Harbor Island

In this vivid and suspenseful addition to her widely acclaimed Sharpe & Donovan series, New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers takes readers on a heart-stopping journey from Boston to Ireland to the rocky coast of Maine

Emma Sharpe, granddaughter of world-renowned art detective Wendell Sharpe, is a handpicked member of a small Boston-based FBI team. For the past decade Emma and her grandfather have been trailing an elusive serial art thief. The first heist was in Ireland, where an ancient Celtic cross was stolen. Now the Sharpes receive a replica of the cross after every new theft—reminding them of their continued failure to capture their prey.

When Emma receives a message that leads her to the body of a woman on a small island in Boston Harbor, she finds the victim holding a small, cross-inscribed stone—one she recognizes all too well. Emma’s fiancé, FBI deep-cover agent Colin Donovan, is troubled that she’s gone off to the island alone, especially given the deadly turn the thief has taken. But as they dig deeper they are certain there is more to this murder than meets the eye.

As the danger escalates, Emma and Colin must also face do-or-die questions about their relationship. While there’s no doubt they are in love, can they give their hearts and souls to their work and have anything left for each other? There’s one thing Emma and Colin definitely agree on: before they can focus on their future, they must outwit one of the smartest, most ruthless killers they’ve ever encountered.

Also by Carla Neggers

Sharpe & Donovan Series

DECLAN’S CROSS

ROCK POINT (novella)

HERON’S COVE

SAINT’S GATE

Swift River Valley Series

CIDER BROOK

THAT NIGHT ON THISTLE LANE

SECRETS OF THE LOST SUMMER

BPD/FBI Series

THE WHISPER

THE MIST

THE ANGEL

THE WIDOW

Black Falls Series

COLD DAWN

COLD RIVER

COLD PURSUIT

Cold Ridge/U.S. Marshals Series

ABANDON

BREAKWATER

DARK SKY

THE RAPIDS

NIGHT’S LANDING

COLD RIDGE

Carriage House Series

THE HARBOR

STONEBROOK COTTAGE

THE CABIN

THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

Stand-Alone Novels

THE WATERFALL

ON FIRE

KISS THE MOON

TEMPTING FATE

CUT AND RUN

BETRAYALS

CLAIM THE CROWN

Look for Carla Neggers’ next novel in the Swift River Valley series

ECHO LAKE

available soon from Harlequin MIRA

To Uncle John and Aunt Martha

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

Harbor Island

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31

Author Note

Rock Point

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7

Extract

Copyright

1

Boston, Massachusetts

As she wound down her run on the Boston waterfront, Emma Sharpe could feel the effects of jet lag in every stride. Three days home from Dublin, she was still partly on Irish time and had awakened early on the cool November Saturday. She’d strapped her snub-nosed .38 onto her hip, slipped into her worn-out running shoes and was off. With less than a half mile left in her five-mile route, she was confident she hadn’t been followed. Not that as an art-crimes specialist she was an expert at spotting a tail, but she was an FBI agent and knew the basics.

Matt Yankowski, the special agent in charge of the small Boston-based unit Emma had joined in March, hadn’t minced words when he’d addressed his agents yesterday on a video conference call. “This Sharpe thief knows who we are. He knows where we work. It’s also possible he knows where we live. If he doesn’t, he could be trying to find out. Be extra vigilant.” Yank had looked straight at Emma. “Especially you, Emma.”

Yes. Especially her.

This Sharpe thief.

Well, it was true. She was, after all, the granddaughter of Wendell Sharpe, the octogenarian private art detective who had been on the trail of this particular serial art thief for a decade. Her brother, Lucas, now at the helm of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery, was also deeply involved in the stepped-up search for their thief, a clever, brazen individual—probably a man—who had managed to elude capture since his first heist in a small village on the south Irish coast.

Emma slowed her pace and turned onto the wharf where she had a small, ground-level apartment in a three-story brick building that had once been a produce warehouse. Her front windows looked out on a marina that shared the wharf. A nice view, but people passing by to get to their boats would often stop outside her windows for a chat, a cigarette, a phone call. Although she’d grown up on the water in southern Maine, she hadn’t expected her Boston apartment to be such a fishbowl when she’d snapped it up in March, weeks before the boating season.

Had the thief peeked in her windows one day?

She ducked into her apartment, expecting to find Colin still in bed or on the sofa drinking coffee. Special Agent Colin Donovan. A deep-cover agent, another Mainer and her fiancé as of four days ago. He’d proposed to her in a Dublin pub. “Emma Sharpe, I’m madly in love with you, and I want to be with you forever.”

She smiled at the memory as she checked the cozy living area, bedroom and bathroom. Colin wasn’t anywhere in the 300-square-foot apartment they now more or less shared. Then she found the note he’d scrawled on the back of an envelope and left on the counter next to the coffee press in the galley kitchen. “Back soon.”

Not a man to waste words.

He’d filled the kettle and scooped coffee into the press, and he’d taken her favorite Maine wild-blueberry jam out of the refrigerator.

Still smiling, Emma headed for the shower. She was wide awake after her run, early even by her standards. After three weeks in Ireland, she and Colin had thoroughly adapted to the five-hour time difference. Their stay started with a blissful couple of weeks in an isolated cottage, getting to know each other better. Then they got caught up in the disappearance and murder of an American diver and dolphin-and-whale enthusiast named Lindsey Hargreaves. Now, back home in Boston, Emma was reacquainting herself with Eastern Standard Time.

Making love with Colin last night had helped keep her from falling asleep at eight o’clock—one in the morning in Ireland. He seemed impervious to jet lag. His undercover work with its constant dangers and frequent time-zone changes no doubt had helped, but Emma also suspected he was just like that.

Colin would know if someone tried to follow him. No question.

She pulled on a bathrobe and headed back to the kitchen. She made coffee and toast and took them to her inexpensive downsize couch, which was pushed up against an exposed-brick wall and perpendicular to the windows overlooking the marina. She collected up a stack of photographs she and Colin had pulled out last night, including one of herself as a novice at twenty-one. Colin had put it under the light and commented on her short hair and “sensible” shoes. She wore her hair longer now, and although she would never be one for four-inch heels, her shoes and boots were more fashionable than the ones she’d worn at the convent.

Colin had peered closer at the photo. “Ah, but look at that cute smile and the spark in your green eyes.” He’d grinned at her. “Sister Brigid was just waiting for a rugged lobsterman to wander into her convent.”

Emma had gone by the name Brigid during her short time as a novice with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart, a small order on a quiet peninsula not far from her hometown on the southern Maine coast. In September, a longtime member of the convent and Emma’s former mentor, an expert in art conservation, was murdered. Yank had dispatched Colin to keep an eye on her. He’d tried to pass himself off as a lobsterman—he’d been one before joining the Maine marine patrol and then the FBI—but Emma had quickly realized what he was up to.

“I bet you were wearing red lace undies,” he’d said as he’d set the photo back on the table.

Emma had felt herself flush. “I don’t wear red undies now.”

He’d given her one of his sexy, blue-eyed winks. “Wait until Valentine’s Day.”

They’d abandoned the photos and had ended up in bed, making love until she’d finally collapsed in his arms. He was dark-haired, broad-shouldered and scarred, a man who relied on his natural instincts and experience to size up a situation instantly. He didn’t ruminate, and he wasn’t one to sit at a desk for more than twenty minutes at a time. She was more analytical, more likely to see all the ins and outs and possibilities—and she was a ruminator.

As different as they were, Emma thought, she and Colin also had similarities. The FBI, their Maine upbringings, their strong families, their love of Ireland. Their whirlwind romance wasn’t all an “opposites attract” phenomenon, a case of forbidden love that had come on fast and hard. They hadn’t told anyone yet of their engagement. On Monday night in Dublin, Colin had presented her with a beautiful diamond ring, handmade by a jeweler on the southwest Irish coast. She’d reluctantly slipped the ring off her finger when they’d arrived at Boston’s Logan Airport from Dublin late Tuesday.

Emma was so lost in thought, she jumped when her cell phone vibrated on the table. She scooped it up, expecting to see Colin’s name on the screen. Instead, it was a number she didn’t recognize. A wrong number? She clicked to answer, but before she could say anything, a woman spoke. “Is this Emma Sharpe? Agent Sharpe with the FBI?”

“Yes, it is. Who are you?”

“What? Oh. My name’s Rachel Bristol. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

“All right. Please go ahead.”

“Not on the phone. In person. Meet me on Bristol Island. It’s in Boston Harbor. There’s a bridge. You don’t have to take a boat.”

“Ms. Bristol, what’s this about?”

“It’s about your art thief. Bristol Island, Agent Sharpe. Be at the white cottage in thirty minutes or less. There’s a trail by the marina.” She paused. “Come alone. Please. I will talk only to you.”

Rachel Bristol—or whoever she was—disconnected.

Emma sprang to her feet. Thirty minutes didn’t give her much time.

She ran to her bedroom and dressed in dark jeans, a dark blue sweater, a leather jacket and boots. She grabbed her credentials and strapped on her service pistol. She didn’t leave a note for Colin. She would text him on the way.

Meeting confidential informants was a tricky business even with protocols, training and experience. But it didn’t matter. Not this time.

Her thief.

Her problem.

2

“Check the bathroom,” Matt Yankowski said, making an obvious effort to hide his mix of urgency and irritation over the whereabouts of his wife, Lucy.

Colin Donovan frowned as he stood on the uneven wood floor in the sole bedroom of the senior FBI agent’s hovel of an apartment near Boston’s South Station. It was bigger than Emma’s, but it had roaches and rusted appliances and a shower out of Psycho. He’d had a quick peek into the bathroom. He hadn’t gone in and checked for signs of Lucy’s presence. What was the point? If he’d been Lucy Yankowski, he’d have gone running from this place, too.

But this was Yank, technically Colin’s boss and a man on his own in Ireland, worried about his wife and his marriage. Colin didn’t want Yank to have to explain. Easier, smoother and more tactful just to check the damn bathroom.

Colin pushed the bathroom door open the rest of the way and stepped onto the cracked black-and-white hexagon tile, so old and worn that the black tiles by the shower stall were now gray. With his cell phone pressed to his ear, he glanced at the pedestal sink and the towel rack. “Yank, do you know your towel rack is on crooked?”

“Yeah, and I don’t care. It does the job. See anything?”

“Guy stuff. Shaving brush, shaving soap, razor. Nothing remotely feminine.”

“Check the shower. See if she left her shampoo in there.”

“I guarantee you she didn’t use the shower. She’d have gone to a hotel before she used your shower, Yank. Damn.”

“Just check, will you?”

“That means I have to touch the shower curtain.”

“It’s clean. It’s just stained. It came with the place. I didn’t want to spring for a new one.”

“You can get a new shower curtain for next to nothing.”

Yank made no comment. Colin pulled open the curtain. He figured he could wash his hands when he was done. Yank was tidy and clean despite his rathole apartment, but the shower and shower curtain were disgusting. Only word for it.

“No shampoo at all in here,” Colin said, stepping back from the shower. “Just a bar of orange soap.”

“My coal-tar soap. I didn’t bring it to Ireland with me.”

“I could have gone my whole life without knowing you use coal-tar soap, Yank.”

“Think I like having you search my place?”

Colin sighed and went back into the bedroom. “Lucy wasn’t here, or if she was, she didn’t stay long. Your bed’s made. Your fridge is empty. Your bathroom and kitchen sinks are clean. The roaches—”

“I don’t need to hear about the roaches,” Yank said. “I’ve been living there almost a year. I know all about the damn roaches. I got a cheap place and rent month-to-month because I thought Lucy would move with me. We would sell our house in northern Virginia and buy a place in Boston. Made sense to rough it a little.”

He’d roughed it more than a little, but Colin let it go. He returned to the kitchen. A roach was parading across the floor. Where there was one cockroach, there were a hundred cockroaches. Often like that in their line of work, too. But Yank didn’t need to hear that right now.

“Where do you think she is?” Colin asked.

“Off stewing.”

“Where?”

“Paris. Prague. Tahiti. How the hell do I know? I’m just her husband.”

Colin could hear the strain in Yank’s voice. He was in his early forties, a classic, square-jawed, buttoned-down FBI agent with hardly ever a wrinkle in his suit. He and Colin had met four years ago when Colin had volunteered for his first undercover mission. Matt Yankowski, a legendary field agent, had been his contact agent through two years of grueling, dangerous, isolating work. Then the director of the FBI had called in Colin for another mission—one even more grueling, dangerous and isolating. It had ended in October with the arrest of the last of a network of ruthless illegal arms traffickers. They’d almost killed his family. A friend. Emma.

“When was the last time you were in contact with Lucy?” Colin asked.

“Sunday. Before I left for Ireland. It wasn’t a good conversation. Leave it at that. I called her on Thursday and left her a message. She didn’t call back. I texted and emailed her yesterday and again this morning. Zip.”

“Did you tell her you were going to Ireland?”

“No, I did not.” Yank grunted, as if he was already regretting having called Colin. “All right, thanks for taking a look. I just wanted to be sure she wasn’t in Boston passed out in my apartment.”

“What about passed out at home in Virginia?”

“Not your problem.”

“Yank, I don’t have to tell you that you need her back in touch soon. With all that’s going on, we can’t have your wife AWOL.”

“That’s right, Donovan. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Yank...” Colin hesitated a half beat. “Have you talked to the director lately?”

“Yeah. He says he’s retiring.” Yank sounded relieved at the change in subject. “He’s moving to Mount Desert Island to be a grandfather and write his memoirs. That’s why you two bonded, you know. He loves Maine.”

“Maybe he and I could do puffin tours together.”

“I could see that, but I don’t know who’d scare tourists more, you or him. I’ve heard some rumors about his replacement. All the names give me hives, but it’ll be what it’ll be. Hey, you wouldn’t want to spray for roaches before you leave my place, would you? There’s a can of Raid under the sink.”

A can of Raid and a million roaches. Colin debated, then said, “I’ll spray for roaches if you stop at the Celtic Whiskey Shop on Dawson Street in Dublin before you leave and pick me up a good bottle of Irish whiskey.”

“Done.”

“Let me know when Lucy is back in touch.”

Colin disconnected. He sprayed for roaches—and sprayed actual roaches—and then got the hell out of Yank’s walk-up as fast as he could. The only reason the place didn’t have rats was because it was on the third floor. Needless to say, there was no security in the building. There was barely a front door.

Colin welcomed the bright, cool November air. He had woken up to Yank’s email asking him to check his apartment for Lucy and telling him where to find a spare key in his office a few blocks from Emma’s place. She’d already left on her run. Bemused by Yank’s request, Colin had walked over to the highly secure, unassuming waterfront building that housed HIT, short for “high impact target” and the name Yank had chosen for his handpicked team. Yank had shoehorned Colin into HIT in October. Colin had packed his bags for Ireland a few weeks later to decompress. He’d expected to hike the Irish hills and drink Irish whiskey and Guinness alone, but Emma had joined him in his little cottage in the Kerry hills. She hadn’t waited for an invitation, but that was Emma Sharpe. His ex-nun, art historian, art conservationist, art-crimes expert—the love of his life—was the bravest woman he knew. Which had its downside, since she’d do anything regardless of the risk.

He saw he had a text message from her.

Meeting CI on Bristol Island. Back soon. Had a good run.

A confidential informant? Emma? Bristol Island? Where the hell was Bristol Island? Colin texted back.

Are you alone?

He buttoned his coat and continued toward the HIT offices and her apartment, looking up Bristol Island on his phone. It was one of more than thirty Boston Harbor islands, unusual in that it was privately owned and not part of the Boston Harbor National Recreational Area. He waited but Emma didn’t respond to his text. He didn’t want to call her in the middle of a delicate meeting. As with Lucy Yankowski, Emma’s silence didn’t necessarily mean anything.

It didn’t necessarily not mean anything, either.

3

Emma picked her way across the cold, hard sand beach at the far end of Bristol Island, which was connected to a mainland peninsula by a short, private bridge. It barely qualified as an island. She’d parked at a marina—the upscale Bristol Island Marina, quiet on a Saturday morning in late November—and found the trail her caller had mentioned. She’d followed it through a tangle of mostly stunted, mostly bare-branched trees and brush, a few rust-colored leaves hanging from the occasional gray branch. The trail ended at a crescent-shaped beach dotted with a half-dozen run-down cottages that looked as if they were one good nor’easter from being swept into the harbor.

The only white cottage was the second one, tucked between a gray-shingled cottage that had all but collapsed into the sand and a tiny brown cottage, the only one with its windows boarded up. Water, sand, trees and brush had encroached on what yards the cottages had once had. They looked to be about a hundred years old, probably a former summer colony of families who had once enjoyed sea breezes and clam-digs on this refuge in the shadows of the city.

Emma didn’t see any footprints in the mix of sand and sea grass between her and the white cottage. Her caller could have come by a different route, perhaps an offshoot of the trail she had taken. It was low tide. A few scrappy-looking seagulls were investigating the offerings in the lapping waves. The biggest of the lot flew onto a rickety pier and watched her as if it knew something she didn’t.

She was aware of the city just across the water, but it seemed as if it should be farther away. In early July, she had taken the inter-island shuttle and explored a few of the islands in the outer harbor. She’d enjoyed a solo picnic with a panoramic view of the Boston skyline. She’d been glad to be back in New England and a member of Matt Yankowski’s team, and she’d just played a vital role in the arrest of Viktor Bulgov, Colin’s notorious arms trafficker and a Picasso enthusiast. She hadn’t known Colin then. She’d only surmised that a deep-cover agent had been tracking Bulgov, gathering evidence on him and his network and their illegal activities.

She stepped over broken beer bottles next to a fire circle piled with charred logs and came to the white cottage, its sagging porch no more than six inches off the sand. Its front door was ajar, but sand that had blown onto the worn floorboards of the porch appeared to be undisturbed.

“Rachel Bristol? It’s Emma Sharpe.”

A seagull cried behind her, and a breeze stirred in the snarl of bare brush between the white cottage and the ones on either side of it. As she stepped onto the porch, she noticed a red smear and splatters, wet, oozing into the peeling gray paint and cracks of the floorboards to the left of the front door.

Blood.

And pale, slender fingers—a woman’s hand, limp and unmoving, on the edge of the porch.

Emma pulled back her jacket and placed a hand on the butt of her nine-millimeter. As she drew her weapon and moved to her left, she saw a woman sprawled on her back in the grass and sand next to the cottage, her left hand flopped onto the porch floor.

Emma responded instantly, leaping off the side of the porch, squatting next to the woman. There was more blood. A lot of it, seeping into the sand, soaking the woman’s sweater. Emma checked for a pulse but already knew there was nothing anyone could do. The woman was dead.

Rachel Bristol? Or someone else? Someone her caller had wanted Emma to find?

The dead woman had short, spiked, white-blond hair and wore black toothpick jeans, an unzipped black wool jacket and a light blue sweater, the chest area now red with blood. Her black flats and thin black socks were muddy, unsuited to the conditions on the island.

Emma took a closer look at the wound.

Not a knife wound. Not a wound from an unfortunate fall onto a sharp object. It was, without a doubt, a gunshot wound.

Emma quickly stepped behind a clump of scrawny gray birches, but an active shooter who wanted to target her could have done so by now. She dug out her cell phone and dialed 911, identifying herself as an FBI agent. She related the situation as succinctly as possible. The dispatcher offered to stay on the line with her. She declined.