Keeper's Reach

by Carla Neggers

  “I figured as much.”

  “Mostly I email him and he doesn’t answer. Every now and then he’ll email me back to let me know he appreciates hearing from me. I get a lot of ideas about this and that—mostly tech stuff—but I can’t always tell the good ones from the bad ones. I don’t have your filter, Naomi. You always seem to know what to do.”

  “I appreciate that, Buddy, but it’s not true. We all fumble sometimes. Are you some kind of informant for Kavanagh?”

  “Informant?” He shuddered. “No. What would I inform on? I just stay in touch. You know how it is with me. For every hundred ‘sure’ leads I send him, two pan out.”

  “But those two are pure gold, Buddy. Pure gold.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with that.” He glanced around the room. “Think Reed bugged our rooms?”

  Naomi groaned. “No, Buddy, I don’t think Reed bugged our rooms.”

  “Gotcha.” He grinned, pointing at her. “You were going spook on me. Think about it, Naomi. I’m working on a productivity app. It’s a glorified to-do list for people who hate to-do lists. I hear things and try to connect dots, but what would I know these days that an FBI agent could use?”

  He had a point. Buddy’s value as an independent consultant had never been his limited intelligence capabilities. Almost certainly he was here now, talking to Reed, solely because of his considerable technical skills.

  “Is this productivity app going to make you money?” Naomi asked.

  “Tons.” He abandoned the blind pull. “You trust these guys, Naomi? Do you feel safe here?”

  “Yes, of course. Look, Buddy, I have a job to do. That’s what I trust. Reed’s not watching my back. He’s looking to watch my clients’ backs.”

  “Is Mike watching your back?”

  “No. Reed invited him. I didn’t.”

  “But do you trust him?”

  “You’re putting too big an emphasis on trust, Buddy.”

  “Who is watching your back, Naomi?”

  She smiled. “Well, gee, Buddy, I thought you were.”

  “Me? I can watch your banking accounts. That’s about it. Sorry. Another lame joke.”

  “You’re better with numbers than I am. I might want you to check out my accounts when I have more than rent and grocery money in them.”

  “Not getting rich?”

  “Nope. You?”

  “Ha,” Buddy said. “Maybe with this app, but what would I do with a million bucks?”

  Naomi couldn’t tell if he was serious. “Who watches your back, Buddy?”

  “Nobody needs to. I have eyes in the back of my head. I also don’t have any enemies except imaginary ones, and maybe a couple of gamer jerks who are sore losers.” He rolled his thin shoulders. “I should head back to my room. I’m staying tonight, but I don’t know if I’ll last the weekend. I’m in the moose room. It’s not called that, but it’s got a picture of a moose above the bed. You’ve got flowers, I see.” He studied her painting but seemed preoccupied. “Naomi...do you feel like this whole weekend is a setup? Something Reed’s cooked up to get us all in one place and then lower the boom?”

  “Lower what boom?”

  “Afghanistan.”

  “That was three years ago. We’ve all moved on. Reed’s getting his company up and running. He wants to deploy his first set of operators. It’s a huge responsibility. He’s an achiever. He won’t want to fail.”

  “People tend to get hurt when he fails,” Buddy said.

  Naomi had no argument.

  “Reed wants to hear what I have to offer. He admits he’s weak on tech stuff. You don’t mind if I talk with him, do you?”

  “Of course not. You go where the work is.” Buddy’s comment surprised her. It wasn’t as if she had an exclusive contract with him. “Reed’s got a lot of balls in the air, but he can handle it.”

  “He likes it that way. Think Mike will want to work for him?”

  “I don’t know. I’m staying neutral. It’s none of my business who Reed hires.”

  “Mine, either, I guess. Thanks, Naomi. You have a calming way about you. I forget that.” Buddy smiled. “It’s good seeing you. Weird that we have to come way the hell up here to Maine to see each other when we live twenty miles apart.”

  “We both stay busy.”

  He narrowed his eyes on her. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Other than jet lag, yes, just fine.” She grinned at him. “Always scares me when you get solicitous. I figure I must look like death warmed over or something.”

  “Not you, Naomi. Never.” But his humor didn’t reach his eyes. “You really don’t think Reed’s up to anything? Deliberately stirring up the past to see what happens?”

  “I don’t care if he is, frankly. I only care if Cooper Global Security can help my doctors.”

  “Laser-focus Naomi. Good for you. I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes.”

  After Buddy left, she waited sixty seconds before she allowed herself to open the purloined file. Waiting was good discipline, and it forced her to think. Why had he bothered grabbing the file? But she knew. Buddy was awkward, and he’d used the file as an excuse to knock on her door—when the truth was, he didn’t need one. He could have knocked on her door and told her he wanted to chat with her.

  She opened the folder, leaving it on the bed. A simple agenda was on top of a half-dozen sheets of paper. Normal stuff. No surprises. The rest of the pages described Cooper Global Security and its history, mission and principles. Naomi didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary or even that she didn’t know already.

  “Buddy, Buddy.”

  Had he bothered looking at the file when he’d grabbed it?

  She sighed, shaking her head. He was brilliant and awkward, and it would be easy to feel sorry for him—but she didn’t. Feeling sorry for him would be patronizing, and he had the life he wanted. He did work he loved and was good at, and it paid well and gave him the freedom to travel and have adventures. Naomi had no doubts that if Buddy Whidmore decided he wanted a relationship—a family—he would find a way to make it happen.

  He was the one with the laser focus.

  She felt scattered, unsettled. Jet lag didn’t explain it. Seeing Mike again didn’t, either. They were factors but not the source of her unease.

  She shut the folder. She needed to get downstairs for Reed’s meeting. She had a bad habit of pushing everyone away when she was under stress. She needed to behave.

  As she headed out of her room, she reminded herself she was in Maine in a professional capacity. She’d told Buddy the truth. The past was past, and Reed Cooper could help her doctors—whether or not Mike Donovan joined Cooper Global Security.

  Let Mike and Reed do their dance. The outcome made no difference to her.

  She had work to do. That was her focus.

  * * *

  Ted Kavanagh was the only one in the meeting room off the inn’s main dining room. He looked all business in his coat and tie. “No ugly sweater today, I see,” Naomi said as she joined him.

  “Hello, Naomi.” He stood by a buffet table with plastic-covered platters of already-made sandwiches, vegetables, fruit and more cookies. “I think Serena might gun me down if I sneak a half sandwich early. Think she’ll let me live if I sneak a grape?”

  “A green one, maybe. There are more of those.”

  He grinned. “Last I saw you, you were waxing rhapsodic over porridge in an English country inn.”

  “Actually, it was over the blackberry compote.” Naomi poured iced tea from a pitcher. Dead of winter, and there was iced tea. “Did you fly into Boston, T.K.?”

  “Yeah. Same flight as Reed.”

  “Did you tell him about your visit to the Cotswolds?”

  Kavanagh shook his head. “We didn’t talk. He flew first-class. Not me. Coach all the way.”

  She handed him the tea and poured another glass. “Am I supposed to keep our breakfast yesterday secret?”

  “Up to you. I’m not the one playin
g with fire.”

  “Isn’t that what FBI agents do for a living?”

  He didn’t respond. Mike entered the room, followed by Buddy, Reed, and Jamie and Serena Mason. Serena unwrapped the platters but didn’t stay for the meeting. Naomi eyed the food but for the first time in the past two days wasn’t hungry. She took her iced tea to the table. Reed sat at the head of the table but let everyone else take seats at random.

  Naomi told herself she wasn’t surprised when Mike sat directly across from her. Of course he would. He could keep a better eye on her that way.

  Buddy sat next to her and Kavanagh across from him.

  Jamie didn’t sit. He stood in the corner by the door, like a bouncer.

  Naomi couldn’t think of a good reason to have Kavanagh at the meeting—unless he wasn’t with the FBI anymore and Reed knew it. She trusted that Reed wasn’t doing anything illegal or deliberately provocative, but, from her experience, not all clients wanted a federal law enforcement officer in their business. A former fed was one thing, but she wasn’t about to tell Reed to kick Kavanagh out of the room or ask him to explain the FBI agent’s presence.

  She wondered if Mike had mentioned Kavanagh to his FBI brother but gave herself an immediate mental shake. She was not talking to Mike about FBI agents.

  Reed started the meeting. “Welcome to Maine. Thank you for coming. We won’t be long here. I’ve included information in your folders on who we are and what we do. Review it at your leisure. Feel free to ask any questions as we go along, or find me later.” He opened his own folder, in front of him on the table. “This isn’t on the agenda, but why don’t we start with each of you describing your life over the past seventy-two hours, before you arrived here? That will help break the ice, so to speak, and get us reacquainted. Naomi, why don’t you go first?”

  She dived in with an answer. “A meeting in London, a night in the Cotswolds, a night in Rock Point just down the road from here, and now here I am.”

  Reed gave her a small smile. “Can you give us a bit more detail?”

  “I met with a volunteer medical group in London. For a break, I walked to a Mayfair art gallery. Then I took a walk in St. James’s Park. That afternoon, I hired a car to drive me to the Cotswolds. So pretty. You were there, Reed. Don’t you think it’s incredible scenery?”

  “Very nice,” he said, his eyes half-closed on her.

  She picked up her iced tea but didn’t drink any. “After breakfast, I took a walk in the countryside and ended up saving a man’s life. That was yesterday morning. The man might have survived without me, but he was in a jam. Hypothermia, head injury. He said he slipped on a wet bank above a stream, but he was muddled. I don’t think he remembers what happened.”

  “You didn’t mention this when I picked you up,” Reed said.

  “True, I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “Still processing whether it was relevant.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kavanagh shift in his chair. She drank some of her tea and set her glass back on the table. She was avoiding Mike’s eye. He probably knew it. “The injured man was British. Martin Hambly. I got him settled into a dovecote that’s been converted into a potting shed. I’d never been inside a dovecote. They were quite the rage a few hundred years ago. Pigeon houses, basically. Think you guys could eat pigeon?” Naomi didn’t wait for an answer. “Doesn’t sound appetizing to me. Anyway, I handed Hambly off to a farmworker. Johnny. Didn’t get a last name.”

  “Where was this?” Kavanagh asked.

  “I was on a public path that goes through private property. Turns out the dovecote is on the farm owned by a wealthy Brit named Oliver York.” Naomi kept her gaze on Kavanagh, but he had no visible reaction. “Turns out is a bit misleading. I knew it was York’s farm.”

  No one at the table spoke.

  Naomi decided to continue. “Oliver York is something of a mystery. When he was eight, his parents were murdered and he was kidnapped and held in a Scottish ruin until he escaped. It was a celebrated, tragic case in Great Britain. What, one wonders, has he been up to since then?”

  “Why do you care?” Reed asked.

  “I got curious when I saw York on Wednesday at a London art gallery that’s showing works by Irish artist Aoife O’Byrne. It took some doing but I figured out who he was.”

  “And you’re interested in this artist...why?”

  “If you’re about to recruit Mike here for your team, then I suspect you know why.”

  Reed’s face darkened. “Don’t play games with me, Naomi.”

  “Who’s playing games?”

  Reed made no response.

  “The O’Byrnes have a history with the Sharpes.” Naomi looked across the table at Mike. “Did you meet Aoife when she was in Boston last fall?”

  “She’s none of my business.”

  Mike’s tone suggested she was none of Naomi’s business, either—or, by extension, anyone else’s at the table. She wished now she had grabbed half a tuna sandwich or a couple of celery sticks, just to have something else to do—a reason to keep her hands moving. She didn’t want these guys to see she was shaking. She settled for another sip of her tea.

  Kavanagh tapped the unopened folder in front of him. “For those who missed it, Aoife O’Byrne was caught up in a murder investigation that involved Mike’s brother Colin and his fiancée, Emma Sharpe, both FBI agents. Her grandfather, Wendell Sharpe, is a private art detective who investigated an art theft at the O’Byrnes’ home in Ireland. For the record,” he added, his voice clipped, deliberate, “I was in the Cotswolds yesterday. I was aware Oliver York has a farm there. I was there because I was concerned Naomi had gone on a tangent. Seems I was right.”

  “What about you, Reed?” Naomi asked. “Were you in the Cotswolds so you could pick me up and invite me here, or were you worried I was on a tangent, too?”

  “I didn’t know why you were there, Naomi,” Reed said.

  Mike’s gaze was firmly on her, but he said nothing.

  She shrugged. “Maybe I wasn’t on a tangent. Maybe I was meant to be in that quaint English village so I could save the Brit’s life. I’ve had an eventful seventy-two hours. If it’d been a month ago, I’d be telling you how I helped my mother clean out her sewing room.”

  “Glad things worked out for you with this injured Brit,” Reed said. “Let’s move on. Unless Naomi here has anything else to add.”

  “The gooseberry jam I had with my croissant was from the York farm. It was delicious.”

  Reed gave an audible sigh. “You have to remember that the rest of us don’t have your convoluted brain. We’re straightforward. Maybe that’s why we need each other. Agent Kavanagh, do you have anything to add about this Cotswolds sideshow?”

  “I was there. Otherwise, not a thing.”

  “What did you do after breakfast?” Naomi asked him.

  “Checked out and drove to Heathrow. Anything else?”

  “What’s a Cotswold?” Buddy asked, then chuckled to himself. “Lame humor, I know. Sorry. Want to hear about my last seventy-two hours? I was in Tennessee, typing like a maniac so I could finish up a few things and fly up here yesterday—which I did. Mike? You next?”

  “Worked at my cabin.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and Reed didn’t seem to expect him to.

  “I’m on leave,” Kavanagh said. “I saw Naomi and you, Reed, in London.”

  “You’re here on your own time, then?” Buddy asked.

  “He’s always an FBI agent, Buddy,” Reed said. “Am I right, Agent Kavanagh?”

  “You are right,” he said.

  The meeting got started. Naomi steadied her breathing. Bringing up Oliver York and the injured Hambly hadn’t yielded any answers, but the response of the men at the table didn’t sit right with her. Reed’s question about the past seventy-two hours didn’t sit right, either.

  She got up, hungry now, and put a cheese sandwich and a few vegetables on a plate, resisting more cookies. She returned
to her seat, aware of Mike watching her. She would focus on the work at hand. Whatever was going on wasn’t straightforward and simple. She had to be patient.

  “Tell us about your volunteer doctors,” Reed said.

  That she could do.

  * * *

  At the end of the hour-long meeting, Reed stood, his arms crossed on his chest as he addressed the rest of the gathered group. “Reputation is key to the success of any crisis management company, but reputation is earned. I saw that with the previous company I worked for. They worked hard to earn their reputation, and then they guarded it fiercely. False accusations can not only ruin reputations, they can ruin lives. I’ve dealt with them. I likely will again.”

  “Anything lately?” Kavanagh asked.

  “Yes. That shouldn’t surprise or alarm anyone, though.” Reed paused, but no one filled the silence before he went on. “I’m always vigilant. So should you be. If any of you are dealing with any threats—direct or implied—I want to know. Blackmail, extortion, envy, frustrated ex-spouses, disgruntled competitors. People, in short, who wish you ill.”

  “I have a long list of people who wish me ill,” Buddy said. “World’s full of jerks.”

  Kavanagh sat forward. “Anyone dealing with an actual threat needs to bring it to the attention of law enforcement.”

  “And to me,” Reed added.

  “Because of your company,” Kavanagh said.

  “That’s right. We’re not law enforcement officers, nor are we vigilantes. I need to know if there’s trouble on the horizon for the sake of all of us involved in Cooper Global Security.” Reed dropped his hands to his sides and smiled. “Enjoy your time here. We will talk more. I’m going out snowshoeing in a little while. I noticed a trail along the water. There’s enough equipment for whoever wants to join me.”

  Naomi left the room first. If the guys wanted to go snowshoeing, they could have at it. She slipped into a lounge down the hall and sat next to a low fire burning in a sturdy, prosaic brick fireplace.

  Who was threatening Reed Cooper?

  Was someone threatening him?