Carla Neggers by Declan's Cross Read Free Book Online

besides becoming Cap’n Colin and taking tourists on puffin tours.”
    “We’d see seals and bald eagles, too, and I could do whale watches.”
    She’d meant options within the FBI, but he knew that. Getting him to talk to her about his career crisis—his personal crisis—since his undercover mission had led murderous thugs to Rock Point in October wasn’t easy. He was a deep, complex man, but that didn’t mean he liked to talk.
    “We’ll continue this conversation another time,” she said as they headed down the hall.
    Emma paused at a reading room at the top of the curving stairs. Its double doors were open, inviting passersby in among the comfortable-looking sofas and chairs. A round table in the middle of a thick, colorful Persian carpet displayed books on Irish history, geography, art and food. The basic lines and layout of the room hadn’t changed in the extensive renovations that had transformed the musty, run-down mansion into a quirky, upscale boutique hotel.
    “Is this where the stolen art was located?” Colin asked.
    “The paintings were here.”
    Four years ago, Paddy Murphy, the part-time caretaker, had let her peek into what had then been a library. Emma had observed musty furnishings, a threadbare rug and oppressive wallpaper. John O’Byrne had died the previous year. It had been late summer, a beautiful day on the south Irish coast. She’d already decided to have a go at Quantico. She hadn’t known if she’d make it through the training and become an FBI agent, but she’d known she’d had to try. That trying was part of whatever was next for her.
    “Thinking again, Emma?” he asked.
    She smiled. “Always.”
    He winked, slipped an arm around her. “Not always.”
    They descended the stairs and headed into the bar lounge, a low fire in its marble fireplace, and outside through French doors to a tiled terrace. Colorful pots of ivy and scarlet and lavender cyclamen glistened in the morning sun. A half-dozen tables overlooked the gardens, pebbled paths meandering among rosebushes, hydrangeas, rhododendrons and raised flower and herb beds, inviting even now, in early November.
    Emma sighed, admiring the gardens. “It’s a perfect spot for a romantic getaway.”
    “Can’t argue with that.”
    They took a walkway past beds of deep-colored pansies, rows of trimmed-back hedges and pale pink cyclamen that had taken over a corner by the ornate iron gate.
    Colin opened the gate. “Did your thief go in and out this way?”
    “It’s a good guess, but that’s all it is,” Emma said. “We don’t know. It was a dark, rainy night. He could have escaped several different ways without being seen.”
    “You’re sure it’s a he?”
    “Another good guess but we don’t know.”
    “‘We’ meaning the Sharpes or the FBI?”
    “Both.”
    They went out the gate, shutting it behind them, and turned left onto a narrow street, following Kitty’s directions.
    “My question bugged you,” Colin said calmly.
    “I expected it,” Emma said. “I’d have asked it myself in your place.”
    “It still bugged you.”
    They passed a gray stone house with dark green shutters and white lace curtains in tall, sparkling windows. Most of the buildings in the village were painted in a range of primary colors, with colorful awnings, flower boxes and flowerpots, the occasional bench out front. Simple, lovely—Emma wished she could dismiss her nagging doubts about Julianne’s choice of Declan’s Cross and just enjoy the day.
    They came to the promised red-painted bookshop on the north end of the village and turned right, as Kitty had instructed, onto a narrow lane that took them uphill. Emma felt herself relax as she breathed in the cool, salt-tinged air. The lane leveled off, curving along dramatic cliffs that dropped straight down to the sea, then winding through a patchwork of rolling fields dotted with grazing sheep.
    She remembered how much she’d loved the atmosphere of Declan’s Cross on her one