Carla Neggers - Heron's Cove

The cavalry was here.

* * *

Two hours later, Matt Yankowski was frowning at a large painting of black, red and white splotches on a stark white wall of the rented house. He had on a medium gray suit that looked crisp despite the South Florida heat. Colin watched the senior FBI agent from his position on a soft, white leather couch. He had changed into fresh clothes from his pack, still in the back of Horner’s Mercedes. The tactical team had almost finished going through the car, the house, the three-car garage, the yard and patio.

So far, they hadn’t found the name of Pete Horner’s buyer or a little note saying where he, Boris and Yuri would be if the FBI swarmed the house.

Yank moved to another painting, almost identical to the first one. “I don’t like them,” he said. “Emma knows art. Do you think she’d like them?”

Colin hid his impatience. “I don’t know, Yank. I’m not thinking about art right now.”

“If I ever buy a house down here, I’d want flamingos on the walls. Not splotches. Looks like somebody got shot.” Yank turned and took in the large, airy room. “This place is sterile. More like a hotel than a home. How long were you here?”

“Minutes. I was staying at a fleabag hotel a few blocks off the beach. Horner, Boris and Yuri met me at a marina where I had a boat rented. The plan was for me to take them to weapons. Instead they tossed me in the Mercedes at gunpoint and drove here. We parked, walked through the house out to the pool, got in the boat and left. I waited until they were distracted and went overboard. For all I know, they still don’t miss me.”

“Unlikely.”

Colin agreed. “Any sign of them?”

“Not yet.”

“How did you find me?” Then he saw Yank’s grimace and knew. “Emma.”

“She got a tip and gave us this address. I alerted the team and flew straight down here.”

“Where is she?”

“Heron’s Cove. She went up there to bake pies and drink whiskey with Father Bracken and your brothers.”

“My family?”

“She’ll get them word you’re safe.”

“No more lying to them, Yank.”

He nodded. “They’ve guessed what you do, anyway. I should have known telling them you worked in D.C. wouldn’t fly.”

Colin looked out through the tall windows at the patio and the canal, quiet in the morning haze. He volunteered for his first undercover mission four years ago. Matt Yankowski had ventured up to the Maine coast to talk to him about the mission and being his contact agent. As of a month ago, Colin was technically the newest member of Yank’s Boston-based team and Yank was his contact agent on this mission.

“I had to go dark,” Colin said. “It still didn’t work. I don’t have Horner’s buyer. I don’t know who’s bankrolling him. He and Boris and Yuri are in the wind. This stinks, Yank.”

“You got a toehold with them. It’s a start.” Yank sat on another white leather couch opposite Colin. “Are you sure you don’t need a hospital?”

“I have three brothers. I can take a punch.”

The senior agent’s dark eyes were steady, serious. He had been a legendary field agent, but he had never strayed too far from the book. He had never gone deep undercover to chase a transnational threat like Vladimir Bulgov and his complex arms pipeline.

“You do like to go it alone,” Yank said heavily.

“I didn’t have much choice this time.”

“Well, you’re no good to us dead.”

“That’s why I decided to jump off that boat, Yank. So I could be an FBI asset.”

“You know what I meant.” Yank drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Your luck saved you this time.”

“Not luck. Skill.”

Yank didn’t crack a smile.

Colin worked a tight muscle in his jaw. He thought he would be sleepy by now, but he wasn’t. He was wide-awake, thinking about how Yank had found him. “What Russians does Emma know?”

“Between her and her family, I imagine she knows quite a few.”

“Vladimir Bulgov’s Russian. Horner flew planes for him. His pals Boris and Yuri are Russian.”

“Emma’s contacts are one of the reasons she’s on my team,” Yank said, his tone cool, measured.

Colin leaned forward. “What else?”

“Nothing else. She’s every bit the asset I thought she’d be when I recruited her. That hasn’t changed in the past month.”

Colin watched a small boat cruise past the house on the picturesque waterway. “Any reason to think whoever tipped off Emma knows my real name?”

“She wouldn’t do anything to compromise you.”

“Not intentionally, maybe.”

“You’ve had a rough few weeks. You need a break. We’ll find these guys.”

“Their buyer? Whoever it is won’t like a delay. Horner knows that.”

Yank didn’t look as confident but nodded. “We’ll find Horner and the Russians and stop them from procuring more weapons. We’ll find their buyer. You laid the groundwork.”

“I knew a blown cover was a possibility going into this thing, turning up alive after three months. I told Horner myself that I was a federal agent.” Colin touched a bruise on his wrist. “But having one of your people get a tip about me isn’t sitting well.”

“One of my people?” Yank raised an eyebrow. “Emma got the tip about this place while she was sleeping in your bed in Maine.”

Colin pictured her honey hair, her green eyes, and sighed. “Hell, Yank.”

He draped an arm on the back of the couch and stretched out his long legs on the white-tile floor. “You two complicate my life.”

Colin didn’t argue. His relationship with Emma complicated his life, too. He had never expected to fall for a woman like Emma Sharpe, granddaughter of a renowned art detective, ex-nun and FBI art crimes expert, but he had. Thinking about her over the past few weeks had been both a comfort as well as a potentially dangerous distraction. Any contact with her—with his family, his real life, even Yank—had become too risky given the stakes and the scrutiny he was under.

“You’re nothing if not pragmatic, Yank,” Colin said. “It’s easier not to ask tough questions if Emma got this tip from a Sharpe source.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“You know who it is, don’t you?”

The dark eyes didn’t waver. “Informants are a tricky business. We have strict rules, but they include reasonable room to maneuver. Are you going back to Maine?”

“I always go back to Maine.” Colin drank some water from a bottle one of the agents had handed him. His lips were dry, burning from his salty swim in the canal. “Are you worried Emma got in over her head to find me?”

Yank got to his feet and stood by the French doors. “I don’t know yet. Maybe.”

“You’ve been known to hold back pertinent information,” Colin said. “For instance, you didn’t mention Emma had been a nun when you asked me to keep an eye on her in September. I had no idea that this pretty FBI agent used to be Sister Brigid of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart.”

“She’d just found a nun from her former convent murdered. I needed your fresh eyes on the situation. I wasn’t thinking you two would end up…you know. Together.”

Maybe so, but Colin wondered how he would have responded to Emma if he had known from the start she had once been a postulant and novice. “What are you not telling me now?”

“Her brother’s in Dublin with her grandfather.”

“Is that relevant to the tip she got on my whereabouts?”

“I don’t know.”

Colin shifted on the couch, the Florida sun burning through the haze and hitting him in the eye, as if to remind him he hadn’t had any sleep. “You’ve never met Vladimir Bulgov, have you?”

“Not in person, no.”