Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (94 page)

“Go see to Pamela and the wee lad,” Lewis said, blue eyes scanning the scrim of the trees as the light of afternoon sank down between needles and feathery boughs and was absorbed into leaf and earth.

Inside the house was quiet, the Aga humming to itself as though nothing had taken place this afternoon. One of the kitchen chairs lay over on its side and a cupboard door stood open. Scattered across the kitchen floor were all the fragile seedlings he and Pamela had so carefully planted—tender stalks crushed, soil scattered and packed by a square boot heel. He righted the chair and closed the door, then cleaned up the worst of the dirt and small broken pots and plants. He only wished he were able to rid his wife and child of what had happened here this afternoon so easily.

He found Pamela upstairs in Conor’s room, holding him in her lap. Finbar lay at her feet, growling low in his throat until he realized it was Casey. Just the sight of his wife, with their son’s head resting sleepily on her breast, was enough to make him grab for the doorsill in relief. He smelled the warm, herbal scents of a recently bathed child.

“He wouldn’t settle,” she said quietly. “I just wanted to give him back his sense of security. He was crying so hard, Casey. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t come.”

“I’m sorry, Pamela. Is he alright now, then?”

She nodded, her head still bent over their son. He realized that it wasn’t just gazing at Conor that had her avoiding his eyes, for he saw the tight set of her shoulders and the stark white of her skin.

He knelt by them, putting his hand to the soft spring of Conor’s curls, feeling the reassuring heat and thrum of the laddie’s pulse so close to the delicate network of bone. Conor eyed him warily, as though he distrusted everyone but his mother just now. Casey didn’t dare touch his wife yet for he could feel the anger coming off her in waves, and while he knew much of it was still directed at the departed thugs he also was wise enough to know part of it was for him. They sat that way for long minutes, both silent.

Dusk had begun to gather softly in the corners of the room when Pamela stood and patted Conor’s back. Conor had screamed himself into exhaustion during the panic for his mother, and his bath, a dry set of clothes and a full belly had put him directly back to sleep. She laid him gently on his bed and pulled his favorite blanket up over his deeply breathing form. Finbar settled beside the bed, his narrow silky face alert and on guard.

“Go put the kettle on, please,” Pamela said. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

Casey went downstairs and did as bid. Outside he could see Lewis still on guard by the front door. He put the kettle on and got out the whiskey bottle, for his nerves could use the analgesic of a small glass.

He heard Pamela’s light tread on the stairs moments later and turned to face her.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs, the bones in her face stark against the white skin. She looked exhausted and terribly fragile. He held himself back from going to her, knowing she had to come to him if she so chose.

She walked toward him and though her tension telegraphed itself clearly, still he was shocked when she slapped him across the face, hard enough to rock him back on his heels.

“You goddamn bastard!”

Casey winced slightly and put a hand up to his jaw. He didn’t say anything because he knew she was right, and that she was reacting out of the aftermath of terror, of fear that her children, both the one upstairs in his bed and the one she carried in her belly, might have been harmed if not killed outright. He had felt the same rage, but she was pregnant, vulnerable and angry that he hadn’t been able to protect her from these men invading their home. He knew, because he was angry at himself for that very thing.

“What the hell is going on at the construction site that you didn’t see fit to tell me about? Goddamn it, man, why didn’t you say something? No more secrets, we both promised. How long has this been going on?”

And so he told her, about the graft, about the payments, and about the fear and worry that had ridden him like a demon these many months. He knew he was bald in the telling, yet there was no way to cushion it. There never was in this country. By the end of the telling, Pamela looked ready to hit him again but began to shake instead, and he automatically reached out to catch her, afraid her knees were going to drop her to the floor. He could feel the resistance in her body, though he knew what she needed right now was comfort and assurance, which he was bloody well going to give her whether she wanted it or not.

“Pamela, ye can rage at me later. Ye can slap me senseless if ye feel it will help, but right now, woman, can ye just let me hold ye? For my own sake as well as yers.”

She looked up at him then, and he thought she saw clearly how terrified he was too, because she moved into the shelter of his arms and let him hold her tightly to his chest.

He breathed deeply of her scent, familiar but changed since she had become a mother, and a comfort to him in all its varying notes. He could feel her pulse slow with the reassurance of his touch. This he could do for her, little that it was. Because he couldn’t be here all the time, and well those bastards knew it. Next time he would not be caught unawares because there wasn’t going to be a next time. He and Lewis would see to that between them.

He had a sick knot in his stomach, for he knew only too well how much worse this situation might have been. If Owen hadn’t called simply because he had a bad feeling about two men who had stopped into his pub for a pint that afternoon, if Lewis hadn’t been there in time to grab the second man and hold him at gun point until Casey arrived.

His wife was no stranger to violence. She had been raped by four men years earlier, and it was a tragedy that haunted him—the fear that it would or could happen again. She had come out of the rape a survivor, had moved through it and then beyond in a way that had told him how very strong this woman was. He had never truly forgiven himself for being absent the day it happened, for as irrational as it might seem, he always felt that had he been with her he could have prevented it happening, or at least died in the effort.

In his arms, his wife had stopped shaking, though she still held tightly to him as if he were the anchor that held her to earth just now.

He placed a palm over her belly in gentle protection. The words he wanted to say were stuck tight in his throat, rammed there and choking him. Pamela must have sensed this for she placed her own hand over his.

“We’re alright, Casey. Stop thinking about everything that might have happened.” She squeezed his hand and he lowered his head in gratitude, knowing his strength often depended entirely on this woman, the touch of her, her limitless capacity for forgiveness, her instinctive understanding of the words he could not say, and her love for him.

“Casey,” she said, moments later, in a quiet but grim tone. “I need you to take me upstairs and make love to me.”

“What, now?” he asked, shocked at the suggestion. Lewis was still out front and would be for the duration of the night. He meant to join him as soon as Pamela was calmed.

“Yes, now. It’s either that or I hit you again.”

He laughed, though it was strained. “Well, when ye put it that way woman, I don’t see as there’s much to the choosin’ here.”

“I need to feel you against me, inside me. I need to know that we’re okay.”

“Alright, darlin’, alright,” he said smoothing the hair from her face, and kissing her forehead gently. He understood the need to touch, to be as close as it was possible for two human beings to be, to regain some ground in the intimacy that had always been their innate language.

He took her upstairs and laid her across the bed, realizing that he needed this too, to know that the heart of what they were was still here and safe, that the bastards had not touched what was sacred.

He made love to her gently, carefully, worried about the baby and that this afternoon’s events might have a price that neither of them could afford. She cried near the end, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him tight to her body. He kissed her tears away, heart beating strong against hers. Pulse to pulse they lay, he holding her, wishing he could infuse his strength into her. He put his mouth to her ear, breath still warm with exertion.

“What is it, Jewel?”

“I’m so afraid that I’ll wake up and find out we didn’t make it through this afternoon.”

“Hush
macushla
,” he said softly. “’Tis alright. I’m here with ye. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry I hit you earlier. I was just so afraid for the babies.”

“’Tis no matter,” he said softly, and meant it.

He waited until she fell asleep, exhausted by both the day’s events and pregnancy, before slipping out of the bed. He dressed, checked that Conor was still sleeping and then went outside.

Lewis sat, shotgun still canted and ready, in the shadow of the pine copse. The sightline from there was broad, covering three angles of the house and with a view to the road lest anyone should chance to come down it. Owen wasn’t to be seen but Casey knew he was just out of sight in the crook of a tree, watching over this family that he and Gert had adopted as their own.

Casey sat beside Lewis, a strange calm coming over him. It was fully dark now but the moon was high enough to provide light by which to see. No one could approach the house without them knowing.

“You have to take care of this situation now,” Lewis said. The taciturn old Swede was always a man of few words, but one rarely mistook the meaning of those he did speak. “The threat you made this afternoon, you have to carry through on it or they will be back, and it will be much worse next time.”

Casey didn’t answer, for the man was right. But vague words of agreement had no place here, nor did Lewis expect them.

“Sometimes people are just evil, and it is no sin to kill such people.” Lewis had lit two cigarettes and held one out to Casey.

“I’m afraid I’m a wee bit too Catholic to see things quite so black and white,” Casey replied, taking the proffered cigarette and drawing deeply on it.

“It is what I did, long ago. It is why I left my own country and came to live here.”

“What do you mean—what you did?”

Lewis looked at him, blue eyes without expression. “I disappeared people.” He stood, but his eyes never left Casey’s. “I have to go home and feed my animals. Owen will take the next watch.” He nodded toward the pine copse where a small ember glowed and just as suddenly winked out.

Lewis cracked the shotgun, preparing for the walk home.

“Was it a long time ago, this job of yers?” Casey asked, quietly.

Lewis’ eyes were still and cold as a Nordic lake in winter. “It was, but it’s not the sort of work a man forgets how to do. And I was very, very good at my job.”

Somehow, Casey thought, watching the straight-backed old Swede walk off into the trees, he didn’t doubt it for a second.

Chapter Sixty-eight
May 1975
At the Center of the Night

David cursed the luck that had brought him here
, standing on a dark country road somewhere just this side of the border with the Republic. His cover story had, of necessity, included a few dropped hints that he knew his way round making simple explosives—which he did, as it was part of his training. That did not mean he was comfortable with the use of them.

The plan was simple enough but hardly foolproof. They would stake out this road, posing as part of the Security Forces, and while the vehicle they had picked out was stopped and the occupants thereof being frisked and questioned by the roadside, he, David, was to be installing the fifteen pounds of gelignite housed in a briefcase under the driver’s seat. It was set on a clock timer and would detonate on the other side of the border. The idea was that this would implicate the band in the van—their chosen target—for carrying explosives. The band was, of course, Roman Catholic to a man. David felt the sophistication of the plan was somewhat lacking, but this dirty war had little in the way of sophistication and plenty in the way of effectiveness.

David had alerted his superiors to the presence of the bomb. They, in turn, had alerted Irish Customs, who were meant to confiscate the vehicle and hand it over to the bomb squad. His personal plan was to make damn sure the bomb was disconnected before it left this dark roadway. He wasn’t taking chances with any poor sod’s life and fifteen pounds of gelignite. This made it doubly unfortunate that Lenny McAskill had been picked to come along on this mission. Lenny, who was every unfortunate stereotype of the hard man Loyalist fanatic. Lenny, who was, David felt quite certain, a complete psychopath. Lenny who did not trust him, David aka Davey, one little bit.

Lenny was a member in uneasy standing of the Ulster Defense Regiment. The UDR had been linked in the past with the British Security Forces and with the Redhand Defenders. Some said if the Army wanted a filthy job done, the UDR were the men they applied to, not openly, mind, but covertly and with complete denial afterwards. But even these men, green bereted and copiously tattooed with a variety of lurid symbols, were a tad nervous around Lenny McAskill.

Lenny sat beside him in the ditch, adjusting a pair of sunglasses that David felt were a tad redundant considering the pitch-black quality of the night.

Their target was a band—the ‘Havana Nights’—a regular sort of dancehall band that added spice to their repertoire with some Latin-based rhythms and drums. Their one big hit had charted in the UK in 1969 and they had been slogging the circuit of sweaty dance halls and grotty pubs ever since. Their only crime was the fact they were Catholic and their schedule was easy to track.

David was aware that Lenny was watching him as closely and carefully as an owl sitting atop a barn roof watches a mouse cross the yard below. It made what he needed to do that much more difficult.

The road was empty this time of night so that when the white van came along it was easily spotted. Lenny and Boyd stepped out, hands up and guns slung waist-height in the particular stance of British soldiers. The van slowed immediately, though David knew the occupants had to find it strange to see security forces on this stretch of deserted road at this hour of the night. Still, not to stop was to risk being shot through the windows.