As the light receded from the sky, marking another day wasted, Sarah found she could wait no longer. Papin wasn’t coming, for whatever reason. It was time for Sarah to move ahead.
As soon as it was morning, she would return to town and do whatever she had to do to get back across that fucking channel.
28
Angie stood by the window and stared out at the channel. “Well, at least we know she’s back in Ireland.”
Jeff came up behind her and put his hands on her waist. “It wasn’t my fault, Angie,” he said. “It was the gypsy skank who tricked me.”
Angie turned her head to see the girl lying—unconscious or dead, she wasn’t sure which—on the bed. “It was your fault. You let the Yank slip by. You and your dick.”
“I love it when you talk to me like that.”
“You’ll love it less when Denny’s picking your teeth out of the seawall when he hears.”
“Why does he have to hear?”
Angie turned to him in frustration. She pointed to the man standing next to the bed. “Dump the body in the channel or a ditch. Report back in thirty minutes. We’re on the next ferry.” He nodded and, tossing the girl over his shoulder, left the room.
“He has to hear because otherwise he’s going to blame me.”
Jeff grinned and reached around to cup her bottom with one hand. “Don’t you know yet, Ange, that he’s going to blame you anyway?”
He was right and she knew it. The minute the little gypsy girl told them—bleeding and weeping so she was barely understandable—that Sarah had made it onto the boat, Angie knew that she would pay for the cock-up. She pushed Jeff’s hands away and turned back to the window.
How many times had she wondered if Jeff and the rest of them would follow her if something happened to Denny? It would be so easy. She was one of the last people he’d ever expect it to come from.
Jeff’s hands were back on her waist and this time Angie didn’t repulse him. Would Jeff follow her? Would the rest of them? Did they only mind her now because of Denny? Her mind unwillingly brought up the image of a darling little girl with bouncing dark curls, blue eyes sparkling. Hadn’t she been told hundreds of times, maybe thousands, that Dana could be a child model?
Jeff hands were back on her arse again. Yes, they followed her now. But even in just the few months since The Crisis she had seen how the roles of men and women had been reshaped and hammered back into place the way they’d been for centuries. The stronger sex either protected or abused his strength, and the weaker sex either bartered her sex for safety or had it taken by force.
And thinking for one moment that any of these men would follow her or accept her as their leader if she didn’t have the long shadow of that lunatic behind her was as crazy as thinking little Dana would finally get her chance with the child modeling agencies.
The door burst open behind them and both she and Jeff jumped at the sound.
Denny’s bodyguard was a large black man named Eli. He grinned at the way he’d startled the two, but Angie wasn’t fooled by his smile. As the closest person to Denny, Eli had his own demons to fight.
“Oy! Denny!” he yelled over his shoulder. “They’re in here.”
Angie felt Jeff’s hands drop from her body. She couldn’t blame him. She would’ve done the same. When Denny walked into the small hotel room with the harbor view, he looked around the room at the bloody bedclothes where the girl had been tortured for what she knew, the two standing by the window, and the chair and desk that anchored the center of the room and he pulled out his Glock and pointed it at Angie. Jeff stepped away.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t blow your fucking head off right now, Angie.”
As ready as she always tried to be for this moment, Angie felt the blood leave her face and the tips of her fingers began to tingle. “I know exactly where she’s going,” she said hoarsely.
“Jeff?”
“Yeah?”
“You remember where this compound is?”
“Of course.”
“Wanna try a little harder, Angie?”
“I want her as bad as you do, Denny. I’ll walk through fire to get her. I’ll be the vanguard going into the camp because, being a woman, they won’t suspect me. And besides, Sarah thinks I’m her friend.” That part was a lie but she had nothing to lose at this point by trying everything.
Denny lowered his gun an inch. “She trusts you? I thought she knew you were with us.”
“She does, but she thinks I’m a mother like her and that I’m doing this for my child.”
Nothing like the truth to really ring true, Angie thought bitterly. A full moment ticked by when nobody moved and nobody spoke until Denny finally tucked his gun into the waistband of his jeans.
“How did she get this far?”
“She picked up some friends along the way.”
“Friends?”
“They’ve been taken care of.”
Denny nodded. “So she’s made it all the way back to Ireland. Anyone see her get off the boat on the other side?”
Angie felt her skin craw again. She hadn’t posted anyone on the other side. There hadn’t seemed to be a point. “We know where she’s going and we know she’s on foot. It seemed a better use of our resources to just go to the settlement she’s heading for. We’ll either intercept her on the road or take the camp—with her and the boy—if she makes it back before us.”
“You got any information about this camp? How well defended it is?”
“I sent Aidan there last week to scout it out. He’ll give us a full report as soon as we arrive.”
“I want the whole community wiped off the map.”
“Of course.”
“And the Yank taken alive. And her boy.”
Angie nodded.
Denny looked at the three faces staring at him as if he hadn’t just held them at gunpoint for the last five minutes. “What are we waiting for? Let’s ride.”
* * *
Dear Lord, was it possible he was even sexier now than before? His month away had clearly chiseled him lean while keeping him big—just how Caitlin liked her men. And he was as grumpy as ever, too. She walked to his desk and sat on the edge of it. She knew her skirt was riding up just high enough. If he made even the smallest effort, he’d get a little treat.
“Are you listening to me, Caitlin?”
She leaned toward him, knowing she was about to fall out of her top and grinned when she saw his eyes go to her breasts. “I am, Mike,” she said. “Every word.”
“Get off my desk.”
“It’s not my fault the men like me.” She hadn’t moved but his eyes were on hers now.
“I see it different. We’ll now have rules that I didn’t think necessary to outline because I just assumed everyone would know how to act.”
“Rules?” she said, forming the word and feeling like a naughty schoolgirl with him. She knew she affected him. She could see it. If she leaned over a little bit more she bet she would see it in his pants, too.
“Like how to dress. This, for example, isn’t appropriate.” He waved a hand at her outfit. “Get the feck off my desk, Caitlin, before I scrape you off.”
Yeah, baby. Get physical with me. I love it. But she slid off the desk and sat in the chair opposite him. She crossed her legs, doing her best to flash him in the process.
“Rule number one,” he said, glowering at her in what she considered his best angry daddy impersonation. “No relations with the other women’s menfolk. Rule number two, only pants. I don’t see any reason for anyone to wear a dress, but especially not you. That’s not the kind of life we have here.”
“I can’t wear a skirt?”
“That’s right. No skirts, no dresses and your top buttoned all the way up unless you’re taking a bath. Like I said, Caitlin, I hate to have to spell it out to you but clearly I do.”
“And if I don’t agree?” She positively tingled at the thought that he was about to stand up, take her across
his knee and reinforce his demands to her. After which, of course, he would knock his papers on the floor and take her hard right here, with the door open and all the world to see. She waited for him and smiled, biting her bottom lip in anticipation.
“Break any of these rules even once and you’re gone. I’ll have old Jerry take you to Limerick. I know you’ve got cousins there. Play by my rules, Caitlin, or get out.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Try me.”
“You would throw me out? Your wife’s sister?”
“I see it more as you deciding to leave since, if you abide my rules, you could stay.”
“And if I think your rules are bollocks?”
“You’re welcome to find someplace else more to your liking.”
A dull pain erupted in her chest as the humiliation of what he was saying ignited in her brain. Her cheeks blazed hot and she turned so he couldn’t see his effect on her.
“You’ll be sorry you did this, Mike Donovan,” she said heatedly. “You’ll be dead sorry you did this.”
She turned and ran out the door, stopping only to pick up the glass vase that she knew he had given Ellen years ago, and smashed it against the open door to the cottage.
* * *
40 Days after the attack.
Sarah watched the ferryman stroll out onto the pier. He still had a plastic coffee mug from one of the boutique coffee chains that she and David had been so addicted to back in Jacksonville. Watching the little ferryman sipping from it now seemed one of the most incredibly surreal moments of her life. Likely, it wasn’t coffee he was sipping in any case.
From her surveillance of the harbor over the last two days, she knew that the ferry managed two round trips a day when weather wasn’t too bad. Powered by steam with ancient paddles at the stern, the ferry looked like the antique it probably was. It certainly wasn’t large enough to handle cars, and just barely sufficed for carrying people and their livestock from the UK to Ireland and back again. Whoever had been in a position to resurrect and re-outfit the old paddle steamer was becoming very rich, Sarah mused.
It was always the same, in every country and in every age: the inventive and the opportunistic jumped at the new windows of chance that life—and hardship—opened for them. And profited.
An image of Denny came to mind. Whatever his background was, whoever he had been before the lights went out, he had ruthlessly taken advantage of the situation. In a world without laws, he was free to grow and prosper without cost to himself.
A small pocket of people stood at the gate leading onto the ferry. Sarah could see the tickets clutched in their hands from where she stood, over fifty yards away.
Her plan was simple. She would try and see if there was any way she might be able to sneak on board unnoticed, either by waiting until the boat launched and then slipping into the water to grab its towlines and hugging the bow for the trip, or by taking advantage of any natural distraction at the boarding area to join the crowd that would soon be gathering to board.
If she failed with the first ferry crossing, she would go to the ferryman’s shack on the pier—there were two drivers that spelled each other. She would offer whatever service he required to get her passage on the final ferry of the day.
Her stomach roiled at the thought and she fought not to touch the gun snug in the waistband of her jeans as antidote to it. It was a revolting almost unthinkable thought, but if it was her best shot at the crossing, then so be it. At her age, five minutes of allowing a stranger access to her body wouldn’t define her view of who she was or taint her memories of her sex life with David. It would just be one more necessary thing she had to do in a depraved and sinister world-gone-mad.
She’d survive.
She thought seriously about hijacking the damn boat instead, but she was already taking a major risk just remaining in the area with Angie’s thugs on the loose. She couldn’t imagine what the odds might be of her surviving an attempt to cross while holding a gun to the ferry driver’s head.
She prayed she would be able to slip onboard unseen.
She watched the crowd of passengers grow at the end of the pier. Before long, she could see the ferryman standing at the gangway and beginning to accept tickets and ushering the people onto the boat. She moved onto the pier and walked down the long cement runway to where the steamboat was parked. It was lightly raining and the clouds were gray and threatening, but Sarah had seen them travel in much worse weather and she knew the trip would go. The chill wind bit into her thin sweater and she hurried to join the crowd now becoming more insistent on boarding and finding shelter from the rain.
It was when she reached the end of the small disorderly queue that it happened.
A child squealed and burst from the group. Sarah watched the little girl run careening along the edge of the pier. Her mother screamed and the crowd stopped moving onto the boat long enough to witness whatever might happen. Sarah’s spotted the ferryman, as interested in the drama unfolding as anyone, as he moved around the crowd to get a better look.
She wouldn’t waste the gift. She moved silently, unobtrusively, onto the gangplank and onto the boat. Behind her she heard shouting, but the voices were directed away from her. She ran to the bow of the boat, invisible to any just standing at the entrance and scanning the passengers. She sat on the far side of the largest bulwark. Her heart was pounding in her ears as, within seconds, a couple sauntered over to her, clearly having just been allowed on by the ferryman.
“I’d give her a blistering, were she mine,” the man said, as he shoved his hands in his pocket.
“She’s just a baby.”
“Baby or not.”
As diversions went, Sarah thought, it hadn’t been much. But it had been enough. She was onboard. She smiled at the couple and pretended to dig into her backpack to hide her face. No point in giving anybody anything to remember, she thought.
Was she safe? She shivered inside her sweater and felt the rain splash against her jeans, which weren’t under the protective arc of the heavy bulwark. The rest of the boarding seemed to take forever. Sarah glanced at the sky and prayed it wouldn’t rain any harder. To make her way onboard just to have to turn back…
She noticed the couple next to her was still holding their tickets in their hands. She felt the color drop from her face. Peering around the bulwark, she saw the ferryman standing in the center aisle. He was doing a head count.
Shit! She looked under the bench to see if there was a place she could squeeze under but it was solid. She knew the couple on the bench next to her was watching her with some concern. Short of slipping over the side of the boat, there was no place she could go if the ferryman stepped around the bulwark to complete his count. She looked at the railing. Do it! There’s no time to think about it! She bit her lip and stood up…
“Oy! You there! Did I get your ticket?”
Sarah jerked her head around to see the ferryman standing twenty feet away staring at her. He was clearly in the middle of his head count because he still held the fingers of his hand up to his face.
“Of course,” Sarah said. Her accent sounded fake even to her.
He approached, his posture aggressive and brash with his intention. “Let’s see it then.”
“You took it, didn’t you?” Sarah said. She looked at the couple next to her but they seemed to edge away from her, as if afraid to be infected by her.
“You’re a feckin’ stowaway, you are!” the man bellowed, reaching out to grab Sarah by the shoulders.
She twisted away, stepping on the foot of the man next to her. Without thinking of what she was doing, she pulled the gun out of her jeans and aimed it at the ferryman.
He stopped and held up his hands, his eyes gone from her face to the gun. “Oy, Danny! Get out ‘ere! Got a feckin’ stowaway with a feckin’ gun!”
Sarah stumbled against someone else, her eyes darting to the opening to the gangplank—the opening which the ferryman was standing directly in front of.
“Move out of my way,” she said, flicking the gun barrel at him to indicate she wanted him to move.
“Jaysus, Joseph and Mary, it’s a feckin’ Yank!” the ferryman said.
Sarah could hear the murmuring of the crowd become louder.
And the man didn’t move.
There was no way she was going to get off this boat short of shooting him and stepping over his body on her way out.
And she knew she couldn’t do that.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, sick with regret for having ever pulled the gun.
“Goddam Americans are the reason we’re in this fix!” someone yelled. Sarah heard a rumble of agreement and she could tell the people on the ferry were crowding in closer to get a look at her. “Grab ‘er gun! She can’t shoot all of us!”
The second Sarah glanced away from the ferryman to see who had spoken, he lunged at her. With a deep grunt, he hit full in the chest and batted the gun away. The air in her lungs whooshed out of her as she hit the railing of the boat, the sound of the gun skittering across the plank flooring ricocheting in her ears. She sank slowly to her knees as the nightmare turned to blessed blackness.
29
Fiona threw back the covers and sat up straight in bed, her heart pounding in building alarm, her body poised for flight. The bedroom was quiet except for her breath, coming in loud, rasping pants.
Are we being attacked?
And then she heard it again, louder. A long moan of anguish that slipped under the door to her room like a snake.
The lad was having another nightmare.
Fiona’s feet hit the cold wooden floor as she grabbed up her robe at the end of the bed. They could probably both use a cup of tea first. It might take awhile to get him back to sleep.
Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Page 20
