Harbor Island. Carla Neggers

detectives.

      Her cell phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She fished it out and answered without looking at the screen. “Emma Sharpe.”

      “Emma...Agent Sharpe...it’s Aoife O’Byrne.”

      Emma sat on the edge of the conference table. She hadn’t expected the Irish accent and cool voice of the Dublin artist, the younger niece of John O’Byrne, the man who had owned the artwork stolen ten years ago from his home in tiny Declan’s Cross. “What can I do for you, Aoife?”

      “I need to see you. I’m in Boston,” she added quickly. “I’m staying at the Taj Hotel. Can you meet me here? Now? It’s important.”

      Emma eased to her feet. “I’ll be right there. Are you in your room?”

      “I am, yes.”

      “Wait there. I’ll come to you.”

      Emma got Aoife’s room number and disconnected, aware of Colin watching her from the doorway.

      “Are you going to tell me who that was?” he asked.

      “Aoife O’Byrne.”

      “The Irish artist who threw you out of her studio in Dublin a few days ago?”

      “She didn’t throw me out. She almost threw me out. She threw Granddad out. Well, she slammed the door in his face. But that was ten years ago.” Emma pushed a hand through her hair. “She’s in Boston.”

      “Boston,” Colin repeated. “Old Wendell told me she’s one of the most beautiful women he’s ever met.”

      “She is very attractive,” Emma said.

      “Good.” Colin handed her a sandwich in a small plastic bag. “I stole it out of the fridge in the break room. I think it’s Padgett’s. He won’t miss it. He probably has a stash of MREs in his desk. You need to eat something.”

      “You and Sam Padgett are going to give Yank a headache, aren’t you?”

      “Lots of headaches, I imagine,” Colin said lightly.

      The sandwich looked good. She noted crisp-looking oak-leaf lettuce poking out of the edges of the soft marble rye. She didn’t care whether it was ham, cheese, roast beef or some weird concoction Sam had come up with. She was suddenly starving.

      Colin grinned at her. “You eat. I’ll drive.”

       5

      Colin followed Emma through a revolving glass door into the Taj, located in an iconic 1927 building on Arlington and Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay. “Mike and I slipped in here when we were in town for a Red Sox game,” he said as he and Emma entered a gleaming elevator in the lobby. “He was thirteen. I was eleven. It was the Ritz-Carlton then. Doorman made us in two seconds flat.”

      “Did your parents know what you were up to?”

      “They still don’t. They were doing a swan boat ride with Kevin and Andy. We said we’d stay in the Public Garden.” He stood back as Emma hit the button for Aoife’s floor. “Mike gets bored easily.”

      She smiled. “And you don’t,” she said, openly skeptical. “Did the Red Sox win?”

      “You bet. Against the Yankees, too. Ever attend a Red Sox game, Emma?”

      “Not yet, no.”

      “But you’ve done high tea here, haven’t you?”

      The elevator rose smoothly up into the five-star hotel. She leveled her green eyes on him. They were the best green eyes. “I have,” she said.

      “Alone? With your family? With the good sisters?”

      “With my family. My Sharpe grandmother was still alive. We all came down for a December weekend in Boston. Granddad, Gran, Lucas, my folks and me. We went to the Nutcracker and the Museum of Fine Arts and did high tea. I was nine. Gran bought me a maroon-colored coat with a matching dress with white lace.” Emma smiled again, some color returning to her face. “It’s a special memory.”

      Colin could picture the Sharpes trooping into the elegant hotel. From what he’d seen of them so far, they were the sort of people who were comfortable anywhere—high tea, a gallery opening, an Irish pub or a struggling Maine fishing village. Emma’s great-grandparents had moved from their native Ireland to Boston when Wendell, their only son, was two. They’d ended up in the pretty village of Heron’s Cove in southern Maine, where Wendell had launched Sharpe Fine Art Recovery from his front room sixty years ago. Fifteen years ago, a widower, he’d moved to Ireland and opened an office in Dublin, although he insisted Maine was still home.

      Emma could take over the Dublin office now that her grandfather was semiretired, Colin thought, but here she was, an FBI agent who had just come upon a shooting death.

      Then again, Rachel Bristol could have called Emma that morning because she was a Sharpe, not because she was an FBI agent.

      The elevator eased to a stop, and the doors opened. Emma led the way down the carpeted hall. Halfway down on the left, a slender woman with long, almost-black hair stood in the open doorway to one of the rooms. She was addressing a man—shaved head, denim jacket, cargo pants, late thirties—in the hall. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

      “Rachel is dead.” The man’s voice was raised and intense, but he wasn’t shouting. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

      The woman seemed to have trouble digesting his words. “Rachel Bristol? She’s dead? But how can that be? What happened? You must tell me.”

      Colin heard the woman’s accent now. Irish. Without a doubt.

      Aoife O’Byrne. Pronounced Ee-fa.

      He’d met her older sister, Kitty, almost two weeks ago, when he and Emma had ventured to Declan’s Cross and ended up in the middle of a murder investigation. Kitty was attractive, but Aoife was drop-dead gorgeous—in her mid-thirties, with shiny black hair that hung to her waist, porcelain skin, vivid blue eyes and angular features. Wendell Sharpe hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met.

      “Rachel was shot this morning.” The man with the shaved head lowered his voice. “That’s the word, anyway. I wasn’t given an official report.”

      “Shot? But I— We—” Aoife broke off, then took in two quick, audible breaths. She placed a hand on the doorjamb as if to steady herself. “I don’t know who you are or what you want with me, but you need to leave now, before I call hotel security.”

      The man didn’t budge. “Rachel came to see you here last night. Why? What did you two talk about? I’m not leaving until I get some answers.” He gave a quick glance at Emma and Colin, then turned back to Aoife. “Believe me, the police are going to want answers, too.”

      Colin stepped past Emma and reached the man a half step ahead of her. “Easy, my friend. What’s your name?”

      The man cast him a cold look. “None of your damn business.”

      “Think not.” Colin produced his credentials from inside his jacket. “I’m Special Agent Colin Donovan, and this is Special Agent Emma Sharpe. FBI.”

      “FBI? No kidding.” He put up both palms, as if he knew to keep his hands where the two law enforcement officers could see them. “Name’s Palladino. Danny Palladino. I don’t have a beef with the FBI. I’m private security. The Bristols are a client.”

      “Are you carrying?” Colin asked.

      Palladino nodded. “Right hip. Glock. It’s legal. I’m out of Las Vegas. I got into town last night. I went to Bristol Island for a Bristol family meeting and it was crawling with cops. What’s the FBI doing here?