Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (103 page)

The outlines of the distillery, the oak beams and river stone, stood out in relief against the flames. It was, Pamela thought, a scene of utter beauty and utter destruction.

“I’m goin’ to go down an’ see what’s what,” Casey said. “It’ll start to die back now that the stills an’ washbacks have exploded.”

She clutched at his hand, grateful for the warmth of his skin. Her own was cold and numb.

“Just be careful,” she said.

She sat there for a long time on the hillside, as the night faded behind the flames and dawn rose. Dew was thick in the grass while smoke choked the air. Autumn was in the dawn, in the chill shadows that didn’t rise until later in the morning, in the feel of winter reaching out with steely fingers. She felt stunned, as though someone had hit her hard with a large object and left her bruised and unable to think coherently. She had half expected Philip to show up and gloat. Then again, he might wish to keep himself as distant as possible from a conflagration that he likely had a hand in setting.

Though Jamie’s empire was far flung, the distillery was the root and soul of it, the beginning and the legacy that had been handed down generation after generation. Under the harsh reek of the smoke, she could smell the melting copper of the vats and the heady burn of the grain itself, the vapor of the angel’s ether rising in the air.

The fire died back slowly, leaving only a frail skeleton behind in the form of structural beams. The stones had cracked in the enormous heat and were scattered within the ruin and the surrounding yards.

She stood, still numb, but knowing she had to go down and speak to the firemen now that it was safe to approach, and start to make a series of very difficult decisions.

Casey was cresting the hill, the morning sun rising behind him, crimson through the ash that clogged the air. His own face was streaked with cinders, eyes wells of exhaustion.

“Jewel, I’ve a wee bit of bad news.”

“The distillery is gone. It can’t get any worse.”

“Oh, aye, it can,” Casey said grimly. “There’s a body inside.”

“Are ye feelin’ any better
?” Casey asked from the bedroom doorway. Pamela removed the cold cloth from her eyes and looked at him. It was several hours since he had delivered the news about the dead body. Following upon that they had spent three hours in the police station, trying to answer questions for which they had no answers. Pamela had not voiced her suspicions, because she knew there would be neither proof nor trail leading to the guilty party. He was too careful and calculating for that. She had little doubt that he, the man who had engineered this disaster, would know the identity of the mysterious corpse which had kept them at the police station so long.

She patted the bed beside her, indicating that Casey should come sit.

“Is Isabelle awake?” she asked, for she had nursed the baby—outraged at the long delay between meals—before lying down, and she had no idea how much time had passed as she drifted in and out of sleep.

“No, she’s sleepin’ fine in her cradle. Conor’s playin’ in the kitchen an’ Gert an’ Owen are still here, so don’t be after worryin’ yerself over the wee ones, darlin’.”

His face was hollowed out with worry and exhaustion, and though he was freshly washed, she could still smell smoke on him. She felt as if it was soaked into her very pores, and that she would smell the phantom of this fire for years to come.

“Can ye manage a bit more in the way of bad news then?”

“Aye,” she said dryly. “I can manage.”

“The police have called an’ they think they’ve maybe identified the body.”

The tone of his voice warned her.

“Who?”

“Jamie’s uncle.”

“Oh, Christ,” she said and sat up. For a moment black spots danced in front of her eyes and she thought she might faint but Casey’s hand on her back shored her up.

“How did they identify him?”

“There was a ring on the corpse. It was melted down a bit, but after they had a good look at it, they made out the initials P.K. There was a sapphire in it, they said.”

There was no doubt then, for that was Philip’s ring.

“Who can have done this, Casey? With all the legal wrangling Robert and I have been doing, it’s going to look very bad for us.”

“I would think ye need look no further than the man’s partners in crime, if ye wish to know who killed him. But that,” Casey said, with a tone of finality, “is for the police to solve, not you. This has gotten, if ye’ll pardon the pun, far too hot a situation for ye to be dealin’ with. It’s time to back off an’ reassess, Pamela. Whatever Jamie might want an’ however much the distillery meant to him, he would not want ye placin’ yerself in harm’s way an’ nor do I.”

She closed her eyes. She was, admittedly, exhausted and at the limits of what she felt she could effectively do. The loss of the distillery was a blow she had not expected and felt unable to absorb just yet. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the smoking skeleton that was all that remained of the four hundred year old building.

She could almost hear Jamie’s voice in her ear telling her not to worry, that they would rebuild. Only it wasn’t
they
or we or us. It was herself, making decision after decision that was affecting the long and storied history of Jamie’s empire. Every step felt like she was further out on a high wire, without a net beneath her feet.

“Robert is downstairs havin’ a tea with Owen. Will ye come down to see him or will I send him up?”

“I’ll come down,” she said grimly. “Just give me a minute to change and make myself decent.”

Casey gave her a worried look, and she summoned up a watery smile. He raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced, before taking himself back downstairs.

She had not liked Jamie’s uncle in the least, but she had not wished the man dead. It took this game to a new level altogether, one at which she did not wish to play. It told her without doubt that the other side was willing to kill to win. Though she couldn’t see what killing Philip accomplished for Lucien, she knew his hand was the one upon the sword hilt.

She was also keenly aware that the game was too far gone to take herself out of play. Now it was simply a matter of the last few moves and hoping they were the ones that would bring the whole thing to an end.

Chapter Seventy-five
September 1975
Day of Reckoning

It was cold, the grass thick with dew
, fog still hanging in great sheets like diaphanous laundry that one could not escape. The men crept forward in utter silence, dew spangling their beards and hair, coating their faces fine as gossamer. Spiderwebs lay in the grass in small patches too. Dusted with the diamonds of dew and frosted ever so slightly, they were a note of beauty in this chill aching morning. David licked the water from his own lips, grateful for the cold of it. His throat was dry and his head thick with foreboding. Around them, the trees were dripping with the weight of water, soft thuds against the leaf-thick loam.

It was a daft plan. He noted with no small cynicism that the man who had authored it was rather conspicuous by his absence today. He thought perhaps they did not understand the nature of Noah Murray and had made the mistake of thinking him like all other Republicans—capable of bleeding and dying. David, having a somewhat better knowledge of the man, tended to think he was half supernatural with his ability to sniff the wind and know what was coming and to avoid capture both of the legal and illegal sort.

They fanned out from the trees into the open now, where the spine tingled with the lack of cover. David crouched low, the gun a natural part of his body, an extension of flesh into steel. He moved lightly on his feet, back and forth, so that anyone watching could not pinpoint him too easily in their sights. However, one would have to be supernatural to see through this bloody dripping fog. The man next to him was swallowed whole and swiftly into the fog’s belly as if it were a living thing with an appetite so voracious it did not take the time to chew.

His hand thrummed with pain, finger stiff on the trigger. He hoped to hell he could move it when the time came. The cut had not been healing well and had been recently cut open again and properly debrided. The memory of that was enough still to make him feel sick. Darren had done it, after insisting on unwrapping the bandages to see how bad the injury was. He had tied the hand to the table and told him to look away. Being that the man was a vet (but no slouch in the treatment of humans either) David had done as he was told—and had thrown up on the well-scrubbed floor a few minutes later. That had been before the stitching, for which Darren had given him a local. David had wishfully mentioned tranquilizers and got the rise of a pale brown brow. He had felt the stitches, as Darren had to do two levels of them in order to properly close the flesh over tendon and bone. He was on enough antibiotics now to kill a bloody horse but took them meekly enough. When it came to the authority over bodily woes, the British super spy bowed before the wisdom of the Irish vet.

A soft bird call reached him on the wind, breaking into his ruminations. But it was no ordinary bird unless the bird was featherless and distinctly humanoid in shape. He knew a signal when he heard one. Three high notes and one low. He stopped for a second, confused. Understanding came swift and deadly, for the final note had only begun to die away when the fog was ripped to shreds by the insect whine of bullets.

David hit the ground, the dew soaking him instantly. He tried to discern where the bullets were coming from—direction, how many guns, how many were automatic fire—but it was useless. The mayhem was too great. He could feel them coming though, many men walking through the fog with purpose and the ability to see their blind enemy. He knew this was not so, but felt it nevertheless. He raised his own gun and shot blind, using senses other than sight. He could do that, put his ‘feelers’ out into the field ahead, judging by sound and echo where the barrage was coming from. What his senses told him was not a story designed to comfort. There were large numbers of men with automatic guns simply spraying the ground and air ahead of them.

It became clear that Noah Murray had been waiting for them, biding his time, knowing that they were coming and thus giving him the advantage of being entirely prepared. Noah Murray would not show mercy. He would kill every last one of them. They would be fortunate if they weren’t tortured for several days before receiving the merciful bullet to the back of the head. What this meant was that there was a traitor within their own group, one beyond himself.

David had been in firefights before and had long known the way a person’s insides shrank tight to his bones as if seeking refuge from harm. He knew fear and all its vagaries well but he had never known a day like this one. Death sat upon his tongue, and it tasted like ink spilled in blood—sour galls and copper and something darker, like fate.

It was hard to think, to formulate a plan, to know how to get out when bullets razed the air like hail, leaving molten trails near ears and shoulders and all too fragile organs. But he knew he had to think and act, for that was his job.

In his mind, he saw the land from above, the location of the buildings, the drainage channel, the stone walls that served as fencing for the cattle and the approximate distance to the ditch and the edge of the forest.

He started to crawl backwards toward the former, tendrils of fog still clinging to him, leaving drops of water in his hair, trickling down his collar and chilling him to the core. The ground was soggy, the morning not warm enough to dry last night’s hard rain.

It was an eternity to get to the ditch, crawling in a zigzag pattern being rather difficult yet it was too risky to stand. He found the ditch by falling into it, hitting his back on the far side with a distinctive
whomph
that winded him.

There were several men in the ditch already. He didn’t even have time to catch his breath before Lenny went on the attack.

“Fuckers knew we were here—how the fuck did they know?” Lenny asked, and though the question seemed general, David felt the man’s eyes boring a hole into the side of his face.

“Yer quick to accuse, Lenny. Maybe yer the guilty one.”

David looked round in surprise. It was the boy he had privately nicknamed Milquetoast for his pale coloring and mild demeanor. The boy who should not be involved in this, who was too young for this much blood and terror, but he was pleasantly surprised by this display of courage. He flashed him a look of gratitude across the mucky ditch.

“Shut the fuck up or ye’ll be eatin’ yer teeth fer tea,” Lenny retorted. Another barrage of bullets closer than the last silenced them all. Noah’s men knew they were in the ditch and had probably counted on the fact that they would end up there eventually.

David looked over, counted heads—six of them. Six of the twelve, the rest most likely dead. He couldn’t help but speculate how many more of them would be dead before the hour was out. Lord, let one of them be Lenny.

Another spray of bullets bit into the dirt two feet out from the edge of the ditch. Thick clods of mud and grass sprayed into their tight domain. The world was drawn down to this corner, bullets and blood and the heat and stink of the man next to you, the slippery metallic smell of fear like cold iron coated in frost.