“For me?” Rose’s heart lifted, and just as quickly sank again. The cabin attendant looked so uncomfortable, he made her nervous.
“I’ve been under strict instructions not to tell you this until we landed,” he explained.
“Tell me what?” Her heart was racing in double time.
“Senor Formosa didn’t want to worry you.” Massive fail, Rose thought. “There’s a situation in Ireland that requires the Blood and Thunder team’s immediate attention.”
“In Ireland? Here? The team’s coming here?”
“They’re about an hour behind us.”
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” Rose pressed.
“I’m not sure myself,” the cabin attendant admitted, “but I do know Senor Formosa has a contact in the Irish police who’s been informed of your arrival, so you should be safe.”
Should be? Was that his terminology, or Dante’s?
Don’t shoot the messenger. It was clear he knew nothing more. She had back-up from the Garda, the Irish police, and the sooner she could get on the road, the better, Rose determined as she got up from her seat.
She was shocked to discover a handgun in the glove compartment of the horse transporter. No kidding the Blood and Thunder team was on its way! But what the hell was going on? The gun laws in Ireland were extremely tight. The cabin attendant had mentioned Dante’s friend in high places, and she could handle a gun. She had fired a double barreled shotgun on the farm many times, and this was a lightweight weapon, she reflected as she weighed it in her hand.
And whatever was waiting for her at home, she could handle that too, Rose determined, as she turned her attention to starting up the engine of the horse transporter. Quickly familiarizing herself with the controls, she released the brake and set off.
~~o0o~~
Where is everyone?
Chills ran up and down Rose’s spine as she approached her father’s isolated farmhouse. Nothing felt right. There was no one working in the fields, no horses, and no sign of the Garda. After turning off the narrow lane, she parked the transporter in the yard. She jumped down from the cab, then ran up the path. Her sense of unease heightened as she approached the front door. The farmhouse had a deserted air too. It was a relief to find the spare key in its usual place beneath the mat.
Opening the door cautiously, she called out. The house echoed, mocking her with its silence. She pulled out her phone. Flat! Why hadn’t she thought to charge it on the flight? She turned full circle, looking for clues in the house, but there were none. There wasn’t even a hastily scribbled note, and the keys to all the ancient farm vehicles were still hanging on their hooks behind the door.
Rushing out again, she searched the stables and then the tack room. Where were the animals? As she ran across the yard, she scanned the fields. She could only see the old donkey she’d rescued years ago. Was she too late? Where was Stargazer? Where were all the other horses? Where was her father?
She raced back to the kitchen and snatched up the keys to the transporter. After she climbed in, she fumbled the starting mechanism in her hurry to get underway.
Thundering her fists on the wheel, she squeezed back tears of fear and desperation at the thought that there was no one to help her and she was on her own.
Ten seconds of self-pity was more than enough. Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she started the engine, but now she had another problem. Where was she heading?
Town. The slaughterhouse! Rose concluded, grimacing. Worst-case scenario, the horses were there, and if the horses were there, her pa was too.
Slamming the vehicle into Drive, she hammered her foot on the accelerator and bounced out of the yard.
~~o0o~~
Dante’s face was grim as he lifted his gun and indicated that his men should cover him. The Blood and Thunder team had been called on to assist the Irish government in rounding up a vicious gang of horse thieves. Likely the same one that had been striking farms around Europe, the gang was holed up in a remote farm deep in the Irish countryside and had proved more than a match for the Garda. If he’d had even an inkling of this before Rose set off, he wouldn’t have allowed her to leave Isla Celeste.
The ability to compartmentalize his life had always been a vital survival tactic in the past, but it was strained to the limit today, Dante accepted as he attached a detonator to a door. Rose was at the forefront of his mind—and Rose was a capable woman, he reassured himself as he took cover behind a wall to wait for the blast.
His jet, carrying all the equipment and support vehicles his team would need, had landed not long after Rose. He’d tried to call her to warn that the man threatening her father was a savage killer and that she mustn’t get involved. Time was short, and he’d failed to raise her on the phone. His call to her pilot had been necessarily brief. The lack of contact between him and Rose was hugely unsatisfactory. There were too many similarities between the gang of thugs threatening her father and the killer from Dante’s past for him to rest easy.
When his charge exploded, confusion reigned inside the house. Random gunfire burst from several windows. His surprise tactic had worked. No one knew what they were shooting at. Grim pleasure consumed him as he vaulted the wall. This was what he lived for. His stepmother’s lover had been a merciless thug who had taken everything from Dante, including his capacity to feel anything but the basest of human instincts. When hatred took hold of a heart, there was no place for anything else.
Except Rose, who seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his thoughts. The only shred of comfort he could cling to where Rose was concerned was that she was under the protection of the Garda.
He and the team moved systematically from one outbuilding to the next. The cleanup took longer than expected. Instructing his team to wait for the Irish police, he mounted the Harley that had come with him in the jet, and roared off in search of Rose.
Chapter Six
“Daddy!” Braking hard, Rose put the vehicle in Park and catapulted out of the cab. She’d always tried to avoid coming to this part of town. Shop fronts were boarded up, and the only viable business seemed to be the darkly depressing slaughterhouse, which was quite literally the end of the road. Seeing her father slumped on the pavement crying his heart out was a terrible sight.
“What is it, Pa?” Hunkering down at his side, she put her arms around him and hugged him tight. “Am I too late? The horses?” She glanced toward the sinister gates.
“Rose? You’ve come back for me.” Her father’s eyes were red-rimmed as he stared at her.
“Of course I’ve come back for you. Can you stand up?” She’d never seen her father broken and unshaven. Even when he’d had a few too many drinks and was mourning her mother, she’d never seen him so low. She feared the worst. He looked as if his life’s work had been destroyed.
“I’m frightened, Rose—”
“Don’t talk now, Pa. Let’s get in the cab.” She hauled him to his feet. She didn’t like the feel of the place, and today the deserted street felt more threatening than ever. Opening the passenger door, she quickly took the gun out of the dashboard and stuffed it into her pocket before helping him to climb in.
“I’ve got myself tangled up with a bad lot, Rose,” her pa explained as he secured his seat belt. “I’m in trouble—”
“Tell me when I’m in the cab, Pa,” she said, not wanting to waste any time.
She closed his door, then hurried around to the driver’s side, climbed in, and locked both their doors before asking him, “What type of trouble, Pa?”
The weariness and fear in his eyes shocked her.
“Money trouble, Rose. I should have known that when something seems too good to be true, it is too good to be true, but I thought I was doing the right thing. I’ve been struggling for a while. As the farm workers grew older and retired, it wasn’t easy to recruit new people. There aren’t many who want to work in the country these days. I tried to take on more work to cover myself, but the money I borrowed to buy new
machinery got the better of me.”
“Why did you borrow money at all?” Rose asked in bewilderment. “I thought the farm was doing well. I wouldn’t have left you otherwise, and neither would my brothers.”
“It was doing well,” her father insisted, “until he took all the money for machinery that either didn’t work or never arrived.”
“Who is this man? And why didn’t you call the Garda?” And where were the police, by the way? Rose thought anxiously, glancing around.
“And look a fool?” Her father sighed heavily before continuing. “I’m no businessman, Rose. Without you and your brothers’ advice, I started to flounder. When I met this man in the pub and he said he’d help, I thought my troubles were over.”
She groaned inwardly as her father continued. “He promised I’d be able to train the horses like I used to—good horses, he said, so I thought he had my best interests at heart. He seemed so friendly and chatty…”
“Oh, Pa.” She reached out to squeeze his arm as she drove. Her father was notoriously trusting. “Well, don’t worry about him now,” she soothed. “Whoever this mystery man is, he’s obviously a conman. You’re just too nice, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I tried to save the horses, but he took them away.”
“Did he bring them here?” She glanced back at the slaughterhouse.
“He said he would. He said this was where he was heading. I followed him, but I can’t see beyond that damn wall.”
“What’s the name of this man?” Rose asked, taking her foot off the gas.
“He never gave me his full name. We were on first-name terms.”
Of course, Rose thought, imagining the scene at the pub where money would pass freely in between copious tots of whisky.
“Simon, he told me,” her father explained brokenly. “He’s the man I trusted. He’s the man I owe my money to.”
And Simon probably wasn’t even close to the top of the pyramid, Rose reflected. He’d just be one of the gang—the most plausible—a man no one would recognize.
“From what I can work out,” her pa continued as he puzzled it out. “They have some sort of protection racket going here in Ireland. They target stables with valuable horses, and either steal them or poison them if you try to stop them.”
“There are a lot of evil people around.” Reaching out, she rested her hand briefly on her father’s arm to reassure him. “You won’t be the first to fall victim to a thug like that.” Rose’s thoughts traveled back to rumors she’d heard on Isla Celeste about a man who’d crossed Dante. There were definitely similarities between the man her father was describing and the gang boss who was said to be responsible for Dante’s stone-cold heart.
“Now I’ve heard that others in the village have had problems with this gang trying to buy them out when they don’t want to move,” her father explained, growing ever more heated.
“Do you think this Simon might be in the slaughterhouse now?” Rose asked, parking She’d only driven a short distance down the road from the slaughterhouse. She could easily go back.
“Arranging a price for the horses, he told me while he was laughing his head off,” her pa recounted with a deepening frown.
“Do you think they’re…?” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“Dead?” her father supplied. “I don’t know.”
It broke her heart to see her pa with his chin on his chest, slumped in despondency. “Don’t you worry. I’m going back to find out—”
“No!”
She was already out of the cab. Tracing the reassuring bulge of the gun in her pocket, she walked briskly up to the towering gates in front of the slaughterhouse.
~~o0o~~
“Dante, we have a problem—”
“Tell me,” he insisted, drawing to a halt at the side of the road.
“It’s bad,” Miguel rapped, his voice crackling over a bad connection on the phone. “Our contact at the Garda has been overruled by someone on the take. There won’t be any backup for Rose.”
“What? That’s not possible. We’re here at the invitation of the Irish government.”
“Communication between departments is unreliable,” Miguel explained. “That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”
“Where is she?”
“One step behind the thugs at the slaughterhouse. As you suspected, some got away, and they’re heading for her father’s farm. They know they’re being hunted and they can regroup there. They’ll be in a strong defensive position by the time she gets back. Taking the animals was just a ruse. When Rose and her father return, their farmhouse will be a fortress with killers in command.”
Rose!
“Do we attempt to cut her off?” Miguel asked him. “Or do we go straight to the farm to neutralize the remaining gang members?”
Rose was driving into a hornet’s nest. She was a courageous woman, but she had no idea what she was up against.
He had never been split two ways on a mission before, but he had to make a choice. Save Rose or complete the mission? He couldn’t guarantee success in both.
~~o0o~~
Rose found no horses in the corral in the slaughterhouse yard. The slaughterhouse itself appeared to be abandoned. She could only find one confused old man in the office, and he seemed to be in a worse state than her father. He’d certainly been badly frightened by someone. When she couldn’t get any sense out of him, she called the Garda to send someone to care for him. She waited until they arrived. The police were as good as their word and were with her within ten minutes. She explained as much as she knew and then told them she’d take her father home as he’d been badly shaken. None of the police offered to go with her or to call by the farm later, which was strange, bearing in mind what the cabin attendant had told her about Dante arranging protection for her from the Garda until he arrived.
The second sign that something was wrong was when they arrived back at the farm to find the gate closed when she knew she’d left it open. And the horses were back in the paddock. Well, that was a relief, but it didn’t make sense. Frowning as she climbed out of the cab, she then opened the gate, and the next thing she knew, a gun was being held to her head.
~~o0o~~
Dante dumped the bike at the top of the hill overlooking Rose’s family farm and ran the rest of the way. The gang didn’t need more warning of his arrival. They’d be wired enough already. His team would be following in vans, but with Rose and her father in danger, he couldn’t take the chance of waiting for back-up. He flew down the slope, using trees and shrubbery as cover. He’d seen Rose and her father arrive and the man take them both captive. He’d been tempted to take the goon out permanently, but Rose’s father had stepped in to protect her, which prevented Dante from taking a clean shot. And now both were in his line of fire. He skidded to a halt when one of the sentries the gang had posted heard a twig snap, then slipped silently into a ditch. “In position,” he murmured into his mic.
“Roger that,” Miguel replied, making him smile grimly at the thought of his comrades, as reliable as ever and present as always, but again, as always, unseen. They’d be on foot now, he guessed, having left the vans out of sight but close by.
He tensed as a gang member emerged from the house and the man covering Rose and her father made a threatening gesture with his gun. “I’m going in,” he murmured. “Cover me, but hold fire until you receive my signal. There are two friendlies with our target—and there may be more captives inside the farmhouse.”
He had a split-second decision to make. Her father or Rose? Rose made the decision for him. When all hell broke out, she pushed her father to safety and pulled out the gun he’d left in the glovebox. Thank God she’d thought to bring it.
He went in firing and brought his team in behind the gang with a couple of his men flanking the criminals. Smoke grenades, gunfire, and confusion created enough of a diversion for him to push Rose’s father out of the line of fire, hustle him to the transporter, and
bundle him into the cab. “Drive down the road until we have things under control here,” he instructed. He glanced up to see the first helicopter circling overhead. The aircraft belonged to his team. There was no sign of the Garda. He couldn’t wait for them. The safety of Rose and her father was paramount.
Rose used the confusion to race to the paddock. Scrambling over the fence, she sprang down amongst the ponies. The noise of gunfire and shouts had sent the animals crazy. Rose was unruffled. With an expression of grim determination on her face, she singled out a handy-looking bay. His team covered him as he raced to help her.
“Stargazer?” he asked as he vaulted the fence.
“What kept you?” she exclaimed dryly, springing onto the horse’s back as Dante held the others off.
He blocked her path. “I can’t let you do this. It’s too risky.”
“You can’t stop me. Now get out of my way—”
Opening the gate, she led the way with the other horses charging after her. If the gang had thought to gain themselves a precious hoard of horseflesh, they’d just lost their investment. Rose had reached the horse transporter, where her father was waiting to help her.
Dante and the team stormed the farmhouse. It was a short, violent fight. Once the worst of it was over and his team was handcuffing the handful of gang members, Dante moved from room to room, gun cocked, to make sure the house was clear. He was thinking “job done” until the front door crashed open and a burst of automatic fire almost took him out. Diving for cover, he returned fire, then stopped as two shots rang out in quick succession. There was a howl of pain and the crash of a semiautomatic weapon bouncing on a stone-flagged floor. Like some latter-day goddess of war, Rose stood over the thug who had menaced her father.
Argentinian Billionaire (Blood and Thunder 2) Page 6
