“Was Yank your contact agent?” Emma asked as she lifted her suitcase, slinging the strap over one shoulder. “I heard he worked with someone in deep. Putting two and two together, I figured you’re the reason we got involved with the Russian arms trafficker. He was yours.”
“Vlad the Purveyor of Nasty Weapons.” Colin ambled next to her as they passed the marina, crowded with boats and people on the beautiful early autumn Boston afternoon. “Vladimir Bulgov belongs under lock and key. I’ll say that much.”
“He wasn’t just after a profit. He enjoyed violence. He was also an erudite art collector.” Emma could feel the weight of her suitcase but didn’t mind. “People are complicated.”
“Not all of us. Some of us are simple.”
“Is there any chance Vlad had something to do with Sister Joan’s death?”
“Emma—”
“I discovered his interest in Picasso. That led you to him.”
“Bulgov’s arrest was a team effort, and he doesn’t know you were involved.”
Once they went through security at the HIT offices, she handed over her suitcase and let Colin carry it up the stairs.
“I cornered Yank this morning,” she said. “While you were telling that pretty, awestruck agent how you defused a bomb, I asked him if you were the deep-cover agent who brought down Vladimir Bulgov.”
“You’re fearless, Agent Sharpe.”
“Yank just gave me one of his looks and told me to get back to work.”
Colin set her suitcase by her desk. “I suppose when you’ve contemplated heaven, hell, saints and a life of poverty, obedience and chastity, a little thing like national security doesn’t intimidate you.”
“What do you think we do here? Knit sweaters and bake pies?”
He turned to her, and she saw the flintiness of his eyes and realized that the dangers he faced weren’t just theoretical—weren’t just classified admonitions and hints about preserving the cover stories of agents and safeguarding their true identities. He’d lived them. He had a family in Rock Point who didn’t deserve to be put at risk because of a slipup by one of his colleagues.
She hadn’t slipped up, and she wouldn’t. That wasn’t the point.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m careful. I promise you I am.”
“I know.” He winked at her. “Maybe too careful.”
Emma sat back at her desk, wondering how long Colin would stay idle. He was an action-oriented man who reacted to intelligence gathered in offices like hers.
After thirty minutes, he disappeared without a word.
Yank materialized next to her. “He’s restless on a good day. I’ve got him in my office. I’ll send him out in time to drive you to the airport.”
“I can take a cab,” Emma said.
“Bring me back a fifth of Bracken’s finest from Dublin.”
She pushed back her chair. “Yank, is the Bracken of Bracken Distillers the same Bracken as the priest in Rock Point?”
He withdrew to his office without comment and shut the door behind him. The past few days in Heron’s Cove had complicated his life.
Emma looked up Bracken Distillers on the internet.
Yep. The same Bracken.
CHAPTER 21
COLIN TOUGHED IT OUT IN YANK’S OFFICE UNTIL he figured Emma was starting to itch to get to the airport. He’d finally taken Yank through every detail of his life since he’d dropped off the radar, skipping only the past few days. Yank already knew about Sister Joan, the missing painting and the bomb, and Colin didn’t want him to know about getting the summons from Finian Bracken or, especially, kissing Emma Sharpe.
“How did Emma figure out about Vlad and me?” Colin asked.
“She’s like that,” Yank said. “That’s why she’s here.”
A week ago, Colin would have balked at that explanation. Now, after a full day with Emma, he understood. She brought a unique perspective to her work with the FBI. It had helped lock up a dangerous, violent operator.
“You and me, Yank. Clean slate?”
“No.”
Colin grinned as he left Yank’s office. The team was still hard at work. They’d just discovered one of their own had been a nun and for the most part couldn’t care less. He figured it was because they hadn’t kissed her before they knew she’d once dedicated herself to a life of chastity.
He was used to skimming the surface of his emotions. It was too damn risky to go deep, but Emma was by nature deep—thoughtful, contemplative, reflective, meditative, prayerful. All of it.
He wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
He had one unbreakable personal rule while he was working undercover: no relationships. It didn’t mean no sex. It meant no falling in love.
It meant not looking into the deep green eyes of this woman and wondering if she’d had nightmares about someone trying to burn her to death in her sleep.
He was gruffer than he meant to be as he collected her and her suitcase and got them both into his truck for the short drive to Logan. Instead of being annoyed, Emma seemed relieved. Maybe she’d had the same conversation with herself about relationships versus sex.
Probably not.
“You’re not following me to Ireland?” she asked when he dumped her off at her terminal.
That was yet to be determined, but he said, “How much trouble can you get into in Ireland?”
She gave him a suspicious look, then smiled brightly. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, blowing him a kiss and heading off with her bag.
He drove back to her apartment and let himself in using a spare key he’d found while rummaging around for coffee filters that morning. He hadn’t found filters—she used a coffee press—but he had found the key.
Time to have a look at the life of Special Agent Emma Sharpe without her present.
The late-afternoon light gave the apartment a stark, empty feel, not so much as if Emma had just moved in but as if she didn’t know what kind of material possessions she wanted around her, or if she wanted any. Colin tried to imagine what her living quarters at the Sisters of the Joyful Heart had been like.
“Hell,” he said, “what do I know about nuns?”
But what did he know about
