“Your mother gave away the Rembrandt before she died,” Emma said, deliberately baiting Gabe.
“For safekeeping.” Gabe’s voice was steady, his righteousness absolute. “She intended for me to have it. I’m her son.” He smiled. “And I will have it, Emma. You’ll tell me what you know.”
She saw that he wanted to kill again. He loved the life of the lone killer and thief. He didn’t want to stop. She hardened her tone. “You know Colin Donovan won’t stop hunting you if you let Sister Cecilia die and hurt me. You’ll have him on your tail forever. Father Bracken, too. He’s wealthy, and he didn’t take well to Sister Joan’s death.”
“Nice try. I’m not worried. I can pull this off.”
“What about your fiancée?”
“I love Ainsley. Truly.” He sounded almost wistful. “I want a life with her, here, in this house. I’m her personal Viking, remember?”
“When are you going to tell her your real name?”
“Soon. It’s not that big a secret.” He moved toward her and Sister Cecilia. “You do know where my Rembrandt is, don’t you, Emma?”
She saw now that he wanted to torture her for its whereabouts. And he would, even if she told him what he wanted to know.
He’d torture her for fun.
“The early martyred saints endured unimaginable suffering,” he said, giving the painter’s tray a little kick, rattling his bloody instruments of torture against the metal. “My mother loved all the gruesome stories. My father told me. It was another of his ways to diminish her in my eyes.”
Sister Cecilia pressed her foot against Emma’s lower leg, as if to let her know that she was conscious and alert.
Gabe scooped up a razor blade and laughed. “Imagine my mother’s terror and suffering when the fire broke out. It started here, in this room. Did you know that?”
“It was a different house, Gabe. It was forty years ago.”
“My father says her body was discovered with a high blood-alcohol level. Another lie. I checked.”
“You’re right,” Emma said. “I don’t know why your father told you that. Maybe he didn’t want you to think she’d suffered.”
“He said she made sure she wouldn’t get out of here. She drank herself into a stupor and collapsed. You don’t believe that, do you, Emma?”
“Actually, no, I don’t,” she said truthfully.
“My father squandered what he inherited from her and his own family. Then he died when I was fifteen. I had nothing.”
“You’ve done extremely well for yourself as a painter. You didn’t have to take up killing and stealing.” Emma better positioned herself so that she and Sister Cecilia, or Sister Cecilia on her own, if she were able, could run for the French doors. “Why the priest outfit, Gabe?”
“If necessary, Father Bracken will burn down this house.”
“Ah. After you get all the artwork into your van, of course.”
Gabe smiled. “Of course. I’ll start over. No one will ever know it was me. I’m the simple painter who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. Father Bracken’s the new priest who had improper dealings with another man’s fiancée and tried to get his hands on her jilted lover’s valuable art collection. He’ll die in the process—a victim of his own lust and greed.”
“Colin’s an FBI agent, Gabe. He won’t be easy to fool or to kill.”
“Maybe so, Emma, but you? Not so tough.”
Gabe held up the razor blade to the light streaming through the French doors. His plan was straightforward if not simple, she thought. Get the whereabouts of the Rembrandt from her, then kill her and Sister Cecilia and blame Finian Bracken.
Then kill Father Bracken and suggest Colin snapped and killed his priest friend in fury.
And finally Gabe would kill Colin in self-defense.
Emma suspected the painter’s plan involved a couple of bombs, as well as medieval torture.
Her plan was to make sure he didn’t succeed.
Without any warning, Sister Cecilia burst to her feet and ran madly toward the French doors. Emma reacted instantly, leaping up and lunging for Gabe before he could shoot the fleeing woman. She went for his gun, chopping his wrist with the edge of one hand.
Colin was there. “Drop the weapon. Do it now.”
Gabe ignored him and Emma hit him in the throat, but Colin was already firing.
Her would-be killer slumped to the floor.
Colin grabbed the Glock and checked for a pulse. Emma headed for the doors. “I have to get to Sister Cecilia.”
“Let’s go.”
They raced through the roses and hydrangeas onto the path to the front of the house. There was no sign of Sister Cecilia. She could be making her way back to the lane, or flailing in the woods.
Colin touched Emma’s arm. “There.”
She saw now, too. Sister Cecilia had bolted straight to the water. In her blind terror, she’d plunged into the tide.
They charged down a narrow path through marsh grasses. A wave overtook Sister Cecilia, her blood mixing with the seawater as she went under.
Emma ran into the cold water, Colin right with her, and together they got Sister Cecilia onto the rocks and sand. She was shivering and deathly pale. “Hold on, Sister,” Emma whispered, then looked up at Colin. “Paramedics?”
“Cavalry’s on the way.”
Drenched and freezing, she nonetheless welcomed the cool breeze as she smiled. “Good job, Agent Donovan.”
Colin sat back into the sand. Somehow, he’d managed only to get wet up to his hips. “Good job yourself, Agent Sharpe.” He grinned at her. “You kicked that son of a bitch’s ass.”
CHAPTER 41
IT WAS ALMOST DARK WHEN COLIN SAT ON A wooden bench on the rocks above the protected cove by the convent of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. Emma and the sisters—her friends—had located another Claire Grayson painting, a happier one of Sunniva as a princess in Ireland, before she ended up dead in a cave. Claire had presented it to Mother Linden as a thank-you gift.
On the back was a scrawled note that made sense now, in hindsight.
To the Sisters of the Joyful Heart,
I give you this painting freely, not for what I’ve
