Cash Cassidy Adventures: The Complete 5-Book Series (Plus Bonus Novels)

by K. T. Tomb

  When Cash finally sat down, her agent immediately cornered her.

  “You know I don't expect anything from you until next year, right?”

  Cash pursed her lips. “I'll write when I want to write, thank you very much. It's not that exerting.”

  “You have to watch yourself now,” her agent said. “And you haven't been eating a lot, have you? I’ve only seen you down by the food once.”

  “I'm eating well enough.”

  “You're supposed to be eating for two now.”

  Cash felt a flying rage coming on and buried her head in her hands, sighing. She pushed herself off the seat and got to her feet. “Thanks for the fast work, it has helped sort out the baby's room. I'll send you whatever I have when I have it.”

  “Seriously, you don't need to...”

  Cash just walked away then. She’d had enough of the attitude from everyone. She didn’t want to be mollycoddled. She wasn’t helpless normally, and she certainly was not now. Yesterday's half marathon run was her own proof of that. She was a bit slower than usual, but she was certainly not helpless. And she damned well knew what she was doing.

  The boar ran through the woods. He rampaged through the brush and charged through the undergrowth. He didn’t know why he was running, but he was. Maybe he was running from something, maybe he was running toward something.

  Suddenly he stopped. There was something in his path. The boar raised his head and sniffed the wind. Slowly, he moved forward again. He trotted slowly and cautiously now. He didn’t recognize the smell at first, but after a while, he relaxed. His beady eyes spotted what it was then. Seated on the path in front of him was a cat. It sat silently and gracefully, gazing at the panting boar. It was almost as though it smiled at it.

  Cash didn’t want to make any speeches either. She was a good speaker and certainly not shy, but she didn’t want to speak then. She was feeling sad. She didn’t know why she was sad. She certainly had reason to be, but it was nothing she would not normally be able to cope with. She knew what the answer would be if she mentioned it. They would blame the hormones and just hug her and dismiss it.

  She got up in front of the crowd and managed to hold back her tears while she spoke about her journey to El Dorado and how she wrote the novel. She spoke of her journey as a person. It was a speech full of rubbish; all the crap she had made up because she couldn’t tell the entire truth. When she was finished, Cash raised her glass of water and watched as everyone raised their pints and glasses of wine. “To El Dorado!” was the toast she proposed.

  Two hours after that, she shoved Tim into the passenger seat of their Land Rover Defender and then got behind the wheel. They left a bit early, but Tim was already stone drunk and it was a long drive from London back to Barry. She figured she might skip the last bit of the journey and spend the night at Tim's Newport flat, but she was not sure she even wanted to do that. The engine roared to life and Cash gunned it through the city's streets, onto the M4. At one point, Tim drunkenly stated he loved her and tried to touch her belly; she pushed his hand aside and turned the radio on. She skimmed through the playlist and found a whole album by The Handsome Young Strangers. Right now, she was angry and liked the punk rock music, but the bush music part of the band reminded her of home. The songs reminded her of her father and uncle playing songs on the porch, it reminded her of her mother singing. And really, that was what she wanted more than anything now, home and her family.

  Chapter Two

  Cash dropped Tim off in Newport, as he was due to give a lecture in the morning and feeling up to the task, she drove on to Barry. To her great frustration, she’d had to help him up the stairs to his flat, after he had fallen asleep and been snoring most of the way back to Wales.

  She sighed with relief when she got out of the car and walked up to her house. She opened the door and as quickly as she could hang up her coat and put her handbag and keys on the entryway table, she went straight to the kitchen and brewed herself a cup of tea. She groaned softly as she took the tray up and mounted the stairs to the library.

  It was already very late and she felt the tiredness creeping up on her rather quickly. She sat down in her favorite fauteuil and put her feet up on the foot stool, turned off all the lights except for one in the very back of the room, which was half shielded by a bookcase. She wrapped herself in a fleece blanket and sank back, cup of steaming tea in hand, looking out the window into the dark. She loved this room, and she had set up that library and the study that was directly above it, in the attic, for the view. In the distance, she could see the lights of the ships sailing down the Bristol Channel, or as the locals would say, the Severn Sea. From a corner of the view she could just make out the lights of Weston-super-Mare, on the other side of the water on the North Devon coast. She yawned and laid her hand on her stomach. The baby was moving. She took a long draught of her tea and set the cup down on the side table, then rested her head against the back of the chair and gazed out again, feeling her eyes close slowly.

  The cat snarled at the boar and ran. The boar startled and ran after it, chasing it out of the forest and onto the sandy shore. He stopped, looking at the sea in surprise. Then the footfall of the cat in the sand caught his ears again and he began his chase anew. The cat kept running and he had to use all of his strength to keep up. He stumbled and looked down to the sand. When he looked up again, the cat was gone. He sniffed the sand and followed the trail until it disappeared altogether.

  A movement in the trees startled the boar. He jumped and began to run again. He did not see what it was, apart from a flash of white, but suddenly he was fearful of it. So he ran away and kept running.

  Cash woke up needing to pee. She got out of her chair without a thought and made her way to the bathroom. She sighed as she sat down, her eyes still struggling to stay open. But she was determined not to fall asleep in there. It was something you did when you were drunk, she reckoned.

  She did not return to the library and her chair, but instead she went to the bedroom and sank down onto the bed. She rolled over onto her back and then on to her side. She sighed again, wishing she did not have a big belly and full breasts and could lie on her stomach like she did before it was made impossible.

  She rolled again onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. It was only then she realized the sun was up. She looked at the digital clock on the bedside table and found it was already seven o´clock. Cash rubbed her eyes and decided it would be better to go about her business for the day, to start work and get started on the other errands that needed to be done. As she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, she realized the house would need cleaning as well and that there was actually no writing to be done. Suddenly she felt trapped. She felt like the creature growing in her belly was a trap designed to pin her down.

  Cash certainly didn’t think of it that way, but she felt like it.

  Cash cut up some fresh fruit in the kitchen, threw it into a bowl with muesli and covered it with Greek yogurt and a small spoon of sugar. She was lucky that her breakfast could go unchanged. Her whole diet had been adjusted for the health of her child. There was no more liquor, beer or wine, less red meat, more vegetables and generally foods low in fat. She was in fact, eating more calories than she had been, but not by the amount everyone suggested she should be eating. She had seen a lot of women around South Wales balloon when they got pregnant, and she was terrified of becoming a Welsh whale. It was one reason she had kept running and cycling as much as she could. That, and she simply couldn’t even imagine sitting still the whole day.

  By the time the shopping was done and Cash had gone for a morning swim, she was bored. She knew full well not to overexert herself and she had to wait for another few hours before she could go out again and take a short run. She could nap, but she did not feel like it. Instead she sat down behind her desk, opened her word processor and reached for the keyboard. But she just sat there and let her fingers rest on the keys. The cursor flickered on the screen, no word
s appearing.

  After five minutes, she opened a browser window. She went to YouTube and found some of the music she had been listening to the other night. She found the Southern Cross album by Sydney City Trash and turned the speakers up as high as they would go. She sat back for a while, but as the third song of the album played, she suddenly sat bolt upright and opened a new tab. There was an idea in her head. Maybe her publisher did not want to accept any new work from her right now, but there was something she could be doing.

  The boar slowed down. He knew where he was again. He knew exactly where he was now. The smell was familiar, as were the surroundings. He recognized the trees he had scratched with his tusks, marking his own territory. And he recognized another smell.

  It was hers. His snout went to the ground again and he followed the trail. It took a while, but eventually he found the smell growing fresher. And there was another smell. It was them.

  He sped up and found them all in the same clearing. They were his. They were theirs.

  The sow looked up and recognized her mate. She sniffed the air when she recognized his scent and then continued digging around for roots to eat. The piglets though ran to his side. They smelt him and were obviously excited to see him. He gently pushed them out of his way and went past them to the side of the sow. The piglets followed him, still lively. He nuzzled the sow and she turned to him, pressing her snout against his neck for a moment.

  Cash had always known her family had been in Australia for a very long time. She knew an ancestor of hers had been at Eureka, but she wanted to find out where her family had come from and how they’d got there. Of course, Cassidy was an Irish name, possibly Scottish, but that did not tell her much. She could possibly begin tracing the history of the name, but that would not tell her how they came to be in Australia, or how her line could be traced.

  Family, that was what she was missing at that moment. It was the reason why she was keen to research her family´s history.

  She had so many friends, but her family was so far away. It had never mattered before, but somehow it seemed to matter now. She wanted to fly back to Oz really, but she knew she could not. By the time she would have arranged her flights, she would be close to the limit for pregnant flying. What was more, Tim would never forgive her for running off to Australia like that. Neither would his family. So, for once, staying put was what she would do.

  Chapter Three

  Tim's car came slowly up the driveway to the house on Saturday. Cash saw him open the door from her desk. She wanted to get up and greet him, glad to see him. Yet at the same time, she was irritated he was there. She did not need him, nor did she want him there, if she were quite honest. In the back of her mind, it was he who tied her up and kept her home. She loved him intensely, and he let her do whatever she wanted to do, leaving her free in every way she wanted, but somehow she still felt tied down. She had felt that way for a long time, but her love for him had always overcome that feeling. Now they had another bond between them, she suddenly felt it even more keenly. Both her love for Tim and her dislike for the ties that bound them together had grown in the last few months. She wanted to be near him constantly, and at the same time, she wanted to run away from him as fast and as far as she could. It was her travel bug, she decided. She’d been on the moved constantly for the past four years, never stopping to long in any one place. The excitement she’d experienced, the people she’d met, even the dangers she’d encountered... it was as intoxicating a drug as any narcotic.

  She heard the key in the lock and she heard the door opening.

  “Pat?” Tim's voice sounded. “Are you home?”

  “Upstairs,” she answered. She got up from her desk just as Tim entered her study.

  “Ah, you don't have to get up.” He came up to her and hugged her. “How've you been?”

  “Good. You?”

  Tim smiled. “Better now than I was a bit ago.” He nodded to the computer screen. “What're you doing? Thought you weren't going to be working for a bit?'

  There was that feeling again. Her heart had jumped with joy to see her husband, but that remark plunged Cash back into brooding darkness. “I'm not working,” she said, “Just doing some research on my family history.”

  The boar could smell the cat again. He couldn’t see the animal, but it was there. It was nearby and it was coming toward him. Moments later, he saw it. It climbed up a tree and sat down on a branch, just above him. He could just about lift his head to look at it. It purred softly. He came closer and the cat startled. It jumped to an adjacent branch. The boar turned and looked at it again. He felt as though the cat was mocking him. It was almost like it was too.

  The cat yawned and began stretching and scratching. It licked its paw and began cleaning itself.

  The boar wanted to say something, but it could not. Being a boar it had no voice. But the cat did have a voice. “You're mine, but I'm not yours.” The cat kept preening herself.

  The boar did not understand. There was only one thing he did know. The cat was no cat. It was magic. The cat seemed to notice his sudden realization and there was a look in its eyes of enjoyment.

  “It's been pleasant, but I have to fly,” the cat said. It jumped from the branch and dug its claws into the bark of the tree, climbing up. It climbed up and out of the view of the boar. Suddenly there was a rush of wings and a white falcon soared down, brushed over the boar's head and flew off through the trees.

  Tim was not pleased with Cash working on anything which he suspected could be another book. Another book would undoubtedly lead to another dangerous adventure, and that was the last thing he wanted her to get involved in at that crucial time. But he could also see that she needed a project to work on. And it was a project that seemed harmless enough.

  He made dinner, despite Cash's protests. She didn’t want to relinquish control of anything, it seemed, not even her tea. He made some spaghetti with a large amount of vegetables in the tomato and meat sauce. It was healthy and tasty, he knew, but Cash was grumpy when she sat down to dinner. He was not sure how to deal with her when she was like that at the best of times, but he certainly didn’t know how to deal with her now.

  “Tell me about what you've found out so far?” he finally asked her.

  She frowned at him.

  “Your family history. What have you found out so far?” he said between bites.

  Cash kept frowning, not sure she wanted to answer it. But she did.

  “Well, my uncle found out how our family first got to Australia. Went from there, really.”

  “So how did your ancestors end up there?”

  So she told the story as far as she had been able to confirm it.

  Nobody yet knew why Pádraig Óg Ó Caiside was in the Castle Hill area. But it didn’t take a genius to figure it out he had been transported, and Cash was certain she would find out why he had been. But what she did know was that Pádraig had been at the Battle of Vinegar Hill. That was her uncle's work. There was a single diary that named him, though a number of other diaries described him. The one passage that identified him read like this:

  “I saw a man there I recognized from the farm. He had always seemed like a caring and sensible type, so in a way I was shocked to see him amongst that rabble. But I was not surprised to see what he was doing, as it was what I had always known him to do. When I saw him, Pat Cassidy was tending the wounded of Cunningham's rebels. It was as I knew him to be from the farm. He had a special status there, and had presumably held this status amongst the transported on the ship they had come in. They treated him with respect, and he treated their injuries. It was what he had done earlier, and it was what I saw him doing now.”

  Cash smiled when she said it. Then she told Tim about the one success she had had so far. She had found out which ships had carried him to New South Wales. It was because of that she knew his Irish name, instead of just Pat Cassidy.

  Tim looked at her questioningly.

  “He was on the Anne.” She smiled.<
br />
  The name didn’t mean anything to Tim.

  “The ship that was hired to transport prisoners from Cork county to New South Wales,” she continued, still not able to invoke much of a response. “There was a mutiny on the ship.”

  “What kind of prisoners?” Tim asked. He taught history, but this history was not his specialist subject. Australian history was certainly not something he knew a great deal about.

  Cash shot him an angry look. “They left Cobh on the 26th of June 1800.” Still no reaction. “As Wolfe Tone's rebellion was petering out.”

  Tim nodded. That was something he did know something about. The United Irishmen Uprising had been one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of the British Isles. One of the most notorious as well. Theobald Wolfe Tone had found the support of the French to overthrow British rule in Ireland, and the rebellion by a front of united Irish, both Protestant and Catholic, had fought a summer's campaign against the Red Coats. Eventually the Red Coats prevailed, but the rebellion lived on for several more years. And to this day, the name of Wolfe Tone was one that was revered by the Irish. He was one of their great and tragic heroes who died for liberty. Suddenly he realized the implication of that statement too. “You think he fought with Wolfe Tone?”

  Cash shrugged. “Yet to find out. But a lot of the guys at Vinegar Hill were veterans of that battle.”

  Tim frowned. The statement made little sense to him.

  Cash gave him a blank look for a moment and then explained. “The Castle Hill Rebellion culminated in a battle often called the Battle of Vinegar Hill, named after Vinegar Hill, in County Wexford. Many of the convicts who fought on that day were prisoners taken after that fight.”

  “So you think your Pat Cassidy was there?”

  Cash nodded. She turned and grabbed her tablet from the side board behind her. “The Cassidys were physicians to the Maguire. One of the names of the leaders of men at the battle was Maguire. Not sure, I'd have to go and look at physical records, but I think he might have been a chief in the old clan, which would explain why there was a Cassidy by his side.”