Family Affairs

by Pamela G Hobbs

  “Oh! listen to you, all sharp shooters and heroic crap.”

  Shit, line from a movie.

  “You said Dev doesn’t care about you, but I know you have feelings for him. You told me so, remember? So my plan is, instead of him watching you die, you can watch him die instead. Your pain, my gain – perfect!” she laughed. “Oh! and then I’ll kill you.”

  She walked over to a chest of drawers and opened one. She pulled out some kind of automatic pistol and stroked it lovingly in her hands. Frankie had seen enough fake weapons on her film sets to know this was the real deal. If ever there was a time for Frankie’s breathing practice to kick in, this was it. She began counting breaths as Mary Frances took out bullets and loaded the gun. Shit!Not sure slow breathing is going to help here . . .

  “You won’t do it. I’m your sister, for Christ’s sake – you can’t kill your own flesh and blood.” Frankie hoped she sounded more certain than she felt.

  “Well, sister of mine, Daddy dearest wouldn’t agree with you on that, now would he?”

  Chapter 20

  Dev, Flynn and a team of six Gardaí, a mix of specialties among them, including two snipers, moved slowly and quietly through the undergrowth of the landscape about six miles north of Clifden, on the Sky Road. They were hard to spot, as they moved stealthily, having left the vehicles a mile away, and all wore camouflage, including Dev.

  Why Flynn had allowed Dev to join them was a mystery to the police, but Flynn knew his brother. He knew there was no way in hell he wouldn’t make his own way to the location Frankie’s phone had been pinned to, no way he wouldn’t have gone charging in like a bull in a china shop, so he figured at least this way, he could control him. Or certainly a bit.

  Plus, Dev knew how to move quietly. He knew how to lay patiently in a hidden spot for hours while waiting for a subject to move a certain way or eat a certain thing – he’d been on enough photographic expeditions to have mastered those skills. They’d come in handy now.

  Flynn reached out and rested his hand on Dev’s arm. He put his finger to his lips and pointed west. There, nestled in a dip in the hill, lay an odd structure, like an old Martello tower – a round, squat building used as a lookout in bygone days but obviously built in much more recent times. There was one entrance and a window at ground level with two windows near the top.

  Flynn spoke in some sort of code into the microphone attached at his ear and snapped a photo of the structure with his phone.

  “Now, we need to wait a bit till they send me the schematics of the interior,” he whispered towards Dev’s ear.

  He pulled out what looked like a tiny set of binoculars from inside his camouflage jacket and raised them to his eyes.

  “We’re lucky in some ways that it’s still daylight, but darkness would have given some protection.”

  It was just after 6 p.m. and since it was only early September, the evening light was more than adequate. The late sun cast long shadows over the gorse and heather and Dev let his mind settle as he gazed towards the sea – a glittering stretch of royal blue that he swore to himself Frankie would see again. She’d love the colour combination of the weird dusk light, the strong chiaroscuro effect cast by the rocks and bushes against the yellow green of the boggy grass. He tried to capture it in his mind, just like this, so he’d remember the contradiction of feelings coursing through his blood right at this second: fear and beauty, certainty that they’d find her, terror that they’d be too late.

  The image Flynn had shown him, reluctantly, of a dead Francis Donovan, head blown apart by a single gunshot, had made Dev’s stomach heave. They’d found the dead man in his home, shot sometime in the last two weeks. They’d tracked Mary Frances’ movements and noted her trip to and from New Jersey to coincide with the timeline. She’d shot her father point-blank in cold blood. They didn’t know why yet, but hopefully Frankie or Mary Frances would both be well enough to cast some light. Flynn had shown Dev a series of images taken at the Donovan household and they were pretty damn unreal.

  A room dedicated to Frankie and her career – but not just her films and TV appearances. Photographs taken, it seemed, by Francis himself of Frankie as a young child, maybe four or five. Playing in a park in New York, walking in a line of school children out for a trip aged about nine, shots taken from the school grounds in Connecticut where she’d boarded for years, and from her high school graduation.

  Creepier and more frightening still were pictures of Frankie with them, the Fitzgerald family, in Dalkey and in Clifden. Not, thankfully, in their gardens but in both locations, as they went about their daily lives. It was all fucking spooky.

  There was a photograph of the night Stephen died – one of a terrified Frankie kneeling next to her dead fiancé, putting Francis squarely at the scene of the crime. Suspect number one, at long last.

  Dev shook his head to clear the pain. He never liked the idea of Stephen – had gone to New York to persuade Frankie not to marry the man. He’d had no right to do that, had never met Stephen, but he certainly hadn’t wanted him dead. And if a dead Stephen made Frankie unhappy, then he wished to hell the man was still living.

  The look on Frankie’s face as she knelt over him was one of agony. He didn’t ever want her to feel that again. He knew that if she didn’t survive this, that look of agony would be his. Forever. He would feel that pain. But he couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t go down that road – it was . . . unthinkable. They had to be on time. His brother would make sure of that.

  He glanced towards Flynn, who was making gestures to the other team members to move forwards and get in place. Jesus! this is what Flynn did. Regularly. To save people he didn’t even know. This was different, though – he was saving his sister, or as close as. If Flynn could man up, so could Dev.

  The danger and intensity of the situation was crackling in the air – yet the silence was deafening, save for the call of the gulls sweeping out to a small island to settle in for the night. They moved forwards as one, crawling and creeping along the ground, making not a sound, moving unseen through the marshy land.

  Flynn pulled Dev aside as they closed in on the round building.

  “Stay put. Do not come in until I tell you. I mean it, Dev,” he insisted as he saw the instant refusal on his younger brother’s face. “I don’t want you in the line of fire. I know what I’m doing. You’ll get in the way. She’ll need you later, so be ready for that,” he added as incentive for Dev to do as he was told.

  Yeah, well that was all very well, Dev thought as Flynn scarpered down the embankment around the tower. But it wasn’t the love of his life in there, if she was in there. He pulled out his binoculars and peered at the windows – they weren’t police issue but they did fine. He hadn’t looked before, because a part of him was afraid of what he might see, but the time for fear was over. He needed to do something and for that, he had to shut down on the emotion and focus on the facts.

  Oh, Christ. He could see her. His hands trembled as they gripped the binoculars tighter. Flynn would have seen the same image. She was tied to a chair, upright, and God! he could see blood on her face and neck. But, sweet Jesus, his brave Francesca was mouthing off to the figure in front of her.

  “Atta girl,” he whispered, “that’s my darling. Keep her talking.” He lowered the binoculars and scrambled down the small hill after Flynn.

  “You killed our father?” Frankie was incredulous. Why would someone do that? Surely an obsessive, selfish parent was better than no parent? Surely? But what did she know. She’d lived with a fantasy dad, a loving, caring, make-up dad for so long that an actual living person would never match up to her ideal.

  But to kill him?

  “Why?” She had to know. “Did he hurt you? Did you go hungry? Did he mistreat you?”

  “You aren’t listening,” Mary Frances roared. “He hurt me and my mama every fucking day that he spent with us. You were always in his head and he got off on ramming that down our throats. We went hungry every fucking
day he spent his money on you and not on us. He neglected us every fucking time he locked himself in his own little shrine and watched your movies, over and over. And then to cap it off, he’d make us watch them, as if it were a fine treat, while he gloated over your awards as if he’d won them himself.”

  Frankie stared at her sister. What she saw was real pain, real suffering. Mary Frances may as well have been a physically battered child, for all the mental abuse she’d sustained. She too grew up with an absent father, one who calculatingly cut her out, shoving his true love for a different little girl in her face. Every day. In every way.

  “I’m so sorry.” Tears fell from Frankie’s stinging eyes. As an actress, she’d learnt how to put herself in another’s position in order to show the necessary emotions called on for a particular scene.

  This was different.

  The sorrow and loss she felt for herself – and in an odd way for that of this demented woman, her half-sister, waving a gun in her face – was as real as the pain she felt in her shoulders, her back, her legs, her face.

  She continued, “I’m really, really sorry. No little girl should have to grow up like that, always second place, always second best. That wasn’t on you. But honestly, Mary Frances, surely it’s not on me, either?” she pleaded. Jesus, she hated begging, but she couldn’t help it. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t have a dad, any dad, even one who ignored me. Or so I believed. We’re both victims here. You can’t blame me for what our dad did to you.”

  “But I can. And I do. Because there’s no one else left. Mama died a year and a half ago of cancer – well, that’s what the doctor said, but I knew she died of a broken heart. He was handsome, our daddy, so handsome with his head of wavy hair and slate grey eyes and that big generous smile. But he didn’t smile at Mama much. She was there always in the background, working her backside off to keep him happy and to put food on the table.”

  “I thought you said he had money?”

  “Oh, he did. We didn’t. The bastard kept it all for himself.” Mary Frances cocked her head. “I think the cavalry are coming,” she smiled. “We’re almost done.”

  Frankie swallowed hard. She was truly frightened. Never in her life had she felt so bloody scared of anything. She’d told her sister to go ahead and kill her but, God, she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live her life with the man who, on the one hand was hopefully coming through that door in a few moments, and on the other hand was hopefully as far away from the pistol pointed directly at the door as possible. The waiting was intense and when a knock finally sounded against the wooden panel, they were so on edge, both she and Mary Frances jerked their heads towards the door in surprise. It was happening.

  “May I come in?” Flynn Fitzgerald’s voice sounded polite, easy. “I’m unarmed.”

  Mary Frances blinked several times. Obviously, this play was not part of her plan. “Such manners! Sure, come in and join the party. But take it slow. There’s a pistol pointed right at you.”

  The door opened slowly and Flynn stepped through, hands held aloft. He walked slowly forwards a few paces, eyes on Frankie and totally ignoring the woman with the gun.

  “Hey there, Francesca. Are you okay?” he said in that same quiet, easy, polite tone. “Nice hairdo,” he added, gesturing to her almost completely shorn head.

  “I’m setting a new trend.” She just about collapsed at the sight of this lovely, lovely man. But her eyes darted behind him to see if anyone else was going to walk in. “Mary Frances here is quite the hairdresser. I’d never have been brave enough to go short, but I think she’s done me a favour.” There was something about the way Flynn was talking to her that gave her a burst of courage, of spirit.

  Flynn turned to the gun-toting female. “Mary Frances, may I say, you’re as beautiful as your sister.”

  “What the fu . . . You two are batshit crazy – carrying on a conversation like I wasn’t pointing a loaded weapon at you!” She waved it about wildly. “Look. Gun?” she sniped. “I could kill you both now,” she insisted, swinging the gun to point directly at Frankie’s head.

  “Why don’t you kill me instead?” Dev asked in a bored voice from the doorway. He strolled in, ignoring the gasp emitted from the direction of the high-backed chair in the centre of the room. “Sorry, Bro, I got bored waiting,” he quipped to Flynn.

  “I might have bloody known.” Flynn huffed as if Dev’s appearance was exactly what he’d expected. “You were never very good at taking orders, were you?”

  “Jesus, people! I have a gun and you don’t. I’m in charge here!” Mary Frances brought the attention back to herself, still waving the weapon about.

  Dev hadn’t even looked in Frankie’s direction – he knew if he did, he’d just fall apart. He also wanted to change the dynamic in the room, have Mary Frances focus on him and on Flynn, not on Frankie. It was like he and his brother were a double act, working in sync. Maybe that’s what being part of a family came down to – working together to get things done.

  Mary Frances pointed the gun directly at Dev and he stared right down its barrel without even blinking. If she shot him, she was dead – Dev knew there was a high-powered rifle pointed right at her through the window. If he was dead, Frankie was alive – it was as simple and as easy as that.

  No decision to be made. His life for hers? In a heartbeat.

  But he still couldn’t look at her. That was a step too far – his courage only went so far.

  “I want her to suffer the pain of loss like I did.” Mary Frances appeared to have gone into a kind of trance, as if the nonsense chatter between siblings had alienated her. Her hand wobbled as she tightened her fingers on the gun. “I want her to lose everything.”

  “But then we can’t be sisters, Mary Frances. If you shoot Dev, we can’t share things and be a family – a real blood family. I’ve not had that since I was a little girl. The Fitzgeralds mean nothing to me, and Devlin? He’s what we call in the business a ‘mercy fuck’. Just handy to use and discard as needed. But you and I, we can be together, as sisters. I don’t need him, I need you.” Frankie strained against her bindings as she spoke, her voice imploring and eager, doing her best to redirect the danger from Dev.

  Dev tensed. Flynn shifted to the right as Frankie tilted her chin up in that determined way of hers.

  “Look at me!” Frankie shouted, and Mary Frances turned and fired.

  Light tried to sneak under Frankie’s eyelids but she just couldn’t raise them. Her mushy brain kept thinking, not again – really, really don’t want to open my eyes and find myself still tied to the bloody chair.I wonder, do I still smell? How embarrassing to pee in one’s pants but, seriously, what was a person to do? She tried gently flexing her shoulders, to see if the ties were still tight about her wrists, but nothing really happened. Where was the pain?

  She turned her head slightly and some part of her brain realised she was lying down. She moved her head again, just slightly, and let the sensation register. A pillow. I’m on a pillow? How could I be on a pillow? I’m tied to a fucking chair. Ooops, her language had gone to hell – so many curses and swear words. All around her people swearing and cursing, cursing and swearing. Efffing and blinding like there was no tomorrow. Was there a tomorrow? Was it tomorrow now?

  Actually, her head did register pain – a slow, dull ache. Remembering the sharp jab the light had caused her when she woke from her drugged stupor, whenever that was, made Frankie believe that keeping her eyes shut now was a very good idea. Was she drugged now? She felt kinda floaty, in a good way, but she couldn’t seem to settle on a single thought. Something was bothering the back of her brain, though – a few somethings, in fact. If only she could remember.

  “Francesca, darling, please wake up.” A soft voice spoke in the distance and an involuntary smile tipped up one side of her dry mouth. It sounded like home. Like family.

  “Please, darling, we miss you.” A hand rubbed gently on her arm.

  Maybe she could try cracking those lids open
again. Just a tiny bit . . .

  This time it was darker, thank goodness, so no instant pain. She prised them open slowly and a shadowy figure was looming over her. Fear whipped through her and she gasped aloud. The same hand stroked her forehead in soothing movements.

  “Hush, alannah, it’s Jo. We just want you to . . . to come back to us.” There was a funny hitch to the voice as if she wasn’t sure what she was saying.

  Frankie tried to focus, her fear disappearing as the soothing hand and quiet voice continued, the same kind words over and over. Jo used to call her alannah – a lifetime ago – when she was sick or miserable. That lovely Irish endearment, my child, was usually accompanied with a hot-water bottle and a mug of tea. And digestive biscuits, if she was lucky. The comfort of it, the mothering of it, made everything better. Just like now.

  “Come back to us. We miss you.”

  Her eyes fluttered closed again. She felt at peace.

  Flynn stood by the doorway watching as Jo turned her worried gaze at Patrick, Ali and Molly, who were seated about the hospital room.

  “I thought we had her, but she’s gone again,” she sighed, distressed and on edge.

  Caro walked quietly past Flynn into the room and heard her mother’s comment.

  “Mum, she’ll be fine. I spoke to the consultant and he said she has to come back in her own time. Begging or pushing won’t help. It’s not just the recovery from her operation. He said it’s the trauma she endured that’s keeping her under. She doesn’t want to come back. Yet.”