Sweet Caroline

by Micqui Miller

  "The time for talking's long past." Foy stepped aside and waved the nose of the Ruger toward the building. "Move it." Mick walked several paces ahead of Foy, until he saw inside the entrance to the building. Now he understood why Ian left the doors open. He wanted Mick to see exactly how high he'd raised the stakes.

  Inside, Caroline and Annie sat side by side in old wooden chairs from the dining hall. Wide strips of silver duct tape had been placed across their mouths, and their ankles taped to the front legs of their chairs as well. Their arms had been laced back through the slats of the chairs and secured behind them. Mick could not tell from where he stood whether their wrists were tied with rope or bound with tape. Either way, the position would have been painful for five minutes and excruciating for any length of time. Mick tensed and balled his fists against the anger boiling inside him. He had to wait for the right moment to overpower Striker, but first he had to free Caroline and Annie.

  Ian stepped close to Mick and nudged him forward toward the steps. Both women's eyes were round with fear, their faces contorted with growing agitation. They shook their heads back and forth, uttering strangled cries against the duct tape, as if they were trying to warn Mick not to enter. The nearer he came, the more panic shone in their eyes. First they'd look up at the ceiling, then around the room and back at him. What were they trying to tell him?

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  "I see the ladies are welcoming you as well." Ian chuckled.

  "How kind of them, don't you think?" He jammed the barrel of his gun against Mick's spine and pushed him forward. "Let's not be rude and keep them waiting."

  With that, Striker gave him a brutal shove that sent Mick stumbling across the threshold. Immediately the look of panic in the women's eyes changed to hopelessness. Annie lowered her head, forlornly shaking it while Caroline's shoulders slumped and a tear slipped down her cheek. Mick had only a moment before Striker slammed the door and bolted it behind them.

  "Purr-fect," Foy crooned and rolled the "r"s to emulate the sound of a feline's purr. "You thought you were the only one who led a charmed life, eh, Mick?" He nudged him forward again. "Free the girls' mouths. I want them to tell you what you've just done."

  Mick went to Annie first, and gently pried the tape from her mouth.

  "Oh, Mick, I'm so sorry," she said, her chest heaving as she struggling for breath. "I was so stupid to trust him, to search him out alone."

  "Shh, Annie, shh," he whispered and leaned forward enough to look behind the chairs and catch a glimpse of what bound the two women. Shit, they're handcuffed. "I'll have you free in a minute."

  "It won't do any good, Mick," Annie said. "Don't you see?

  We're going to die."

  "No, no." Mick shook his head. Not if I'm a Mahoney worth my salt.

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  He moved to Caroline, and freed her mouth. "I'm sorry, sweetheart." He wiped away a second tear with this thumb. Never had she looked more vulnerable, or more beautiful. God, how he loved her. "We'll be fine, you'll see."

  "Annie's right." Caroline gulped for air. "You can't stop him, and you'll be blamed."

  "That's not going to happen."

  "Ian set this up years ago. He's the one who sent the postcard and the invitations to your family reunions. Put the shanks under our beds so he could listen if we ... He's going to kill all of us. He wants to unite Annie and me with him for eternity. He led you here, Mick. The police will think you killed us to hide Brian's fraud. Ian's behind the thefts, and I played right into it." Tears sprang from her eyes again. "Oh, Mick, I'm so sorry. I only wanted to do the right thing. Because of my naiveté, we're all going to die and Brian will go to jail."

  "Don't you worry about that, sweetheart. Let's get you and Annie out of here, and worry about the rest later." He pressed a forefinger against his lip to stop her from saying more. Slowly, Mick stood. Although Ian was close to his height, Mick was ten years younger and in far better physical shape. If he goaded Ian enough to shake his artificial air of tranquility, Mick knew he could disarm him. He turned and faced Foy. "You've made a real mess of it this time, Striker. The police know where I am, and so does my family. Everyone one knows you've kidnapped Annie and Caroline." He started advancing on Foy. "You'd better hope they get here soon because if you think I'm afraid of a coward 326

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  who hides behind two defenseless women, you're about to have the greatest awakenin' of your life." Not backing down as Mick had hoped, Striker laughed, glancing at him with that superior, I'm-better-than-you look that had always set Mick's teeth on edge.

  "Mick, Mick, you still haven't seen them, have you?" Foy chuckled. "You don't have a clue what awaits your nimble fingers. 'Gifted hands.' Isn't that what Michael always said about you? "'Tis a God-given talent this young lad possesses.'" He mimicked the heavy Irish brogue that had been Michael Mahoney's trademark. That, and the pride he took in his precocious eldest son's ability to handle explosive and disengage timing devices at an age other children were still learning to tie their shoes. A gift that shattered to pieces the day Michael Mahoney blew himself to kingdom come. Mick frowned and turned to the women. "What's he talking about?"

  Annie clamped her teeth together but could not choke back a mournful sob. Her gaze swept upward, Mick's followed. Something hung from the ceiling, five to six feet above his head.

  "What the hell is—" He froze. Dangling above him, like Christmas mistletoe, he saw a dozen sticks of dynamite wrapped in tape, with an amateurishly constructed timing device hanging beneath it, tantalizingly close if Mick stood on tiptoes and reached high above his head. "Sweet Mother of God." He exhaled the words, part prayer, part shock. An explosive with a simple timing device, one he'd learned to 327

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  dismantle before he entered kindergarten, but it might as well have been the H bomb.

  Instead of the normal bright red, blue, white and green colors used in the construction of timing devices, to Mick, they all looked the same, a shade of off-gray. Tailor-made to stymie a man afflicted with color-blindness. Next to the wires, a digital display ticked off the seconds. The explosive was indeed live and set to detonate in approximately thirty minutes and counting.

  His gaze swept the room. Six other explosives, crudely wrapped, elementary to the point of childish, hung in place. Were they live? He couldn't tell from a distance, and not even the biggest quake ever registered could have freed him from where he stood rooted in place.

  Fear spread through him as palpable at if he'd tried choking down poison. Sweat had streamed down his face and neck. He felt light-headed and in a moment, his entire body would quiver. He was powerless to stop the encroaching darkness.

  Annie, no longer crying, shouted, "Mick, don't let go. Don't give into the darkness. We'll find a way, just don't let go." He heard the panicked breaths he was taking as he hyperventilated. The room spun around him. In a second or two, he'd crumble to his knees. He was eight years old again, standing in a field in the dark of night. He saw his father kneeling at a checkpoint, heard his uncle's voice, torn with panic, shouting for Michael to seek cover, that the quadrants were wrong. A sudden flash of light illuminated the midnight 328

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  sky. A deafening boom. Bits and pieces of his father arcing through the air like leaves on an autumn wind.

  "What wrong with him?" Caroline cried, her voice a full octave higher with fright.

  "It's the bomb," Annie said. "And the memory of watching his father die. That's the darkness."

  No, it's a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Instead of sending Mick to counseling, they'd sent him off to Ireland for a year. He'd never be the same until he worked past it. Holding that thought, Caroline shouted, "MICK, SNAP OUT OF

  IT! WE DON'T HAVE
TIME FOR THIS!"

  Taking her cue from Caroline, Annie joined in. "MICK, DON'T GIVE IN TO THE DARKNESS. COME BACK TO US!" They continued shouting until they saw their pleas were getting through to him. Slowly, as if he'd found strength from something greater than all of them, the color seeped back into his face that had paled to ashen. Blinking, he looked around, still confused yet trying to find his bearings. In a hoarse voice, he asked, "Why, Ian? Why are you doin'

  this? You can't hate us that much."

  "You disappoint me, Mick. The world renowned investigator who is not smart enough to weigh the evidence and proffer a conclusion."

  Mick held his arms at his side, shaking his hands and flexing the numbness from his fingers. His shirt was drenched in sweat and clung to him. He ached to strangle the life out of Ian Foy. "I don't care what happens to me or you. You're threatenin' the two women I love most, and I'm not going to let you do that without a fight or knowin' the reason why." 329

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  "A fight?" Ian chuckled and brandished the gun. "I'm afraid, Mick, you're a bit over-matched." Mick's confidence never wavered. "Don't count on it."

  "As to why, perhaps it's time you and Annie had the heart to heart I'm so pleased you never had years ago." He turned an ugly smile on the older woman. "My dear, my love and my life, would you like to give your precious Mick your version before I give him mine?"

  Annie looked up, her gaze seething, her voice hoarse with emotion. "Ian Foy, you'll burn in hell before you convince anyone I was a willin' participant."

  Mick looked from one to the other, at the anger and revulsion in Annie's face. Her words and that look brought back memories he'd long forgotten. Memories of the night before Annie left for the convent. Mick had been too young to understand what he was seeing—Annie in tears rushing away from the gazebo in the vineyard. He'd stopped her and tried to help, but she'd brushed him aside saying it was nothing. In the moonlight, Mick had seen the red streaks on the inside of Annie's forearms, streaks that turned to purple bruises the next day. She'd torn the front of her dress, and when she'd run past him, he thought he saw blood on the back. Now he understood only too well.

  "You bastard," he said in a deadly whisper. "You raped Annie, didn't you? The night before she left for the convent." Ian smiled, standing tall and proud. "Your saintly Annie was quite the vixen in her young days, Mick. A tease who led us all on a merry chase, telling us she loved us in one breath, and laughing behind our backs in the next." 330

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  "Maybe your back, mate," Mick said. "Not mine."

  "Ian, I never meant to hurt you," Annie said, her voice less edgy. "I wanted to love you, but God was callin' me. I couldn't turn my back on Him."

  "You raped her because you wanted the sisters to think she was damaged goods and turn her away." Mick understood. "Send her back home, to you."

  "I did more than that, Annie, didn't I?" Ian's voice sounded so smug and self-satisfied, Mick knew that if he'd had the gun, he would have shot him right through the heart.

  "You thought no one knew, didn't you, Annie?" Foy asked.

  "Not until you saw the postcard. How I would have loved to see the look on your face." His voice turned harsh. "What was it like to see the living proof of what you'd hidden from everyone else? The proof of our love. What did feel you then, Sister Anne?"

  "Leave her alone, Striker," Mick said. "Quit talkin'

  nonsense."

  Foy looked at Mick, incredulous. "Nonsense? You call my daughter nonsense?"

  "Ian, don't," Annie cried too late. Foy gestured with the gun toward Caroline and spoke softly, "Caroline's my love child. Mine and Annie's." He glowered at Annie. "But you gave her away to strangers." He rushed to Caroline and knelt down beside her. Mick saw her draw back, repulsed by his nearness.

  "I would have raised you alone, Caroline. I would have loved you, but they denied me that chance. Her, and the rest 331

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  of the Mahoneys. They've made me live a lonely life, but I'll not be lonely again."

  Oh my God, the man's completely lost his mind. Acting on instinct and adrenaline, Mick charged and threw himself at Foy. The first blow connected. Beneath his fist, Mick felt bone and cartilage collapse. An uppercut to the jaw sent Ian's eyes rolling back while he fell into unconsciousness, blood pouring out of his nose, a tooth lying on the floor next to him. Mick wiped away the sweat of the struggle with his forearm. "Where's the key?" he shouted at the women.

  "In ... h-his left pant's ... pocket," Annie answered. She was crying harder, barely able to speak.

  He paused. "Don't cry, Annie. We're okay now."

  "We're not, Mick," Caroline said. "We're all going to die. When he threw the deadbolt, he activated the bomb."

  "Doesn't matter." He looked up at the timer. "We have twenty minutes to get him out of here and find safety." He'd opened the lock on Annie's handcuff and moved behind Caroline.

  "No, we don't," Caroline insisted while he worked to free her. "If we try to leave, or if someone else comes in here to help us, the bomb will detonate."

  Mick paused, wondering if he'd heard right. "What are you sayin', Caroline?"

  "Ian was there when your father died. He saw what happened to you. He knows you're terrified of live explosives, that you honestly believe in that stupid curse. That's why he did it—to prove to Annie and to me that you're a coward, that you'd let us all die rather than touch an explosive again." 332

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  Mick dropped the key under the assault of her words. Hearing it for the first time from someone he loved with his whole heart and soul brought home the foolishness of what he'd forced himself to believe all these years. The curse everyone else viewed with such contempt. You idiot, you haven't disclaimed the curse, you've brought the wrath of your foolishness down on Annie and Caroline. He remembered how Sheila had told him over and over, "It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, Mick. If you believe in it, it will be. If you cast that belief aside, it will disappear into thin air and you'll be free." Mick bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. He deserved whatever happened to him, but not Caroline and Annie.

  "Mick, you're the only one who can help us," Annie said, and for the first time, he realized she was standing beside him, her hands reaching out to him in supplication.

  "I can't."

  "Yes, you can, Mick. That device is child's play for you." He took both of her hands in his. "You don't understand, Annie. I can't see the colors and neither can you. Ian knows we're both color-blind. He knows I can't disarm it."

  "I can," Caroline said, her face determined, her voice calm.

  "I have perfect vision." She ripped the duct tape from her ankles and pushed her sleeves up her forearms, in a gesture that said she was ready to go to work. "First we have to do something about him. Then we figure out how to get that thing down." She pointed to the ceiling. "I'll be your eyes."

  "Caroline, you don't know what..." 333

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  "Stop that right now!" She stood in his face, their noses only inches apart. "I love you, Mick Mahoney. God help me, I don't why but I do." She turned to Annie and offered her hand. Annie took it and completed their circle. "Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet, Mick, but Ian was telling you that Annie is my birth mother."

  Annie nodded. "Aye. The background on the postcard is the garden of the home I stayed in during my final months. Mother Superior arranged the adoption, and as soon as I started to show, she sent me to them." She turned to Caroline with a look that only a mother knew. "Caroline was too large to deliver the natural way. They anesthetized me and took her by C-section, then whisked her away." She touched Caroline's cheek while fresh tears formed in her eyes.

  "I never saw you, never held you, but I loved you, Caroline. I didn't know where you went or to whom, but I
prayed every day that you grew up well and happy. The moment I saw you at Brian's wedding, I knew exactly who you were." Caroline held tightly to Annie's hand. "Something drew me to the photo of you on Mick's wall. Now I understand why."

  "I'd already conceived you by then, Caroline. The picture was taken the day I left for the convent. Ian came by that afternoon, had the nerve to stand beside me like nothin' had happened while Mick snapped the photo." Mick held a hand of each of the women in his, listening quietly to the two most important people in his life share a moment like no other—a rebirth as well as a reunion. But the moment was fleeting. "Caroline, Annie, we don't have time for reminiscing." He checked the timer again. "I'll tend to him 334

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  then I'll get to that." He pointed up at the bomb then at Annie. "Pray, Annie, pray like you've never prayed before." While Caroline and Annie searched the back room for something Mick could use as a workbench, Mick dragged Ian to the remaining pieces of the cast iron stove that had once heated the building in winter. He slipped one of the handcuffs around the leg of the stove and the other onto Foy's wrist. He noted Ian was coming to, but was still too disoriented to realize what was happening. Next he bound his ankles and free hand with duct tape, ensuring Ian would not be able to move without help.

  Finished, Mick heard the scrape of metal against the concrete floor. He turned to find Annie and Caroline dragging a rusted table into the room. "Will this do?" Caroline asked.

  "It should," Mick answered, and with a huge breath, he set the chair Annie had been sitting on directly beneath the bomb, climbed the chair, managed to free the slip knot that held it on the hook above him.

  Very gingerly, he handed it down to Caroline who held it in front of her like a bag full of snakes. He looked over his shoulder. "Annie, see if any of the timers are runnin' on the others. If not, we can deal with them later." He jumped to the floor, took the explosive from Caroline and gently placed it on the table.

  "All fakes," Annie called after she'd circled the room. "No wires, not timin' devices. Thank God, he placed them just for show."