Carla Neggers - Liar's Key

If only Colin were close, too...

She pushed the thought aside and walked the short distance to the nearest hotel, a four-star chain hotel on a small wharf jutting out into the water. It was probably more expensive than Gordy would have liked, but it was an easy walk to HIT and not a bad cab drive from the airport, assuming he hadn’t lied and he’d come in from London yesterday.

Emma didn’t quite know why she was thinking the way she was—not simply that Gordy Wheelock hadn’t told her the whole story about why he was in her office, but that he might have deliberately lied to her—but there it was.

She approached a cheerful bellman, explained who she was and showed him her FBI credentials. “I’m looking for a friend of mine,” she said, then described Gordy. The bellman pointed her to a colleague, an older man flagging a cab for a young couple. Emma waited until he finished.

He remembered Gordy. “Sure, sure. You missed him by a few minutes. I just put him in a cab.”

Emma stepped back from the curb, away from an arriving cab. “Has he checked out?”

“Yes, ma’am, he had his bag with him.”

“Do you know where he was headed?”

“I don’t, sorry.”

“Was he alone?”

The bellman nodded. “He was, yes. I never saw him with anyone. I worked late last night and I got in early today. I didn’t see him leave the hotel, but I saw him come back—he was on foot. Alone. Only weird thing...” He hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t say anything.”

“Go ahead, please,” Emma said. “He’s not in any trouble.”

“Well, he tripped last night. That’s what he said—I didn’t see it happen myself. He was bleeding...here.” He pointed to a spot behind his left ear. “We keep hand towels by the door for runners. I gave him one. He wasn’t real coherent but he thanked me. He said he tripped and went flying on the steps by the aquarium when he went out for a smoke.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course. Why would you lie about something like that? At first I thought he’d been mugged, but he’s a big guy—not the target you’d pick, you know? Then he said he tripped and that made sense to me. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it. I asked him if he needed an ambulance, but he said no, he’d be fine. He looked okay just now.”

“Anything else you can think of?”

“There was one other thing. A cab driver gave us an envelope to deliver to him.”

“To Mr. Wheelock?”

The bellman nodded. “The driver said he left his passenger window open while he was chatting with another driver, and when he got back in, the envelope was on the front seat. He didn’t see who left it. He said there was a label on it but it blew off.”

“What did the label say?” Emma asked.

“Just the guy’s name and that he was a hotel guest. He’d checked his bag with the front desk. I found it and put the envelope in an outside pocket.”

“Did you look inside the envelope?”

“No, ma’am, I did not,” the bellman said, obviously offended.

Emma thanked him and headed back to the street. She called Sam Padgett and filled him in. “No wonder Gordy looked as if he was in pain,” she said.

“I’ll talk to housekeeping and see what they can tell me about the state of his room. Good work, Agent Sharpe. Are you going to call Wheelock and ask him what the bloody head and this envelope are all about?”

“Doing that next.”

“He didn’t mention falling either because it’s embarrassing, tripping while out for a smoke, or he was attacked and doesn’t want you to know.”

“Or it didn’t occur to him to mention it.”

“It occurred to him,” Sam said with his usual certainty.

“What’s your take on the envelope?”

“Was he expecting it or was it a surprise? Something from a source? A threat? Red Sox tickets? Lots of possibilities. We’ll stay in touch.”

After they disconnected, Emma called Gordy on his cell phone. When he didn’t answer, she left a voice mail. “It’s Emma Sharpe. Call me.”

She continued along the harbor to the tiny waterfront apartment she’d rented upon her arrival in Boston last March to join Yank’s team. Happy to be back in New England, working on challenging investigations on a small team led by a senior agent who’d always been her champion, she’d settled into her new apartment and new routines. Not for a second had she envisioned—or even dreamed—that by fall, she would be in love with a deep-cover agent with roots in a small fishing village a few miles from her own southern Maine hometown.

Now she and Colin were getting ready for their wedding.

She smiled, thinking of him. His dark hair, his smile, his blue-gray eyes that reminded her of the ocean.

“I miss you,” she whispered, as if he could hear her.

After several months back and forth to Washington, he’d finally disappeared in mid-March on his latest undercover mission. Despite her own role with the FBI, Emma didn’t know what his mission was or where it had taken him. She only knew it was intense, dangerous and exhausting. He’d come home for a few days in late April and then left again. Since then, not a word—not so much as a text message, email or cryptic voice mail.

Matt Yankowski knew where Colin was. Yank had been Colin’s contact agent on his first deep-cover mission four years ago. Last October, he’d gone out on a limb to get Colin, at least nominally, into HIT and had put up with his relationship with one of his team members. Emma would never ask him to give her hints as to Colin’s whereabouts. She respected their professional relationship, but she also respected Colin’s silence and his trust in her to handle the situation.

Never in a million years did I think he’d put a ring on your finger, at least not this soon.

That was Yank in November. He’d never been one to mince words. Emma smiled, remembering that rainy Dublin night when Colin had dropped onto one knee in a crowded pub and proposed to her.

Wherever he was, she knew he was safe. She felt it.

As she unlocked her apartment door, she noticed a new sailboat had arrived at the marina that shared the small wharf with her building, another renovated warehouse. There would be more boats with the warming weather.

She went inside and was helping herself to a yogurt out of the fridge when a text message came in. Video chat in ten minutes?

Oliver York. Emma texted him back. Five.

* * *

“You look uptight, Emma,” Oliver York said in his genuine upper-class English accent. “Or do you continue to insist I call you Special Agent Sharpe?”

“Agent Sharpe will do.”

“Mmm. That sort of call, is it?”

“It’s always that sort of call, Oliver.”

She’d placed her laptop on her coffee table and was seated on the sofa in her small living room. Just as well they were talking here instead of her FBI office. Nothing about her relationship with the wealthy Englishman, sheep farmer, mythologist and serial art thief was regular. He was in his late thirties, with curly tawny hair and lively, light green eyes. His features were deceptively boyish, betraying none of the psychological trauma and physical pain he had suffered as a child.

“I see.” He narrowed his gaze on her. “For someone usually so cool and analytical, this uptight look of yours worries me. You and Colin haven’t canceled the wedding, have you?”

“It’s Agent Donovan and no, we haven’t.”

“Have you relented and decided to invite me after all? Is that why you texted me?”

“I’m not inviting you to my wedding.”

“Is Agent Donovan inviting me, then?”

“No.”

“A pity, but I’ll send a gift, regardless.” He sat back, putting a bit of distance between him and his screen. “You’re home early. I recognize the moody seascape on the wall behind you. It’s the work of our fair Irish artist friend, Aoife O’Byrne.”