Keeper's Reach Read online

  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.

  “Look,” Lucy said, smiling as she raised a shade when they returned to the living room. “We have a tree outside the window. Imagine it in the summer. When do you get leaves on the trees up here?”

  “May for sure,” Emma said. “I count on full leaf bloom by Memorial Day at home in Maine.”

  “Gad. It’s too late to change my mind. We’ve already signed the lease.” She sighed, gazing out at the bare-limbed tree. “I’m sure there are quirks, but I couldn’t be happier with this place. Matt will freak out if he sees a roach, but it’s the city. There are bound to be roaches. We sleep with a can of Raid and a flyswatter next to the bed in our current apartment.”

  “I can see why you’re eager to move,” Emma said.

  She lowered the shade again. “I’m giddy. It’s fun to show the place off. Thank you for indulging me.”

  “I love checking out Boston apartments.”

  “Will you and Colin stay where you are once you’re married?”

  “For now.”

  “Boston rents are insane. I’m sleeping here tonight. I brought over a few basics from Matt’s place. He won’t be back for a couple more days, and a sleeping bag on the floor here is more appealing than another night on my own with the roaches.”

  Emma laughed. “I can’t say I blame you.”

  “Do you ever miss convent life?”

  Ah, Emma thought. The real reason for her presence here. “I miss the gardens and the scenery. It’s a beautiful place.”

  “Matt says you’re hea
ding up there for a couple of nights.”

  “Tomorrow after work, yes. It’s a mini retreat.”

  “I’ve always loved the name of your order. Sisters of the Joyful Heart. Are they a joyful lot?”

  “Most of the time,” Emma said.

  “Matt says your time with the sisters has served you well in the FBI. You strike me as centered, Emma. You have good command of your emotions and the ability to stay fully present. I can see how you and Colin do well together. He operates on gut instinct honed by training and experience.” Lucy moved away from the window. “I’m aware Matt was Colin’s contact agent on at least one undercover mission.”

  Emma followed Lucy to the entrance, making no comment on her assertion.

  The older woman smiled. “Not going to confirm anything, are you? That’s all right. I wouldn’t expect you to. One learns to ferret out tidbits when one is married to a senior federal agent. The isolation, constant danger and pretending to be someone else as an undercover agent can take a toll after a while. Some personalities are more suited to that sort of work than others. There must be a high burnout rate.”

  “You have to know when you’ve had enough in any line of work,” Emma said.

  “Ah, how true. Here I am thinking about opening a knitting shop. I’m eyeing a spot on Charles Street. I could walk to work. That would be a first for me. A knitting shop might be a fantasy to help me with the transition to life in Boston, but if it is, it’s working. I haven’t been this excited in a long time.”

  “Maybe you needed something new.”

  “I wonder if that’s part of why I resisted moving for so long. I didn’t want to face my own boredom. Psychology is a relatively portable career, but maybe it’s run its course. I thought maybe my marriage had, too. I’m glad I was wrong about that.”

  Emma wasn’t going there. “I can see Yank taking up knitting.”

  “My husband’s idea of a hobby is cleaning his gun.”

  Lucy thanked Emma again as she left, taking the stairs down to the small lobby and heading out into the February cold. What Lucy Yankowski hadn’t brought up—and clearly hadn’t had any intention of bringing up—was that her husband and Emma’s fiancé were both in Washington, DC, likely meeting with the new FBI director about an undercover mission.

  With Oliver York waiting for her, Emma grabbed a cab back to her waterfront apartment. After a quiet winter fitting himself into HIT, Colin had been summoned to FBI headquarters in Washington in late January. He’d returned several times the past month, so far managing to fly back to Boston for weekends.

  Wedding or no wedding, he had a job to do.

  And so do I, Emma thought, reading Oliver’s text again. Wealthy, solitary and very smart, he might be a man haunted by his past, but he was firmly anchored in the present. It helped, no doubt, that he didn’t fear arrest, by the FBI, Scotland Yard or any of the law enforcement agencies in the other countries where he had helped himself to valuable art over the past decade.

  Oliver York was, in a word, untouchable.

  * * *

  When she reached her tiny apartment, Emma heaped her coat, hat and gloves on a chair and kicked off her boots. She sat on her couch in the living room and dialed up Oliver York on her laptop on her coffee table.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said.

  Oliver peered at her from across the Atlantic. A thick, dark blond curl flopped onto his forehead as he leaned closer to his screen. “What happened to your hair, Emma?”

  “Hat head.” She had no intention of telling him about trying on wedding dresses.

  “It’s cold in Boston?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “My London flat.”

  It was a room she didn’t recognize from her one visit last November to his sprawling Mayfair apartment overlooking St. James’s Park. Colin and Yank had accompanied her. Oliver had met them in the library, where his parents had been murdered almost thirty years ago. Now he sat in a tall-backed red-leather chair in front of a draped window and a painting of porpoises in Ardmore Bay on the south Irish coast. Emma knew the painting, an early work by well-known Irish artist Aoife O’Byrne.

  “A video chat is more intimate than a phone call, at least. How are you, Emma? It is all right if I call you Emma, isn’t it? It’s more informal than Special Agent Sharpe, but this is an official chat, I assume?”

  “I’m an FBI agent. You’re a thief. Yes, it’s an official chat. But Emma is fine.”

  He pointed at her. “You’re testier than when I saw you here in November.”

  That was when she had figured out that Oliver Fairbairn, a tweedy British mythologist caught in the middle of a murder investigation in Boston, was also Oliver York, a cheeky, wealthy British aristocrat with a tragic past. That Oliver Fairbairn and Oliver York were one and the same wasn’t widely known. He preferred to keep the two identities separate, and Emma had no reason to announce it to the world. In fact, the opposite.

  “Tell me about this FBI agent you believe is following you.”

  He gave an audible sigh. “Testy. Definitely testy.”

  She tried to resist a smile.

  “I have reliable radar for FBI agents, and it went off like crazy when I spotted this man. He was in the park outside my apartment. I had just returned from an art gallery. I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed me.”

  “Was this today?”

  “Around noon, yes.”

  “Is the gallery the one holding the show for Aoife O’Byrne?”

  “Mmm.”

  The Irish O’Byrne family was one of Oliver’s victims—his first, ten years ago. He had made off with two Jack Butler Yeats landscape paintings of western Ireland, a fifteenth-century silver wall cross depicting Saint Declan and an unsigned landscape of a local scene, probably by a young Aoife O’Byrne herself. Her Yeats phase, Oliver called it. The porpoises had come after that, as well as a few crosses of her own, but she was known now for her moody seascapes.

  At least Oliver had bought the porpoise painting instead of stealing it.

  “What’s the name of this agent you ran into in the park?” Emma asked.

  Oliver looked surprised. “I only saw him. I didn’t speak with him.”

  “How do you know he’s an FBI agent if you didn’t speak with him?”

  “The suit. The look. He’s one of yours. I’ve no doubt.”

  “Did you take his picture?”

  He sniffed. “Of course not. I’m a mild-mannered mythologist, not Scotland Yard or MI6. This man is tall, lean, medium coloring, perhaps early forties—but that describes a lot of your colleagues, doesn’t it? Not you, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Oliver sat back, amusement lighting up his face. He was good-looking and surprisingly affable for a man so solitary, so haunted by his past. “I’m many things, Emma, but paranoid isn’t one of them. I’m convinced this man is one of yours. Consider yourself alerted.”

  “Fair enough. Anything else?”

  “I’ve sent you a package. Martin has, actually.”

  On her November trip to London, Emma had also met Martin Hambly, Oliver’s longtime personal assistant. It was unclear to her whether Martin was aware of his boss’s alter ego as an art thief. “What’s in the package, Oliver?”

  “A present for you. A surprise. You’ll love it. I packed it myself when I was at the farm over the weekend. I returned to London on Monday. Then today...” He grimaced. “Today, I saw the FBI outside my apartment.”

  “Where did you send the package?”

  “I addressed it to you at Father Bracken’s rectory in Rock Point. I thought that would be simpler, but, as luck would have it, our Irish priest friend is here in London.”

  Emma frowned at that bit of news. “I thought he was in Ireland visiting his family.”

  “He joined his brother on a business trip on behalf of Bracken Distillers. I ran into Finian at the gallery. He, Declan and I are all about to have a drink together. Declan has to return to Ire
land tomorrow, but I plan to invite Father Bracken to the family farm in the Cotswolds.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Oliver.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a thief and Father Bracken is a friend of mine.”

  “That’s plain enough.” Oliver paused. “How is your family, Emma? Everyone’s well?”

  “Doing fine, thank you.”

  “Did your grandfather come home to Heron’s Cove for Christmas?”

  “You know he didn’t. You two rang in the New Year together at Claridge’s.”

  “Ah, so Wendell did tell you. I wasn’t sure he would. He told me he’d expected to fly home to Maine for Christmas, but he didn’t feel comfortable going so far with your parents here in London. The experimental procedure to help relieve your father’s chronic back pain went well, but it’s taken some time to recover.”

  Emma made no comment. She wasn’t discussing her family with Oliver York.

  “Chronic pain takes a toll,” he added.

  “Yes, it does,” Emma said. Although there was a psychological component to her father’s physical pain given its impact on his life, it was different from the chronic psychological pain Oliver York endured. She was convinced he’d turned to planning and executing solitary, daring art heists to provide relief. It must have worked, at least temporarily, since he’d been at it for a decade. Of course, catching him sooner would have put a stop to it.

  “I gather you and my grandfather are on a first-name basis now,” she said.

  “I haven’t seen him since New Year’s. He came out to the farm for a couple of days, then went back to Dublin to pretend he wants to retire.”

  “You harassed him for ten years. He wants to see you arrested before he retires.”

  Oliver waved a hand. “Nonsense. Wendell said you spent Christmas with the Donovans in Rock Point, that gloomy yet oddly charming Maine fishing village of theirs. You two haven’t been to Ireland or London since November. Perhaps I should have had you come to the farm and collect the package yourself.”