Carla Neggers - Keeper's Reach

Martin noticed Oliver hadn’t used Agent Sharpe’s Boston home or office address, which, to the consternation of the FBI, were in his possession. Instead, he had addressed the package to her in care of Father Finian Bracken at the St. Patrick’s Holy Roman Catholic Church rectory in Rock Point, Maine.

Oliver’s new friend, the Irish priest.

Father Bracken was also Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan’s friend, an awkward and potentially incendiary situation in Martin’s estimation.

He rang the courier service, catching them in time to pick up the package for overnight service to the United States. He wasn’t surprised to discover Oliver had done a perfunctory, inadequate packing job. He added more tape before setting the package outside on the doorstep. He would wait for the courier. Then an early supper and some well-placed acupressure on his sore arms were in order.

He heard a rustling sound behind the dovecote, which sat atop a wooded hillside above a stream.

“Not the bloody ram again,” he muttered.

The stubborn beast refused to stay within the fence. He liked to escape the confines of his carefully maintained pasture and romp through forbidden territory. Farm animals weren’t Martin’s responsibility, but he couldn’t leave the sheep to his own devices. At the least, he could assess the situation and then call for help if necessary. If it was the ram and he wasn’t in too big a fix, Martin could manage to get him back into his pen on his own—if grumbling the entire way.

He went around to the back of the dovecote. The ground was soft and wet, no surprise given the two days of rain. At least it hadn’t been snow. He noticed with pleasure that snowdrops were in bloom, blanketing the grass around an oak tree with their tiny white flowers, a welcome harbinger of spring.

The hillside was darkened with dusk and shadows, but not so much so Martin would be unable to see a wandering sheep. Still, he saw nothing. He paused, listening, but he couldn’t make out any bleating.

Perhaps it had been a fox or pheasant he had heard, stirring with the warmer weather and now on its way.

“Well, good, then,” Martin said aloud, turning back toward the dovecote.

Then came a scraping sound...metal on metal...as distinct and unmistakable as his own breathing.

Now what?

It had to be the ram. He must have caught on something.

Martin decided to have another look then get a farmworker out here.

Then came a grunt, distinctly human and close.

“No!”

Martin heard panic and fear in his voice. His heart jumped, adrenaline surging painfully through him as he tried, instinctively, to dodge what he knew was an oncoming blow.

He was too late.

The blow came quickly, hard, to the back of his head, sending him sprawling down the hill. He couldn’t get his footing and crashed against winter-denuded trees and brush, until finally landing facedown in wet grass and dead leaves.

He was vaguely aware of the taste of mud and the stab of a twig in his cheek as pain exploded in his head.

Bastard.

Unable to breathe, he gasped in agony, fighting to stay conscious as he sank into the cold ground and the inevitable blackness.

2

Boston, Massachusetts Wednesday, 3:00 p.m., EST

Emma Sharpe was in love with her wedding gown. Totally, absolutely in love. It was silky, simple, flattering and exactly what she had envisioned. She took a selfie in the fitting room of the Newbury Street shop and texted it to her mother in London, who responded immediately.

It’s perfect. I’m sorry I’m not there.

Emma didn’t mind. Her father was recovering from his latest procedure to help ease his chronic back pain due to a long-ago fall on the ice, and her mother was at his side. For most of the past year, they had been living and working abroad, away from reminders of the past, and of the future they had once envisioned for themselves. Their hometown of Heron’s Cove, Maine, had become a trigger for emotional and physical pain.

Her parents had promised to return for Emma’s spring wedding. That was enough, she thought as she eased out of the dress. It was pinned for alterations. She smiled at her reflection, her fair hair a bit flyaway from the dress and the dry winter air. From her late teens into her early twenties, she had believed she would never marry. She had been Sister Brigid then.

She thought of Colin, a hardheaded Maine Donovan, an FBI undercover agent and her fiancé since he had proposed on bended knee in early November in a Dublin pub.

She was Sister Brigid no more.

She slipped back into her jeans, sweater and boots and grabbed her three-quarter-length wool coat, hat and gloves as she exited the dressing room. She’d left work early for the fitting but had stopped at her Boston waterfront apartment to change out of her work clothes. Around the same time her parents had left for London, she had moved to Boston to join HIT, a small FBI team started and led by the senior agent who had recruited her out of the convent. Matt Yankowski had never doubted his conviction that Emma wasn’t meant to profess her final vows and become a full-fledged member of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart.

We can use your expertise in art and art crimes , Yank had told her when he had visited her at her Maine convent four years ago. Give it some thought, Emma.

He hadn’t called her Sister Brigid.

Her early expertise in art crimes hadn’t come from her time at the convent. She was the granddaughter of Wendell Sharpe, founder of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery and one of the foremost private art detectives in the world.

As she ducked out onto the Back Bay street, her phone dinged with another text. Although it was from London, it wasn’t from her mother. It was from Oliver York, aka Oliver Fairbairn, a British aristocrat, self-educated mythologist and international serial art thief.

Who is the FBI agent following me?

Emma stared at the screen. There was no FBI agent following Oliver. She would know if there were. She typed a quick response.

I’ll call you in an hour.

Oliver responded immediately.

I’ll be waiting.

* * *

Lucy Yankowski buzzed Emma into the third-floor apartment she had just rented on Marlborough Street, two blocks from the Newbury Street wedding shop in Boston’s Back Bay. “Matt hasn’t seen it yet,” she said as she led Emma into the living room. “He’ll love it, don’t you think?”

“From what I can gather, he’ll love anything that isn’t infested with cockroaches.”

Lucy shuddered. She was a small woman with dark hair cut short and edgy, something of a new look for her as she reinvented herself in Boston. She hadn’t wanted to move from northern Virginia. It had taken her a year to decide saving her marriage was worth giving up her life in suburban Washington, DC. Her reconciliation with Yank—Matt, as she called her husband of fifteen years—hadn’t been without drama or peril, and it didn’t mean her new life in Boston was settled. For one, she was a clinical psychologist and was talking about giving it up to open a knitting shop.

First order of business, however, had been to find the “perfect apartment.” As far as Emma could see, there was no question Lucy had done just that.

“I insisted on a washer and dryer in the unit, and I wanted a decent view—I didn’t want to drink my morning coffee looking out at trash cans. I swear I manifested this place, but I’m not sure I believe in that stuff.”

She gave Emma the grand tour, starting with the living room and moving into the bedrooms—there were two—and dining room. Although small given its upscale location, the apartment was a far cry from the cheap, roach-infested one-bedroom Yank had rented, thinking he would be there for a couple of months at most. Like the rest of Back Bay, Marlborough, one of Emma’s favorite streets in Boston, had been underwater before the massive nineteenth-century project that had created the gracious neighborhood, now known for its tree-lined streets and Victorian brownstones.