Or go ahead and pitch his tent now, as well as unfurl his sleeping bag?
He smiled at the depth and complexity of his decisions. The fog was lifting, if not soon enough to leave him time to paddle to another island. What was the point, anyway? It wouldn’t be that different from the one he was on. More rocks, more trees, more blueberry bushes.
He heard a boat, out of sight just beyond the headland where he’d pulled up in his kayak. The underwater rocks there were tricky. Only a skilled pilot or an idiot would navigate a boat this close to the island, particularly in the tough conditions, with the tide going out.
Or a determined enemy, Colin thought, sitting up. He had on dark-colored waterproofs, not the neon-orange or yellow his lobstermen friends and family wore. If he needed to, he could disappear into the fir trees. He also had a weapon—a nine-millimeter Sig Sauer—tucked in his backpack.
He edged toward his kayak as a lobster boat materialized, bobbing in the chop about twenty yards offshore. No colorful buoys marked lobster traps in the immediate vicinity of the island, but Colin recognized the trio of buoys on a pole in the stern of the boat, bearing the distinctive blue, magenta and yellow stripes that identified Donovan traps.
His eldest brother, Mike, stepped out of the pilothouse. He was an outfitter and a guide, not a lobsterman, and he was in the Julianne, their lobsterman brother Andy’s backup boat, a hulking heap that would keep running until someone blew it up or hacked it to pieces. Mike would have a fair idea of where Colin would be since he’d helped plan his route among Maine’s southern coastal islands. Not that Colin, with three years with the Maine state marine patrol under his belt, had needed help, but he and Mike got along well. Mike understood his younger brother’s desire for solitude.
“Hey, Colin,” Mike said, barely raising his voice he was so close. Like all four Donovan brothers, he was a big man. “I tried your cell phone in case you were in a hot spot. No luck.”
Colin hadn’t even turned on his phone. “What’s up?”
“Father Bracken wants to see you. I said I’d find you.”
This was unexpected. “Bracken? What’s he want?”
“A nun was killed a few hours ago.”
“In Ireland?”
“Heron’s Cove.” Unmoved by the heavy swells, Mike pointed vaguely toward the mainland. “Sisters of the Joyful Heart.”
Colin got to his feet. He’d paddled past the isolated convent on his first day on the water. He’d looked up at the stone buildings with their leaded-glass windows and thought it wasn’t a bad place to sit out life.
“I’m not getting mixed up in a nun’s death.”
Mike shrugged. “That’s what I told Bracken.”
“The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction over a homicide in Heron’s Cove. The Maine State Police will handle the investigation. Tell Bracken—”
“I did. Now you tell him. He’s your friend.”
Colin noticed a patch of blue burning through the fog and clouds on the horizon. It’d be a chilly night out on his little island, but with the clearing weather, there’d be a starlit sky. Stars, quiet, the wash of the tide on the rocks. It was a lot to give up.
“Let’s go,” Mike said.
There’d never been any point arguing with the eldest Donovan. Mike had a place way down east, out on the rugged and remote Bold Coast. He lived off the grid as much as possible. He didn’t own a cell phone or a computer, but he knew how to use them—when he had to, and only for his work as an outfitter and guide.
Mike hadn’t needed an explanation when Colin had turned up in Rock Point and said he wanted to go off on his own for a few days. Mike wouldn’t worry whether his brother was hiding from demons or running from enemies. In Mike Donovan’s world, wanting solitude was normal. It wasn’t a reason for concern.
Not that Mike believed Colin rode a desk at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. None of his three brothers did, but they’d never flat-out asked him if he was an undercover agent.
“All right.” Colin reached for his backpack, set next to his kayak. The mosquitoes were starting to congregate around him, anyway. “Let me collect my gear.”
* * *
Mike abandoned Colin at the docks in Rock Point, the small, struggling fishing village where they’d grown up, just north of high-end Heron’s Cove. With little comment, Mike climbed into his truck and headed back north. A week hiking and canoeing in the northern Maine woods was next up for Colin, on the heels of his kayaking trip.
He just had to clear up the matter of the dead nun with Father Bracken.
Colin threw his kayak and gear into the back of his truck and walked across the potholed parking lot to Hurley’s, a local watering hole in a weather-beaten shack built on pilings.
Finian Bracken’s black BMW was parked out front.
Hurley’s was a favorite with hardy tourists who ventured beyond southern Maine’s more popular beach hangouts. It served good food and drinks at a reasonable price, and it was also the only restaurant and bar in Rock Point. The only inn had opened up two years ago and was owned by Colin’s parents. His father, an ex-cop and sometimes lobsterman, had taken to cooking massive breakfasts and polishing silver. His mother couldn’t have been happier.
Colin headed inside. The tide rolled in and out under Hurley’s worn wood floorboards. The bar was constructed of more worn wood. Each table was covered with a marine-blue tablecloth, decorated with a small clear vase of local flowers and a white votive candle. The early crowd had left, and the evening crowd hadn’t yet arrived.
No Donovans were about. Colin considered that a plus under the circumstances.
He spotted Finian Bracken at a sturdy table in back, by a window
