Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  “I read the titles on the books in the library,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Aye, well,” he said, “it’s for Conor an’ Isabelle. They can add to it as they like when they’re older. But mostly, Jewel, I had you in mind as I built it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the little girl that ye were who maybe was lonelier than the woman admits. I wanted to give her some magic an’ wonderment.”

  “I love you, man.” She sighed and turned her cheek against his chest. He could feel her blood beneath her skin, the pulse of it against his own and the enchantment of the iridescent night still there in both of them, casting its peculiar, still magic.

  “An’ that, darlin’,” he replied, “is my magic an’ wonderment.”

  “I wish,” she said, “that I could hold this moment with both hands and that it could be this way always. Just the two of us with our babies, safe and sheltered. Why can’t time just stop for a bit?”

  “Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,

  That time may cease and midnight never come.’”

  She pulled back and looked up into his face. “Casey Riordan, did you just quote Faustus at me?”

  “Aye,” he said, smiling. “All yer quotin’ at me has worn off over the years, I suppose.”

  He stroked her hair, the twined silk of it furling soft under his hands. Through the window the moon peeked, slowly weighing anchor behind the pines and the hills. He knew there was no answer to his wife’s question; only that all things changed and one could no more stop it than one could halt the waning of the moon or the growing of a child. The knowledge of that was both the bitter and the sweet marrow of life, no matter how silver the night, no matter how the blood sang beneath the skin, no matter the love and the joy, all things changed.

  Still, none could blame a man if, now and again, he wished to hold the moon in his hands and stop time for a space. Because wishes were, and always had been, for the impossible things of the human heart.

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  November 1975

  Belfast, For My Sins

  It was the sort of morning that came rarely in Belfast this time of year. The sky was washed a clear, fragile blue and the sun mellowed the prevalent red brick to a roseate hue. David was struck by the sudden feeling that this was now home. He had been here in one capacity or another, with only brief absences, for four years. Normally operatives were cycled out on a regular basis—unless they were so deeply embedded in the community they’d been sent to infiltrate that pulling them out would collapse the entire house of cards they had built over their time. His own house of cards was so high and so fragile at this point that he was rarely even checked on, and hadn’t reported to his superiors in such a long time that he half wondered if they had forgotten about him entirely.

  His life was here now, whether his minders remembered him or not. It was something they warned you about, something you were trained to steel your mind against. But operatives were human and formed relationships and sometimes even committed the cardinal sin of sympathizing with the natives—to the point where they thought they were one. A mistake like that could get you killed. He knew this all too well, as he had made just such a mistake. He wouldn’t be here today, walking this narrow little street, watching the gulls wheel overhead, had Pat Riordan not saved his life. He had been kidnapped by a crew of IRA men down in South Armagh, and taken to a field to be shot when Pat Riordan had come to his rescue.

  There had been no repercussions to his return from the massacre at Noah Murray’s farm. This worried him, and told him it was time to take his irons out of the fire.

  In the wee hours of the morning he had packed up his scant belongings and left the boys’ home for the last time. He had everything he needed now, all the evidence required to bring justice—albeit too late for some—to the boys in that castle of nightmares. He had the target lists for the kill squads too, though he was aware that they mutated all the time according to the Trustees’ current whim. Beyond those two things, there were a few loose ends that needed tying up, some job related, most personal.

  He had long ago learned to compartmentalize his life. A man had to in his line of work or he would go mad. The danger was that you compartmentalized to the point where you couldn’t remember any longer where you had left certain aspects of yourself, such as your humanity. He had seen more than one man lose that aspect entirely and forget that he was dealing with human beings and that human beings, despite rhetoric and rough tongues, were terribly fragile things.

  The building where his meet was scheduled was an old office front, half deserted as so many buildings were in this city. The stairway was narrow and dank with a warren of offices at the top that seemed little more than ratholes. Which perhaps was a bit too apt, David thought, suppressing an unseemly smile before tapping politely on the opaque glass pane with the neat lettering, George Felton, Building Inspector. He wondered how many people had wandered in here looking to have a building inspected. But knowing the man behind the door, it was likely he would take a perverse pleasure in conducting said inspections.

  A dry voice bid him to come in and he pictured the man behind the voice. He had never known him as anything other than George Felton but David would lay good money that George wasn’t his real name. Their interaction had always been scant, as they worked on a cell system and a need-to-know basis that kept contact to the minimum.

  Everything about George’s personality was bland, down to the dun coloring of his hair and eyes. There wasn’t anything about him that a man would remember later and that was what made him good at his job. There was a reason people called agents at this level spooks, for all of them were like ghosts. There were days he himself felt so unreal he half imagined that he was invisible. The only time he truly felt real these days was when he was in the grey farmhouse just beyond the Riordan land.

  He opened the door and went in. His boss was seated behind the desk, head bent over an official-looking document. He wondered briefly about him, if he had a family somewhere, if he went on holidays or had fights with his wife. It was hard to imagine, for he had such a dusty appearance that David imagined him here all the time, suspended between their visits, always signing documents, always dressed in the dreadful brown suit that looked as if it had been worn by some British bureaucrat since the end of the Great War.

  David placed the canvas bag he had brought onto the desk.

  George looked at it without enthusiasm. “What have you brought me, David?”

  “It’s all there, what’s going on in that house, what’s going on in much fancier places than that. Everything we need to put all these bastards in jail is there. Everything is documented, dates, times, and the films are numbered.”

  A silence asserted itself as the man looked blandly at the bag. David got a very bad feeling as the silence stretched too long. His hand twitched, as it was wont to do since the latest series of injuries, and he put it behind his back.

  “We can’t use it, not if Boyd is in any of these films.” The man pursed his lips in distaste, as though he felt sullied by the evidence on his desk. David went cold at the words, a slow understanding dawning on him.

  “Why not?” He swore he could feel it, the fragile house of cards falling in, silent but inflicting terrible damage on the way down.

  “Because Boyd is our informant on the inside, David. We can’t afford to arrest him or make any of his,” he cleared his throat, “proclivities public.”

  For a second David went entirely numb, the feeling that came just before all-out panic took hold. But within the numbness there was fury.

  “Then what the fuck have I been doing all this time?”

  The man sighed. “There’s no reason to use profanity, David. You aren’t naïve, you know the game we play over here and you know we often have to sacrifice a few pawns to get at the key players.
”

  “A few pawns? These are boys, George, boys who had already been thrown onto the refuse heap of this goddamn city, and then when they thought they’d found a safe place to lay their head and get some food and sleep, they were raped—over and over again by grown men. In some cases, George, they were killed, though that isn’t news to you. What the hell have you had me out there for, if not for this?”

  “What do you think, David?”

  David had never liked this man, but he had never outright hated him until now.

  “Are you saying this was only a distraction so that you could get your ties as tight as possible with Loyalists and then just throw me to the wolves? Was I that big of an embarrassment to you, George?”

  “I don’t think I need to answer that question, do you? You were kept in the game because we have a larger asset here to whom you were connected. But as he is no longer quite so valuable to us, we no longer have need of your services.”

  David swallowed, but his mouth was so dry that it was painful and futile. He knew exactly whom George was referring to and knew with a sickening certainty why they felt he was no longer of value to them. But he could not address that here and now, for there were other matters he wanted cleared up before he left.

  “Does Boyd know who I am?” he asked.

  “No, he doesn’t, but I suspect he will soon.” The threat was implicit. It didn’t need to be put any more directly.

  “You’re helping them, aren’t you? It’s exactly as the Republicans suspect, you’re actively helping the kill squads go in and out of the Catholic neighborhoods. Those girls who were shot, by the milk van—was that a mistake, George, or do you allow them to kill indiscriminately? Is it a case of any Taig will do?”

  “That,” George steepled his hands under his chin, his brown eyes flat, “was an unfortunate mistake. The players have been reprimanded for it.”

  “Reprimanded!” David laughed, a bitter sound like unripe lemons.

  “You’re not on the board anymore, David. It’s time for you to go home.”

  David opened his mouth to protest, but was halted by the next words George spoke.

  “David, I know what happened in that field in South Armagh. I haven’t told anyone… yet. Don’t make it necessary for me to do so now.”

  “You’re bluffing, George. That field was a complete and utter clusterfuck. I don’t even know who killed whom out there that day.”

  George gave him a long, level look and David saw that he did know somehow what David had done and would have no compunction about sicking the Loyalist dogs on him if he didn’t do as he was told.

  “I also know about the man in the farmhouse. Perhaps that’s an argument you will find more persuasive.”

  David was not fool enough to think it wasn’t a valid threat. So much could be hidden in this country. The army and the Loyalists, the IRA and all its splinter groups could play their deadly games and the blood of them could often be swept to the side, every death seen as just more collateral damage in an unending war. Death was old and well fed here in this province and a man only needed to happen along at the wrong time or be associated with the wrong person in order to step straight into its jaws.

  “As I said before, go home.”

  He wanted to shout at the man that he was home, that he had built the only life that mattered to him here in this rage-torn city. He wanted to say so many things about the horror of what had unfolded over these last several months, about the futility and blind ignorance of it all, but he knew it was of no use whatsoever. He had to leave before he hit the man, or shot him. Both options were highly tempting.

  He left the building, his blood still high with fury and walked half blind to his surroundings. He walked for a long time, out beyond the limits of the city into the dark roads that cut through fields and led toward the coast.

  He stopped finally when he reached the water, the sound of gulls like a threnody in his own blood. Strangely, beyond the rage there was a sort of relief, a giddy feeling that he was no longer bound in any way. He had been cut loose. They didn’t care whether he lived or died, whether they left him bloodied and circled by wolves, and so he did not have to exercise caution anymore. He no longer needed to pretend. He could do what needed to be done and damn the consequences, for he no longer owed his allegiance to any man. If this was all a game, then he was going to finish it.

  Chapter Eighty

  Check and Mate

  The last time Robert had felt this nervous was when he had kissed Caitlin Meldrum behind her grandfather’s sheep shed. His solid and practical Scots nature, however, assured that he did not show it externally. When you played a long game, you waited for this moment, you envisioned it from the first move and kept it in your sights because it was the only way to keep yourself in play.

  Across from him, seated at the table like a prince come to demand obeisance from his subjects, was Julian. The resemblance still startled him, though he had only met James Kirkpatrick the one time. He was not a man forgotten once met, and Robert still felt a second’s pause each time Julian entered a room. He wished he liked the boy more, for the sake of the father. But he did not. Part of it stemmed from Julian’s suing for the right to take over the companies. It was a move that was, at best, indiscreet, though one look at his face told everyone in the room just whom he was. At worst it was robbery, committed while the owner was away. No, he did not like the boy.

  Robert noticed that Pamela was careful not to look at Julian too often. There was a weakness there, an understandable one, for that resemblance he had noted. He even possessed the magnetism, though it wasn’t of the brilliant golden sort that his father had but an element far colder and darker. Still, Robert was honest enough to admit, it was mesmerizing. He felt a shiver of worry, for the boy did have a compelling case. Blood could take precedence where nothing else would.

  He shifted in his seat and turned his attention to the woman he had worked beside for two years now. Still caught in the bloom of new motherhood, she looked to him like nothing so much as a windblown rose, all pale pinks and whites, with the softest hint of green around her edges. She had chosen her clothing carefully, he was certain, for she had left no detail unstudied this day. The dress was of the palest pink, like rose quartz shaded with cobweb silk. Her hair was up and she wore a string of grey-pink pearls at her neck, with discreet pearl studs in her ears. She was most deliberately feminine, choosing to play to her own native strength rather than attempting to join the men by imitating their own qualities.

  Gathered along the length of the table sat the board members, those who owned what stock was public in the various entities of Jamie’s empire, and the head supervisors from each of the concerns here in Ulster. Robert tried to read their faces and saw a variety of things there, leaves in the book of worry: stoicism, avariciousness, jealousy, curiosity and fear. He had no way of knowing how they would vote and knew they could count on the loyalty of only a few. Pamela would have to convince the rest.

  She stood to speak, using no papers nor charts to prove her points. She went over the position of the companies—why Jamie had chosen to leave them to her, their history of friendship, his trust in her judgement, her knowledge of what he wanted, how he chose to pursue certain avenues, and her admittance that while she was not His Lordship’s equal in these areas, he had chosen her, he had placed his trust in her. She knew that the claims of blood were ones that must be given careful consideration and their due weight, only perhaps now, when His Lordship was away, was not the best time.

  Robert took a mental reading of the room’s temperature and felt certain Pamela’s calm delineation of the details was swaying the board to their side. Through the entire recitation, she did not look at Julian once. It worried him a little, that, for the boy could not be unaware of it and it gave him power he did not deserve.

  But Robert had no compunction about w
atching him and saw how he sat back in his chair, biding his time, like a cat that had already drunk the cream and couldn’t wait for it to be found out.

  Everyone stirred slightly, all eyes trained on the boy’s face, as Pamela calmly admitted his paternity. Robert could see that everyone the length of the boardroom—excepting the woman who sat at the foot—was disconcerted by his looks.

  She sat down when she was done, and opened the floor for questions. Julian forestalled them by rising from his seat, every move sleek with unstudied grace. Some day he would be a formidable foe, but not, Robert thought, just yet.

  “I’d like to thank Mrs. Riordan for her comprehensive outline of the current position of the companies and also for her stewardship of the aforesaid during the very long absence of Lord Kirkpatrick. I have no doubt that his faith and trust in her was very well founded.”

  He had a great deal of sophistication for one so young. He could sway the board. For what she had in store, Pamela was going to need their good faith. Julian could take that away.

  “I only recently found out that Lord Kirkpatrick is my father. It has been a time of great emotion, made only more so by the knowledge that just as I found my real father, I also lost him. I think, as much as we would all like to believe that he is still alive and will someday come home—and believe me, no one wishes that more than I do—still, we need to face reality because a company does not operate on emotion, it operates on bottom lines and the ability of the person in charge to inspire confidence. And while I am impressed by Mrs. Riordan’s abilities and how well she has done, I think none of us can deny that things have been rather unstable since the reins were put into her hands. This is through no fault of her own, but she has a life that is very full beyond what the company requires of her. Two young children, a husband and a household to run, not to mention her work for the police department.”