Obviously accustomed to the Maine coast terrain, he hopped onto another boulder, then another, heading up to the lawn in a few long strides.
“Hold on,” Emma said. “That’s close enough. No sudden moves, okay?”
He stopped next to a spreading, prickly juniper. “Understood.”
Up close, he was just as rugged and muscular as she’d expected looking at him from the porch and kitchen window. He moved with a casualness that she immediately suspected was deceptive, if not deliberately misleading. He struck her as a man who missed nothing—including the hazards of Maine’s rocky coastline.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Donovan. Colin Donovan.”
“Convenient to shipwreck on a rising tide, isn’t it, Mr. Donovan?”
“It is.” He swept his gaze over her. His eyes were as gray as yesterday’s fog. “An FBI agent who knows tides. Imagine that.”
“Where are you from?”
“Rock Point.”
Not far, then. “What are you doing here?”
“Right now I’m trying to figure out how to tell my brother I ran aground. It’s his boat. It’s trickier to maneuver than I thought it’d be. I’ll never live this one down.”
“Why did you borrow your brother’s boat, Mr. Donovan?”
“Because I don’t have one.”
His tone was matter-of-fact, but his eyes were half-closed, alert, as if he were calculating just what he’d do if she decided to shoot him. Whoever he was, Emma had the feeling Colin Donovan wasn’t a regular lobsterman.
“I’ll be checking you out, Mr. Donovan,” she said.
“By all means. It’ll be at least an hour before the tide rises enough for me to get Andy’s boat off the rocks.” He nodded to her. “Don’t let me keep you from your work.”
Emma considered the situation. He wasn’t a suspect, and he had done everything she asked. She had no reason to detain him or search him for weapons. She couldn’t help noticing that he was extremely fit. “How did you get yourself hung up on the rocks?”
“I got too close.”
“On purpose, or you weren’t paying attention?”
His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and she had her answer. He’d run aground on purpose. But he said, “Just one of those things.”
A state marine patrol boat made its way around the tip of the small peninsula and maneuvered toward the Julianne. “I’ll notify them of your situation,” Emma said.
“No worries.”
He turned and whistled and waved at the two officers on board, giving them an all clear.
They waved back.
“They know you,” Emma said, relaxing slightly. Whoever he was, he wasn’t a direct threat.
“We lobstermen know a lot of people. I got my feet wet jumping out of my boat. Anywhere I can dry off before I get hypothermia?”
Just his shoes and the ends of his jeans were wet. Maine’s notoriously cold water didn’t seem to bother him at all. He didn’t look any more worried about hypothermia than he had been about tripping on the rocks.
“You’ll be fine,” Emma said. “You were at the docks in Heron’s Cove last night.”
“That’s right. How’d you know?”
“I saw you and I saw your boat.”
“My brother’s boat,” he amended.
Not a man easily intimidated. “Are you spying on me, Mr. Donovan?”
Again he gave no hint of uneasiness. “Why would I do that, Special Agent—”
“Sharpe,” she supplied. “Emma Sharpe. Enough with the games, Mr. Donovan. You know who I am. Did you see me leave this morning and figure I’d head out here to the convent?”
He shrugged without answering.
“Who are you? CID? Marine patrol?”
“Aren’t FBI agents supposed to have partners? Why did you come here alone?”
“I want to know who you are. You ran your boat aground deliberately. Why?”
“Would you have let me in through the main gate? No. Neither would the nuns or the state cops.”
He hadn’t wanted to go through the main gate. He’d wanted to do exactly what he’d done. Emma could see that her approach with him wouldn’t get her far. Colin Donovan would tell her what he wanted to tell her and not one word more.
She glanced down at his boat, still hung up on the rocks. “Don’t tell me you’re an average, everyday lobsterman, because you’re not. What’s your interest in what happened here?”
“Maybe it’s you.”
“You’re checking me out? Last night, too?”
He raised his eyes to her and she saw that they were a flinty gray now. She remembered Yank lingering on the docks as if he were discussing seagulls with a Maine lobsterman.
Yank hated boats and couldn’t care less about seagulls.
And she knew.
“You’re FBI.” She sighed. “You could have said so.”
He grinned at her. “No fun in that.”
Emma gritted her teeth, but she heard someone panting behind her in the trees.
“Agent Sharpe?” Sister Cecilia emerged tentatively from the cover of a spruce. “I saw you from the motherhouse and wondered what was going on.”
“This is Colin Donovan,” Emma said, noticing Sister Cecilia eyeing him nervously. “He ran his lobster boat aground.”
“Oh. So I see.” She hugged her oversize sweater to her and peered down at the battered boat. “It can’t get swept to sea, can it?”
“Not until the water rises,” Colin said.
“I don’t know much about boats. The police scoured every inch of the grounds and the surrounding coastline for evidence and possible entry and exit points. They’re coming back soon for another look. I’ve racked my brain trying to think how anyone could have gotten in and out of here without being seen.”
“Probably not as hard as it looks,” Colin said, “especially in the fog.”
Sister Cecilia didn’t seem satisfied. “Still, you’d think someone would have seen something. I wish I hadn’t panicked. If I could have gotten close enough to get a better description of whoever it was I saw, the police—”
Colin didn’t let her finish. “The police would have two dead nuns to deal with instead of one.”
Emma gave him a sharp look, but his blunt words seemed to snap Sister Cecilia out of her self-recrimination. She stood straight, color high in her pale cheeks. “I should be working. We’ve temporarily closed our shop and studio in Heron’s Cove, out of respect for Sister Joan. I teach classes there
