Cold Comfort
Book 6 of the Irish End Game Series
Susan Kiernan-Lewis
San Marco Press/Atlanta 2015
Some people were born to take advantage of a bad situation.
In the sixth installment of The Irish End Games, Sinead Branigan has found a way to create happiness for a nation of childless couples—by stealing and selling the babies of post-apocalyptic Ireland.
When Mike and Sarah return from their search for John and Gavin, they find their home and compound deserted, their friends and family inexplicably gone without an apparent struggle.
Will they be able to piece together the mystery in time to find their people? Or, like so many other things they’ve adjusted to in Ireland after the bomb, will they be forced to accept a new kind of life—one tragically changed for generations to come?
Sarah could see the interior of the compound from where she stood at the end of the straight drive leading to it. There was no sign of life inside. She expected that. They’d all braced for it. But seeing it was something else. Seeing it was a gut punch of reality that imagining couldn’t come close to.
She and Mike had walked sixty miles to get back. Because of her late-stage pregnancy, the trip—which should have taken two days—took four. Now she stood at the end of the long road home looking at the haven they’d left six months earlier, the place she’d dreamed of so many nights on the road—their place of fellowship and comfort. And her strength began to falter.
There was no way their friends and family—Fiona, Declan, Archie—would have left the gate open. Absolutely no way. The fear Sarah had pushed aside ever since John told them he’d found the compound abandoned now slithered unabated into every part of her.
Mike put a hand on her elbow to steady her as they stood in the road. Dark rain clouds threatened overhead.
“You all right, love?” he said in a low voice.
She took a deep breath and leaned on his arm. If anybody wasn’t all right about this, it was Mike. Ameriland was his creation. Every nail in every cottage, he’d either pounded in himself or directed. Every family who lived here he saw as his personal responsibility.
“I’m good,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. “Just give me a minute.”
Sarah’s son John trotted up to them.
“Mike?” he said. “You mind if Gavin and I go on in?”
Sarah looked at Mike, her eyes wide with worry. What if there were bandits or wild animals inside?
Mike’s son Gavin and daughter-in-law Sophia came to stand next to them. All five stared at the looming compound walls at the end of the long straight road.
“Hold up,” Mike said to John, “and we’ll finish the journey together.”
Sarah saw the impatience in John’s face. At fourteen he was still so young. Too young to realize the only thing waiting for them inside those walls was pain.
“I can’t believe it,” she murmured, still staring at the open gate. “What could possibly have happened?”
Mike didn’t answer but she felt the tension in his grip as he held her arm. She stumbled as they walked and Mike’s fingers pinched into her to keep her upright. She pulled her arm from his grasp.
“All of you go on,” she said. “Just do me a favor and don’t get shot.” She put a protective hand on her abdomen. The baby, clearly awake and annoyed at the adrenaline and nervousness Sarah was channeling its way, kicked and squirmed as if to say Go in already!
Gavin led the way with John right behind. Sophia looked at Sarah, her brow knit in concern. Mike patted her on the shoulder as he walked past.
“Stay with Sarah,” he said. “We’ll give the all clear when you’re to come in.”
He strode down the remaining yards to the compound and disappeared through the gate. Just the sight of him—so tall and broad shouldered, so sturdy in the face of whatever trial they’d had to face in the last six months—vanishing inside, made Sarah quicken her own steps.
“Da says we are not to follow just yet,” Sophia said with her thick Italian accent.
“It’s abandoned,” Sarah said, sounding more confident than she felt. Although most people—even those who’d taken over a compound that didn’t belong to them—might logically lock their doors, who’s to say what thugs and riffraff would do? Perhaps the people inside were so drunk they didn’t know or care that the gate was wide open.
Still holding her abdomen, Sarah stepped through the gate. John stood to her immediate left on the porch of the cottage that used to be theirs. Gavin was already coming from the back of the compound where the gypsies lived. His face was solemn. Mike was nowhere in sight.
Even without looking in every corner herself, there was something about the feel of the place that told Sarah it was deserted.
“It is much as Gavin described to me,” Sophia said quietly.
Sarah’s stomach clenched in nausea. The atmosphere of the place was so violated, it was hard not to believe that something bad had happened here.
“Did you find anything?” she asked Gavin.
“Nah. Da’s checking out the garage and the southern perimeter. Find anything, John?” he called.
John shook his head. Sarah knew her son felt guilty about his part in all this, as if his leaving had somehow triggered whatever had happened to the compound. Was that possible? Were they connected?
“I need to sit down,” Sarah said moving to the center fire pit in front of the cottage. She could tell it was long cold. She sat on one of the stacked cairns. The gypsies—and old Mickey Quinn—had often sat here in the evenings telling stories, singing and drinking poteen. She knew what had happened to poor Mickey—but what of everyone else? There was nothing obviously out of order with the place. It hadn’t burned or flooded. It hadn’t been taken over by anyone else.
What would make everyone just pick up and…leave?
John jumped down from the porch and joined them in front of the fire pit. It occurred to Sarah that at least they hadn’t found any bodies. In her mind, that meant there was still hope that whatever had happened, it could all somehow be put back together again.
**********
Checking the stables was the first order of business, Mike thought as he strode toward the back of the compound. He could tell from the minute he walked through the gates that there was nobody in the place. Hell, the gate swinging open and unbarred had said that loud and clear.
The silence of the place was overwhelming. Not a goat or a horse’s whinny. Yes, it was deserted. But hadn’t they known that since the minute John had told them so? Every step they’d taken to get to this point from Rosslare had been filled with dread, some of it voiced and some of it just germinating and growing in his mind as they travelled.
He had been so sure that the answer to why they had all left would be clear to him once he saw the compound. But that answer was no more evident than it had been on the road from Rosslare. There was nothing obviously wrong with the place to hint that the people had been driven out. With the exception of the odd campfire remnant here and there indicating the compound had been visited by transients, the place looked much as it had the day Mike and Sarah left five months ago.
Mike heard the faint sounds of voices conferring at the front of the compound. Sarah and Sophia must be inside. He’d forgotten to tell Gavin to pull the gate closed but until they found out if they were truly alone inside, perhaps that was just as well. The stable was located next to the garage they’d built the year before. When Mike saw the stable doors open, he realized with dismay how much a part of him had been hoping the animals might still be there.
With no one to feed or care for them? He shook his head. Like most hope, it had been irrational. But he’d held it even so. He approached the barn slowly and then stopped. Large tire tracks led from the garage.
There was only the heavier truck left after he and Sarah took the Jeep Wrangler. The garage door was open and as he walked closer, its darkened interior morphed slowly into a cavern filled with trash and empty, tipped-over fuel cans. There was no darkened hulk inside where the truck should be. The tracks told that story clearly. They looked to have once been carved deeply into the dirt but months of wind and rain had erased all but shallow outlines. Whoever had taken the truck had taken it fully loaded.
He walked to the stable and glanced in briefly to confirm that there were no horses inside. He saw the leather tack and harnesses still on their hooks, and the saddles perched on their wooden racks.
So they didn’t take the horses but either freed them or just let them wander away as they would. Mike tried to imagine Declan agreeing to any of this. He tried to see his brother-in-law—so logical and practical—letting their horses just…go. Mike walked away from the stables in frustration.
Horses gone, truck gone and loaded with God knows what, everyone in the place gone. He glanced up at the northern watchtower where they kept most of their surveillance and communications equipment—at least whatever Declan hadn’t destroyed last fall in a moment of insanity. It was likely that the truck was loaded with food stores and their armory but only a careful inventory of the camp would reveal exactly what was missing.
He knew Sarah would be getting nervous the longer he was gone but the north watchtower was an ideal place to survey the entire compound. He picked up his pace heading toward it, scanning his immediate surroundings as he went. Everything looked normal, everything in order. That was what was so maddening. There wasn’t even a tipped over bench to indicate there’d been a struggle or an attack.
It was like they all just vanished.
As he turned the corner around the last line of cottages and mini-sheds which bordered the perimeter of the compound, he saw the first thing since entering the camp that looked out of place. In the small patch of garden that used to belong to old Siobhan Murray was a wooden table with a large bowl in the center. Frowning, Mike walked over to the table. The bowl was full of rainwater and a bloated mass of spongy material floated at the bottom. It was dough. Set out to rise.
And someone had never come back to fetch it. He realized this was the first piece of evidence that showed that something unexpected had happened. As he looked away from the bowl, he saw a scrap of color on the ground that caught his eye. Stepping behind the table, he stopped.
A body lay on the ground. Now mostly bones and tufts of hair, the flesh destroyed by weather and animals, it had on leather boots and a floral blouse and skirt. Even though he knew the hair was wrong to be Fiona, Mike’s heart seized up at the sight. It was what he’d been fearing to see around every corner and down every path.
All of the food stores were intact. Not only had their people not taken any of the food harvested last year—but whoever had squatted in the place in the interim hadn’t known about it or bothered to take it either.
Sarah sat with Mike opposite John, Gavin and Sophia at the table in her old cottage. John and Gavin had found wood for the cook stove as well as canned jam and sweet potatoes. The bread on the shelves had long molded, the meat in the smoke house was rotten. They still had some smoked fish they’d brought with them on their journey from the coast, which they ate with a bottle of Pinot Noir from the stash Sarah had brought back from the States the year before. The wine was stored in one of the hand-dug cellars near where the gypsies had lived. Obviously any vagrants or transients hadn’t looked there for anything of value.
“Does it make sense that our people wouldn’t take the wine?” Sarah asked as she handed Mike a plate of fish with corn that she’d canned the summer before.
“They must have left in a mad hurry,” Gavin said. “No one who wasn’t the full shilling would leave wine behind.”
“But the guns are all gone,” Mike said. “And the truck, the petrol, the livestock and all the electronics. It doesn’t make sense. Any of it.”
“What could make them leave?” Sarah said, shifting her bulk uncomfortably in her kitchen chair.
No one answered. It was the question they’d all asked, out loud or to themselves, all afternoon long. Why take the truck but leave the wine and the food?
“How long do you think?” Sarah asked, breaking the silence. Mike’s grisly discovery in the northern perimeter of the camp had given a new edge to the mystery and one that seemed to counter the possibility that their friends would be coming back.
It was Sarah who identified the body as Kendra by the woman’s signature wiry red hair worn long in wild tendrils about her shoulders. Even without a recognizable face, there could be no mistake. Every time Sarah thought of Kendra, she wanted to weep or vomit or both. Before they left last November to search for Gavin and John, Kendra had been one of the women who’d stepped up and bravely helped rebuff the group of druids intent on capturing and killing their children.
They found two bullet casings. One on the ground beneath the body and one lodged in the skull. Kendra had been shot and left to the crows.
Gavin sat close to Sophia, his arm draped over her shoulders. Mike stood up and held a hand out to Sarah to help her to her feet.
“At least four months,” Mike said. “Maybe longer. The place has been vacant a long time.” He helped Sarah to the sofa where she sat down heavily. He sat beside her and eased her feet up into his lap. He slipped off her boots and began massaging her feet with his large warm hands. Sarah groaned.
“But why has no one else moved in?” Sophia asked.
“Good question,” Mike said.
“It looks like our people just left and didn’t bother closing the door behind them,” Gavin said.
“It is truly a mystery,” Sophia said, resting her head on Gavin’s shoulder.
“Whatever happened, it’s pretty clear they were forced out,” Mike said. “Kendra’s death tells us that. No way they would’ve just left her like that.”
“But why was she the only one fighting them?” Gavin asked.
“The gypsies wouldn’t fight,” Sarah said. “They’d run.” She looked at Mike who frowned. “You know they would. Declan wouldn’t, but the others would.”
“In the morning, we’ll go into the village and see if anyone’s heard anything.”
“Can I come?” John asked.
Mike didn’t look at Sarah but nodded his assent. She knew she couldn’t always keep John safe and she also knew that her attempts to do so often did more harm than good. Still, it was hard to let go.
“Sophia and I will try to clean up the place while you’re gone,” Sarah said. She looked at Gavin. “Will you be wanting your own place, I suppose?” She watched him exchange a glance with Sophia.
“Here’s good for now,” he said. “Plenty of time for thinking about that later.”
Sophia breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed against him again.
John picked up Sarah’s glass of water from the kitchen table and brought it to her on the couch.
“Everything will be okay, Mom,” he said. “We’ll find them.”
There was always something. There was never just a moment when everything was fine and everyone was where they were supposed to be. Would there ever be?
“I know, darling. I believe it,” she said, forcing her smile to reach all the way to her heart as she said the words.
*****
The next morning broke cold and wet. It was late March. Almost too late to plant. When Sarah asked Mike last night how long they’d been gone, Mike knew they were assuming he was going on the condition of Kendra’s body and to a certain extent he was. But more than anything, he guessed the time frame because there were certain things that should have been done in November and December—things like cutting extra firewood and canning—that hadn’t been done. That meant they’d been gone nearly as long as Mike and Sarah had been.
Could he have prevented whatever had happened if he’d been here? There was no knowing. It seemed to him that ever since Gavin had gone missing six months ago—and everything in between—Mike had been in a constant state of trying to get to the next stage—of scrabbling to find Gavin or John, of trying to hold Sarah together while they waited for John, of hurrying back to Ameriland to find out what had happened, and now of racing to the village of Ballinagh to see if answers could be found there.
He couldn’t remember a time when life was just one day after another, one foot in front of another. Ever since the druids showed up, he’d been putting out fires and praying for something to happen.
And he was still doing it.
He looked over at Sarah in their bed and marveled that it had been so long since they’d both been in it. They were finally home—with both boys back safe and sound—but now everyone in the damn compound was missing.
“You’re not leaving before breakfast, are you?” she asked around a yawn.
“Nay,” he said, “but I hear the lass up boiling Gav’s tea. What I wouldn’t give for an egg.”
“Maybe you can bring a couple of hens back from Ballinagh?” Sarah sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.
Mike thought she looked as beautiful as he ever remembered seeing her. Full with his child, her face glowed with youth and life. Her lips looked starkly pink against her pale skin.
“We don’t have time for monkey business, if that’s what you’re thinking, husband dear,” Sarah said with a grin.
“Am I so transparent then?”
“On some things, yes.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “I love ye, Sarah Donovan.”
“I love you, too,” she said. “We’ll find her, Mike. She might even be living in the village.”
“Aye.”
The fact that Fiona and the baby Ciara—not to mention Fiona’s husband Declan—weren’t in the compound felt like the biggest mystery of them all. Nobody was tougher than those two. They would not have walked away without a fight. Mike began to leave and then stopped and returned to Sarah, dropped to one knee and placed his hand on her swollen belly.
“Sure you have to know, darlin,” he said in a whisper hoarse with emotion, “that nothing matters more to me than you and this one.”
“I know.”
“And I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure that he gets the chance to live in an Ireland that’s safe. This is our future right here. Ye know that, aye?”
“I do, Mike.” She placed her hand on top of his and looked into his eyes, full of love and care. “Mind yourself in the village. Come back to us safe.”
He nodded and kissed her, then left the room. He knew none of them would ever again take for granted a parting without thinking it might be the last time they saw each other again. Too many times in the past it had happened just like that.
Gavin and Sophia were in the kitchen, quietly sipping tea at the table. It was hard to believe there was no bread, no milk for the tea, and no stream of people outside needing Mike’s advice or guidance. They were in a ghost town.
Mike’s thoughts flitted back to the image of poor Kendra. He had prepared the body last night for burial. Why was she killed? Why her and not anybody else? Why only her?
He had already besieged himself with these same questions over and over again all night long until he’d fallen asleep exhausted and uneasy. Sarah was right about that too, he thought, as he glanced out the kitchen window to the camp center. The place didn’t feel like home any more. It felt like a crime scene.
**********
The village of Ballinagh was two miles away by road and less than a mile cutting directly through the woods that separated it from Ameriland. Since they’d taken the main road in yesterday and found no evidence of recent travel, Mike led John and Gavin through the woods in hopes there would be a clue to where the compound people had gone. His thought was that if they left on their own accord, they’d likely go the main road, but if they were fleeing, they’d head into the woods. That would definitely be the case with the gypsies of the camp.
Both boys were quiet as they moved through the woods. It had rained in the night and only the sounds of leaves squelching underfoot broke the morning silence.
When Mike and Sarah left last fall, the inhabitants of the village of Ballinagh appeared to be in the process of moving out and finding refuge in Ameriland. Because they’d left immediately after the altercation with the druids outside the compound walls, Mike couldn’t be sure the blighters hadn’t come back to try to finish the job of taking the compound. But whatever had happened in the compound, it had happened so fast there had been no time to leave clues to tell Mike what had happened.
Would he find the village deserted too? Had whatever happened in Ameriland been repeated in Ballinagh? Mike found himself nearly jogging through the woods in his impatience to reach the town and find answers. John and Gavin kept pace with him. They were concerned, Mike knew. But the prospect of losing a beloved auntie—however painful the blow—was something both lads were prepared for. They’d faced worse in their young lives.
As they approached, Mike put a hand out to hold Gavin back. He and John looked at Mike questioningly.
“Let’s wait and watch a moment, lads,” he said. While waiting was just about the last thing Mike felt like doing, after four years of living in a world with the unexpected around every corner, he knew it was necessary.
The woods opened up abruptly to a narrow country road which would carry them the rest of the way into town. The long ditches that flanked the road were choked with gorse and broom. Although no cars had travelled this road in four years, there should have been pony cart tracks and horse prints in the damp verge bordering the road. There were none.
Not a good sign.
“We’ll split up,” he said and they both nodded. “You two stay together. Go around the back of the town. Mind you’re not seen. Meet me at the end of town. Off with ye.”
He watched them jog away, bent over and silent. He couldn’t help think as he watched them go how the disappearance of the two of them had been the catalyst for Mike and Sarah’s heartbreaking journey to find them that had finally led to their reunion. He knew both boys felt that they were somehow responsible for the loss of the compound. And that was Mike’s fault because he couldn’t help think that if he had been there, whatever happened wouldn’t have.
Mike said a quick prayer for their safety and then turned away. The town looked deserted from this angle but that didn’t necessarily mean it was. With no cars and little commerce, Ballignah had struggled to survive. In the last year or so, Mike had started regularly sending food and medicine from the compound to the village. Cars still sat parked in front of storefronts. Tires had been slashed or stolen years ago and the car interiors plundered for whatever valuables they’d once possessed. The street looked truly apocalyptic, Mike couldn’t help but notice, with the ravaged cars hunched in their spots like threatening monuments to another time.
He kept to the south side of the street and moved slowly. If there was anyone in town, they’d be watching from the picture windows that faced the main street. It was a time of warranted fear and Mike wasn’t surprised not to see evidence of a living soul out and about. The general hard goods store that used to be the main gathering place in town was one of the first buildings he came to. The windows had long been smashed out and its shelves looted. There were other shops more intact and more likely to house people. He kept his eyes sharp and continued down the store fronts.
When he heard the faint strains of guitar music, he stopped and his heart leapt to his throat. The gypsies had often played their guitars around the compound center campfire. He didn’t remember anyone else playing music except them. Had Declan’s lot regrouped at Ballinagh? Could it be as simple as that? He held his breath and listened to the strumming. It was faint but definite. It seemed to be coming from one of the buildings facing the street. He took a few more tentative steps in the direction of the sound and then stopped again. Now he heard voices.
The domiciles in the village had all been perched atop stores and pubs before the bomb dropped. Since then, and especially since the stores were plundered almost immediately, people found comfort and a sense of safety—whether accurate or not—in living higher up. Mike glanced at the windows of the apartments across the street but they were dark. Some of them were broken out. It was hard to believe anyone could live in a place with no way to shut the wind and the rain out.
A woman’s laugh rang out, high but muffled as if a hasty hand had clapped over her mouth. Mike froze. He heard voices again, louder this time, although the words were still indistinct, and then the woman’s voice rising above them, angry and insistent.
He knew that voice.
Sarah eased herself down onto a wicker chair on the porch. The morning rain pattered on the wooden deck. Not unusual for this time of year in Ireland, she thought, pulling the collar of her cardigan up. The weather was crap. Overcast, cold, and with the constant threat of rain.
Not unlike how I feel at the moment.
Sophia sat on the steps at Sarah’s feet. She wore a shawl that she’d found in one of the cottages and wrapped it tightly around her. She was staring at the gate as if wanting to see the very moment that Gavin returned.
“What part of Italy are you from?” Sarah asked. “I guess you’re not used to Irish weather.”
Sophia smiled but didn’t look away from the gate. “I come from the north,” she said. “It’s nice there.”
“Nicer than this.”
Sophia turned to Sarah, her smile broadening. “Not without Gavin it isn’t.”
“You really love him.”
Sophia laughed as if the answer was so obvious it must be a joke for Sarah to even ask.
“You know, Mike was a little worried about you in the beginning,” Sarah said. She and Sophia had gone over this ground a few hundred times when they all lived together in Rosslare but she knew Sophia found it soothing to hear the story of her acceptance into the family. And she very much looked like she could use some reassurance about now.
“Gavin has used bad judgment with girls in the past,” Sophia said, still smiling. “Da thought I must be the same.”
“You can’t blame him. One doesn’t usually stumble onto the love of one’s life in the middle of nowhere,” Sarah said.
“You did.”
Now it was Sarah’s turn to laugh. She dropped a hand to her belly and rubbed the outline of the baby moving within.
“You’ve got a point there,” she said. “But it was a long time coming and at the cost of terrible pain and loss.”
“I know.”
Sophia’s smile was gone now and Sarah imagined she must be thinking of her father and how he had died. Sarah’s eyes dropped to Sophia’s hands with her missing finger. In the months they had spent living with Mike and Sarah in Rosslare while they were waiting for John, Sarah had grown to love the girl. She was strong and had a sense of humor—all of which came in handy when being married to Gavin. But she was tender, too, and sentimental. It’s the Italian in her, Gavin often teased. But she made a good addition to the family and Sarah was delighted for all their sakes that Gavin had found her.
They deserved happiness, Sarah thought fiercely. And she knew she would do whatever was necessary to get that and keep it—for all of them.
“You are having theories?” Sophia asked.
“About where everyone went?” Sarah glanced in the direction of where Kendra’s body was found. “Maybe one or two.”
Sophia tore her eyes from the gate opening.
“Tell me.”
“Well, I think we’ve all accepted that our people didn’t leave willingly. The fact that Kendra was killed in the attack and they weren’t able to return to bury her tells me that.”
“That is what Gavin thinks too.”
“But Kendra’s death tells me something else,” Sarah said. “She gave her life when everyone else seems to have walked away. That tells me she was fighting to protect something valuable. Something worth her life.”
When Sophia looked at her in confusion, Sarah dropped a hand to her abdomen. Sophia’s eyes grew round.
“I don’t understand. Gavin said she was childless.”
“She was. But I knew her and she was ferocious about protecting the children in the camp. I think she was killed because she was trying to protect the kiddies. So the threat has to do with the children. That’s what I think.”
Sarah felt the tears stinging her eyes as she remembered Kendra, so brave, so determined. How was it possible that someone with so much life was just snuffed out?
“But would not the mothers and fathers be doing the same thing? Why are they not dead?”
Sarah wiped the tears from her eyes. “A mother, as you’ll learn some day, can only go so far in a fight because ultimately she needs to be alive to protect her children. Kendra had nothing to lose. She wouldn’t give up.”
“So they killed her.”
“I think so. Whoever they are.”
Sophia shivered. “I am so sorry for this woman. No family and to die alone.”
“I know. But we were all her family. And we will avenge her.”
Sophia snapped her head around. “What means avenge?”
By the way she asked it, Sarah guessed Sophia knew exactly what the word meant.
“Our new world is more than just finding a peaceful place to grow crops and raise our children, Sophia. We have to create and follow a code of behavior—now more than ever. We’ll get our people back and we’ll punish the ones who drove them out. We’ll find the ones who murdered Kendra, too. Trust me we will.”
Until she’d spoken the words out loud, it hadn’t occurred to Sarah that it was truly how she felt. The persistent feeling pulsing beneath her breastbone wasn’t indigestion or the chronic worry she lived with day in and day out, or the unsettled feeling of the mystery of what happened to everyone. It was the relentless, unholy fury of knowing that somebody had taken the life of one of their own.
And for that somebody—no matter where they were or who they were—there could be no mercy.
**********
Mike walked down an alley off the main road and in the direction of the music. He dropped to his knees and crawled to the edge of the last storefront and peered around the corner.
Across the street, a bicycle was propped up against the door of what used to be a nail salon. The door to the salon was open and the music and the laughter were loud and clear.
A sudden flash of movement caught Mike’s eye at the end of the alley. He felt a rush of irritation when he saw John and Gavin standing at the opening, watching him. They were supposed to be on the other side of the street and meet him at the edge of town.
He held a finger to his lips and pointed at the salon door. Gavin nodded, his eyes going to the bicycle. Whoever was in there wasn’t concerned about being overheard, that much was clear.
Mike got to his feet and walked across the street so that he was now on the same side of the alley as the opened door and the bike. He watched John and Gavin follow suit. If anybody inside had a gun, this might be a terrible idea but giving people advance warning was also usually a pretty bad idea. He stood with his back against the wall and waited until Gavin and John were in place on the other side.
“I can take it off or you can,” a girl’s voice said coquettishly. “The choice is yours.”
Before Mike had a chance to react, he saw Gavin’s face drain of all color, then pivot to face the opening and fling the door open.
“What the feck?” Gavin shouted from the doorway. Mike heard the girl scream and the shocked gasp from whoever else was inside.
Shit! Mike pushed past Gavin into the nail salon with John right behind him. A man stood facing them, a large knife in his hand. His face was purple with rage and it looked to Mike like he wasn’t interested in talking his way around the situation. The man shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, ready to launch himself at Gavin who still stood, gaping at him from the doorway.
“Steady on!” Mike bellowed, holding up a hand to the man. “We mean ye no harm.”
“Then bugger off!” the man snarled. He was bigger than Gavin but shorter than Mike by at least four inches. Mike watched him size him up as if trying to determine if he could take him in a fight. He was younger than Mike but not enough to make a difference.
“We will as soon as we have a wee word with the lass,” Mike said, nodding in the direction of the girl who stood behind the man with the knife.
“I don’t know them!” the girl shrieked. “Tell ‘em to feck off!”
“With pleasure, luv,” the man said, tossing his knife from hand to hand. Clearly meant as some sort of demonstration of confidence, it always surprised Mike when an idiot did something like that. He took two steps toward the man and slapped the knife out of his hands. The girl scrambled for it and snatched it off the floor.
Mike grabbed the man by the shoulders and slammed him against the nearest wall. He twisted him around and hammered his face into the wall then yanked his arm up high behind his back. The man squealed.
“Give Gavin the knife, Regan,” Mike said, keeping the pressure on the man’s arm.
“Why should I?” Regan said. “You can’t come in here and feck with me like you—”
Mike heard her scream and glanced over his shoulder to see that Gavin had taken the knife from her. She stood in front of him, her fists at her sides and her eyes blazing as she looked at Gavin. She was wearing low slung jeans and a lace bra. Her blouse lay in a puddle of stained polyester on the floor between them.
“I’m going to let you go,” Mike said to the man. “And if you behave yourself I won’t have to stuff your balls down your throat. Sound good?”
The man grunted and Mike released him.
“Sit over there where I can see you,” Mike said, pointing to a broken chair in what used to be the salon reception waiting area. He turned to Regan and put his hands on his hips. “Where are your parents?”
“None of your business! You’re not the boss of me here,” she said hotly.
“Are you living here?”
“Go feck yourself!”
Gavin shot a hand out and gripped her by the shoulder.
“You had the priest lure me into the woods so the fecking druids could sacrifice me,” he said angrily.
“Not now, Gav,” Mike said. But it was clearly the exact right thing to say as the fight went out of her immediately. She looked at the floor.
“I didn’t want to,” she said.
“They were going to kill me, Regan,” Gavin said harshly.
“I didn’t know!” She looked at him, her chin trembling. “And besides, I’ve been forgiven for that. By Herself.” She looked over at Mike. “Wasn’t I?”
Gavin looked at Mike in astonishment. “She’s off the hook for trying to lure me to me death?”
“It’s complicated,” Mike said tiredly. “And we’re not going to sort it out right now.” He turned to Regan. “I’m going to ask you again. Where are your parents?”
Regan licked her lips. “Me mum’s upstairs.”
Mike nodded. “And this plonker?” he said indicating the man in the chair. “Who’s he?”
“Nobody,” she said and looked at the floor.
Mike watched her for a moment and then took the knife from Gavin and handed it to the man.
“If that’s your bike outside, I suggest you get on it.”
“I didn’t get what I came for,” the man said truculently. “And she took me money.”
“Regan, put your shirt on and give him his money back,” Mike said, gritting his teeth to prevent himself from saying more.
She hesitated, then pulled a few coins out of her jeans pocket and handed it to the man. The fury began to build in Mike the moment he realized what had been going on. But when he saw how little she was willing to sell herself for, he wanted to punch something really hard.
“Now get the feck out,” he said to the man in a low voice. The threat was feral and real. The man hesitated only an instant before grabbing up his guitar from the floor and exiting the store.
Mike looked at John. “You and Gav wait outside.” When Gavin looked like he’d argue, Mike gave him a severe look until he stomped out with John behind him.
“Does your mother know you’re doing this?”
“I have no idea what she knows,” Regan said as she defiantly tugged on her blouse.
“Sit,” Mike said tersely, pointing to one of the chairs.
“You can’t order me about. I’ll stand, thank you.”
“Suit yourself. Why are you not at the compound?”
Regan’s eyes widened. “Are you and Sarah just now getting back?”
“Aye.”
“So you don’t know,” she said. “Bugger me. All this time I thought they went to meet you somewhere else and start up a new camp.”
“Where are the people of Ameriland and why are none of ye at the compound?”
“They left,” she spat. “They just picked up and left.”
That was bollocks. One thing Mike knew from what few clues they had was that the people did not just pick up and leave. They were driven out.
“Okay,” he said patiently. “And why is it you didn’t leave with them, may I ask?”
“I never got the chance, did I?”
He watched her eyes fill with angry tears.
“They left without us.”
Mike sighed. Regan and her mother must have been out of the compound when it was attacked.
“And your father?”
“After the strammish everyone made of what I did when the other ones…” She shrugged.
“You mean the druids?”
She nodded. “He never forgave me. So when they all left, he went with them.”
“You’re asking me to believe that Barney Murdoch left you and your mother…when you were, what?…off blackberry picking or something?”
She looked down at her hands. The memory of the pain of that day was written on her face.
“That’s exactly what he did,” she said. “Me mam and I took a picnic in the woods and when time got away from us it was near dark and so we hurried back.” She swallowed hard. “And they’d all gone.”
The weariness began in Mike’s shoulders and began filtering all the way down to his legs. If the trip to the village hadn’t exactly been for nothing, it’d come pretty close. Regan had no idea of what had happened to the compound. This was a dead end. Probably the first of many.
“I need to talk to your mother.”
“She’s not well,” Regan said, her eyes darting to the ceiling.
“All the more reason for her to come back to Ameriland with us.”
“Come back?” Regan stared at him.
Mike glanced up the stairs. “Is she just up here then?”
Regan ran to him and grabbed his arm. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You’re taking us back to the compound?”
“Lass, the people of the compound, including your father, didn’t leave voluntarily. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth of it.”
Regan stared at him with her mouth open and her eyes glazed as if seeing the misery of that day through a new and even more painful prism.
“They didn’t deliberately leave us?”
“No, lass. Nothing about that day seems deliberate except the evil that came calling.”