Heron's Cove

And perfect.

She stood at his oak dresser and ran her fingertips over the stack of books, sports watch and a few coins that Colin had left. She caught her reflection in the mirror and stared at herself, as if somehow it would help her see answers that so far had eluded her. She had moved to Boston in March to join a small, specialized team. Her area of expertise was art crimes and their intersection with other major crimes. In early June, she had discovered that Vladimir Bulgov, a wealthy Russian citizen and the kingpin of a transnational network of illegal arms traffickers, had a passion—a perfectly legal passion—for Picasso and would be in Los Angeles for an auction.

At the time, Emma had suspected a deep-cover operative was chasing Bulgov but had no idea who it was. When she met Colin in Maine in September, she thought he was a lobsterman.

Well, for a minute, anyway.

She had learned that his friend and former contact agent was Matt Yankowski, the same senior agent who had encouraged her to join the FBI as a young novice and then handpicked her for his new Boston-based team.

Colin had done the hard, dangerous, often solitary work to investigate and build the case against Vladimir Bulgov. The Los Angeles auction was a way to lure Bulgov onto U.S. soil and arrest him.

Emma had no illusions that Matt Yankowski—Yank—had recruited her solely because of her expertise in art and art crimes. She was also a Sharpe. Her grandfather was Wendell Sharpe, a renowned art detective who had started Sharpe Fine Art Recovery out of his home in Heron’s Cove. He had six decades of experience working with the FBI, Interpol, Scotland Yard and countless other law enforcement agencies, as well as embassies, insurance companies and individuals—celebrities, princes, heiresses, CEOs, new money, old money. Fifteen years ago, he had opened an office in his native Dublin and had worked there ever since. Now in his early eighties, he was semi-retired and Emma’s older brother, Lucas, was running the family business.

Yank had known from the moment he met her at the Sisters of the Joyful Heart convent and decided he wanted her in the FBI that as a Sharpe, she had her own sources, her own contacts.

Emma noticed her cheeks were pink from the wind and cold. As Finian Bracken had wished her a simple good-night, continuing on his way to St. Patrick’s rectory, she had felt his deep concern for his friend. She understood. She was worried about Colin, too.

She turned from the mirror and sat on the edge of the bed, tugged off her boots, her wool socks. She had come up to Rock Point several times during Colin’s absence but never stayed overnight at his house. She had always gone back to her apartment in Boston or the Sharpe house in Heron’s Cove.

She flopped back onto the soft duvet and gazed up at the ceiling, knowing it wasn’t just the whiskey that was keeping her in Rock Point. It was being here, in Colin’s house. In his bed.

“Colin, Colin. Where are you?”

Her whisper sounded hollow, even bewildered. She sat up straight, shivered in the chilly room. The sheets would be cold. And no Colin there to help warm them.

Her cell phone rang and she realized she still had on her raincoat and dug her phone out of the outer pocket.

A private number.

She answered without giving her name. “Hello, who is this?”

“Hello, Emma Sharpe. It’s good to hear your voice.”

Her breath caught in her throat at the Russian-accented voice of the man on the other end. He would never identify himself over the phone, and she would never ask, or guess, or say who she thought—knew—he was.

“And yours,” she said.

A half beat’s pause. “Your man is in danger.”

Colin.

Emma stood up from the bed, the floor cold on her bare feet. “Do you know where he is?”

“Yes.”

He gave her an address in Fort Lauderdale, and disconnected before she could thank him or ask any questions.

Another ghost, she thought, and dialed Matt Yankowski.

2

THE TWO RUSSIANS wanted to kill him now. Pete Horner, the American, wanted to wait. Then kill him if he didn’t produce the weapons they wanted. In their shoes, Colin Donovan would have sided with the Russians. Time to cut their losses. Too many risks doing business with a turncoat FBI agent.

They were out by the pool behind the pale yellow stucco house that Horner had rented on a finger of the intricate web of canals that had given Fort Lauderdale its nickname as the Venice of America. It was a hot, humid night, even for South Florida in late October.

A cabin cruiser was tied to a private dock in the dark, quiet Intracoastal water. Colin had the feeling the boat was in his immediate future. He was already sore from a few warning blows back at the marina where he had tried to persuade his new friends to let him be the one to take them to the weapons they wanted, but they weren’t doing this his way. They were doing it their way.

Horner and the two Russians were armed. Colin wasn’t.

“Watch this guy,” Yuri, the older of the two Russians, said. He had short, thinning gray hair and a scar under his left eye, his English excellent but heavily accented. “He’s like cat. He has nine lives. Maybe more. First he’s alive, then he’s dead. Now he’s alive again.”

The younger Russian, Boris, who was especially eager to kill Colin now, stood at the edge of the pool, the water turquoise in the light from the house. Boris was good-looking, with wavy brown hair, pale brown eyes and no visible scars. Colin didn’t know their last names and doubted their first names were Yuri and Boris. The American, however, really was Pete Horner, a private pilot in his mid-forties who had flown one of Vladimir Bulgov’s arms-smuggling cargo planes.

A good thing for Colin, Horner was the leader of the armed trio and still held out hope that their FBI agent could help them. “We give him this one chance to deliver,” Horner said. “If he does, he gets to live. That’s the deal.”

That clearly wasn’t the deal but Colin wasn’t offended at being lied to by a sandy-haired, blue-eyed, amoral thug who wanted to procure illegal weapons and then sell them to anyone who would give him his price—drug cartels, warlords, guerrilla groups, terrorist cells, paramilitary organizations, mass murderers. Horner didn’t care provided he got paid, and he would get paid more selling weapons—picking up the pieces of Vladimir Bulgov’s network—than he ever had flying planes.

The house behind them was an expensive furnished rental walled off from its upscale neighborhood of currently absent snowbirds. Horner lived above his means, and the lure of easy money was obviously too much for him to resist.

“I’ll take you to the arms,” Colin said. “I stashed them myself.”

“When?” Horner asked.

“I told you. Two days after Bulgov’s arrest in June. My buyer got cold feet and bolted. I had to disappear for a while and let the dust settle.”

Yuri narrowed his gaze on Colin. “Does FBI think you are dead?”

Colin shook his head. “I couldn’t fake my death with them. I’m an undercover agent. Turning up dead would have drawn too much attention to me. You boys might keep that in mind. The FBI thinks I’m on their side. If you kill me, they won’t rest until they catch you.”

Boris smirked. “Or FBI thanks us for killing a traitor.”

“The weapons he promises are a fiction,” Yuri said.

“They’re not a fiction,” Horner said. “He bought them with FBI money for a fake buyer but he was running his own game. He had his own buyer waiting in the wings. A real buyer.”

“I like how you talk about me as if I’m not standing here,” Colin said. “We’ve been through this. I put the weapons in a safe place and told the FBI that Bulgov had them. Then I let everyone in Bulgov’s world think I was dead and bided my time until I could find another buyer. That would be you three budding arms merchants.”

The younger Russian looked disdainful. “He double-crossed the FBI.”

Honor among thugs, Colin thought. “I don’t want a career doing this,” he said. “I want to unload my stash and disappear. I’ll take you to enough weapons to prove I’m legitimate. Then we do business. My price is a third of what your buyer is willing to pay. You’ll make a tidy profit. It’s a risk worth taking.”

Horner gave him a cool look. “I didn’t say we had a buyer.”

Colin didn’t argue but he knew they had a buyer.

Yuri jumped into the aft deck of the boat. “I still say we kill him now. We can find other weapons.”

“We don’t have time,” Horner said.