LITMIR.BIZ

       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.

      She disconnected and called Colin. “The woman who wanted to meet me. She’s dead, Colin.”

      “Where are you?”

      “I told you. Bristol Island.” But she realized what he meant. “I took cover. I’m safe. I’ve never seen this woman before. I’m sure I’d remember. If it’s the same woman who called me, her name is Rachel Bristol. At least that’s what she said her name was.”

      “We’ll figure that out later. You’re alone out there. No one else is in danger. Right now, your only job is to stay safe. That’s it, Emma. Nothing else.”

      That would be the case for anyone in her situation. She knew that. “I’m in a good spot.”

      “I’m on my way,” Colin said. “I’ll stay on the phone with you until the police get there.”

      She heard the gulls, their cries sharper, louder, as if they sensed the tragedy that had unfolded up by the white cottage. She leaned forward, without exposing herself as a target, and peered down at the dead woman, seeing now that her right arm was flopped at her side with the palm up.

      Emma edged a bit closer, noticing something in the woman’s palm.

      A small, black stone, polished smooth.

      There was some kind of etching that she couldn’t make out—but she didn’t need to. The stone would be inscribed with a simple Celtic cross and a sketch of Saint Declan, an early medieval Irish saint.

      The cross was the signature of an international art thief who had first surfaced ten years ago in the tiny village of Declan’s Cross on the south Irish coast.

      Her thief, as Yank had put it.

      Eight times over the past decade, the thief had laid claim to a recent art heist by sending a small cross-inscribed stone to Wendell Sharpe, Emma’s grandfather. Then last week, that pattern changed. Out of the blue—unrelated to any recent art theft—she and her grandfather had both received cross-inscribed stones in Ireland. So had her brother in Maine, and Matt Yankowski, her boss, in Boston.

      “Emma?”

      The sound of Colin’s deep, intense voice brought her

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