Carla Neggers - Harbor Island

“Right.”

Emma ignored Padgett’s skeptical tone. “The bell is gone now, but a boulder on the harbor beach is said to be the one that carried the bell to Ireland.”

“More than fifteen hundred years ago.”

“It’s called Saint Declan’s Stone. On Declan’s feast day in July, the faithful crawl under it with the hope it will bring them good health, or restore them to good health. Saint Declan was a healer credited with many miracles.”

Padgett ran one finger over the small cross-inscribed stone in the center of the table. “Think our thief is hoping for a miracle?”

“It’s one theory. We have very little to go on, unfortunately. Even the artwork he’s stolen over the past ten years doesn’t tell us much. We can speculate but not much more than that.”

“Well, our long-departed Irish saint and his little bell must have meaning for our thief or he wouldn’t copy them onto a rock every damn time he makes off with a work of art.”

“I’m glad you said our thief.”

Sam’s dark eyes hardened. “Yeah. I don’t like that he sent Yank this cross. I don’t like that he could have followed any one of us here. He’s out there taunting us. And if he—or she—killed that woman this morning, then we’ve got a violent perpetrator on our hands. This scumbag’s in Boston, Emma. Mark my words.”

“He could be in Maine by now.”

“Heron’s Cove?” Padgett got to his feet. “Home of the Sharpes. I haven’t been up there yet. I hear it’s pretty.”

“It is. Not that pretty matters to a rugged guy like you.”

“Making a joke, Emma?”

She managed a smile. “Nope. Serious.”

He gave a short laugh and again looked out the windows toward the harbor. “Did the shooter know you were on the way this morning? Who would have discovered Rachel Bristol’s body if you hadn’t?”

“Her ex-husband or stepdaughter, I imagine.”

“The cops said that Travis and Maisie didn’t know Rachel had gone onto the island. She didn’t have her own car in Boston. She had to have hired a car, taken a cab or the subway or walked.” Padgett shifted back to Emma. “Was Rachel Bristol killed to keep her from talking to you? That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it, Emma?”

“Right behind who shot her.”

He shrugged. “That’s a given. You okay? I’ve been in the situation you were in this morning a few times.”

“I’m okay, Sam. Thanks for asking.”

“Once the adrenaline wears off, you think—hell, I could have been shot dead myself out there.” He grinned as he started toward the door. “But I’m not an ex-nun.” He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. “Were you thinking as a federal agent this morning, or a Sharpe?”

“I’m a federal agent at all times.”

“I know that. Do you? Deep down? Or does part of you think you still work for your family?”

He left without waiting for the answer. Emma knew the entire team would be sifting through her files on the Declan’s Cross thief. Her grandfather hadn’t investigated that first theft in the small Irish village until six months later, after two Dutch landscapes were stolen from a small museum in Amsterdam. He received the first of the crosses, along with a museum brochure, and recognized the image of Saint Declan and his bell. That and subsequent crosses not only allowed the thief to take credit for his heists but also to keep Wendell Sharpe on the case—and to taunt one of the world’s great art detectives.

Her cell phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She fished it out and answered without looking at the screen. “Emma Sharpe.”

“Emma...Agent Sharpe...it’s Aoife O’Byrne.”

Emma sat on the edge of the conference table. She hadn’t expected the Irish accent and cool voice of the Dublin artist, the younger niece of John O’Byrne, the man who had owned the artwork stolen ten years ago from his home in tiny Declan’s Cross. “What can I do for you, Aoife?”

“I need to see you. I’m in Boston,” she added quickly. “I’m staying at the Taj Hotel. Can you meet me here? Now? It’s important.”

Emma eased to her feet. “I’ll be right there. Are you in your room?”

“I am, yes.”

“Wait there. I’ll come to you.”

Emma got Aoife’s room number and disconnected, aware of Colin watching her from the doorway.

“Are you going to tell me who that was?” he asked.

“Aoife O’Byrne.”

“The Irish artist who threw you out of her studio in Dublin a few days ago?”

“She didn’t throw me out. She almost threw me out. She threw Granddad out. Well, she slammed the door in his face. But that was ten years ago.” Emma pushed a hand through her hair. “She’s in Boston.”

“Boston,” Colin repeated. “Old Wendell told me she’s one of the most beautiful women he’s ever met.”

“She is very attractive,” Emma said.

“Good.” Colin handed her a sandwich in a small plastic bag. “I stole it out of the fridge in the break room. I think it’s Padgett’s. He won’t miss it. He probably has a stash of MREs in his desk. You need to eat something.”

“You and Sam Padgett are going to give Yank a headache, aren’t you?”

“Lots of headaches, I imagine,” Colin said lightly.

The sandwich looked good. She noted crisp-looking oak-leaf lettuce poking out of the edges of the soft marble rye. She didn’t care whether it was ham, cheese, roast beef or some weird concoction Sam had come up with. She was suddenly starving.

Colin grinned at her. “You eat. I’ll drive.”

5

Colin followed Emma through a revolving glass door into the Taj, located in an iconic 1927 building on Arlington and Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay. “Mike and I slipped in here when we were in town for a Red Sox game,” he said as he and Emma entered a gleaming elevator in the lobby. “He was thirteen. I was eleven. It was the Ritz-Carlton then. Doorman made us in two seconds flat.”

“Did your parents know what you were up to?”

“They still don’t. They were doing a swan boat ride with Kevin and Andy. We said we’d stay in the Public Garden.” He stood back as Emma hit the button for Aoife’s floor. “Mike gets bored easily.”

She smiled. “And you don’t,” she said, openly skeptical. “Did the Red Sox win?”

“You bet. Against the Yankees, too. Ever attend a Red Sox game, Emma?”

“Not yet, no.”

“But you’ve done high tea here, haven’t you?”

The elevator rose smoothly up into the five-star hotel. She leveled her green eyes on him. They were the best green eyes. “I have,” she said.

“Alone? With your family? With the good sisters?”

“With my family. My Sharpe grandmother was still alive. We all came down for a December weekend in Boston. Granddad, Gran, Lucas, my folks and me. We went to the Nutcracker and the Museum of Fine Arts and did high tea. I was nine. Gran bought me a maroon-colored coat with a matching dress with white lace.” Emma smiled again, some color returning to her face. “It’s a special memory.”

Colin could picture the Sharpes trooping into the elegant hotel. From what he’d seen of them so far, they were the sort of people who were comfortable anywhere—high tea, a gallery opening, an Irish pub or a struggling Maine fishing village. Emma’s great-grandparents had moved from their native Ireland to Boston when Wendell, their only son, was two. They’d ended up in the pretty village of Heron’s Cove in southern Maine, where Wendell had launched Sharpe Fine Art Recovery from his front room sixty years ago. Fifteen years ago, a widower, he’d moved to Ireland and opened an office in Dublin, although he insisted Maine was still home.

Emma could take over the Dublin office now that her grandfather was semiretired, Colin thought, but here she was, an FBI agent who had just come upon a shooting death.