Declan's Cross

An escape to an idyllic Irish seaside village is about to turn deadly in this riveting new novel by master of romantic suspense Carla Neggers

For marine biologist Julianne Maroney, two weeks in tiny Declan’s Cross on the south Irish coast is a chance to heal her broken heart. She doesn’t expect to attract the attention of FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan—especially since a Donovan is the reason for her broken heart.

Emma and Colin are in Ireland for their own personal retreat. Colin knows he’s a reminder of everything Julianne wants to escape, but something about her trip raises his suspicion. Emma, an art crimes expert, is also on edge. Of all the Irish villages Julianne could choose…why Declan’s Cross?

Ten years ago, a thief slipped into a mansion in Declan’s Cross. Emma’s grandfather, a renowned art detective, investigated, but the art stolen that night has never been recovered and the elusive thief never caught. From the moment Julianne sets foot on Irish soil, everything goes wrong. The well-connected American diver who invited her to Ireland has disappeared. And now Emma and Colin are in Declan’s Cross asking questions.

As a dark conspiracy unfolds amid the breathtaking scenery of Declan’s Cross, the race is on to stop a ruthless killer…and the stakes have never been more personal for Emma and Colin.

Declan’s Cross

Carla Neggers

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Oona, daughter of my daughter. Welcome, baby girl!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Author's Note

Excerpt

Prologue

A COLD, GUSTY wind swept up from the Celtic Sea, whistling and shrieking in the rocks and ruins as Lindsey Hargreaves jumped over a puddle in the muddy, rutted lane. She didn’t care about the weather. She was happy to be out of her car. She would never get used to Irish roads, and this one was worse than most—if one could call it a road. It curved up from the tiny village of Declan’s Cross, hugging sea cliffs, twisting through fields of grazing sheep and finally dead-ending at a stone wall tucked between two small hills at the tip of what locals called Shepherd Head.

Her rented Mini barely fit into the small hollow, but she was confident it wouldn’t be spotted from the water or farther down the lane.

That was good. She didn’t want anyone to see her.

She noticed a holly tree poking up from the November-browned hedges, rushes and ferns that grew along the stone wall. Its waxen, evergreen leaves glistened with raindrops from an earlier shower.

Wasn’t holly supposed to bring good luck?

“I hope so,” she whispered.

A muddy trail led up through wind-stunted trees to a rock ledge with a precipitous drop to the cobble-and-boulder coastline. Lindsey had never been up there and couldn’t see the ledge from the lane, but she had seen it from the water.

And the crosses.

She’d seen them, too. Three stone Celtic crosses rising from golden-copper grass on the small hill at the tip of the headland. She looked up at them now, standing tall against the gray clouds of the damp, gloomy November afternoon. They marked old graves next to the ruin of a small church on the other side of the stone wall. She’d read there’d been a church dedicated to Saint Declan on this spot for more than a thousand years.

Whose graves, Lindsey wondered, were up there on the hill? She tried to imagine the rough, simple life the last residents of this place must have endured. Had they died in the horrible mid-nineteenth century Irish famine? Had they joined the mass emigration to other parts of the world? America, Canada, Australia?

What would she have done in their position?

Survived, she thought.

Her natural enthusiasm and optimism, coupled with her instinct for survival, would see her through what she had to do out here.

She tightened her sweater around her. She hadn’t brought a jacket or even a raincoat. She wore too-tight jeans, the same dark gray as her sweater, and black boots more suited to the Dublin streets where she’d spent the past two days than out here on the south Irish coast. An Hermès scarf with its cheerful mix of reds, blues and purples added a splash of color to her outfit. It was a birthday gift from her father, his first birthday gift to her in years. She’d deliberately worn it to breakfast with him in Dublin that morning.

Handsome, wealthy, lonely David Hargreaves. Smiling awkwardly as he’d complimented her on the scarf, forgetting he’d bought it for her himself just a few months ago.

Lindsey hadn’t reminded him. She couldn’t let the gift or his offer to have her move into the guesthouse of his home on Boston’s North Shore fool her. He would always be the reluctant adoptive father who kept her at a safe, arm’s-length distance.

She’d picked him up at the Dublin airport on Saturday and had spent yesterday with him, taking him to her favorite Dublin sights. The Book of Kells and the Long Room at Trinity College Library, Dublin Castle, Temple Bar, Grafton Street. They’d strolled through quiet St. Stephen’s Green and Georgian Dublin with its famous painted doors, then had dinner at a five-star restaurant, talking about their mutual love for the world’s oceans.

“I’m enjoying this father-daughter time together,” he’d told her.

Lindsey believed him, but she had no illusions. He preferred solitude. He always had, even during his eight-year marriage to her mother.

Her sweet, artistic, vulnerable mother who had died drunk and broke, still desperate for his attention and approval.

They’d married when Lindsey was five and divorced when she was thirteen. Her mother had kept the Hargreaves name and died when Lindsey was eighteen. She was twenty-eight now. Time to put past hurts behind her.

She just had to do it her way.

Her father had caught her off-guard that morning at breakfast when he’d told her he was extending his stay in Ireland. His business in London, his reason for this overseas trip, could wait.

He’d be in Ardmore tonight. Declan’s Cross tomorrow.

“I’ve booked a couple of nights at a two-bedroom cottage on the grounds of a boutique hotel in Declan’s Cross,” he’d told her. “I plan to arrive late tomorrow afternoon. You’re more than welcome to stay with me.”

Lindsey had felt cornered.

She’d told him so many lies.

He knows, she’d thought, staring at her plain yogurt and berries—which she’d ordered because it was what he’d ordered.

Finally she’d mumbled, “I know the hotel you mean. It’s only been open a year. You’ll love it. I’d join you, but I’m staying with a friend. We’re sharing a cottage within walking distance of the village.”

“What friend is this?”

“She’s a marine biologist from Maine.”

Lindsey had welcomed the change in subject and, as she’d left breakfast, told her father she looked forward to seeing him in Declan’s Cross.

“Enjoy Ardmore,” she’d said, keeping any bitterness out of her tone.

His pale blue eyes had taken on a warmth and a distance that together she found disconcerting. “You understand why I’m going, don’t you?”

“I do, Dad, yes.”

“Your mother loved Ardmore.” He’d looked away, then added, “Good memories.”

Lindsey had pretended she hadn’t heard him. Good memories? When they’d gotten back from Ireland, he and her mother had separated.

But her mother had loved the south Irish coast. “It’s magical, Lindsey. Absolutely magical.”

Lindsey didn’t want to see her father in Declan’s Cross. She couldn’t bear having him confront her about her lies.

So many lies.

She blinked back tears. She needed to concentrate. If she tripped and were incapacitated, she’d fast be in danger of hypothermia in the cold, wet conditions. No one would come looking for her. No one even knew she was in Declan’s Cross, never mind out here. She’d made sure.

She was on her own.

“I can pull this off,” she said aloud.

The wind shrieked again, whipping her scarf into her face.

She thought she heard someone above her on the trail, but it had to be the wind, the ocean, maybe a bird. No one else was out here—except maybe the ghosts of the Irish dead.

She suppressed a shudder and stepped over another puddle in the muddy lane.

Lies, lies and more lies.

It was her way.

1

EMMA SHARPE PAUSED atop a craggy knoll and looked out at the ripples of barren hills, not a house, a road, a car or another person in sight. She didn’t know what had become of her hiking partner. Maybe he had stepped up to his midcalves in mud and muck, too, but she doubted it. It wasn’t that Colin Donovan wasn’t capable of taking a misstep. It was that she’d have heard him cursing if he had.

A fat, woolly sheep stared up at her from the boggy grass as if to say, “You might be an FBI agent back in Boston, but out here in the Irish hills, you’re just another hiker with wet feet.”

“This is true,” Emma said, setting her backpack on the expanse of rough gray rock. “However, I’m prepared. I have dry socks.”

She unzipped her pack and dug out a pair of fresh wool socks. The sheep bleated and meandered off, disappearing behind another knoll, one of a series on the windswept ridge on the Beara Peninsula, one of the fingers of land that jutted into the North Atlantic off the southwest coast of Ireland. It had been centuries since these hills were forested. She could see peeks of Kenmare Bay in the distance, its calm waters blue-gray in the midafternoon November light. Across the bay, shrouded in mist but still distinct, were the jagged ridges of the Macgillicuddy Reeks.

Emma kicked off her shoes, sat on the bare rock ledge and pulled off her wet socks. She glanced down at the narrow valley directly below her, a small lake shimmering in the fading sunlight. She and Colin were five hours into their six-hour hike. With the short November days, they would get back to their car just before dark.

As she put on her dry socks, he came around the knoll where her sheep had disappeared. A light breeze caught the ends of his dark hair, and he had his backpack hooked on one arm as he jumped over the wet spot that had fooled her.

He climbed up onto her knoll and dropped his pack next to hers. “I like having you walk point,” he said with a grin.

“No fair. You saw my footprint in the mud.”

“I’ll never tell.”

Emma leaned back against her outstretched arms. She had on a wool hat, her fair hair knotted at the nape of her neck. She had pulled her gloves on and off over the course of the day. She didn’t know if Colin had even packed a hat and gloves. He was, she thought, the sexiest man she had ever met. Small scars on his right cheek and by his left eye from fights he said he had won. She had no doubt. He was strongly built, rugged and utterly relentless.

A good man to have on your side in a fight.

She was fit and lean and could handle herself in a fight, and although she wasn’t tiny, he could easily carry her up a flight of stairs. In fact, he had, more than once.

They had set out early. For the past two weeks, they had explored the southwest Irish coast on foot and by car, by mutual agreement avoiding talk of arms traffickers, thieves, poison, attempted murder and alligators. Colin would wink at her and say he especially didn’t want to talk about alligators, not that he had seen one on his narrow escape from killers in South Florida. Thinking about them had been enough.

By unspoken agreement, he and Emma also avoided talk of their futures with the FBI—or even each other. His months of intense undercover work, in an environment where everyone was a potential enemy, had taken a toll, and he needed this time to be in the present, to be himself.

Emma’s needs were simpler. She just wanted to be with him.

It was her life that was complicated.

She sat up straight, noticing that Colin’s boots and cargo pants were splattered with mud but not wet like hers. She grinned at him. “You do know I’ve spent more time hiking the Irish hills than you have, don’t you?”

“Beneath that placid exterior beats the heart of a competitive federal agent.” He made no move to sit next to her. “Your mishap gives me an excuse to run a hot bath for you when we get back to the cottage.”

“Life could be worse. You’re not bored, are you?”

“I can go more than two weeks without anyone trying to kill me.”

As he stood next to her on her boulder, his smile almost reached his stone-gray eyes.

Almost.

He offered her a sip from his water bottle, but she shook her head. He took a long drink as he gazed out at the hills. Except for the occasional baa of the grazing, half-wild sheep, the silence was complete.

“What are you thinking about, Colin?”

“Guinness.”

“A cold pint and a warm pub. Sounds perfect.”

He leaned down and touched the curve of his hand to her cheek. “It’s been good being here with you.” He winked at her as he stood straight. “Mud and sheep dung and all.”

Emma sighed as she slipped back into her trail shoes and tied the laces. “No escaping sheep dung out here, is there? I wasn’t distracted when I stepped in the wet spot. I just misjudged. There’s a difference.”

“But you do have a lot on your mind,” Colin said.

She always did. Their jobs with the FBI attested to their different natures. He was an undercover agent. She specialized in art crimes. She was analytical, methodical, detail-oriented. He was direct, intuitive, quick and decisive—and independent to a fault. Six weeks ago, he had been assigned to her small team in Boston, if only because the senior agent in charge was determined to rein him in.

Good luck with that, Emma thought. She stood, lifted her backpack and slung it over her shoulders. “The rest of the way is all downhill.”

“Have you ever done this hike before?”

She shook her head. “First time.”

“It’s a good spot,” he said, tucking his water bottle in his pack.

“I’m glad we did this before I go home.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

It was Monday. She had a flight back to Boston on Friday. She’d be at her desk a week from today. Colin had more time before he had to decide what was next for him. Not a lot more time, but he could stay in Ireland for a while longer, without her.

She angled a look at him. “Anything on your mind, Colin?”

“I had an email from Andy in my in-box this morning. He sent it last night. I didn’t read it until just now, while I ate an energy bar and admired the view. Reading email is against our hiking rules, I know.”

“A sign it’s time to get back to work, maybe.” Emma gave him a moment but he didn’t take the bait and respond, and she let it go. “How are things in Rock Point?”

“Andy says Julianne Maroney is leaving for Ireland tonight.”

“Tonight? Isn’t that sudden?”

“She’s just accepted a marine biology internship in Cork that starts in January. She decided to come for a couple weeks now and get herself sorted out. It’s sudden, but that’s Julianne.”

“So, she’s staying in Cork?”

“A village east of Cork. Declan’s Cross.”

Declan’s Cross.

Emma went still as a dozen images came at her at once. A pretty seaside Irish village of brightly colored shops and residences. A romantic mansion with sweeping views of cliffs and sea. Haunting Celtic crosses on a grassy hilltop.

A tight-lipped old Irish sheep farmer.

Her grandfather, Wendell Sharpe, a renowned art detective, pacing in his Dublin office as he admitted he and Sharpe Fine Art Recovery were after a thief they couldn’t catch.

A thief, Emma thought, who had first struck in tiny Declan’s Cross on a lonely, rainy, dark November night ten years ago.

She’d only become involved in the case four years ago, in the months between her life as Sister Brigid at the coastal Maine convent of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart and her life as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She’d worked side by side with her grandfather in Dublin, learning everything he knew.

Not everything.

Wendell Sharpe never told anyone everything.

She was aware of Colin’s eyes narrowed on her. He wouldn’t know about the thief. There was no reason for him to know.

She pushed back her thoughts. “Why Declan’s Cross, Colin?”

“Emma...”

“Just tell me what you know. Please.”

“All right.” He was plainly suspicious now. “A woman who’s launching a marine science research facility in Declan’s Cross stopped in Rock Point last week. She and Julianne hit it off. Now Julianne’s meeting her there.”

“To help with this research facility?”

“Andy doesn’t have any details. He hasn’t talked to Julianne himself.

“Then who told him?”

“Her brother. Ryan. He’s in the Coast Guard, but he’s in Rock Point visiting for a few days. He found out from their grandmother. Julianne lives with her.”

Rock Point was a small, tight-knit southern Maine fishing village. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, but Julianne’s short-lived romance with Andy Donovan, third-born of the four Donovan brothers, apparently had come as a surprise, especially since she’d vowed never to get involved with a Donovan. Emma didn’t know either Andy or Julianne well. She’d only met Colin in September and was still figuring out who was who in his hometown.

“What’s this woman’s name?” she asked. “Do we know her?”

“Her name’s Lindsey Hargreaves. I don’t know her.”

Hargreaves. Emma searched her memory but shook her head. “I don’t, either. Did she come to Rock Point looking for Julianne?”

“I don’t have any details. I just know Julianne’s on her way to Ireland.”

“And you don’t like it.”

“Julianne’s as smart as they come, but she’s impulsive and she’s had a rough time lately. She’s never been that far from home. I doubt she’s been farther than Nova Scotia. Now all of a sudden she’s meeting some strange woman in a little Irish village.”

“Are you concerned she’s running away because of her breakup with Andy?”

“I know she is,” Colin said half under his breath. “This trip could be exactly what she needs, but I’d feel better if she wasn’t alone.”

“We could drive over to Declan’s Cross tomorrow,” Emma said.

He tilted his head back, eyed her again. “We could, but what’s going on? I noticed your look when I mentioned Declan’s Cross. Emma, is there a Sharpe connection to this village?”

She sighed. “We can talk on the hike back to the car.”

2

THEY DIDN’T TALK on the hike back to their car or the drive back to their borrowed cottage in the Kerry hills across Kenmare Bay. Colin drove. He’d adjusted quickly to driving on the left, but the high, thick hedges and narrow roads—each with its own quirks—kept him on alert.

He’d known he and Emma wouldn’t talk the moment he’d mentioned Declan’s Cross and she’d given him that tight look. He liked to joke that he could do deep-cover work because he himself wasn’t deep, but Emma was. She had layers of secrets. Sharpe secrets, Sister Brigid secrets, FBI secrets.

Emma secrets.

He didn’t have secrets. He just had stuff he couldn’t talk about.

And he had his demons. He’d come to Ireland because of them. His months of undercover work had taken a toll not just on him but on his family and friends—and on Emma, even in the short time they’d known each other. They’d met in September on his brief respite at home in Rock Point.

Then he went away again, and when he came back, he’d brought some of his bad guys with him.

The short version, he thought as he pulled into the gravel driveway of the little stone cottage he and Emma had shared for the past two weeks. He’d stayed here on his own for several days before she couldn’t stand it any longer—as she’d put it—and got on a plane in Boston, flew to Shannon, rented a car and found him.

Colin hadn’t asked her to turn around and go back to Boston without him.

Maybe he should have.

It was dark now, the wind shifting, turning blustery. He glanced at Emma, but she had already clicked off her seat belt and was slipping out of the car.

Definitely preoccupied.

He was in no rush. Let her take all the time she needed before she told him about the Sharpes and Declan’s Cross. Wendell Sharpe had lived and worked in Dublin for the past fifteen years. Whatever was on her mind likely involved him. Colin had drunk whiskey with old Wendell. Interesting fellow. Maybe not quite the analytical thinker his granddaughter was but definitely a man with secrets.

Colin got out of the car, not minding the spray of cold rain. He grabbed their packs from the back and headed up a pebbled path to the cottage. The front door was painted a glossy blue, a contrast to the gray stone exterior. Finian Bracken, the owner, an Irish priest serving a parish in Rock Point, had told Colin to stay as long as he wanted. They’d become friends over the past few months, maybe as much because of their differences as in spite of them.

Fin couldn’t bring himself to stay in the cottage. It was a reminder of his life before the priesthood, when he’d been a successful businessman, a husband and a father. He and his wife had renovated the tiny ruin of a place, adding a bathroom, kitchen, skylights, richly colored fabrics. It had been their refuge, he’d told Colin, a favorite spot to spend time with their two daughters.

Never in Fin’s worst nightmares had he imagined he would lose all three of them. Sally, little Kathleen and Mary. They’d drowned seven years ago in a freak sailing accident.

Fin had removed any personal mementoes, but Colin thought he could feel the presence of his friend’s lost wife and daughters and the happy times they’d had there.

He set the packs on the tile floor and pulled the door shut behind him. He liked being here. He liked having Emma here. The rest would sort itself out.

He watched her as she got on her knees and carefully, methodically, placed sods of turf in the stone fireplace. Colin liked the smell of burning peat, and a fire would warm up the single room and loft in minutes.

She rolled back onto her heels and stared at the fire as it took hold. Then she glanced up at him, the flames reflecting in her green eyes. “I hate to leave this place,” she said.

“Ah, yes.” He moved closer to her. “The cold, cruel world awaits.”

She stood, and he slipped an arm around her waist, kissed the top of her head. Even her hair smelled like mud, but he didn’t mind. She leaned into him. “I thought we’d have a few more nights together here. It’s the most romantic cottage ever, isn’t it? But we need to go to Declan’s Cross, Colin. At least I do.”

“There is a Sharpe connection to this village, then.”

She eased an arm around his middle, the lingering tentativeness of even two weeks ago gone now. “I’ve reserved a room at the O’Byrne House Hotel,” she said. “It’s on the water, right in the village of Declan’s Cross.”

“That was fast.”

“The joys of smartphones.”

And she’d had her plan fixed in her mind when they’d arrived back from their hike. “Have you ever been to Declan’s Cross?” he asked.

“Once, when I worked with my grandfather in Dublin. I was only there for the day. The O’Byrne House wasn’t a hotel then. It was a rambling, boarded-up private home. It opened as a hotel last fall. Apparently its spa is quite nice.”

“A spa,” Colin said, as if he were translating a foreign language.

“I bet it offers a couple’s massage.”

“Dream on, Emma.”

She grinned. “I think you’d enjoy a hot stone massage.”

“I’d rather have you heat up my stones, Special Agent Sharpe.”

“You’re hopeless.” She tightened her hold on him, her grin gone now. “Massages are good for demon fighting.”

He wasn’t going to be distracted by talk of his demons. He drew her against him. “What’s good for extracting Sharpe secrets?”

“There are secrets and there are confidences, and there are things I just can’t tell you.” She broke away from him and grabbed a black-iron poker, stirred the fire. “I wish I had a fireplace in my apartment in Boston.”

“Emma.”

She turned, and now the hot flames deepened the green of her eyes. “It was a great hike today, but I smell like dried mud, sweat and sheep dung.”

“Just mud,” he said.

“Such a gentleman. I’ve no regrets. I love hiking the Irish hills.”

Still trying to change the subject, or at least delay telling him what was going on. He wasn’t easily put off. “Roaming the Irish hills is different from figuring out what drives people to steal art. Is Declan’s Cross the scene of an art heist the Sharpes investigated?”

Emma sank onto a bright blue-and-white rug in front of the fireplace, kicked off her shoes and tucked her knees under her chin as she stared at the flames. “It’s the scene of an art heist we’re still investigating.”

Colin remained on his feet. He was restless, but he knew he had to be patient. An unsolved art theft was right up Emma’s alley as both a Sharpe and an FBI agent. “What was stolen?” he asked.

“Three Irish landscape paintings and an unusual Celtic cross.” She still didn’t look up from the fire. “They were stolen from the O’Byrne House ten years ago, on a dark November night much like tonight.”

“Your grandfather investigated?”

“Not at first. Not until after another theft in Amsterdam six months later.”

“The work of the same thief?”

“We believe so, yes. He’s struck at least eight more times since then. London, Paris, Oslo, Venice, San Francisco, Dallas, Brussels and Prague.”

“A different city each time?”

“Yes.”

“Patterns?”

She hesitated, then said, “Some.”

She didn’t go on. Colin sat next to her, feeling the warmth of the slow-burning fire, her intensity. “Declan’s Cross was his first hit?”

“We believe so, yes. It’s also the smallest location, and the only one in Ireland.”

“Any viable leads?”

“Almost none.”

“And of all the cute Irish villages, Julianne picks this one. Okay. I get it. You want to make sure her choice of Declan’s Cross doesn’t have anything to do with your thief.”

“I have no reason to suspect it does. We can scoot over there tomorrow, welcome Julianne to Ireland, spend the night in a romantic Irish hotel and then get out of the way and let her enjoy her stay.”

“Without a Donovan breathing down her neck,” Colin added.

“If she’s making this trip in part to get over Andy...then, yes, she deserves to be Donovan-free.”

Colin stretched out his legs. “All right. Let’s check out Declan’s Cross and see what Julianne’s up to. If it’s just whales and dolphins, you’re on for that couple’s massage.”

“You jest now, but wait until you’ve had one.”

“Jest.” He smiled at her. “I don’t know if I’ve ever used jest in a sentence.”

“Making fun of me, are you?”

She didn’t look at all worried. “Never.” He edged closer to her. “What were you like four years ago when you were working with old Wendell in Dublin?”

“Not as good with a gun for one thing.”

“Quantico changed you.”

“I learned new things there, most certainly. Did it change you?”

He shrugged. “Not that much.”

“You were in law enforcement before you entered the academy. I wasn’t. My grandfather can’t break the law, but he doesn’t have to follow the same rules we do.”

“In other words, he doesn’t care about prosecuting this thief. He just cares about catching him.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“You’re a complex woman of many interests. I’m a simple man of limited interests. Whiskey, sex and—” Colin grinned at her. “I can get by on whiskey and sex for some time.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Good.” He lowered his mouth to hers. “No more questions, Emma. No more thinking. Not tonight.”