Free Falling (20 page)

John murmured into her shoulder: “I will, Mom, I promise.”

Sarah rode out into the darkness, her saddlebags bulging with cartridges, her Glock, fully loaded, in her shoulder holster. The weather was cold but clear. It hadn’t rained or snowed in 24 hours.

Again, Sarah fought the impulse to gallop Dan across the pasture in a more direct route to town. There were too many things to help him come up lame so she held herself back. As she rode, she scanned the ditches on either side of the road for ambushers or bodies. Her fingers touched the butt of her handgun nearly the whole ride into town.

She found herself wondering when she had stopped being afraid of guns and when she had begun thinking of them as something comforting and essential.

“Da, sure isn’t that the American lady coming in to town?”

Mike Donovan looked up from the cart he was packing with firewood and squinted down the main street of town. It was midmorning and the sky had darkened and let loose with a gentle, insistent rain. He saw Sarah riding down the street on a large thoroughbred cross.
Most sane people would not choose to be out in this weather,
he thought.

“You’re right,” he said, watching her. “Wonder what she’s doing here.”

The town was more alive today than it had a right to be. When he and Gavin had arrived earlier that morning, it was clear that a tentful of riffraff had spent the night there drinking and fighting. Father and son had steered wide of the noise and the crowd. Donovan needed the firewood that Siobhan kept behind her store. She was long gone and everyone else seemed to forget it was even there.

The crowd of men looked to be mostly gypsies although some had a different look to them, hardened but in a city, seedy sort of way. Even from a distance, Donovan could tell they weren’t from around this part of Ireland, maybe not from Ireland at all. The foreign looking ones were quieter than the gypsies, he noted. They didn’t sing or dance, though they were drinking just as hard.

He hurried Gavin to finish the loading.

Sarah had hoped there would be another market going on. She rode slowly down the main street, keeping her eye on the group of rowdies at the end of it by a large tent. All the storefronts were either boarded up or smashed. The few cars she’d seen two months back when she spoke with Julie were now vandalized beyond any kind of value. She resisted the temptation to just pull the gun out and ride down the street demanding information.

 
If she didn’t find somebody to talk to about where Julie lived, how was she going to find David? Had she truly waited all this time to finally come to Balinagh—putting her son at risk back at Cairn Cottage in the bargain—and all for nothing?

The frustration coursed through her until she wanted to scream. Her eyes flitted from side to side for any possible indication that there was someone who could help her. She looked to the end of the street where the gypsies were gathered and where she felt herself drawn to.

There were only five of them. They looked like thugs and so far, they hadn’t seen her. Sarah decided to stay mounted in case she needed to make a run for it although the thought of galloping across miles of snowy pasture with fences and stonewalls hidden from view did not sound like a good plan.

She walked Dan closer to them.

Seamus had been able to get the drop on three armed men, she thought, because they did not fear him. Her greatest protection, she realized as she approached them, was their arrogance. If she didn’t take too much time to line up each shot…

“Blimey, Da. Is she barking? What the hell is she doing?”

Donovan stopped stacking and stared with his mouth open at the sight of Sarah riding down the main street. “I have absolutely no idea,” he said.

At the last minute, Sarah slid off her horse and tugged him into a small alley off the side of the street. She peered around the corner to see if they’d seen her. They gave no indication of it. Taking in a long breath, she loosely tied Dan by his reins to a stunted tree in the alley and secured her gun in the waistband of her jeans. 

I can do this
, she thought.

She crept out of the alley and slid forward one careful yard at a time until she was a hundred feet away from them. One of the men shouted. The rest of them laughed. A skinny redheaded gypsy boy with badly crossed eyes took a step off the wooden walkway into the street. He was grinning broadly and looked very drunk. A glazed look came over his face. He dropped to his knees and vomited down the front of himself. The rest of the men roared with laughter.

Was she really looking at this rabble as a source of credible information? They were drunk. Anything they might say would probably be useless to her.

 She watched one of the men stumble backwards on the wooden steps that led to what might have been a grocery store or a restaurant a few months ago. He fell down to shrieks of laughter and rowdy insults from his friends.

 Two of the men began shoving each other until one hauled off and slugged the other in the face. The rest of the group turned their attention to the grappling fighters, now on their hands and knees in the street. Sarah used the opportunity to back away a little bit since it was clear the gang was becoming more and more out of control. The nonfighting men alternately swore and cheered the fighters on. One of the fighters grabbed a piece of wood and began hammering away at his opponent with it which drove the gathered crowd wild with delight.

Sarah watched in horror as it became clear that the man intended to murder the other man, clearly inebriated, in the middle of the street. She watched the melee helplessly when, without warning, a pair of strong hands grabbed her from behind and jerked her sharply backwards. The last thing she remembered seeing before a large dirty hand clapped over her face and eyes was the gypsy she had shot coming out of the building. He was wearing the University of Florida sweatshirt she had last seen on her husband.

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 conceivable 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.