Eye of the Storm (9 page)

Racing down Penn Avenue, Jimmy calling “clear,” and warning against traffic as Drake steered, was just like the old days when Drake was a rookie and Andy Greally was his training officer. But Drake didn’t have time or energy to reminisce, all he could think about were Hart and his mother.

Thankfully Andy had been there, at the house. Drake was certain that was why there hadn’t been bloodshed—Andy wouldn’t have let the civilians panic. As soon as Jimmy made sure everything was being done to mobilize the city’s resources to find the kidnappers, he got Andy back on the line.

“Who the hell is this Kasanov?” Drake shouted into Jimmy’s phone.

“Never heard of him, but your aunt has. Said she ran into him back when she was a reporter in Cleveland. Ran some mob outfit.”

“Russian?” Not that it mattered, but if they knew Kasanov’s associates, they might get some leverage. Drake spun the wheel and they screeched onto Tessa’s street, already crowded with patrol cars. He skidded to a stop, double-parking beside Jimmy’s wife’s van.

Jimmy leapt from the Mustang, yelling for Denise and the kids, flashing his badge at the patrolman guarding the scene. As Bridget and Colton bounded from the house, leaping into Jimmy’s arms, Drake slowed his steps. There was no one here for him to greet, no need for him to rush. The realization hit him like a sucker punch, knocking out all his wind until his knees wobbled. He clutched the thin iron handrail beside the steps leading up to Tessa’s porch.

Hart was gone. His mother was gone. He stood there, the whirlwind of activity blurring around him. Inside, he felt emptied, a vacuum that had stolen everything: fear, anger, hope. Nothing left but a frozen, black void.

He inhaled; the air was warm for this late in December, at least fifty—no snow this year. The thoughts jumbled like pieces of a puzzle thrown into the air. Mixed in were images of
Steadfast
burning last night—only now it wasn’t the painting he saw in flames, but Hart’s face.

That she knew he was coming for her was the most comforting thought he could conjure. He couldn’t let her down, her or his mother. Flimsy strands of desperation, but they were enough to guide him forward, one step at a time.

A patrolman opened the door for him, not even asking to see his ID. Jacob and Nellie rushed to his side, Nellie embracing him with a hug, Jacob standing back, observing—their usual partnership; reporter diving into the fray, editor reining her in when need be.

“They’ll be fine,” Nellie said between her own tears. “We called the police right away. There’s no reason for him to hurt either one of them.”

Drake gently disengaged her arms from his body. “What happened?”

Jacob stepped forward. “I got most of it on video—they didn’t even ask us for our cell phones or anything. Like they didn’t care what evidence they left behind.”

Jimmy and Andy joined them as Jacob pulled out his phone. Drake realized they were the only detectives on scene—the patrolmen were more concerned with securing the scene and starting the manhunt than reviewing evidence.

Denise asked Adeena to take the kids upstairs with Tessa then she joined them as they watched Jacob’s video. It started with Hart’s arrival, followed by Adeena tugging her up the steps, a scene of the priest surrounded by the children, finally Hart descending the steps dressed in a wedding gown.

“You can’t see that, it’s bad—” Denise’s hand went to her mouth before she could finish. “Sorry,” she said, reaching a hand to squeeze Drake’s shoulder.

Then the doorbell rang and everything changed. The two heavies with Kasanov; Hart at his feet, her face bloody, his hand twisting her hair; Kasanov with Colton on his knee, his eyes locked with Hart’s; Hart pulling the boy from Kasanov; Muriel and Kasanov in the center of the room; Hart and Kasanov leaving with Muriel.

“That’s Kasanov? He was at the Fairstone,” Drake said. “He was there when they burned
Steadfast
.”

Drake rewound the video and watched it again. He didn’t care about the last part—seeing that once was more than enough. Instead, he lingered on the beginning, the part with his mother and Hart laughing and happy, whole and alive. Those images he carved into his heart.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Jimmy asked. “And what’s he want with Hart and Muriel?”

“He’s an Eastern European mobster,” Nellie answered Jimmy. “I tried to do a story on him several years ago—one of the people who spoke to me was named Russo. The story died after I couldn’t get anyone else to confirm what Russo told me, and a few days later, I received a package with a note from Kasanov.” She cringed and Drake knew where this was going. “It was a human tongue—I gave it to the FBI in Cleveland. They confirmed it as Russo’s and said it had been removed while he was alive. He’s never been seen again.”

Jacob wrapped an arm around her, but that didn’t stop her trembling.

“Maybe he’s using Hart to get to you?” Andy asked Drake.

“Why?” Drake clutched the phone, frozen on Hart’s smiling face as she and Muriel hugged. “I have nothing to do with Kasanov—if he’s with the mob, he’s a federal problem, not local. I never even heard of the man before today. Why target Hart or me?”

Drake’s questions went unanswered. The knot of despair tightened in his gut but he refused to give up hope.

They were alive—they had to be.

<<<>>>

ONCE CASSIE FORCED
her panic away, the ride became surreal. Kasanov’s men had prepared the trunk, bolting sheets of metal over the vulnerable spots like the tail lights and electrical connections as well as barricading the space in front of the back seat with a length of plywood, giving her no escape route and no light. The space was so small that no matter how she twisted her body she ended up folded, her weight pressed on the delicate joints of her wrists and ankles. Once they became numb, any new movement sent electrical jolts of pain through her—bad enough that the car’s erratic bumps and turns did that, so she gave up trying to reposition herself and simply focused on being… elsewhere.

Deep, calming breaths, forcing her muscles to relax, clearing her mind…at first she heard Drake’s voice, reassuring her that he was coming for her, that everything would be all right. Then another voice, equally strong and comforting, came through: her grandfather’s.

After her mom died, Cassie had spent a lot of her childhood with Padraic and Rosa on their farm in St. Augustine. Cassie loved both her grandparents deeply, but Rosa with her gypsy curses and impossible standards was too formidable for a little girl to approach.

Paddy never minded her tagging along with him, called her his shadow, never tiring of her endless questions or begging for stories from the war he and Rosa had fought. A natural storyteller, he was delighted to oblige, filling their hours of chores with tales that cemented Rosa’s image as larger-than-life, often downplaying his own role in events. But Cassie knew better—her grandfather was a hero.

She treasured every moment spent with him; he was her closest friend, and the one person she could trust with her feelings. It wasn’t until years after he was gone that she realized he must have felt the same about her, entrusting her with the truth of what he and Rosa had done, things she never fully understood until she was older and wiser.

As much as she loved her father and worshiped her grandmother, it was Paddy she adored without reservation. His strong, hairy arms, thick as small tree trunks; his large, calloused hands; the scent of cherry pipe tobacco that followed him everywhere; the lilting Irish accent and occasional lapse into Gaelic; his easy grin and the laugh that would rumble out of him like a volcano erupting. His was a presence solid, warm, comforting, and loving.

“Tell me a story,” she’d beg, cuddling into his embrace. He’d already told her how he and Rosa met during the war. In November of 1940, his ship had been torpedoed by U-boats off the coast of France, but Rosa and her group of Maquis had rescued Paddy. “Tell me about how you and Rosa saved your crew.”

Paddy puffed on his pipe, and then nodded his agreement. “It all started with a root cellar and a bushel of turnips.”

IN HER MIND,
Cassie was safe and sound at Paddy and Rosa’s farm, far away from the pitch-black pain of the endless car ride to an unknown fate.

“I quickly realized I’d been rescued by a crazy woman.” Padraic continued his story. “Just as fast realized she was the leader of this crew of French brigands who seemed as like to toss us back to the mercy of the storm as drag us onto dry land once they realized we were none of us officers.”

The scent of cherry pipe tobacco softened his words. “Course, I had a secret weapon. I was the radio operator and the officers had taught me German and a bit of French, so I could report anything I heard. Turns out languages came as easy to me as did mimicking old Father O’Brien’s Latin or the nuns’ mincing tirades. One thing I’ve always been good at—be it a birdcall or a whiff of a tune, if I hear it once, I can repeat it. Good thing, too. That gift of gab and playacting saved our lives more than once.

“Rosa didn’t care we weren’t officers, but her men complained that the Brits only paid them to rescue officers. She quickly had them in hand with only a word or two I didn’t understand, some language not German nor French, but the men—all of them ages older than her, mind you, I didn’t learn it until later, but she was barely seventeen at the time, already fighting the Nazis years longer than any army, already blood on her hands—the men jerked their heads up at those words, searching the storm clouds as if waiting for lightning to strike, and bent their backs to their oars, bringing us into shore.”

“I’ll bet she cursed them,” young Cassie whispered into her grandfather’s shoulder. She knew how the men felt—Rosa could turn her bones to jelly with just a stern look, didn’t need to resort to using any of her Romani curses.

“There was one thing they kept repeating.
La tempête.
The storm, I thought they meant. Figured out the truth later that night after we’d dragged the boats ashore and hid them. Nine of my mates had been saved by Rosa’s crew, another twenty-two by her other boats. No officers, but one of Rosa’s men who’d stayed on shore, monitoring the radio, said the Vichy had taken seven British officers prisoner after their launch landed up the coast near Bayonne.

“Rosa and her men marched us inland, the storm still lashing us, our limbs weighed down by exhaustion and sorrow at our mates lost and killed. Finally, we reached a farm where we were hurried inside a barn and down a ladder to a root cellar. Only after we were shut in, guards posted, did we risk lighting a few lanterns and got our first good look at each other.

“We were a motley crew, half-drowned and shredded by the storm and ocean. Remember, none of us were true Navy—we’d been merchant sailors pressed to service by the Royal Navy without training, our ship was a supply vessel, no arms at all. Only thing true Navy about us were our officers and there were none among us now, which gave the rabble-rousers a chance to rise up.

“The Irish of us—myself excluded because I had good reason to hate the Krauts after my sis died on the
Athenia
—they favored the Germans, thought if the English lost the war, they’d leave the north and our fight would be won as well. The Scots and Brits, a rough lot gathered from docks across England, most of them no fans of the government and Navy who’d taken our ship and livelihood as their own, were easily swayed by thoughts of leaving the war behind once talk turned of escaping both France and their service.”

Cassie closed her eyes, Paddy’s words coming to life as if she watched a movie.

<<<>>>

PADDY AND HIS
men helped themselves to wine their rescuers provided and apples from the baskets lining the dirt walls of the root cellar. There were also bushels of potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, pears, and onions, a harvest safely stored for winter.

“After all, we’re none of us real soldiers,” Maguire, a socialist from Galway, stood up, leading the debate. No surprise there. Maguire was a loudmouth in all things from berating Cookie for lousy rations to planning the future of Ireland.

The smell of the cellar reminded Paddy of home, of a life led safe on land, no U-boats or curfews or blackouts or weeks of tinned food, the same morning and night, tales of the officers’ gourmet fare brought back by the stewards who stole what they could from the upper galley.

Perfect atmosphere for Maguire’s talk of mutiny. “Why shouldn’t we scamper off, blend in with the civilians, turn our back on this god-forsaken war? The Germans will be winning it soon enough, no reason to put a target on our backs. We didn’t ask for this, none of us, right?”

The men sitting at Maguire’s feet, crowded into the cramped cellar, nodded and grunted their agreement. Paddy had positioned himself as close to the ladder and escape route as possible, even if it meant missing out on the wine being passed hand-to-hand. He stood, propped against the hard-packed dirt wall, exhausted enough to fall asleep, his head nodding against his chest. On the ship he’d trusted these men, they were his mates, good at their jobs. But they weren’t on board the ship anymore, they were alone, stranded, and without officers to lead them.

Rosa and two of her men stood beside him, near the exit. Protecting them or guarding them? It was clear Rosa spoke English—enough that he could see she followed the debate. It was equally clear that she was disgusted by Maguire’s talk of desertion.

As Maguire paced before his rapt and besotted audience, shadows from the lanterns flickering around him, Rosa reached past Padraic to a bushel of turnips, scrounging among them until she found one small enough to fit her hand, almost perfectly round, its body a deep shade of purple, barely a dimple or crease marring it.

Paddy, despite his fatigue, was intrigued enough to shake himself alert. Maguire’s speech had reached some impassioned high point that led to cheers from the assembly. He stopped pacing, standing tall as if he’d just been elected Pope, beaming at the men crouched in the dirt before him.