Pamela gave him a look of gratitude and he turned away. They both knew he could only keep her safe until the baby was born. She thought he hadn’t fully understood what he was getting into with this kidnapping and torture, but now it was too late for him to back out.
They brought Noah back a little while after that. She was more prepared this time for how he looked and for the damage which had been done. Blood was their common element and she refused to shy away from it. She did what she could and even managed to get a tiny bit of water into him before he collapsed back into the mattress. He lapsed once again into restless unconsciousness.
Outside the light was growing. It was a pale November dawn, grey and then pink and then gold and she watched as the colors rose and built; even here in this dingy room there was a place for beauty. She rubbed her belly with long slow strokes, willing the tiny occupant to stay put for a bit longer and she would have faith that somehow, in some way, Jamie would manage to find them.
Sometime around mid-day everyone left the dormitory to gather in the smaller room next to it. The two rooms shared a chimney and because the mattress was near to the hearth a small bit of warmth leaked through. She could hear them arguing but couldn’t make out what it was they were arguing about. Division in the ranks could be a good thing for her, if only she knew where the fault line was and how to exploit it.
She turned and found that Noah had awoken. She wished he hadn’t. She wished she could grant him oblivion or even the peace of death.
“Listen,” he said, his voice hoarse and so quiet that she had to lie down very close to him, in order to hear him. “I need to tell ye somethin’. If ye should get away there’s somethin’ I need ye to know. There’s a crate of guns in the basement of this place. If ye could get that far, ye’d have a chance. It’s where I was headed when they caught me. They don’t know. They thought I was just tryin’ to escape.”
“Okay,” she said. She didn’t see how she could possibly hope to escape.
“I’m goin’ to draw the directions on yer arm, Pamela,” he said faintly. His breathing frightened her. It sounded wet and she wondered if his lungs had been damaged. She knew one of his ribs was broken and a jagged edge of bone could easily puncture a lung.
She put her arm gingerly on his stomach and he traced the directions on her skin with his broken nails and she spoke them in her mind. Right down the long hall off the dormitory, then right again, and a small set of choppy motions with his fingertip which indicated stairs, and then a gap, and another set of stairs. A long hall maybe and then a rectangle to the left indicating a room. He tapped her arm twice. This was the room where the guns were. She tapped her fingers twice on his chest to let him know she understood and she would remember. They both knew she wasn’t likely to get the chance but it was hope, even if it was of the sort which was little more than a wraith on the air.
He passed out again after that. It wasn’t sleep but it was mercy of a sort. She curled up next to him. She no longer cared about the smells of pain or blood or the reek of fear. None of it mattered. They needed the small comfort of human flesh next to their own. Or at least she did. Noah likely wouldn’t know the difference unless he regained consciousness and she hoped he did not.
The day crawled past—lunch—tea, toast and an orange. Washing up with lukewarm water, rising to relieve herself in the bucket, lying back down on the mattress, each time praying that Noah would have stopped breathing and praying that he would still be there. He rose in and out of consciousness and she felt both a dull resignation and a sharp and blazing fury toward the men. She wanted to kill them all. Every last one. It was as she had told Noah—there will always be blood and now the fury of it, the want of it on her own hands had seized her.
They came and took Noah away again in the late afternoon.
They didn’t take him as far away this time and the building with its old tall walls was the perfect forum for echoes. She made herself listen, though she didn’t truly understand why. It was as if she was bearing the pain with him and by doing so, she could lessen it somehow for him. It made no sense and it was, she knew, in no way true, but she did it anyway. She supposed it was the same instinct that drove parents to find out the details of their child’s suffering when they’d died by violence or depravity—as if the listening and the pain of doing so was owed somewhere in the universal balance.
At the very last there was one long scream, something inhuman, something beyond pain. And that was when she covered her ears and cried.
It was dark when they returned him to her mattress and she was cowardly enough to be grateful for that small mercy. She waited until the captors were in their little alcove, where they huddled near to heat and light, before she spoke to him.
“Noah?”
He didn’t answer at once and she was afraid they had killed him and brought her his corpse.
He drew in a breath and it sounded like the gasp of a drowning man. Only this man was drowning in blood not water. “I’m alive,” he said at last, though she could tell the words were difficult for him. She moved as close to him as she could manage without hurting him. They both desperately needed the warmth. She took her sweater off and placed it over him and then pulled the blanket the dark-haired man had given her over the both of them. She put her hand very carefully on his arm, in a spot where she could feel his pulse. Her belly pushed into his side and the baby rolled in response to the pressure. She went to move and Noah spoke.
“No, stay there…it’s nice.”
His pulse echoed against her own until it seemed as if they shared a strange place where time was suspended and this old building around them hardly seemed to exist. The world was just this—his pulse and their small warmth like a candle flame fighting against the wind.
She drifted then and dreamed. She was lying on the sofa in Jamie’s study and there was a huge fire in the hearth, and she was warm. She could hear Jamie working away at his desk and then she could hear Conor and felt him snuggle in beside her. She must be in Conor’s room now. She could smell his scent and she sighed, relaxing as her little boy’s natural heat warmed her own flesh. Isabelle stirred across the room, clicking her tongue a little and then cooing just as she had done when she was a newborn. It felt real and yet she understood it was a dream, but it no longer mattered as long as she wasn’t asked to wake up. A hand, strong and familiar, touched her shoulder. It was Casey. He hadn’t visited her dreams in such a long time. He smoothed the hair back from her face, his thumb softly running the line of her jaw.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.
“Aye, so am I,” he replied. She could almost see him, but her vision was that of dreams—more impression than sight.
“Ye have to wake up, darlin’.”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “I’m warm here. I just want to lie here beside you for a little while. You haven’t come around for such a long time now.”
“I know. I’m sorry for that.”
“I thought you were mad at me and that’s why you didn’t come to me anymore.”
“No, darlin’, it wasn’t that.”
She felt one big hand cup the side of her face and she leaned into it. She was so tired. She wanted to just stay asleep forever here beside Casey because she knew outside of the dream he would be gone. He leaned down and kissed her forehead.
“Pamela, ye need to wake up.”
“Why, why do I need to wake up?”
“So that ye can say goodbye.”
“I don’t want to say goodbye to you.”
“Not to me, Jewel. To him. Ye need to say goodbye to him.”
“Pamela. Are ye awake?”
She blinked. Casey was gone and so was the warmth she’d felt. Noah was terribly cold.
“Yes, I’m awake,” she said.
“There is something I have to tell ye,” Noah said, his voice little more than a reedy whisper.
“What is it?”
“That night in the byre. The Special Branch
man. What he told ye.”
“About Casey being an informant?” she asked, fighting to clear her head. She could still feel the touch of Casey’s hand on her face.
“Aye,” he shifted and lost his breath for a moment. “I’m referrin’ to the bit where he told ye that Casey might have been sacrificed for someone in even deeper.”
“Yes?”
“He was right, an’ I believe he even suspected that it was me. If yer husband was killed, Pamela—an’ I don’t know what else could have happened to him—then the blood of it is on my hands an’ no other.”
“It was you?” She drew in a long shaky breath. All she could smell was the odor of pain and blood and exhaustion. “Noah, I don’t understand.” She didn’t. How he could have gotten away with some of the things he’d done—if he’d worked for British Intelligence… She knew it was a dirty war the country was engaged upon but this—surely, but then no. There were likely no depths to which either side would not sink.
“I played both ends against the middle. They looked the other way when it came to the smugglin’ an’ gun runnin’ for what information I could give them. They looked the other way for a lot of things.”
“Did you kill Casey?” she asked. That much she did need to know.
“No, I didn’t. I did think someone had discovered my secret, though, an’ I talked to my handler about it. I didn’t know it was him. In truth, I think he must have stumbled across somethin’ accidentally. He was what he told ye, he simply passed names through the British spy who was yer friend.”
“How long have you known?” she asked. There was no room left in her for shock and so she did not feel it.
“Once I started pokin’ into it an’ askin’ questions—well, it wasn’t too long after that I understood the road I was on didn’t have any answers I was goin’ to like.”
“Most of the time you’ve known me then?” she asked. He didn’t need to answer because she knew.
“Aye. It seemed too much of a risk to tell you. Both for you an’ for me as well. An’ then I liked ye an’ valued yer friendship, an’ I was too much of a coward to risk that. Then I loved ye an’ it became impossible.”
She couldn’t absorb it and in truth, she wasn’t sure it mattered anymore. They would both be dead in a matter of days. Hours in Noah’s case. Why Casey had died no longer required an answer for her because answers wouldn’t bring him back. And even if he could come back she would no longer be here waiting for him.
“Davison—did you kill him?”
“There was no other choice. He knew it an’ that’s why he tried to goad you into killin’ him. As I said to ye that night, he thought a woman would give him a more merciful death.”
“Was his death without mercy?” she asked.
“No,” Noah said quietly. “I’m tired of blood too, Pamela. I see it in my dreams; I smell it on my hands even when they’ve been washed a hundred times since last there was real blood on them. I shot him. It was quick. I’m done with killing. It no longer matters for they will be done with me soon.”
This was only too true. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. Death had happened around her nearly every week for some time. She had lived in terror of it and thought at times she had felt it coming. Once Noah was gone she would be alone here with these people until her child was born. She didn’t think she could bear this much longer though. She couldn’t countenance them hurting him anymore.
“Noah?”
“Yes,” he said. He said it in such a way that she understood he was answering the larger question she had been about to ask and not merely the summons of his name. He knew. How to do it was the question. She was effectively shackled to the wall and well out of reach of a viable weapon.
“There’s a tourniquet on my right leg,” he said as if she had spoken her question out loud. “If ye release it, it will be done soon enough, an’ it will be peaceful here with you. It’s more than I deserve but it’s how I would have it, if I’ve any choice.”
She nodded and they were close enough that she knew he felt and understood her reply.
“We have a little time,” he said. “Just speak to me. Whisper me one of yer pretty tales. They will wait the night. Even torturers get tired.”
She whispered stories to him, ones Jamie had told to her and the children what now seemed a lifetime ago. And at the last, an old one which she thought her father had told her long ago—a story of a maid from the sea who had found comfort for a time with a man of blood and earth.
Before she finished, his hand rose and touched her face softly. He had maybe one unbroken finger and she knew the movement must be causing him agony, but she didn’t move to stop him.
“It’s time,” he said. She thought it likely he wouldn’t make the day any way, he was weak and he’d already lost a lot of blood and even a man as strong as he was could only bear so much. This would spare him a final day of pain.
She inched her way down, her fingers feeling lightly for the tourniquet. One did not ask oneself, at such a time, what was right and what was wrong; there was neither room nor leisure for such thoughts. She grasped it and then stopped for a second.
Noah’s hand closed on hers and he pressed down. “Do it,” he said, his voice no more than a hoarse whisper. She felt that she might well choke on the words she couldn’t say. His hand was cool and sticky with dried blood.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and pulled. The bandage was wet and didn’t come away easily, and she was afraid at first that she had tightened it, rather than loosening it. She tugged again, not wanting to hurt him, only wanting to give him an end with some kindness and love in it. The cloth gave in her hand. She pressed her lips to his forehead, and felt the first warm spill of blood against her thighs and felt a wave of terror that it was her water breaking, rather than his blood. It was his blood, though. And for a moment she felt a panic so intense that she considered trying to tie the tourniquet back into place. She was terrified of being alone. He might already be gone. His hand was so cold.
“Noah?” The space of a heartbeat and then another and then one more passed. She thought it was done and that he’d gone away from her and felt both relief and sorrow.
“I’m…just counting…the stars,” he said.
She held him there even as his flesh grew cold, and the small beat of life which had been in him slowed and slowed and then ceased altogether, and she merely held the body, the spirit gone. The story she told to its end, knowing that the comfort of it was now for her, for the man in her arms could no longer hear, nor had he need of human stories to chase away the darkness.
He would know now if there was heaven or hell and what he had earned.
And still she held him, because here and now in this old building that had seen so much pain and blood, he was all she had left.
Chapter Eighty-seven
Devil’s Bargain
JAMIE WAITED FOR THE REVEREND at the appointed spot. Here in the Tollymore Forest Park there was a little stone shelter called the Hermitage which had been built long ago as a place for ladies to shelter while their husbands hunted. It was fretted with ferns and moss and it shone wetly in the dank November afternoon.
The park was wet and grey, the spaces between the trees filled with clinging mist. There wasn’t another soul about, which was likely why the Reverend had chosen it as a meeting place. There was no danger of anyone stumbling upon them. There would be no witnesses regardless of what the man chose to do. He had the whip hand here and Jamie was certain he knew it.
It had been almost forty-eight hours since Pamela had been taken. The forty-eight longest and most terrifying hours of his life. Forty-eight hours during which he had pulled in every favor, listened to every whisper and rumor and turned up exactly nothing.
Kate had come to him immediately and told him Noah also appeared to be missing. It would have been nice to imagine they’d just gone off—as much as that idea might have galled him even a few days before. But the children and Vanya h
ad been clear that she’d been outside with them and then the children had gone into the house and their mother had not followed. Then Kate told him Pamela had broken the engagement to Noah two weeks before and that the two had not seen each other since. Still, both of them disappearing at the same time was a bit too coincidental to his mind. And it was clear Noah hadn’t planned to leave as he had left no instructions with his men and none of them—and he’d questioned them all—had any idea where their boss had gone.
Pamela was only a few days away from her due date. Her two births had been early and extremely precipitate with both children—Isabelle to the extent that Pamela had given birth in the middle of a forest.
Nothing made sense. The police had been pulled in and didn’t seem to have any leads worth running down. To give them credit, those who knew Pamela from working with her over the years were concerned and doing their best to trace any clue as to her whereabouts.
It had to be the author of the terrible letters she’d received over the last few years. It made the most sense to him. He’d had a friend who specialized in forensics look over the one letter in his possession when he’d taken it from Pamela. There were no fingerprints on it, and the friend had said he thought it likely that the author of the letter had worn gloves while writing it. The tone of it made him think that if it wasn’t the Reverend writing and delivering the letters it was someone within his sphere of influence. And so he had followed that lead and found out about the woman called Elspeth. He’d gone to her home and finding it empty, had quite calmly broken the lock and gone in. He’d spent thirty minutes going through her things and then he’d known for certain she was the author of the letters. He’d found pictures of Pamela and what appeared to be a series of reports from a private detective detailing her movements. That was when he’d asked the man for a meeting. The Reverend had chosen the place and time, and so here he stood awaiting him.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 98
