Free Falling, Book 1 of the Irish End Games

CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sarah’s hands would not stop shaking.

  Even after Mike Donovan gave her a second mug of tea laced with whisky and checked the window for the third time to make sure the gypsies were still occupied, she could not will her hands to stop trembling.

  “I don’t know what I was expecting,” she said, cupping the hot mug in both hands. “Dear God, I really thought I was going to find David.” She looked at Donovan and her eyes filled with tears again. “Alive. It never…it never really occurred to me—” She shook her head.

  “Drink your tea,” Donovan said quietly. He looked at his son who stood in the corner of the abandoned store and was peering out the window onto the street.

  Donovan had crept quietly up behind her when the fight broke out and quickly hustled her into the building around the corner from where the gypsy men were gathered. Gavin had led her horse into the store too. It wouldn’t do, in case the gypsies weren’t quite as drunk as they looked, to have it tied up outside where they were. Donovan had just enough tea left in his thermos for one last cup. It was Gavin who had thought to find an unbroken mug from the store shelves.

  Sarah looked at her horse that had just made a healthy deposit in one of the aisles of the small store before he nodded off again.

  What kind of nightmare am I living? she wondered.

  “I’m sorry, missus,” Donovan said. “We’ll be able to leave as soon as it gets dark. They’re pretty done for. I wouldn’t expect any trouble from them soon.”

  “Except they’re not all of ‘em,” Gavin said from the window. “Or even the worst of ‘em. You know that, Da.”

  “Shirrup, Gavin,” Donovan said, frowning at the boy. He turned back to Sarah. “What is your interest in them?” he asked gently.

  Sarah looked at him with eyes so full of pain and sadness it was all he could do not to look away.

  “I thought they might have information about my husband,” she said. “They had his horse. Plus, I…I wounded a gypsy that came to my place to steal my horses.”

  “Cor, Da! She’s talking about Finn. She’s the one shot him.”

  Mike ignored him. “Is that true?” he asked.

  “I killed one of them,” she said, staring directly into Mike’s eyes. “He tried to hurt my boy.”

  Mike nodded.

  “Do you know them?” she asked.

  “The man you wounded is the leader of this miscreant band of thugs,” Mike said. He sighed heavily. “His name is Finn. He’s been a worthless piece of shite from the beginning. Lived with his extended family around these parts as gypsies do—under bridges, in caravans and tents. Been involved in petty theft stuff and some senseless killing of dogs and cats.

  “Been in prison for some years recently for robbing a dairy with a weapon, I heard. But since the blackout, he’s taken advantage of the situation. Come in to his own, you might say. A natural leader is our Finn. And he’s found a following of scum just like him.”

  “Three of his gang tried to kill Seamus McClenny yesterday,” Sarah said, watching her horse. “They acted like they’d done it before and it was no big deal.” She looked at Mike. “One of ‘em said this guy Finn was looking for me. I guess to get revenge for shooting him.”

  “And for the other.”

  “The other?”

  “I think the one you killed was Finn’s brother Ardan.”

  Sarah stood up and set her mug down. “I have to get back,” she said.

  Donovan held out a hand as if to restrain her. “Whoa, missus, that is not a good idea.”

  “Stop!” Sarah put her hands to her head as if she’d just experienced a terrible headache. “Stop…calling me ‘missus.’ My name is Sarah Woodson.” She moved past him to where Dan was dozing.

  “Look, Sarah, you can’t leave.” Donovan moved quickly to put himself between her and the horse. “I don’t have to tell you, I’m sure, how dangerous that lot is.” He gestured in the direction of the window.

  “They’re a murderin’ lot, they are,” Gavin added helpfully and received a glower from his father.

  “I have to get home to my son,” Sarah said. As she said the words, a terrible fear seized her and her sentence finished in a near shriek. “I have to get to my boy.”

  He’s all I have left.

  “Sarah, please,” Mike said. “I’ll be asking you to take a breath and think for a moment. Going out there now is not the most direct route to your getting back to your son.”

  “Not a-tall,” Gavin said, shaking his head. “But it looks like they’re packing up, Da. They’re leaving the one poor bastard just lying there in the road.”

  “Likely dead,” Mike said. He turned back to Sarah. “Give them ten minutes to clear out and then you can be on your way. Gavin’ll go with you.”

  “I will?” Gavin said happily. “Great.”

  Sarah didn’t care one way or the other. She wanted to be on her way home so bad it was all she could do not to mount Dan right there in the store.

  “Fine,” she said between gritted teeth.

  Donovan moved over to the window to look out.

  “Take her home,” he said to the boy, “and wait for me. Understand? Bunk down in the barn or wherever she has an extra place but don’t leave until I get there.”

  “Really?” Gavin frowned. “When are you coming, then?”

  Donovan looked back at Sarah who had Dan’s reins in her hands now and was checking his girth.

  “Take the wagon and keep up with her the best you can. You got the rifle?”

  His son nodded.

  “I’ll get back home and get your uncle and a few others.”

  “Uncle Aidan won’t leave without Aunt Mary and the girls.”

  “Probably not, so I’ll be bringing them, too. Don’t look for us until tomorrow.”

  “You really expect Finn to come to her place, Da?”

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t done it before now. Let’s just pray we still have time before he gets there.” He turned away from his son to speak to Sarah. “Sarah, can you tell me how Seamus escaped the three thugs to tell the story?”

  Sarah led Dan to the door and jerked back a curtain to get a better view of the street.

  “He shot them,” she said, dropping the curtain.

  “He…shot them? All?”

  Sarah pulled out her Glock and checked to see that it was chambered and ready.

  “Yes. All,” she said.

  “And this was two days ago?”

  Sarah looked into the distance and her gaze seemed to glaze over.

  “No,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Yesterday.”

  Mike had a bad feeling about the timing of all this. He turned back to his son.

  “Go on, get going,” he said. “I’ll be there with your uncle before nightfall.”

  The ride from Balinagh normally took ninety minutes with a combination of walking and trotting. As soon as Sarah was remounted, she put Dan into a canter that spilled into a gallop before they were half a mile outside the village. She could hear Gavin’s pleas for her to wait for him but she knew he was armed and could take care of himself. As she rode, one part of her scanned the hills and the hillocks for any sign of life that might signal an ambush, but the other part was so panicked and single-minded on getting back to Cairn Cottage to see for herself that John was safe that she couldn’t really consider seriously the idea that anything would stop her.

  Her focused, maniacal determination worked to blot out the other thing.

  David.

  Sarah closed her legs firmly around Dan and urged him forward. The horse felt like a powder keg of energy and force beneath her. He broke into the gallop that carried them towards home with very little prompting, as if he’d been waiting for her all along to let him go all out.

  As she thundered down the wet main road that led from Balinagh to Cairn Cottage, Sarah never thought for a moment that the horse might slip, or that she might lose her balance. It was simply not concei
vable that he should do anything but fly over the potholes and swivel around the sharp turns in the road, just not believable that she might do anything but ride him as fast and sure as if she’d been born to do it. And if, as she would later wonder, everything in her life before this moment was somehow to be seen to have prepared her to meet this spasm of incredible need, she would’ve considered it a life well done.

  The feel of the rhythmic, thundering hooves as she galloped and the cold wind stinging her bare face mixed with her conviction that she would…she must…find John safe. The ride would end with her arms around her child, holding him safely and snugly to her heart. Time enough later—much, much later—to talk to him about his Dad. For now, she had to get back to him. The intensity and the craving to see him again was as vital and elementary as the need to take her next breath.

  She was only a mile from home when she slowed Dan to a walk—just to catch her breath, and to give him a moment to gather himself for the mad gallop down the main drive of the cottage. It wouldn’t do to kill the poor horse and have to run the rest of the way on foot. She didn’t expect to be able to see any sign of the cottage from this distance. In all the times she’d ridden back from the village and strained for that first, welcoming sign—usually a thin needle of smoke to indicate a fire in the hearth—she had never caught a sign of it for another half mile or more.

  Which is why, when she saw the long funnel of black smoke jutting up into the sky above where she knew the cottage should be she sat up suddenly straight in the saddle, stopping her horse dead in the road.

  The house was burning.