“Sometimes.”
He glanced at her. “What’s on your mind, Agent Sharpe?”
She didn’t meet his eye, picturing instead the gentle, terrified novice in the fog earlier that day. “Sister Cecilia knows something that she’s not saying.”
“The CID guys think she’s just scared.”
Emma shook her head. “It’s more than that.”
“Can you get it out of her?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Maybe. I can try.”
“Does she know you used to be a nun?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right.” Yank buttoned his suit coat against the cold evening air. “That nun business was a whim. You’d have figured it out. I just figured it out before you did and helped you see the light.”
A whim.
Emma noticed her lobsterman was still on his boat, cleaning traps, puttering. She understood the appeal of hanging out on the docks. She could sit on the porch for hours, painting, reading, watching the tide, the people, the boats.
“You have your work cut out for you the next few days,” Yank said. “You might not pick a lot of apples.”
“I’ll talk to Sister Cecilia in the morning. Are you going straight back to Boston?”
He nodded toward the water. “After I take a stroll on the docks and look at the boats.”
CHAPTER 6
COLIN USED A WIRE BRUSH TO SCRAPE EMBEDDED gunk off a lobster trap, figuring he had another fifteen seconds before Matt Yankowski wandered onto the dock. Yank was up on the retaining wall now, acting as if he’d just spotted an interesting bird.
Emma Sharpe had gone inside and turned on lights in the back windows. She was something of a surprise. Honey-colored hair, leather jacket and boots.
Not bad.
Heron’s Cove was quintessential coastal southern Maine with its mix of historic houses, oceanfront mansions, shops and restaurants. It had two short stretches of sandy beach, marshes, rock-strewn coastline and the tidal Heron River.
No Hurley’s, though, and no Donovans.
Yank walked onto the wooden dock, tentatively, as if it might suddenly collapse and cast him into shark-infested waters. He’d faced down violent criminals and fanatical terrorists, but he didn’t like much that had to do with boats.
Colin shook his wire brush off in the water. Nothing on it hadn’t come from the river and ocean in the first place. “Agent Sharpe must be trouble for you to trek up here and pay her a personal visit.”
“I thought you were dead,” Yank said.
“No, you didn’t. You know you’d have heard.”
The unrelenting gaze fastened on Colin. “You don’t change, Donovan. When did you get to Maine?”
“Sunday. One day of yard work. Five days kayaking. A week up north in the wilderness. That was the plan. Today was my fourth day kayaking, so the plan didn’t work out.”
“You’re alone?”
“I’m alone.” Colin flipped over the trap and started to remove the gunk encrusted on the bottom. “Emma Sharpe thinks I’m a lobsterman?”
“For now.”
“She doesn’t have my name from the Bulgov case?”
“I didn’t tell her,” Yank said. “She knows she provided key information to an undercover agent to help in the arrest of Vladimir Bulgov, a Russian arms trafficker operating on U.S. soil. That’s all.”
“Any connection between Vlad and what happened today?”
“You tell me.” Yank shifted his gaze to the opposite bank of the tidal river, where a couple were throwing a ball for two chocolate Labs in front of a sprawling cedar-shingled house. “You dropped off the radar, Colin. You’ve been working without a net for the past three months.”
“I had no choice. You know that. You let it happen. You wanted our Russian and you got him. You’re about results, Yank. You’re not about people.”
“Who knows you’re in Maine?”
“The director. My family and friends in Rock Point. Now you.”
“You knew this was the Sharpe place,” Yank said.
“That’s right. Makes sense. I’m from the area and the Sharpes are world-renowned art detectives.”
“But you’ve never met Emma.”
“I just saw her for the first time chatting with you. She’s better looking than I expected.”
Yank wasn’t distracted. “What about her brother, parents, grandfather?”
Colin shook his head. “I didn’t investigate art crimes when I was with the state marine patrol.”
“Art crime is in the Sharpe DNA.” The senior FBI agent frowned at Colin. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Cleaning lobster traps.”
“Think the lobsters care?”
“An FBI agent who just found a dead nun is watching us, Yank. I’m trying to look natural.”
Yank grimaced. “Do I want to know what’s stuck on those crates?”
“Probably not.”
“The CID guys say Emma was cool today. She made sure the rest of the nuns were safe, she provided details to the detectives—”
“Who’re you trying to convince? She’s an FBI agent. She damn well should be able to handle herself in a tough situation. You’re not protective of her, are you?”
Yank stepped back sharply, as if Colin had gut-punched him. “Hell, no. Whatever you’re thinking, you can stop right now. Emma’s a fully qualified agent. I’m no more or less protective of her than I am of any other agent.”
Colin shrugged. “Okay.”
“She doesn’t rattle easily.”
Using the end of his brush, Colin hacked at a thick wedge of what he thought might be dried bait. He didn’t tell Yank. “She isn’t acting as if she’s worried she might be next for a blow to the back of the head.”
“Emma doesn’t worry.” Yank spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “That’s what I’m saying. It can make her hard to read.”
“She’s not a normal agent, is she?”
“We need to wrap this up. She’s watching. I don’t want her to march down here and then have to explain you.”
“I’m not your problem. Agent Sharpe is.” Colin abandoned his scraping and tossed the brush into the toolbox, latched it shut. “She screws up, it’s your career. This new team of yours goes up in smoke.”
“She couldn’t have saved that nun today,” Yank said, a note of regret mixed with his usual pragmatism. “Maybe you could have, but that’s because you’re not normal, either.
