“No.”
“That’s how you knew there were skeletal remains in the cave. Sister Cecilia didn’t mention them. You’d seen them yourself. You suspected the painting was of a saint. That’s why you wanted to talk to Father Bracken.”
She looked up at the attic window. Lights were on. The police were still up there. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.” She shifted back to Colin. “I don’t care if I have to take a leave of absence. I’ll quit if I need to.”
“Get fired?”
“Whatever it has to be.” She seemed not to notice the stiff, cold night breeze that blew up off the water. “How well do you know Father Bracken? An Irish priest with a BMW and expensive whiskey—”
“Don’t go off on tangents. Follow the evidence.”
“I am following the evidence. It’s standing right in front of me.”
“You’re looking for distractions. I don’t plan on being one of them.” Colin waited, watching her, but she didn’t meet his eye. “I’ll see you around.”
As he headed back through the tape to his truck, Emma said behind him, “You’re leaving because you have something you want to do.”
He didn’t respond, but she was right.
He was having another glass of whiskey with Finian Bracken and a little chat about Special Agent Emma Sharpe.
CHAPTER 16
FATHER BRACKEN KNEW.
Emma had seen it in his eyes. He wouldn’t say anything to his friend the FBI agent until he figured it out for himself. Colin would see that Bracken was holding back something—he probably already had—and get it out of him.
Then Colin would know.
Everything would change the second he realized the woman he’d kissed after disabling a bomb in her attic had been a nun.
So be it, she thought as she avoided the law enforcement personnel still at work and went into the first-floor bedroom. She gathered up the few things she’d brought with her from Boston and threw them into her overnight bag. As she zipped it shut, she tried Lucas once more, again getting his voice mail. She’d already left him a message and didn’t bother leaving him another one.
On her way out, she spoke to Tony Renkow, the lead detective and one of Colin’s many friends among the Maine police, and explained where she’d be. She wasn’t holding back information from CID. They knew what she knew about the painting now no longer in her grandfather’s attic.
“We checked your car,” Renkow said. “It’s clean. No bombs. Your people had a unit go through your apartment in Boston.”
“Thank you for letting me know,” she said, keeping any emotion out of her tone.
The detective studied her a moment. The events of the past two days had clearly put a strain on him, but he was focused, professional. “Are you sure you want to drive to Boston alone?”
“I’ll be fine, Detective. Thank you again.”
“What about Colin Donovan?”
“He’s gone back to Rock Point,” Emma said evenly.
Renkow pointed a thick finger at her. “You two—”
“We met this morning for the first time.”
“Handy having him here to defuse the bomb.”
“Yes, it was.”
“You FBI agents, huh? Even the ones who sit at a desk all day know just which wires to cut to keep from blowing themselves up.”
Emma wasn’t about to share her own suspicions about the true nature of Colin’s work with Renkow. “Good night, Detective.”
“Yeah. Stay safe.”
When she started her car, Emma was glad that Renkow had told her it’d been checked for bombs. She’d have wondered. On her way through the village, she drove past her brother’s house, but it was dark and his car wasn’t out front. She continued to their parents’ house, a little Victorian that served as the temporary offices of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery. It, too, was dark, with no cars out front.
Yank called her. “Where are you?”
“Heron’s Cove. I’m heading to Boston.”
“Stop by the office. We’re here. We’re working on this thing.”
“It’s a two-hour drive, Yank.”
“I’m not going anywhere. A bomb, Emma. Hell.”
“You know that Colin Donovan was there?”
“Yeah. I know. Drive safely.”
“You’re not going to talk about him, are you?”
But Yank had already disconnected. Emma slid her phone back in her jacket pocket. Her head ached, and her eyelids felt heavy, although she was wide-awake. She hadn’t seen any of her HIT colleagues—except for Matt Yankowski—since Sister Joan’s death. By now they all would know that she’d been a novice with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. They worked side by side with her. She tried to imagine herself in their position and wondered if it would matter to her that one of them had been a priest, a minister, a nun.
No, she thought. It would matter that one of them had kept that information from her and now it had put them into the middle of a murder investigation that could expose their team to unwanted publicity and distract them from their work.
That could expose a valuable undercover agent and distract him from his work.
She sighed as she reached the interstate. Her past had put Yank’s team at risk. For all she knew, the FBI director could be reaching for his phone to call Yank and shut him down right now.
Emma got out her phone and dialed his number. “I can resign,” she said.
“For what? Not getting blown up in your attic?”
“For bringing this mess down on everyone—”
“You focus on your job. Let me worry about any fallout.”
He disconnected again, and Emma continued driving south, only faintly reassured.
CHAPTER 17
BRACKEN’S BMW WAS IN FRONT OF HURLEY’S when Colin arrived back in Rock Point. He found the priest still at his favorite table overlooking the harbor. The soup dishes and the water and whiskey glasses had been removed, and he sat with a pot of tea. “This isn’t tea as I think of tea, but it’ll do. I have to say mass in the morning, and I have to do hospital visitations.”
“Fin,” Colin said, forcing himself to sit down despite his restlessness, “I need you to tell me about Emma Sharpe.”
“I think
