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Declan's Cross
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, who are in Ireland for their own personal retreat.Ten years ago, art was stolen from a mansion in Declan’s Cross, but it has never been recovered and the elusive thief never caught. Now, 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 asking questions.As a dark conspiracy unfolds amid the breath-taking 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.
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 (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To Oona, daughter of my daughter. Welcome, baby girl!
Contents
Prologue (#uf10b1b9b-f66a-5445-b41f-12e13fdfdd35)
Chapter 1 (#u1e5f1581-236d-51bf-93ec-e288745b7bef)
Chapter 2 (#u3f4ea6cc-6b6c-5db8-a37d-a47f4bbbecfc)
Chapter 3 (#u5d1526cc-2e87-5863-831e-a7a5c657891d)
Chapter 4 (#u447b4bc6-fe68-5bef-942e-2de911875217)
Chapter 5 (#u1fba552f-de83-5969-9402-e91685e3d312)
Chapter 6 (#u45e0fe15-8f95-599f-bd94-dce6a1e740e4)
Chapter 7 (#u2214507f-72f0-5814-b3ff-611309694316)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Author's Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
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.
