“It would have to contain the last of your stolen art for me to come to your farm.”
“Emma, Emma.”
“We’re still missing the two Dutch landscapes you stole in Amsterdam.” She kept her tone even, without any hint of hostility, sarcasm or cajoling. “I would fly to England to get those works back to their rightful owner.”
“I wish I could help.”
“That’s a start. We’re also missing the unsigned landscape you stole in Declan’s Cross, but I doubt you’ll ever return it since it’s a fair guess it’s an early work by Aoife O’Byrne. You’re familiar with Declan’s Cross, Oliver. It’s the tiny village on the south Irish coast where you launched your stint as an art thief.”
“I’m familiar with Declan’s Cross. It’s quite a charming hamlet.”
“Aoife’s missing landscape depicts the three crosses on the headland in Declan’s Cross where you hid after stealing from her uncle. The painting has personal value for you, but you still should return it.”
Oliver peered at her. “You look happy but preoccupied, Emma. I can understand you have much on your mind. When you do come to England again, you must bring Special Agent Donovan with you. Are you two inviting me to your wedding?”
Emma smiled. “No.”
“Pity. Your Colin isn’t hovering in the background, is he?”
“No, he isn’t. Anything else, Oliver?”
“I’m reading a new book on the early Irish saints. Would you like me to send it to you when I finish? Did you study Saint Patrick, Saint Declan and the like when you were a nun? You must have studied Saint Brigid since that was your name as a novice.”
Her grandfather must have told him. She knew she hadn’t. “Good night, Oliver.”
“The farm is stunning in the spring, which, happily, comes to the Cotswolds earlier than it does in your part of the world. You and Colin can walk in the countryside to your hearts’ content. We can all have English tea and scones together.”
“Only if there’s clotted cream to go with them.”
“Absolutely. It will be homemade, whipped from cream from our own dairy cows. We’ll have our gooseberry jam, made with wild berries picked on the farm, although not by me. Monotonous, repetitive tasks like berry-picking tend to make my mind go to other things.”
“Like plotting your next art heist?”
“By all means, cling to your theory that I’m your art thief. I won’t try to dissuade you.” He waggled a finger at her. “Your nose is red, too, Emma.” He sat back with a mysterious smile. “As cold as it is there, you’ll enjoy my present all the more.”
She didn’t want any presents from Oliver York, but she wasn’t arguing with him.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening,” he said. “Shall I give Father Bracken your best?”
Emma wasn’t enthusiastic about Oliver meeting the Bracken brothers for a drink, much less inviting Finian to the Cotswolds, but there was nothing she could do about it. “Please do,” she said.
Oliver clicked off and the screen went blank.
He wouldn’t send valuable stolen art from England to Maine, and he wouldn’t send it to her.
Would he?
Emma opened a file on her laptop and brought up photographs of art stolen over the past decade by the same unidentified thief—from homes, businesses and museums in Ireland, Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Venice, Prague, Oslo, San Francisco and Dallas. After each heist, the thief sent Wendell Sharpe a small, polished stone inscribed with a Celtic cross. Emma had worked on the case even before she became an FBI agent.
There was no proof Oliver York was their thief, but there also was no doubt.
Emma wasn’t unsympathetic to the torment he’d endured as a young boy and undoubtedly still carried with him, but she was careful not to get sucked into it as rationalization for his stealing and taunting—for his crimes. After she and her grandfather had figured out Oliver was their thief in November, the stolen artwork started turning up, each piece back in the hands of its rightful owner, with nothing to trace its theft or its return to Oliver York.
What, Emma wondered, was returning the art costing Oliver?
What would he do now to relieve the sense of helplessness and the terrible pain he had suffered as a child?
She let her gaze linger on the photos of the two missing Dutch landscapes, small oil paintings done by lesser-known seventeenth-century artists. They were valuable but not as valuable as a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh would have been. Oliver tended to stay away from art that would have attracted worldwide headlines. The Amsterdam museum that owned the landscapes had left the spaces empty where they had hung for decades.
Oliver needed to return them. Then Emma could think about his pain.
She shut her laptop and went into her tiny kitchen. She didn’t want to go out again, but she had little in her refrigerator. She was digging out vegetables and hummus when her phone dinged.
Oliver again.
I forgot to tell you. Our agent spoke to a woman in the park.
They knew each other?
I’m certain. They looked like they were arguing.
Did you speak with her?
No. Is she FBI?
Emma resisted getting him back on the phone.
Go enjoy a whiskey with Fr. Bracken and forget about FBI agents.
Ah, Emma. I never forget about you lot.
She responded with a smile icon and resumed collecting her dinner. As she took her plate into the living room, her gaze settled on a photo of her and Colin together in Ireland last fall. Framing it had been her idea. He didn’t think of such things. She set her plate on the coffee table and eased onto the couch as she touched a finger to his chin, as if he were with her. He was solid and confident, a man who relied on his instincts and his training. On Monday, he had packed his duffel bag and headed to the airport, saying he had meetings in Washington and would be in touch.
All very sudden and mysterious.
Colin wasn’t a natural fit for HIT, but he’d managed to make a place for himself once Yank had shoehorned him onto his team in October. Colin contributed to complex investigations with the eye of a seasoned undercover agent and the gut instincts of someone who had faced sustained, real danger in the field.
Emma hadn’t thought his meetings involved HIT until that morning, when Yank had left for Washington with no explanation beyond “meetings.” It was possible his trip had nothing to do with Colin’s trip, but what were the odds?
Given Colin’s absence, she supposed she didn’t need to spend two nights on her own at the convent. She could stay here in Boston and contemplate her life. But her current life wasn’t the reason she had arranged for her mini retreat with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart.
It was her past that was driving her to return, briefly, to the sisters.
Ever since the first of the year, she kept seeing herself walking through the convent gates as a teenager, thinking she would never have another home. It was as if she were looking at a stranger, someone outside herself—a different person altogether from the woman she was now, or even the child she had been before the thought of becoming “Sister Brigid” had gripped her.
Emma