Keeper's Reach. Carla Neggers

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      “A lovely time to get married. Agent Yankowski mentioned that the ceremony will be at the convent of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. I understand they have beautiful gardens. The foundress, Mother Linden, was friends with Agent Sharpe’s grandfather.”

      “So I’m told,” Colin said. He didn’t like the direction of this conversation.

      “And your Irish priest friend is performing the ceremony? Father Bracken?”

      Van Buren was asking him questions to which she already knew the answers, but Colin decided not to point that out to her. Being an experienced prosecutor, she would know exactly what she was doing. “That’s the plan,” he said.

      “How nice. The priest he’s replacing for a year will return in June, won’t he?”

      “Father Callaghan. Also the plan.”

      “Presumably Father Bracken will return to Ireland once Father Callaghan resumes his post.” Van Buren sounded hopeful. “The whiskey distillery he owns with his twin brother, Declan, is doing well. My husband and I tried a Bracken whiskey over the holidays. Excellent.”

      “Fin would be pleased to know you liked it.”

      “He’s your family’s priest,” Van Buren said. “That means he’s your priest, too.”

      “He’s my friend,” Colin said.

      “Have you confided in him?”

      “Confided what?”

      “Anything.”

      “I’ve been burdened by this time in sixth grade—”

      Van Buren waved a hand. “I withdraw the question.”

      “Why are we talking about Father Bracken?” Colin asked.

      “Small talk.” She smiled. “I’ve never been good at it.”

      It wasn’t small talk but Colin didn’t argue.

      The FBI director folded her hands on top of the folder open in front of her. “An independent thinker is critical for undercover work, in my judgment, but it can have its downside. You don’t really know for sure how you will react until you’re under, do you? On a real assignment, with real people who would harm you. It can take a toll. That’s why we have rules—rules the independent-minded can sometimes chafe at in their desire to do the work.”

      She waited but Colin didn’t fill the silence with commentary. What was there to say? He had done difficult assignments in the past four years. He’d come out alive. He hadn’t compromised investigations or prosecutions. The bad guys were in prison or on the way there.

      Van Buren unfolded her hands and sat back in her chair, her gaze on him. “I’m told you’re the best, and I’ve read your file.”

      But she hadn’t seen him in action, Colin thought. She didn’t know if the file was padded—if she could trust her predecessor’s last days at the desk she now occupied. Colin trusted his instincts, and his instincts told him if Mina Van Buren wasn’t sure about Yank, she sure as hell wasn’t sure about him.

      “Your life is more complicated than it used to be, isn’t it, Agent Donovan?”

      “Yours, too, Director.”

      She cracked a smile. Colin was positive. It didn’t last, but it gave him hope. In his world, a serious mission required a judicious sense of humor, moments of levity that made everything else not just easier but possible.

      Federal prosecutors and another agent or two would be joining them. The meeting was in relation to a new undercover mission, one that had arisen out of his previous mission—a dangerous, months-long investigation that had succeeded but also had created a vacuum in the world of illegal arms trafficking.

      It wasn’t an unforeseen consequence.

      Jokes and talk of weddings, priests and snowshoeing ended as the conference table filled up. Colin wondered if any of the people who had joined the meeting had sent an agent to London to check on Oliver York. Because of him. Because they wanted to know if his life was becoming too complicated to put him undercover again.

      * * *

      Seventy minutes later, Colin told Yank about the calls from Emma and Mike. Yank had joined him on the walk from FBI headquarters to the inexpensive hotel where he had spent far too many nights over the past few weeks.

      The senior FBI agent visibly gritted his teeth as Colin finished relaying the latest Sharpe and Donovan goings-on. “The Plum Tree? I’m supposed to get worked up about Mike’s old army buddies showing up at a Maine country inn called the Plum Tree?”

      “It has its own plum orchard,” Colin said.

      “Of course it does.” Yank turned up the collar on his overcoat. “Think this Cooper sent his man to Rock Point to snoop on your family?”

      “To get the lay of the land, anyway.”

      “They left it to your mother to tell Mike. That would piss me off.”

      “Mike wasn’t happy about it,” Colin said.

      “Imagine that.”

      Colin wasn’t happy about it, either. “Do you know Ted Kavanagh?”

      Yank shook his head. “Not personally, no. Nothing says he can’t meet with these guys on his own time. Why, what else is going on?”

      Colin slowed at a wide intersection. He hadn’t told Yank about Emma’s call. He did now, keeping his recap as succinct as he could. “I’m wondering if this guy York saw could be Kavanagh. York didn’t give much of a description.”

      “He’s bound to be paranoid.”

      “He strikes me as very observant. He’d have to be to get away with stealing art and taunting Wendell Sharpe for a decade.”

      “Ten to one the guy he saw in the park is a London stockbroker. Even if we show him a photo of Kavanagh, there’s no guarantee he won’t say it’s his guy just to spin us in circles.”

      “York says the guy he saw argued with a woman.”

      “Naomi MacBride?” Yank was silent as they approached Colin’s hotel. “We have coincidences and conjecture. Not my two favorite things.”

      They entered the hotel and sat in a quiet nook by a gaslit fire. Colin watched a blue flame. He preferred wood fires, but this wasn’t bad. “It occurred to me the director could have put someone on York without telling us.”

      “We wouldn’t be here if she felt that was necessary. Either one of us.”

      It was a fair point. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

      “No. Same reasoning. You wouldn’t be here if I felt that was necessary.” Yank settled back in his chair. “While we’re in the world of coincidence and conjecture, what if this Reed Cooper asked Kavanagh to look into СКАЧАТЬ