Authors: Carla Neggers
How many hours had she spent in here as a little girl, watching her grandfather work, listening to him talk about art and art thefts?
He’d solved his first big case here, a stunning theft of three Claude Monet paintings from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
She and Lucas had grown up around the business. Only when chronic pain from a freak fall on the ice had become debilitating had her father stepped away.
By then, Emma had been on Yank’s radar.
Colin Donovan appeared in the office doorway. Emma hadn’t heard a sound. He had on a black jacket and held a nine-millimeter pistol in his hand. He put a finger to his lips. “Easy, sweetheart. I’m on your side, remember.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Same as you.”
Not quite, she thought. “What’s going on?”
“Storm door out front’s broken.” He spoke quietly, everything about him intense but very steady. “Someone’s been in here.”
She nodded her understanding, drawing her own Sig from the holster on her hip. “Are you trying to cover for searching the place yourself?”
“No. If I’d been in here, you’d never know it.”
“Your priest friend?”
“Not a chance. He said Ainsley d’Auberville didn’t make it inside.”
“That’s what she told him. As you can see, there’s nothing here. And nothing’s missing. I was just in the kitchen. It’s fine.”
“Upstairs?”
“Empty, but there are old files in the attic.” She paused, thinking. “And there’s a vault.”
“Let’s have a look,” Colin said. “I’ll go first.”
It didn’t occur to Emma to argue with him.
14
THERE WAS NO SIGN OF AN INTRUDER IN THE cleared-out bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor. Emma pointed to the open door to the attic. “Normally it’s shut, but I haven’t been up here in ages. My brother could have—”
Colin didn’t let her finish. “Stay behind me.”
He started up the steep stairs. The attic had low, slanted ceilings with a solitary window letting in the afternoon sun through a thick layer of dust. Sheets covered old furniture, and boxes were stacked everywhere. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed in years.
Colin edged over to a freestanding vault as tall as he was, its heavy metal door half open. “What’s in here?”
Emma stood next to him. “Archives. Nothing of substantial value. The conditions are good for storage. Humidity and temperature are fairly steady.”
“Why’s the door open?”
“We don’t keep it locked but it should be shut tight.” She swung the vault door open wider, stopping abruptly when she saw the mess inside—boxes upended, files strewn on the floor, old canvases shoved aside. “Someone’s been in here—”
“Hold on.” Colin touched her arm. “Don’t move.”
She followed his gaze to a small explosive device just inside the vault, a few inches from the toe of her boot. She took in the blasting cap, wires and ticking clock.
“Colin…”
“Yeah. It’s a bomb.”
He hadn’t moved. Emma, hardly breathing, forced herself to remain still. “I’ll call for a bomb squad,” she said. “My phone’s downstairs—”
“We don’t need a bomb squad.”
Without any warning, Colin snatched a utility knife from a coffee can on the floor of the vault, then knelt down and, in one swift move, cut a wire on the obviously homemade device. He winked up at her. “Done.”
“Show-off.”
He stood. “It’s crude. My guess is it was put here in a hurry.”
Emma tried not to let him see that her hands were trembling as she backed away from the vault.
Colin got on his phone and spoke to the police.
“You were a state trooper?” she asked when he finished.
“Marine patrol.” He slipped his phone into his jacket pocket and smiled at her. “I like boats. Let’s wait outside. I doubt there are more devices in here, but just in case.”
“This one was timed to go off—”
“Midnight.” He tilted his head back, his dark eyes on her. “You don’t need me to carry you down the stairs, do you?”
“No.”
He grinned. “Didn’t think so. I heard you jumped a fence yesterday.”
“I climbed over a fence. I keep telling people. Wonder Woman jumps. I climb.”
He glanced back at the vault. “Will you know if anything is missing?”
“Maybe. I doubt there’s a formal inventory of the contents.” She steadied herself, wishing now she’d eaten more of Ainsley d’Auberville’s apple muffin. “Placing the bomb up here in the attic means it was probably intended to distract and divert attention rather than to hurt anyone.”
“Or to destroy evidence.” Colin nodded to the stairs. “This time you go first.”
Emma had holstered her weapon. Warm now, her heart skidding along rapidly, she felt him standing close to her, steady, watchful. Definitely a high-testosterone type. “Defusing bombs with a rusted utility knife and your fingernails. Honestly.”
“It wasn’t much of a bomb. You don’t do bombs as an art detective?” He brushed a few strands of hair off her face and tucked them behind her ear. “You don’t want hair in your eyes walking down steep stairs. Any ghosts up here?”
“I used to think so,” she said. “I’m not afraid to be here alone if that’s what you’re getting at.”
He stayed very close. “You’re not afraid of anything, are you, Agent Sharpe?”
“Bombs,” she said with a small smile.
“What about the prospect that your family might have done something wrong in the past that will come back to haunt you?” He found another few strands of hair to tuck behind her other ear. “I think you’re afraid that this mess yesterday is going to bite the Sharpes in the ass.”
“It already has, because I was with Sister Joan yesterday and couldn’t save her.”
In no apparent hurry to get out of there, he traced a fingertip along her lower lip, and when she took a quick breath and didn’t throw him down the stairs or go for her gun, he kissed her, a soft, inevitable kiss that unraveled her composure. Her heart was racing now, every part of her shaking, unsteady. She found herself grabbing his upper arm, clutching the sturdy fabric of his coat. She felt his tensed muscles. She was cerebral more than physical, analytical, a planner—not an agent who leaped tall fences to help a nun in trouble or cut wires to defuse an explosive device.
“Emma,” Colin said quietly. “The bomb didn’t go off. We found it.”
“I’d never have—”
“You’d have seen the broken window in the storm door. I just saw it first.”
She still could feel his mouth on hers and the effects of even a brief kiss. She gripped his arm again. The reality of his hard muscles brought her up short, and she jumped back.
He dropped his arm to her waist. “Easy. You don’t want to fall down the stairs.”
“I wasn’t going to fall.”
He smiled, leaving his arm around her middle. “That kiss was bound to happen, don’t you think?”
“No,” she lied. “It was adrenaline. Let’s go.”
Emma barely noticed her feet hitting the steps as she charged down the stairs, taking the lead this time. Colin stayed with her, following her through the empty rooms and out to the back porch.
She shivered involuntarily in the chilly air. Colin slipped off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She smiled at him. “Chivalrous. Thank you.”
“Chivalrous? I think that’s a first.” His black sweatshirt fit close against his broad shoulders and flat abdomen. He nodded to the painting she’d been working on. “Your work?”
“Yank thought my boat was a seagull. And don’t tell me you don’t know who he is, because you do.”
“Is painting a hobby?”
“A hobby I have less and less time to indulge.”
Emma realized he was getting her to talk through her nerves while they waited for the police to arrive. There’d be a big response. Two FBI agents had found a bomb at the family home and offices of one of them. If her brother or any of his employees had decided to start clearing out the attic, they could have accidentally triggered the bomb. There could have been serious injuries. Deaths.
She shut her eyes, picturing herself in the attic as a little girl, sitting in front of a painting as her grandfather fussed with a stack of files.
“Granddad, she’s so pretty. Is she sleeping?”
“I think so, darlin’. She’s a saint. A kind, lovely saint.”
“Why is she in the cave? Is she hiding from the Vikings?”
The remembered conversation wasn’t the result of stress and adrenaline—regret, she thought, and guilt. The shock of Sister Joan’s murder hadn’t somehow created a false memory. Emma was positive that the painting of the woman in the cave that Sister Cecilia had described had once been in Wendell Sharpe’s attic—in her grandfather’s possession.
How could it be a focal point in a Jack d’Auberville painting of an unknown private gallery?
Was that what Sister Joan had wanted to ask her? Had she recognized the painting of the woman in the cave?
Was it why she had been killed?
Emma was aware of Colin watching her, aware of wanting him to kiss her again. “I enjoy painting,” she said, although she knew he’d rather hear about her elusive memory of what was now, apparently, a second missing painting—the mysterious painting of a beautiful woman in an island cave, with a Viking longboat about to attack. “I have no airs about being an artist. I love the colors, the textures, the feel of acrylic and oil paint on a clean brush and fresh canvas.”
“Do time and worries fall away when you paint?”
“Yes. For you—?”
“Kayaking, canoeing, hiking. I don’t paint landscapes and still lifes.”
“I like kayaking and hiking. I haven’t gone canoeing in ages. I paint what’s around me here in Heron’s Cove. I did a still life of apples I picked myself that I like well enough. I hung it in my kitchen in Boston.”
“Yank’s going to want to know about the bomb,” Colin said.
She nodded. “Yes, he is.”
“Why would someone want to break into your grandfather’s house and set a bomb in the attic, Agent Sharpe?”
“I think after that kiss you should at least call me Emma, don’t you?”
“You’re avoiding my question. What was in the vault, Emma?”
She could hear the wail of sirens of the approaching police cars. They seemed to be coming from all directions.
“I’m not going anywhere until I get an answer,” Colin said. “I know all the guys about to descend here. I’ll tell them to leave you to me for now. They’ll do it.”
Emma had no doubt they would.
“Does your grandfather have a big unsolved case—some grand old masterpiece that he’s been on the trail of for decades?”
“I’m sure he has more than one unsolved case. Art theft cases can go on for decades. One of the most famous is the theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Thieves posing as police officers carried off thirteen paintings valued at half a billion dollars—works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet and Degas. There are a lot of theories about who’s responsible.”
“What’s the relationship between the convent and your family?”
“We both deal in fine art, if in different ways—”
“It’s more than that,” Colin said.
The sirens were louder, blaring. She could see the lights of the police cars shining through the empty house behind her. “My grandfather and Mother Linden, the foundress of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart, were friends.”
“Before she became a nun?”
Emma nodded and pulled Colin’s jacket more tightly around her, noticing it was still warm from him. “She was an accomplished artist and a dedicated teacher. My grandfather was a security guard at a Portland museum. She encouraged him to pursue a career in art theft and recovery.”
“So you knew her.”
“I met her as a small child. She died when I was quite young. She was a lovely, cheerful woman dedicated to her work and her faith. Everyone adored her.” Emma felt the energy drain out of her. “We should go meet the police.”
She started back into the kitchen.
“Emma,” Colin said, waiting until she stopped in the doorway and glanced back at him. “The kiss was good.”
She smiled. “Yes, it was.”
He gave her one of his dark-eyed winks. “Let’s do it again sometime.”
She felt somewhat more energized as she went to meet the police, Colin Donovan right behind her.
15
COLIN TOOK A HALF GALLON OF LOCAL APPLE CIDER out of the Sharpe refrigerator after explaining himself yet again to his former colleagues in the Maine State Police. The FBI and ATF were on scene now, too. He’d let the Maine guys explain him to them. He’d been at the convent that morning, he’d been at the d’Auberville place that afternoon and now he was at the Sharpe place, just having defused a bomb. He wasn’t sure how long anyone would believe he was an FBI agent who worked at a desk in D.C., and was just on vacation at home in Maine.
There wasn’t much besides cider in the Sharpe kitchen. Apparently Emma hadn’t done her apple-picking, sauce-making and pie-baking yet.
He found a glass and poured the cider as his brother Kevin, in his marine patrol uniform, joined him, leaning against the counter and shaking his head at his older brother. “Where did you learn to defuse a bomb? Quantico?”
“High school,” Colin said. “It was a basic homemade bomb. I could tell it wasn’t going to go off in my face.”
“You could have run.”
“Steep stairs.” Colin took a swallow of the cider.
“How is that?”
“Sweet.”
Kevin got a glass down from an open shelf and helped himself to cider, leaving the jug on the counter. He was tall, if not as tall as his three brothers. “You should have gone moose hunting.”
“It’s not moose season.”
Kevin sighed and drank some of his cider. “I don’t mean literally.”
“I planned to go up north with Mike next week. This week was kayaking.”
“Kayaking. What kind of Donovan are you?”
“We’re both standing here drinking sweet apple cider, Kevin.”
“Couple of tough guys. I want to get away before the snow flies, go up and let Mike map out a route for me.” Kevin drank more cider. “What’s going on, Colin?”
“Nothing good.” Even his attraction to Emma Sharpe probably wasn’t good, or at least not smart, but he didn’t mention that part to his brother. “I want to know who killed that nun.”
“Do you know why she got Agent Sharpe up there?”
“No, and I don’t know why someone broke in here and planted a bomb in the attic.”
“One that didn’t go off,” Kevin said. “Not bad work for a desk jockey.”
Colin ignored his brother’s skepticism. “Are you on the case? You’re not going to find answers standing here drinking apple cider.”
“You were a hard case even when you were nine, Colin. I guess you’re not mellowing in D.C. Do you get to many cocktail parties?”
“You should come for a visit, brother. I live alone with twelve cats.”
Kevin downed the rest of his cider. “I suppose if I called the FBI, someone would cover for you, say you were off analyzing data or some such crap.”
“I don’t have anything to do with this violence. Don’t waste your time on me.”
“I’d keep a close eye on your Emma.”
“It wasn’t a random break-in yesterday—kids stuck in fog decide to check out the convent and accidentally kill a nun.”
“Not a chance, especially now with this d’Auberville painting missing.” Kevin set his glass in the sink and eyed his brother. “What’s your involvement, Colin? Sharpe’s a colleague, I know, and she’s from up here, but why did Father Bracken send Mike after you? Because a nun was killed?”
“Her death bothers him.”
“And he’s bored in Rock Point. I can’t say I blame him. This painting…” Kevin looked out the window at the waterfront, lights on in a passing yacht. “The woman in the cave has to be a saint. You know about relics, Colin? You know what they are? Body parts. Holy body parts. I’m glad I’m not a saint. Cremate me and dump my ashes in the ocean, brother.”
He gave a mock shudder and walked back out to the front room to rejoin his colleagues.
Colin headed out to the porch, and Emma joined him. She still had his jacket draped over her shoulders. “You weren’t kidding. The Maine contingent knows you,” she said. “Do they realize you’re an undercover agent?”
He leaned against the balustrade, his back to the docks. “I’m here visiting my family. Now I’m helping you. That’s all that matters.”
“It’ll be a while before everyone finishes up here but you’re free to go.”
His eyes settled on her. “Jump in the boat, then.”
“What? No.”
“If I’m free to go, you’re free to go. Someone broke into your house and left a bomb. I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“Because of Yank—”
“Because of me,” he said.
“How is jumping into a lobster boat with you going to help me?”
“Ocean breeze in your hair. Bouncing over the waves.” He stood up from the balustrade. “It’ll help.”
“Do you work for Yank? Are you one of the ghosts on the team?”
“I’m not on his team. Yank and I go way back. How do you think he ended up in Heron’s Cove to recruit you?”
“Then you know about me,” she said, her eyes distant.
“Sharpe family. Art detectives. Yeah, I know.” Colin stopped short and forced himself to think past his attraction to her. “That’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”
She seemed relieved and brushed him off. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t see you and Yank as friends. He’s a lawyer—by the book, ambitious. You strike me as—”
“A problem,” Colin said.
“Independent,” Emma countered. “A lone ranger.”
She slipped her arms into his jacket sleeves and rolled up the cuffs. She looked small and vulnerable, but he knew it would be a mistake to underestimate her. He could think she was sexy, though. That couldn’t bite him back.
But she was all business. “Yank assigned you to protect me?”
“I told you. I don’t work for him.”
“From what I just heard from your former colleagues, I’m more likely to protect you. I think that’s just a bluff, though. They know you don’t sit at a desk. You were too handy with that bomb.”
“The lobsterman in me. I kiss well, too, don’t you think?”
“You move fast in a number of ways, I’ll say that for you. Okay, lobsterman, let’s go.”
They headed down to his boat. Colin stood back while Emma, asking for no help from him, climbed in. She had on her boots but they didn’t seem to impede her in throwing one leg over the other. He tried not to notice the shape of her hips, tried not to think about having those slim legs wrapped around him.
Maybe it was the bomb, he thought. Maybe he was more affected by the danger than he wanted to admit, and that was why he couldn’t get the thought of sleeping with Agent Sharpe out of his mind.
Because a romantic relationship with her—with any woman—was insanity right now, given his present circumstances.
She found a spot to sit in the stern of the boat. “At least it doesn’t smell like bait.”
Colin laughed as he jumped in next to her. He tossed her a life preserver. “Keep my jacket. It’ll be cold on the water.”
“Don’t you need it?”
“I’ll be fine.” A little cold air would do him good.
She unrolled the cuffs to cover her hands, and she looked paler and more upset than she would want to admit. She stared back at her house as if she were picturing it in flames instead of just inundated with law enforcement types.
“Kevin thinks it was a saint in the painting with the Viking ship,” Colin said.
“Probably.”
“You know more than you’re saying. You have since this morning with Sister Cecilia. You can tell me more over a glass of whiskey. Ready to go?”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
He laughed. “Sure you can.”
He stepped into the pilothouse and got the boat under way. Emma stayed in the stern as he steered the
Julianne
through the channel out to the ocean. There was a purple cast to the afternoon as daylight leaked out of the sky. She gazed out toward the horizon, her cheeks pink with the wind and the chilly air.
The waves weren’t bad, and it was a reasonably smooth ride to Rock Point. Colin dropped her off on the dock, then moored the boat and rowed the dingy back, secured it and hopped up next to her. His jacket was crooked on her shoulders and hung to her knees, but Colin reminded himself she had a nine-millimeter pistol on her hip.
“Have you ever been out here?” he asked her as they headed to the small parking lot.
“Not in a long time. I haven’t even been to Heron’s Cove that much lately.”
“Yank keeps you busy. HIT’s new. Have you had a chance to find a place in Boston?”
She nodded. “I have an apartment on the waterfront. It’s small but I can walk to work.”
“Are you on the road much?”
“Some.” She cast him a quick look. “Where’s the whiskey?”
It wasn’t even a subtle dodge. “This way.”
She wasn’t sharing information, not even with a fellow FBI agent. Colin walked with her over to Hurley’s. The dinner crowd had gathered, filling up most of the tables. He felt the normalcy of the lives of the people around him. He hadn’t had a normal life in a long time and guessed Emma Sharpe hadn’t, either, especially since she’d started working for Matt Yankowski.
His two Rock Point brothers, Kevin and Andy, were at a back table with Finian Bracken. Kevin had filled them in on the break-in and bomb. Bracken had produced another bottle of his precious Bracken 15 year old. Kevin and Andy had already finished their allotment and were preparing to leave.
“
Julianne’
s solid,” Andy said, leaning over to Emma on his way out. “She can handle getting smashed onto the rocks.”
Emma’s smile at him seemed genuine. “Then we weren’t in danger of springing a leak and sinking on our way over here from Heron’s Cove?”
“No danger at all.”
Kevin looked more skeptical but kept his mouth shut.
After the two younger Donovan brothers left, Bracken started to his feet. “I’ll be on my way.”
“No,” Emma said, pointing him back to his chair. “Your perspective as a priest might be of some help right now.”
He dropped back into his seat. “Of course.” He splashed a bit of whiskey into a brandy glass and pushed it across the table to her. “It’ll settle your nerves.”
She didn’t protest and pulled off Colin’s jacket and hung it on the back of her chair as she sat across from him by the window. She took a small sip of the whiskey. “It’s perfect, Father. You haven’t had too much, have you? I need you with a clear head.”
“Ah. I never overimbibe.”
Colin positioned himself so that he could watch both Bracken and Emma.
Bracken poured water from one of Hurley’s plastic pitchers and pushed that glass across to her, too. “You’ll want to stay hydrated. Even a little whiskey tends to have a dehydrating effect.”
Emma dutifully drank some of the water, then set down her glass. “Father, can you think of a young female saint who died in an island cave, perhaps while escaping a Viking warship? She’s beautiful—blonde, lying in the cave as if she’s fallen asleep.”
“But she’s dead?”
“I think so, yes. There are skeletal remains around her. White light emanates from the top of the cave into the sky and surrounding water.”
Colin splashed whiskey into a glass. This was new information. Sister Cecilia hadn’t described skeletal remains.
“Perhaps her body is incorrupt,” Bracken said.
Emma kept her focus on him. “Incorruptibility suggests we’re talking about a saint.”
Bracken picked up his glass, just a few sips of the expensive whiskey left. “Saint Sunniva,” he said. “That’s my guess.”
“I’m not familiar with her, Father.”
“There are various versions of the Sunniva story,” he said. “According to the most popular, Sunniva was a tenth-century Irish Christian princess who fled Ireland to escape an arranged marriage to a pagan, probably a Viking. She was stranded on Selje, an island off the coast of Norway.”
“What happened to her?” Emma asked.
“Farmers grazing livestock on the island believed Sunniva and her companions were stealing cattle and called for help from the mainland. The local Viking ruler got fighters together and sailed for Selje to deal with what they assumed to be Christian invaders. The Irish hid in a cave. As they prayed not to be captured and brutalized, an avalanche sealed them inside.” Bracken paused, staring into his drink. “The Viking warriors found no one on the island and left.”
Colin frowned. “How does that make Sunniva a saint?”
The priest raised his midnight eyes to him. “Forty years later, Olaf Tryggveson, the Christian king of Norway, ventured to the island to look into reports of a strange light coming from the cave. He unblocked the entrance and found skeletal remains and the incorrupt body of a beautiful woman.”
“Sunniva, the Irish princess,” Colin said, sitting back with whiskey in hand. “What’s ‘incorrupt’?”
Emma swirled the amber contents of her glass. “An incorrupt body is one that doesn’t decompose in the natural process. Long after death, the person continues to appear as if he or she has simply fallen asleep.”
“Incorruptibility isn’t a requirement or a guarantee of sainthood, and it’s no longer considered a miracle by the church,” Bracken said.
Colin sat forward. “Sunniva and company probably should have been more specific about what they were praying for. They got their wish, but they also ended up trapped in a cave.” He set down his glass. “I suppose dying in a cave is better than getting burned at the stake.”
Bracken shrugged. “It’s unlikely the Vikings would have burned Sunniva and her companions at the stake. More likely they’d have carried them off into slavery or hacked them to death.”
“Easier to be an incorruptible if you die of natural causes in a cave,” Colin said, not letting it go. “Did many saints live to a ripe old age?”
The priest traced a fingertip along the edge of the Bracken Distillers label. “Some.”
“Saint Augustine lived into his seventies. He’s a classical theologian, one of the most important figures in the ancient church.” Emma spoke quietly, staring into her whiskey as if she were transfixed. “He was from North Africa. He didn’t convert to Christianity until his thirties.”
Bracken watched her a moment, then said, “We must remember that each recognized saint was a flesh-and-blood human being. Saints aren’t gods. In fact, that’s the whole point. We pray to them not as gods, not to perform miracles, but to intercede with Christ on our behalf.” He kept his gaze on the woman across from him. “Their example shows us what is within our grasp as human beings and moves us toward lives of faith, hope and charity, a deeper understanding of what is truly holy.”