Keeper's Reach

by Carla Neggers

  And her grandfather hadn’t had much.

  She climbed out of her car, welcoming the cold air. There was more snow in Heron’s Cove than in Boston, but with no fresh storms in more than a week, the snowbanks were partially blackened and turning icy. The house backed up onto the mouth of the tidal river, between a marina and a popular inn and within sight of the ocean. The big houses that overlooked the ocean up the street were mostly empty now, in the off-season.

  The front walk was neatly shoveled and sanded, but Emma knew no one was there. She stood at the base of the steps, noting the shiny black paint on the front door. Over the past six months, the house had been gutted and renovated to create modern offices for Sharpe Fine Art Recovery. She had managed to persuade her brother, who didn’t have a sentimental cell in his body, to keep the back porch, but he had already included a small apartment in the plans. It wasn’t a house anymore, but the apartment was available to their grandfather, should he finally decide to return to Maine.

  Emma decided not to go inside. Lucas was in Dublin with their grandfather. Their parents were in London. The process of shutting down the temporary offices and moving everything back here would be getting under way and didn’t need her input. There was talk of a grand opening party. She’d be invited, although she had no official role any longer with Sharpe Fine Art Recovery.

  She returned to her car, looking forward to her evening in Rock Point. She took the coast road northeast to Rock Point and its working harbor and smattering of houses on narrow streets. Donovan country, Emma thought. She continued up to the Craftsman-style house Colin had bought as a refuge at the height of a long, difficult undercover mission. His independence, always an asset, had proved to have a dark side, isolating him, fraying his relationships with some of his FBI colleagues and even his family.

  Not that he saw it that way.

  Emma let herself into the house through the back door, but she didn’t stay. She slipped back outside, hunching her shoulders against a cold gust of wind. Before leaving Boston, she had changed into casual leggings, an oversize sweater and her Frye boots, in anticipation of her convent retreat. She grabbed her hat and gloves out of her car. She would walk to St. Patrick’s rectory to see if Oliver York’s package had arrived. If it had, she would decide what to do once she saw the contents. Enjoy her long weekend in Maine, or delve back into the world of an accomplished art thief.

  * * *

  Clouds and fog moved in, adding dampness to the air, making it feel colder. Emma navigated an icy patch on the sidewalk that curved onto the quiet, narrow street where St. Patrick’s was located. The rectory, a small Victorian, was next to the white-sided church, which had started life a hundred years ago as an American Baptist Church. Both church and rectory were dark now, with Finian Bracken in Ireland.

  Actually, in England, Emma thought with a sigh of frustration. Finian was likely settling into a guest suite at Oliver York’s Cotswolds farm.

  She didn’t run into any residents or passing cars, everyone either at work, running errands or inside their homes. She wasn’t used to Rock Point on a weeknight in winter. She and Colin had been up a few times since Christmas, but always on a weekend.

  She adjusted her scarf, covering more of her face against the breeze and damp air. The fog was thick and bone-chilling, tasting of salt. There was definitely no sign of spring tonight on the southern Maine coast.

  If the package was too large to carry, she would have to go back for her car, but the walk and fresh air were doing her good after her drive, especially given her crowded mind. She needed to sift through everything simmering—her wedding, her canceled retreat, this latest with Oliver—and create some order. Walking, inevitably, helped.

  She passed in front of the church and turned onto the walk that led to the front door of the rectory. Finian Bracken was a hit with parishioners with his good looks, Irish accent and approachability. His tragic past, while nothing anyone would wish upon him, seemed to help people identify with him. He and Colin were already friends when Emma had met them both in September. Finian had agreed to perform their wedding service before he returned to Ireland in June—if he did return, Emma thought. She had her doubts, whether or not Father Callaghan resumed his post in Rock Point.

  She didn’t need to tell Finian that Maine couldn’t be an escape. Neither could the priesthood. That was one of the lessons she’d learned at the convent. He would have gone through a rigorous process of discernment before being admitted into seminary, but how had life in Maine affected him? His friendships with the Donovans—seeing Aoife O’Byrne in Boston in November?

  None of her business, Emma reminded herself. She shook off her ruminating and headed down the walk to the rectory, built around the same time as the Sharpe house in Heron’s Cove and as in need of an overhaul as it had been.

  There was no package on the front steps. Oliver wasn’t above sending her on a wild-goose chase, but his package might not have arrived yet, or the part-time church secretary or a volunteer could have picked it up. It was also possible delivery trucks would circle through the church parking lot and drop off packages on the rectory’s side porch, easily accessible for the driver and out of view of passersby.

  Emma took a narrow, icy walk to the enclosed side porch. If anything, the fog seemed denser, impenetrable. She wished she had thought to bring a flashlight with her. She mounted the porch steps, immediately noticing a large package in front of the kitchen door. She flipped on the porch light and checked the label.

  It was Oliver’s package.

  What did he consider a surprise she would love? Short of the missing Dutch landscapes or a confession, she couldn’t think of anything she would want to receive from him. Whatever he had sent, she would promptly report to Yank. She wasn’t accepting gifts of any kind from Oliver York.

  She turned off the porch light and, using both arms, lifted the package. It was bulky but not heavy. A sweater? A stuffed sheep? It was too big for a shipment of English scones and not heavy enough for jam or whiskey.

  She was tempted to rip open the package there on the porch but resisted. She’d get back to Colin’s house first. She debated whether to leave the package and fetch her car but decided she could manage carrying it.

  While she’d been on the porch collecting the package, a car she didn’t recognize had parked on the street in front of the rectory, its trunk open. She didn’t see the driver or any passengers. Probably a parishioner dropping off something at the church, although there were no lights on yet in the building.

  Slowing her pace, Emma adjusted the package in her arms.

  She heard a sound behind her—a quick intake of breath, like a warning of what was to come. She started to drop the package, but she knew she was too late.

  A blanket thrown over her head...a choke hold...

  Give in to it. Don’t risk permanent injury or death.

  Fight later.

  She let her body go limp, felt the pressure on her carotid artery as unconsciousness overtook her.

  * * *

  Breathe...

  Emma pushed back the instant panic as she regained consciousness, dizzy, unable to move, suffocating.

  Not suffocating.

  It was the blanket. She could smell the fleece, taste the fibers.

  Her hands were bound behind her. Her ankles, too, were bound.

  Her attacker would have had only seconds before she regained consciousness and must have been ready, must have waited for her and known exactly what to do.

  An ambush.

  She slowed her breathing. She had to stay calm.

  I’m in the trunk of the car that was parked at the rectory.

  She felt the movement, heard the engine.

  Where are we going?

  Her attacker hadn’t killed her straightaway. That was something, even if the plan was to kill her outside the village and dump her body.

  Colin.

  Emma closed her eyes and imagined him, felt him close to her, heard his laug
hter.

  “Emma Sharpe, I’m madly in love with you, and I want to be with you forever.”

  His words to her on that rainy November night in Dublin when he’d asked her to marry him, and she’d said yes.

  She brought herself back to the present, the effects of the choke hold easing. She risked a deeper breath, inhaling to the count of four, holding for four, exhaling for eight...

  First things first, she told herself.

  Right now, her job was to stay alive.

  10

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Thursday, 7:00 p.m., EST

  Colin took a cab from the airport straight to the HIT offices in an unobtrusive brick building on the Boston waterfront. He wasn’t surprised to find Sam Padgett in the open-layout area in the center of the main floor, outside the individual offices. He had a laptop and two monitors arranged on U-shaped tables, with his scuffed boots up on one of the tables. He was HIT’s newest member, in his midthirties, dark, an ultra-fit type and a hard-ass with a sense of humor. He made no secret he preferred his native Texas. He’d started griping about New England winters at the first snowflake.

  “Good flight?” he asked, not glancing up from his laptop.

  “Uneventful,” Colin said.

  “Best kind. I heard our favorite art thief has been in touch. When are we going to nail his ass?”

  “Probably never.”

  “Is Oliver York the wrong man or the right man for the thefts?”

  “Right man.”

  “Then we could find a way to nail him if we wanted to. That means we don’t want to.”

  Colin didn’t disagree.

  Padgett tilted back in his chair. “At least it’s another chapter in the annals of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery closed.”

  “Closing, maybe.”

  “Old Wendell must be happy.”

  “He’s happy the stolen art is being returned intact. We all are.”

  Padgett dropped his feet to the floor and shut his laptop. He was blunt and consistent about not getting Emma’s role with HIT or the value of her expertise in art crimes. He never would have recruited her for the FBI in the first place, never mind handpicked her for an elite team. Her family’s work in art recovery and her grandfather’s status as one of the foremost private art detectives in the world would have disqualified her if Padgett had been doing the disqualifying. And art crimes mystified him.

  “What are you working on?” Colin asked.

  “Numbers.”

  Padgett was as good with numbers as he was with firearms. Colin had seen him take enormous pleasure in catching people in their own stereotypes since he didn’t look like the classic numbers guy.

  “Give me two minutes,” he said. “I’ve got some info for you on your brother’s friends.”

  He snapped up straight in his chair, reopened his laptop and tapped a few keys on his keyboard, back into his work.

  Colin entered an empty conference room. Before he’d boarded his flight, he had given Padgett the names he had from Mike. He felt only mildly guilty that he hadn’t asked his brother for more information, but Oliver York’s call to Emma mentioning the possible sighting of an FBI agent on his tail was too coincidental for Colin not to take a closer look. Best-case scenario still was a London stockbroker.

  Boston Harbor was glasslike, reflecting the city lights. He’d texted Emma when he’d landed at Logan, but she hadn’t responded. He didn’t know what the sisters’ rituals were in the evening. Dinner, cleanup, reading, games, vespers. He’d been to the convent and could picture its stone buildings, a renovated nineteenth-century estate on its own small peninsula overlooking the Atlantic. Mother Linden, who had been friends with Wendell Sharpe in his younger years, had transformed the run-down property when she’d founded the Sisters of the Joyful Heart decades ago.

  Padgett entered the conference room without notes or a laptop. “Let’s start with Ted Kavanagh,” he said. “He’s an active agent. He’s forty-four, divorced, two kids in college, and he’s supposed to be in a hammock on a beach.”

  “He’s on vacation?”

  “He’s supposed to be taking an overdue break to decompress after wrapping up a difficult investigation into money launderers—guys he started chasing when he was assigned to Afghanistan a few years ago. They hooked up with local drug lords. One of those tangled webs. You can identify.”

  Colin nodded without comment.

  “Kavanagh should have taken a break two months ago, but he stuck around, pissed people off and finally got told to take a break.”

  “I can identify with that, too,” Colin said.

  “He packed his suitcase and said he was going to the beach. I’d have assumed he meant sand and eighty degrees, not ice and—what was it this morning in Maine? Two?”

  “A balmy twenty degrees.”

  “I’ll have to get out my swim trunks.” Padgett stood at the window and glanced at the glittering harbor. “Reed Cooper is an army captain turned private contractor. He worked with one of the big outfits until going out on his own in October. Cooper Global Security is still a fledgling company. He’s taking his time pulling the right people together. He has family money. He has a solid reputation and a breadth of operational and logistical experience.”

  “No alarms yet,” Colin said. “What else?”

  “Cooper, Naomi MacBride and Buddy Whidmore are all Tennesseans. Cooper is from Belle Meade, MacBride from a small town east of Nashville, Whidmore from Memphis. Cooper and MacBride are Vanderbilt grads. Buddy dropped out his sophomore year—one of those guys too smart for college. They were all there at different times. MacBride is a security and crisis management consultant who used to be an intelligence analyst for the State Department. She’s based in Nashville. Whidmore is a freelance tech guy. He’s based twenty miles southwest of Nashville. Nashville—not coincidentally, I’m sure—is where Cooper decided to open his offices for Cooper Global Security.”

  And now, Colin thought, they all were on their way to see Mike in Maine.

  “I can do more digging,” Padgett said, “but it looks to me as if these are key relationships formed at a tough, dangerous time. As far as I can see, this thing at the Plum Tree is a big old spook and soldier reunion in the wilds of Maine. With Cooper’s new outfit, he’ll want to do some networking and recruiting with people he knows and trusts.”

  “I won’t try to explain that the Plum Tree Inn isn’t in the wilds,” Colin said.

  Padgett grinned. “I’ll have to get up to Maine when the weather warms up, if it ever does.”

  “Depends on how you define warm.” Colin nodded toward the door. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you a beer and listen to you bitch about the cold weather.”

  “Done.”

  While Padgett put away his laptop and monitors, Colin checked his phone again. Still no response from Emma. He hadn’t expected one, and the last thing he wanted was to bug her while she was on her retreat. He debated texting her that he wouldn’t text her again, but it would be another interruption—assuming she even had her phone turned on.

  Forget it.

  Let her enjoy her time with the sisters.

  * * *

  Colin and Padgett walked to a waterfront restaurant crowded with people who weren’t in law enforcement. Padgett refused to sit by a table overlooking the harbor. “Too damn cold,” he said, agreeing instead to a table by a gaslit fire. He grinned at Colin as they sat down. “I’m not warming up to the frozen north, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Helps to be on Yank’s team.”

  “So far it’s been interesting, I’ll say that.”

  They had burgers and beer and watched some of a Bruins game on the television above the bar. Padgett was clearly preoccupied with whatever numbers rabbit trail he had been following. Colin left him to coffee and headed out for the short walk to Emma’s waterfront apartment. It was small for the two of them but at least reasonably roach-free. She had rented it last March when she arrived in Bo
ston to join Yank’s team. Colin had been posing as an arms buyer then, deep inside the network of a Russian now in prison in California.

  He pictured Emma when they’d met in September on the grounds of her former convent.

  She’d been all set to shoot him.

  He smiled, trying to picture her now, in the convent where she had once expected to live out her life. Sometimes he had no trouble imagining her as Sister Brigid. Other times he couldn’t imagine it at all.

  Tonight would be one of those other times.

  The wind kicked up, and he was cold when he arrived at the apartment. He had never stayed there without Emma. It still felt like her space, not their space, but that was fine with him. He tossed aside his jacket and got a beer out of the refrigerator—his six-pack one of the signs that he did, in fact, also live here.

  He debated getting in touch with Mike. Was his brother still in Rock Point or had he gone to the Plum Tree? Or had he decided not to bother with his old friends and gone back up to the Bold Coast?

  Colin remembered the day Mike had given him the keys to his cabin. If I get eaten by a whale on the high seas, I need someone to burn down my cabin. You’re it, Colin.

  He hadn’t known if Mike had meant literally he wanted his brother to burn his cabin in the event of his demise, and he hadn’t asked.

  Mike lived simply and worked hard. He would be taking advantage of winter to get things done that he couldn’t during summer. Refurbishing gear, painting, fixing, oiling. It was a life Colin knew, if not to the degree Mike did, but hadn’t chosen for himself.

  In some ways, he wasn’t sure Mike had chosen his life as a guide and outfitter, either. It was more as if he had fallen into it after the army because he hadn’t known what else to do, and because it allowed him to be something of a loner and keep family and friends at a distance.

  Colin understood the drive toward solitude and isolation. Mike had never talked much about his years in the army, but they had to have taken a toll. It had taken Colin some time to recognize that his work as a deep-cover agent had taken its own kind of toll.