Free Falling

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “Get ‘er up,” he barked harshly.

  Sarah felt rough hands grabbing her jacket, her hair and pulling her back to a standing position. Her legs buckled and one of the men grabbed her under her arm and kept her standing.

  “Hey, Mack, we brung ya two for the price of one.” The men laughed and it was all Sarah could do not to throw up again.

  My precious child. Dear God, don’t let this be happening.

  Finn turned from Sarah and looked in the direction his men were pointing in and, for a moment, Sarah saw his face relax and soften. She was surprised to be able to realize that, without the hate and the anger manipulating his face, he had a pleasant face.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

  Two of his men dragged John off his pony and over to Finn.

  Sarah, her lip bloodied and open, twisted in her captor’s hands to try to put herself between Finn and her boy.

  Finn looked at Sarah and smiled.

  “You’ll soon be knowing what it feels to lose a cherished loved one,” he said to her with a smile. “I’ve got your handsome husband, too, you know.”

  Sarah stared at the gypsy and licked her lips. She tasted her own blood. She didn’t know how he wanted her to respond. She watched his eyes to see if there was any sanity there at all.

  “He’s not too handsome at the moment though—”

  “What do ya want us to do with ‘im?” One of the gypsies who was holding John asked. They held the boy between them in front of their leader.

  “Mom, you okay?” John’s eyes were wide with fear. Sarah couldn’t imagine what she must look like to him. “You leave her alone!”

  The gypsy holding him gave his jacket a hard jerk.

  “Shirrup, ya hear?”

  John never took his eyes off his mother.

  Oh, my God, she thought, her stomach roiling. He thinks I have a plan.

  “Take ‘em both into the house,” Finn said, turning back to the body. “I got a little surprise I need to get ready. Somebody move this piece of shite before I trip over it.”

  The men ushered Sarah and John into one of the bedrooms. One of the gypsies took a piece of cord and tied John’s hands in front of him. When he was done, he shoved the boy down onto the bed and walked out.

  Sarah heard him complaining to the other as he left: “Bastard coulda said something—good work or something. Arseways bastard he is.”

  John scrambled to his feet and ran to Sarah.

  “Mom, I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought…when Mr. Donovan got hurt, I thought…I wanted to…”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, her voice a rasping whisper. “It’s okay.”

  “What are we gonna do?” he asked. He looked around the room. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here we can use.” The bedroom had a window facing the back of the farm. Sarah sat on the bed, her knees no longer able to support her. She had screwed this up so badly. She tried to banish the nausea and self-recrimination long enough to think clearly. She tried to steady herself with deep breaths.

  “You okay, Mom?” John came and sat down on the bed next to her. “You’re breathing funny.”

  “I’m good, sweetheart. Did he hurt you when he tied your hands?” Just saying the words out loud made her want to break down and cry.

  “They’re not even really tied,” John said pulling his hands out of the bind. “See? The cord’s too big so he couldn’t make a good knot.”

  “You didn’t bring a gun, did you?”

  “No, you told me I’m not allowed to have a gun.”

  “Yes, that’s right, that’s right.”

  “I coulda, though, Mom. They didn’t even check me for weapons. Guess they figured I don’t count. So they didn’t find this.” John rolled up his pant leg and pulled out a small fixblade knife from his sock.

  Sarah took another deep breath.

  “That’s good, sweetie,” she said. “Hide it someplace so you can get to it easier than your sock, okay?”

  “Don’t you want me to cut you loose?”

  “Okay, yeah, good idea,” she said, holding out her hands. “Don’t worry about nicking me,” she said. “Just pay attention to if it sounds like anyone’s coming.”

  John began to saw through the hemp rope when they heard footsteps outside.

  “Hide it,” Sarah whispered, pulling her hands back.

  They listened carefully but the footsteps were headed to the kitchen and then out the front door.

  “I can’t believe they’re just leaving us here,” Sarah said.

  “You can bet there’s a guard on the front door, though,” John said, resuming his work on her cord.

  Another noise made them both freeze. This time the noise came from behind them outside the back window.

  “Guards out back too, I guess?” Sarah said, trying not to let the words sap all her energy for the ordeal ahead.

  John stood up and went to the window and pulled back the curtain to peer out. Sarah turned to ask him what he saw when he dropped his knife and stifled a yelp. Hands reached into the room from the outside and roughly grabbed him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  David grabbed his son, hoping to clap his hand over his mouth and get Sarah’s attention before she started yelling too. He pulled himself into the room, not letting go of John and looking frantically around the room for his wife. He had listened long enough out the window to know they were alone. But they wouldn’t be for long if Sarah screamed.

  He needn’t have worried. Sarah stood by the bed, her eyes as big as dessert plates, both her hands covering her mouth. David held John to him and took the two steps to Sarah to gather her into his arms as well.

  “Oh, my God,” Sarah whispered into his chest as she felt his arms close around her.

  John said not a word but hugged his father fiercely.

  David pulled away and looked into his wife’s eyes. Her face was bruised and bloodied.

  “We need to go, family,” he said. “Out the window and fast before they come back to check on you.”

  Sarah nodded, her heart so full she nearly sat back down again. The feeling of being able to transfer the terrible burden of their situation to David was so exquisite, she suddenly began to feel clearer headed and stronger.

  “Thank you, God,” she said looking at her husband. “You’re really here.”

  “John, you first,” David said quietly, pushing the boy toward the window. “It’s a five foot drop. Clear the bushes and wait for us. Go.”

  John turned for the window at the exact moment that the bedroom door swung open.

  Mack Finn was framed in the doorway.

  “Well, well. This is even better than the surprise I had planned,” Finn said, his eyes going from John at the window to Sarah and David standing by the bed. He held what looked like a small machete with a large sawback blade loosely in his hand, the butt of her semi-automatic protruding obscenely from the front waistband of his trousers.

  “Don’t try it, boyo,” he said to John. He stepped into the room with two men behind him, both armed with rifles. Finn stepped over to John, leaned over and scooped up the dropped knife at his feet.

  “Now this is interesting,” Finn said, looking at the knife. “Yours?” He gestured to John.

  “Leave him alone, Finn,” David snarled.

  Finn turned back to him.

  “Or what, Yank?” He nodded to his men who entered the room fully. “You see your mate, Brendan? I left him out there so you could see what you did to him.”

  “You left him out there so the rest of your scum could see what happens to people who cross you,” David said, moving in front of Sarah.

  “Tie ‘im,” Finn said. One of his men put his gun down while the other fastened David’s hands behind his back. When he was finished, he picked up his gun and smashed the butt of it into David’s face. Sarah screamed and grabbed for David as he sank, with a groan, to his knees.

  “You…you
bastard!” John screamed, his hands clenched in fists of fury and frustration.

  Finn hefted his knife in his hands.

  “You remember me?” He spoke to Sarah. “You remember me coming to your place and you shooting me and me brother? You remember?”

  Sarah looked at the gypsy and willed herself not to glance at John or David. Somehow, she knew that calling attention to how much they meant to her would not be a good move right now.

  “I remember you,” she said, her tongue thick in her mouth. She’d lost a tooth. “You tried to steal my horses. Your brother was hurting my boy.”

  Finn was shaking his head.

  “No, no, no! That is not what happened. We were hungry, we came upon your place and begged for food.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” Sarah said. John fidgeted and she forced herself not to look at him. She wanted to reassure him, like she had so many times in the past for misfortunes that mattered not at all in the big scheme of things. Her whole body ached to tell him everything would be okay, to please not fret. But she knew not only that the words were a lie and would likely be seen as one even by John, but that they were the trigger by which this madman would pull to end all their lives.

  “Do you remember this?” Finn wrenched the shirt away from his shoulder to reveal an angry red mark the size of a tangerine, puckered around the edges on his upper arm. He covered the wound roughly, as if suddenly embarrassed to have shown so much. He walked to Sarah and held the knife to her chin.

  “If the brat moves, shoot him,” he said over his shoulder.

  Suddenly, Finn reached down and grabbed David by the shirtfront and jerked him to his feet. With his hands behind him, David was defenseless but he met the gypsy’s stare.

  “Bet you live in a big mansion back in America, huh?” Finn spoke with his face mere inches from David’s. “Bet you have three cars, don’t you?”

  David stared at him. “Go to hell,” he said.

  Finn flushed angrily. “Hold ‘im,” he said. The same man who had hit David set his gun aside and held David from behind.

  Sarah tried to put herself between David and Finn.

  “Please, don’t,” she said before Finn checked her hard in the jaw with his elbow. Blood gushed out of her mouth and she collapsed to a sitting position on the bed.

  “Mom!” The anguish in John’s voice brought Sarah out of the daze of pain that clouded her head. She looked up and saw Finn position his knife against David’s chest and then draw it slowly from one side to the other, through his thin jacket and the soiled tee shirt beneath it. Blood blossomed in large crimson blots in the knife’s trail.

  Sarah heard David moan loudly at the same time she saw the blur of brown and blue as John launched himself onto Finn’s back in a flurry of fists and kicking. She heard Finn’s grunt of surprise and saw him reach up to dislodge the boy from his back, his hand still holding the knife dripping with David’s blood.

  It all happened so fast.

  She reached for the butt of the Glock in Finn’s waistband that was now eye level with her and without bothering to pull it free from his trousers fired three rounds. He screamed and jerked convulsively. She wrenched the gun out as he fell, the knife clattering to the floor ahead of him, and shot the armed man in the doorway. She turned her attention to the gypsy holding David and pointed the gun at him.

  “No, missus!” he cried, looking at his rifle as he spoke and clearly gauging his chances of reaching it.

  John scrambled off Finn’s thrashing body and grabbed the rifle. He picked up the dead gypsy’s gun too and then turned back to Finn and fished the knife out from under his twitching body. He stood there, panting, holding the two rifles and the knife in his arms as if trying to remember something.

  “Untie him,” Sarah said to the gypsy near David. The man nodded vigorously and quickly untied David who put his hands to his bleeding chest. “John, give your Dad some of that bedding and help him press it against his wound. David, you look like you’re going to pass out?” David collapsed into a sitting position onto the bed.

  “I’ll live,” he said hoarsely. “Is he dead?”

  She jabbed the muzzle of the gun in the direction of the remaining gypsy.

  “Check him,” she said.

  The man held his hands up and stepped over to Finn’s body, now quiet. He knelt down, listened to his chest, and then looked up at Sarah.

  “Dead as a cod,” he said.

  “John, see if the door will lock,” Sarah said, holding her gun steady on the gypsy. “You,” she said to the gypsy.

  “Name’s Mick.”

  “I don’t care what your name is,” Sarah said. “Move to the front door. Don’t touch the doorknob.”

  They could hear loud voices outside the bedroom door.

  “Finn? You okay in there?”

  “I’m not gonna hurt you, missus,” Mick said, grinning at her.

  Why was the bastard smiling at her? Were they all demented?

  John sat on the bed where his father was lying and held a folded up sheet to his wound. The collected rifles and knife were in a pile at his feet.

  Sarah stood in front of the back window and braced her arms together, holding the gun on the man.

  “You are going to tell anyone outside that door to back off,” she said to him. “You are going to tell them—”

  “Mom, look out!

  Sarah heard the noise behind her and instinctively turned toward it. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Mick, the gypsy, moving fast in her direction but she could only deal with what was in front of her—a large, bearded man pointing a shotgun at her from the window.

  Sarah dove to the floor while firing blindly at him, three, four, rounds. The man took two in the chest that she could see before his gun clattered to the bedroom floor and he fell back outside.

  She heard John yell out: “You got ‘im! You got ‘im!” and she turned to see the gypsy, Mick, lying not six inches from where she was—John’s fixblade knife in his hand. She looked up and saw David sitting on the bed, staring in her direction, a gun in his hand.

  Sarah got to her feet and went slowly to the bed. She put her empty gun down on the floor with the other weapons and wrapped her arms around her husband and son.

  “Come on, Mom,” John said, standing up. “We can’t quit now. There’s about a hundred gypsies out there.”

  “How are you doing?” Sarah asked David. She touched the blood soaked pad he was holding to his chest.

  “It hurts like shit,” he said, wincing. “But I don’t think anything major got cut. John’s right,” he said, nodding at the back window. “We’re not home yet.”

  “I know, I know.” Sarah leaned over and picked up a rifle, cracked it open to check it was loaded and stood up. “This back bedroom is not safe,” she said. “We can’t see what’s going on. We need to get away from that window.”

  “I dunno,” David said, frowning. “Feels awfully exposed in the front room. Maybe we should stay—”

  “Oy! Mrs. Woodson!” A voice called from the back window. “Don’t shoot, missus! It’s me, Aidan.”

  Sarah looked at David, her mouth open.

  “Don’t look at me,” David said.

  John ran to the back window before Sarah could stop him.

  “Aidan, hey, It’s me, John! What are you doing here?”

  “Oy, John, Donovan says to tell your mum not to shoot him. We’re here to save ya!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sarah sat on the front porch steps of Dierdre and Seamus’s cottage. A month had passed since the killings at the gypsy camp. Since then, Sarah and David and John had left Cairn Cottage and moved into the McClenny’s farm. There was nothing left for them back there and Dierdre and Seamus’s place was untouched. They brought their horses, Rocky and Dan and the two ponies with them. The pony trap sat on the side of the barn. When the snows melted, they would all learn how to drive it.

  It was only March, with plans for planting Dierd
re’s garden still long weeks away, but the larder was full of the food that the gypsies had stolen and stacked in boxes in a barn. Sarah felt guilty every time she pulled a can out of one of those boxes but David brushed away her concerns.

  “The people they stole that food from are long gone,” he told her.

  “One way or the other,” John had added ominously.

  The boy was so much older than his eleven years.

  When Donovan came charging into the gypsy camp, he had no way of knowing that Finn was dead. He rode in, his arm in a sling, Aidan and Jimmy behind him and Fiona and two plucky and pissed-off wives behind them. Donovan told Sarah later that he believed that the two women—Janie and Shannon—would’ve set fire to the place if he hadn’t talked them out of it, so angered were they by what they’d done to poor Gavin.

  And Gavin survived his wound, which turned out to be a bullet to the shoulder, straight in and straight out again. “The easiest he could have hoped for,” Donovan said over and over again to Gavin’s extreme annoyance. Aidan and Jimmy had circled around and gone back for him as soon as it was safe to do so. They watched David take Gavin’s gun and leave.

  Mike Donovan and his group settled into a makeshift community within two miles of where Sarah and David now lived. She rode over to visit with Fiona at least once a week and often more. In all her life she never felt more connected to another woman than she did with Fi. Together they talked about men, food preparation, and how the world looked to them now. In the space of one short month, Fiona had become the sister Sarah never had.

  She was glad to see that David and Mike seemed to have become friends. Even though she and David had saved themselves, she felt she owed a large debt to the big Irishman. He had risked a lot for her family and she vowed privately that she would never forget it.

  Now, she sat on the porch, watching and waiting to see Mike’s wagon come around the main driveway to their farm. When he and Gavin visited, they always brought fresh meat with them.

  John came around the corner of the house with his dog Patrick at his heels. “Hey, Mom,” he said. “Waiting for Uncle Mike?”