Liar's Key Read Online Free PDF Page A

front seat. He didn’t see who left it. He said there was a label on it but it blew off.”
    â€œWhat did the label say?” Emma asked.
    â€œJust the guy’s name and that he was a hotel guest. He’d checked his bag with the front desk. I found it and put the envelope in an outside pocket.”
    â€œDid you look inside the envelope?”
    â€œNo, ma’am, I did not,” the bellman said, obviously offended.
    Emma thanked him and headed back to the street. She called Sam Padgett and filled him in. “No wonder Gordy looked as if he was in pain,” she said.
    â€œI’ll talk to housekeeping and see what they can tell me about the state of his room. Good work, Agent Sharpe. Are you going to call Wheelock and ask him what the bloody head and this envelope are all about?”
    â€œDoing that next.”
    â€œHe didn’t mention falling either because it’s embarrassing, tripping while out for a smoke, or he was attacked and doesn’t want you to know.”
    â€œOr it didn’t occur to him to mention it.”
    â€œIt occurred to him,” Sam said with his usual certainty.
    â€œWhat’s your take on the envelope?”
    â€œWas he expecting it or was it a surprise? Something from a source? A threat? Red Sox tickets? Lots of possibilities. We’ll stay in touch.”
    After they disconnected, Emma called Gordy on his cell phone. When he didn’t answer, she left a voice mail. “It’s Emma Sharpe. Call me.”
    She continued along the harbor to the tiny waterfront apartment she’d rented upon her arrival in Boston last March to join Yank’s team. Happy to be back in New England, working on challenging investigations on a small team led by a senior agent who’d always been her champion, she’d settled into her new apartment and new routines. Not for a second had she envisioned—or even dreamed—that by fall, she would be in love with a deep-cover agent with roots in a small fishing village a few miles from her own southern Maine hometown.
    Now she and Colin were getting ready for their wedding.
    She smiled, thinking of him. His dark hair, his smile, his blue-gray eyes that reminded her of the ocean.
    â€œI miss you,” she whispered, as if he could hear her.
    After several months back and forth to Washington, he’d finally disappeared in mid-March on his latest undercover mission. Despite her own role with the FBI, Emma didn’t know what his mission was or where it had taken him. She only knew it was intense, dangerous and exhausting. He’d come home for a few days in late April and then left again. Since then, not a word—not so much as a text message, email or cryptic voice mail.
    Matt Yankowski knew where Colin was. Yank had been Colin’s contact agent on his first deep-cover mission four years ago. Last October, he’d gone out on a limb to get Colin, at least nominally, into HIT and had put up with his relationship with one of his team members. Emma would never ask him to give her hints as to Colin’s whereabouts. She respected their professional relationship, but she also respected Colin’s silence and his trust in her to handle the situation.
    Never in a million years did I think he’d put a ring on your finger, at least not this soon.
    That was Yank in November. He’d never been one to mince words. Emma smiled, remembering that rainy Dublin night when Colin had dropped onto one knee in a crowded pub and proposed to her.
    Wherever he was, she knew he was safe. She felt it.
    As she unlocked her apartment door, she noticed a new sailboat had arrived at the marina that shared the small wharf with her building, another renovated warehouse. There would be more boats with the warming weather.
    She went inside and was helping herself to a yogurt out of the fridge when a text message came in. Video chat in ten minutes?
    Oliver York. Emma texted him back. Five.
    * * *
    â€œYou