventeen years later, it was a thriving whiskey business, earning a name for itself in that tough, competitive world. Until tragedy had torn Finian apart—leaving him without the woman he loved, the beautiful daughters she’d born—he had expected to work side by side with his brother. If Declan had ever felt abandoned, first by Finian’s spiral into depression and alcohol, then by his call to the priesthood, he had never said so. Finian, still a co-owner in Bracken Distillers, had joined Declan on visits to various London whiskey clients. Declan didn’t need his brother’s help these days, but Finian had welcomed dipping a toe back in his old life. He thought Declan had enjoyed it, too.

  Oliver York frequented Claridge’s bar and had joined them for whiskey last night. Scotch for the Brit, Irish for “the Bracken twins,” as Oliver called them. They had argued the merits of adding water to whiskey—in Finian’s view, there were no merits, but Declan was more open to the idea, particularly if it sold whiskey.

  “A couple of nights in the English countryside, and then it’s back to Maine,” Finian said.

  “All right, then. Stay in touch, Fin. It was good to have you home.”

  Finian understood what was left unsaid. Declan and the rest of the Brackens wanted Finian to return to Ireland after his one-year assignment in Maine. Whether he took a parish in Ireland or quit the priesthood and returned to Bracken Distillers wasn’t as important to them as being back on their side of the Atlantic.

  Declan was off to another appointment, then flying back to Ireland that evening. His wife and their three young children were meeting him for a weekend in Dublin. Not long ago, Finian would have figured out how old his daughters would be now and pictured them with their mother, greeting him for a Dublin break. Instead, he was aware of the urge but didn’t let it take hold of him.

  He waited for his brother to get into a cab, then headed out from the hotel on foot. London was clear and chilly, a change from yesterday’s clouds and rain. He was clad in his priestly garb and a black overcoat, with no gloves or hat, but it was a short walk to the Mayfair gallery where Aoife O’Byrne’s work was on display. He had investigated the gallery, briefly, yesterday. He’d had no reason to expect Aoife to be there. The opening cocktail party had passed, and Finian knew she hated such things. She resisted looking at art she’d completed. Solitary and driven, and quite beautiful, she preferred creating new art in her Dublin studio.

  Aoife didn’t need him turning up in her life again—or Oliver York, either, for that matter. Oliver was a thief who had begun his career stealing paintings from her uncle, and Finian was...well, he didn’t know what he was to her.

  Another self-delusion. Finian did know. He and Aoife had been lovers for one mad weekend a few months after the deaths of his wife and daughters, before his call to the priesthood. Aoife had convinced herself she was in love with him and he with her. The only cure was to keep his distance. Let time heal and prove she was wrong about him—that he did, indeed, belong in the priesthood, keeping his promise of celibacy.

  Finian slipped into the gallery. He hadn’t meant to return after yesterday’s visit, but here he was. His heart jumped when he spotted Aoife in a far corner, alone. He knew he should leave, but he couldn’t move. She glared at him, then spun away from him, her long, dark hair gleaming as she darted into a private back room.


  Aoife O’Byrne didn’t take well to being the jilted lover.

  It wasn’t Finian’s view, but it did no good to explain to her that he hadn’t jilted her. The truth was, he had been wounded, raging and drinking, blinded by indescribable pain, and she had provided solace and relief. Their stormy Irish weekend together had helped open the way for him to carry on, to turn from self-destruction and, eventually, to experience the call to a religious life.

  Their mad, doomed attraction to each other hadn’t been only about him. It had been about her, too. Aoife O’Byrne was a committed artist, absorbed by her work. Perhaps she needed to cling to an unattainable love to justify her own solitary life.

  That he and Aoife had made love in the same run-down seaside house Oliver had burglarized a few years earlier wasn’t lost on him.

  Finian didn’t want to cause Aoife further distress and left the gallery immediately.

  He returned to Claridge’s, regretting his impulse to visit the gallery again today. On yesterday’s visit, he’d been struck by another woman—an American with dark curly hair and high energy. He’d overheard her pepper a gallery worker with questions about Aoife. Was Aoife in London? Had anyone sponsored the show? Then she’d looked straight at Finian, took in a breath and exited the gallery. He’d been wearing his priestly garb and occasionally encountered strong reactions, but this was different. It was as if she’d known exactly who he was.

  Oliver had been at the gallery, too. That evening, he’d joined Finian and Declan for drinks and extended the invitation to visit his farm.

  When Finian arrived back at Claridge’s, the car and driver Oliver had hired for him were waiting. Already checked out of the iconic Mayfair hotel, Finian retrieved his bag from the bellman. He climbed into the back of the Rolls, thinking that London had been a bad idea. He hoped this side trip to the Cotswolds wouldn’t be a worse idea. He had accepted Oliver’s invitation out of curiosity, plain and simple. He could try to dress it up and credit priestly duty and friendship, but he would be fooling himself, if not outright lying to himself.