Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (144 page)

ENJOY A SNEEK PEEK AT
KEEPER’S REACH,
THE EXCITING NEW NOVEL IN THE SHARPE & DONOVAN SERIES FROM
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR CARLA NEGGERS

When she reached her tiny apartment, Emma Sharpe heaped her coat, hat and gloves on a chair and kicked off her boots. She sat on her couch in the living room and dialed up Oliver York on her laptop on her coffee table.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said.

Oliver peered at her from across the Atlantic. A thick, dark blond curl flopped onto his forehead as he leaned closer to his screen. “What happened to your hair, Emma?”

“Hat head.” She had no intention of telling him about trying on wedding dresses.

“It’s cold in Boston?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

“My London flat.”

It was a room she didn’t recognize from her one visit last November to his sprawling Mayfair apartment overlooking St. James’s Park. Colin and Yank had accompanied her. Oliver had met them in the library, where his parents had been murdered almost thirty years ago. Now he sat in a tall-backed red-leather chair in front of a draped window and a painting of porpoises in Ardmore Bay on the south Irish coast. Emma knew the painting, an early work by well-known Irish artist Aoife O’Byrne.

“A video chat is more intimate than a phone call, at least. How are you, Emma? It is all right if I call you Emma, isn’t it? It’s more informal than Special Agent Sharpe, but this is an official chat, I assume?”

“I’m an FBI agent. You’re a thief. Yes, it’s an official chat. But Emma is fine.”

He pointed at her. “You’re testier than when I saw you here in November.”

That was when she had figured out that Oliver Fairbairn, a tweedy British mythologist caught in the middle of a murder investigation in Boston, was also Oliver York, a cheeky, wealthy British aristocrat with a tragic past. That Oliver Fairbairn and Oliver York were one and the same wasn’t widely known. He preferred to keep the two identities separate, and Emma had no reason to announce it to the world. In fact, the opposite.

“Tell me about this FBI agent you believe is following you.”

He gave an audible sigh. “Testy. Definitely testy.”

She tried to resist a smile.

“I have reliable radar for FBI agents, and it went off like crazy when I spotted this man. He was in the park outside my apartment. I had just returned from an art gallery. I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed me.”

“Was this today?”

“Around noon, yes.”

“Is the gallery the one holding the show for Aoife O’Byrne?”

“Mmm.”

The Irish O’Byrne family was one of Oliver’s victims—his first, ten years ago. He had made off with two Jack Butler Yeats landscape paintings of western Ireland, a fifteenth-century silver wall cross depicting Saint Declan and an unsigned landscape of a local scene, probably by a young Aoife O’Byrne herself. Her Yeats phase, Oliver called it. The porpoises had come after that, as well as a few crosses of her own, but she was known now for her moody seascapes.

At least Oliver had bought the porpoise painting instead of stealing it.

“What’s the name of this agent you ran into in the park?” Emma asked.

Oliver looked surprised. “I only saw him. I didn’t speak with him.”

“How do you know he’s an FBI agent if you didn’t speak with him?”

“The suit. The look. He’s one of yours. I’ve no doubt.”

“Did you take his picture?”

He sniffed. “Of course not. I’m a mild-mannered mythologist, not Scotland Yard or MI6. This man is tall, lean, medium coloring, perhaps early forties—but that describes a lot of your colleagues, doesn’t it? Not you, of course.”

“Of course.”

Oliver sat back, amusement lighting up his face. He was good-looking and surprisingly affable for a man so solitary, so haunted by his past. “I’m many things, Emma, but paranoid isn’t one of them. I’m convinced this man is one of yours. Consider yourself alerted.”

“Fair enough. Anything else?”

“I’ve sent you a package. Martin has, actually.”

On her November trip to London, Emma had also met Martin Hambly, Oliver’s longtime personal assistant. It was unclear to her whether Martin was aware of his boss’s alter ego as an art thief. “What’s in the package, Oliver?”

“A present for you. A surprise. You’ll love it. I packed it myself when I was at the farm over the weekend. I returned to London on Monday. Then today…” He grimaced. “Today, I saw the FBI outside my apartment.”

“Where did you send the package?”

“I addressed it to you at Father Bracken’s rectory in Rock Point. I thought that would be simpler, but, as luck would have it, our Irish priest friend is here in London.”

Emma frowned at that bit of news. “I thought he was in Ireland visiting his family.”

“He joined his brother on a business trip on behalf of Bracken Distillers. I ran into Finian at the gallery. He, Declan and I are all about to have a drink together. Declan has to return to Ireland tomorrow, but I plan to invite Father Bracken to the family farm in the Cotswolds.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Oliver.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a thief and Father Bracken is a friend of mine.”

by Theresa Ragan

Chapter One

San Quentin State Prison

Jason Caldwell sat across from his defense lawyer, Mike Gabaldon, in a twelve by fourteen square foot room. There were no windows, and the table was bolted to the floor in case his temper got the best of him. Metal cuffs circled his wrists and a heavy chain weighed them down almost to the floor, where two more metal cuffs trapped his ankles.

He’d already been locked up for three years. Most prisoners stayed clear of him once they heard about the hack job he’d done on his business partner. It also helped that he lifted weights for a few hours every day.

The truth was…he was innocent. But of course no one believed him, since someone out there in the real world had a done one heck of a job framing him.

“How are you holding up, kid?”

Kid? He’d just spent his thirtieth birthday in a cold cell. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Listen, Mike, be straight with me and tell me what’s going on. What’s next? You’re still working on getting me out on appeal like you said, right?”

His lawyer shook his head, slowly, with about as much regret as if he’d just been told his neighbor’s dog had been run over by a car. “I’ve done everything I could to get the conviction overturned,” he said glumly. “Felony appeals in California are limited to legal issues. The only question the Court of Appeal asks is ‘did the case proceed in accordance with the law?’” Mike paused for effect, just as he had done throughout Jason’s trial.

He’d been told that Mike was one of the best defense lawyers in California. What a crock of shit.

“The answer to the question,” Mike went on, “was yes, the case proceeded in accordance with the law, and therefore your original sentence was affirmed.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Mike? That I’m sentenced to life in prison for a crime I didn’t commit?”

“We’ve been over this before. The aggravating factors involved in your case are to blame for your plight. Not me. But I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

“You’re sorry you couldn’t do more?” Jason’s voice rose, his tone biting. “What have you done for me besides ensure me a life sentence? You’re telling me there’s absolutely nothing I can do to get out of here?” He raised his hands just enough to make the chains rattle.

Mike flinched, as if he thought Jason might actually take a swing at him.

Nothing made sense any longer. Why was he still in this place? He was innocent.

Mike lifted himself from his chair and calmly went about gathering his files. He opened his briefcase and carefully slid his belongings inside. Everything about the man was nice and neat, his suit, his tie, his hair. Every action said ‘nothing more to do here, see you on the outside.’

Jason stared at the man, and suddenly noticed something he hadn’t seen before. And that’s when it clicked. He smacked his fisted hands on top of the table so his chains rattled. “You son-of-a-bitch. You don’t care what happens to me. You took this case because of the media attention, isn’t that right?”

“You need to calm down, Jason.”

“You never thought you could get me off, did you?” It was true. Not only did Jason see it in his eyes, he read the answer in every line in his face. His lawyer was a big part of why he was here. Why hadn’t he understood that before now? “What did you do, Mike? Did you take a bribe?”

Mike leaned low, his cleanly shaved face inches from Jason’s, his gray-blue eyes narrowed and condemning. “I don’t appreciate being accused by a felon.” Straightening, he smoothed a hand over the creases in his tailored suit, moved toward the door, and knocked three times. . The guard’s key rattled on the other side. Mike turned back to Jason and said, “The only way you’ll get out of here, son, is in a box.”

Chapter Two

Five Years Later

Montpelier, Vermont

Angela Chack sped down River Street in her ancient Toyota Corolla. Minutes later, the tires spit up gravel as she pulled into the parking lot in front of the morgue where she worked.

She was late.

Her hands shook as she worked on inserting the key into the main door. The alarm beeped, but she had thirty seconds to punch in the code. Done with that, she smoothed her hair out of her face and took a moment to breathe. Thanks to the entire bottle of 2012 Sparrow Hawk Reserve she’d drank last night, her stomach turned.

After setting her purse on the counter, she walked around, turning on lights and opening blinds. Usually her boss was already here, but he and his wife had decided to take their first vacation ever after ten years of marriage.

She turned on the radio, then quickly turned it off again when she heard “
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’
” by the Righteous Brothers.

The last thing she wanted to think about was love. She was done with men.

Today, she decided, she would lose herself in her work and forget all about Rob.

As Mr. Keener’s assistant, she was responsible for collecting bodies, helping with autopsies, writing reports, and keeping the place running smoothly. The problem was, there weren’t too many people in Montpelier, which meant that ninety percent of her time was actually spent tidying the place up, paying invoices, and filing.

She settled into the chair in front of her desk, turned on her computer, and checked the clipboard.

Interesting.

A body had been brought in yesterday before Mr. Keener left for Hawaii. There were also two other corpses in the cold room, embalmed and ready to go. It wasn’t too often she spent the day alone with three dead people, but with the week she was having, spending her birthday with a bunch of stiffs sort of made sense.

Who was the new arrival? Man or woman?

She flipped the page, looking for answers. Male. Chris Patterson. A case number was logged in beneath his name, which meant law enforcement was involved. He’d been brought straight from prison...all the way from California.

What was he in prison for? Was he a killer? A rapist?

Curious, she waited for her computer to boot up, then typed the man’s name into the search bar. She found three different Chris Pattersons doing time at San Quentin. No pictures, but they were all incredibly violent men. A shiver coursed over her.

And then curiosity got the best of her.

She grabbed the keys from the wall hook and headed for the refrigerated room. When she opened the door, cold air and the usual funky smell associated with dead corpses whooshed over her. There he was—the new arrival—in the middle of the room, lying atop a steel table with a lightweight cotton sheet draped over the length of him.

Why would Mr. Keener bother to remove the body from the body bag and then simply toss it in the corner?

Highly unusual, she thought, as the heavy steel door clicked shut behind her.

Without the music or the sound of Mr. Keener puttering around, the place was eerily quiet. The light thump of her shoes echoed off the walls as she walked across the cement floor to the table holding the corpse.

One look and then she’d go.

Mr. Keener had left no instructions for her to do anything with the body. According to the chart, Chris Patterson’s family had requested that his body be brought to Vermont because they wanted to see him one last time before an autopsy was performed.

She slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then pulled the sheet down to his chest.

Her mouth dropped open.

Usually the corpses were as white as the sheet covering them, but this guy still had some color. His dark hair was wavy and a little on the long side, but also thick and shiny. His brows were also thick, and his lips full. The only flaw was the slightest crook to an otherwise perfect nose.