The Fey (14 page)

“
You better do it,” she
said. “I’ll wait here.”

She made a movement with her hand.

“
Go on.”

Cian Kelly gave Alex an aggravated look then
turned his back on them. Walking away, he dialed his cell
phone.

“
Sit down,” Alex said to
John.

“
Alex… I…”

Her heart flashed with emotion. She shook
her head and pushed the emotion away.

“
You may as well get
comfortable,” she said then yawned.

Cian Kelly was yelling into the telephone.
Storming back to the chairs, John moved to cover Alex with his
body, but Cian punched the phone in her direction.

“
He wants to talk to you,”
Cian said. “Where’s your fucking tattoo?”

“
Have a tissue?” she asked
reaching for the phone.

The red haired man ran to the bathroom and
returned with toilet paper. She wiped off the concealer from her
fairy tattoo.

“
Oh fuck Cian, do you know
who that is?” the red haired man wheeled back from Alex as if he
was hit.

She waved at the red head then began
speaking into the telephone.

“
Dia duit,” she
said.

“
You are with John Kelly,”
the voice said in Irish Gaelic.

“
I just found that out,”
Alex said continuing in Gaelic. “How are you?”

“
I’m well. I have three
more grandchildren since you were here last,” the elderly man’s
voice said. “How is your health, dear? I hear you’re walking…
kicking guns from people.”

“
I’m much better than when
we spoke last. Did you hear the Fey is back?”

“
I did hear that but I
prefer to see it with my own eyes.”

“
Why are you here?” Alex
asked.

“
As you know, John Kelly
is a curiosity of mine. I received this photo of him with a group
of people and, things being what they are, I thought I’d send a few
boys to talk to him.”

“
His wife? Where is
she?”

“
Yes, his wife. Why are
you with John Kelly? The boys said you were pretty hot at
it.”

“
He’s my husband,” Alex
said.

The man laughed. “John Kelly is your John?
The John that taught you Gaelic? Wait… Oh my God, this is a picture
of you. Christ, you’re wearing mouse ears.”

“
That’s what you do at
Disneyland,” she said. “Where did you get the photo?”

“
It came in our direction.
I’m not sure.”

“
But you’ll find
out.”

“
Yes, lass. We have a few
questions,” he said.

“
Fine. Then we go
home.”

“
I don’t care where the
questions get answered.”

“
Great,” she said. “He
wants to talk to you.”

Alex passed the phone to Cian. She stepped
into her shoes then stood.

“
Come on John,” she said.
She held her hand out to him. “Let’s go home.”

“
Wait a minute,” the red
haired man said. “We need to talk.”

“
You’ll be much more
comfortable at our house,” Alex said. “I can call a cab
or…”

“
I’ll drive,” Cian said
stomping over to them. “You know it’s not very fair to cover that
tattoo. How the fuck are we supposed to know who you
are?”

“
Right, I could just be
some other girl you are holding at gunpoint,” Alex said.

“
Shut up,” Cian said. “Get
in back.”

They drove in silence. John reached and
entwined his fingers with Alex’s fingers. When she turned to look
at him, he saw that she had placed herself somewhere far away from
him. He kissed her hand. Closing his eyes, he prayed to a God that
he was certain had abandoned him years ago. He prayed that Alex,
the only thing that mattered to him in this whole world, would
possibly understand. When the car stopped at their house, Alex got
out.

Turning back into the SUV, she said, “There
are some people here to see you.”

The car was surrounded by Homeland Security
agents. Raz jumped from the porch of the house and swept Alex into
a hug. John stood behind Alex, not sure if he should touch her.

“
We got the call from
Matthew and tracked you with the GPS locater in your hip. We
thought it was Eleazar.”

“
I’m sorry to have worried
you,” Alex said. “We got picked up by the PIRA.”

Raz made a face.

“
Yeah. I’m sorry. I need
to go to bed. Can you hold these guys? Just hold them. They didn’t
do anything.”

“
Got it,” Raz
said.

Alex walked up the porch to where Ben stood
smoking a cigarette. She searched the face of her mentor and saw
what she expected.

“
Why didn’t you tell
me?”

“
Because it doesn’t
matter,” he said.

She gave a curt nod and moved to follow John
into the house. Ben touched her arm.

“
Remember. He’s a
psychological terrorist.”

Hearing his words, Alex’s eyes shifted to
look at Ben but her mind was already slipping down the familiar
path of depression. She followed John into the house. Moving like a
person in a trance, Alex walked up the stairs. Each step brought
her further into the depressive fog that blanketed her for the last
two years. Rather than walking into their bedroom, she turned into
the guest bedroom and closed the door. John stood on the landing
staring at the door.

“
You have to talk to me,”
John said to the door.

Standing on the other side of the door, Alex
turned the lock of the door. She didn’t have to talk to him
tonight. Pulling off the tight red dress, she threw it on the
ground and kicked the pumps under the night table. She went to the
closet and put on a battered marathon gimme shirt. Sitting on the
side of the bed, she heard John sit down in the hall.

“
I know you are just
sitting there, Alex,” he said. “Will you hear me out?”

“
Why?” she asked. “You’ve
had twelve years to be honest, to tell me that you were already
married. Ah fuck.”

She pressed her hand against the pain and
anger that lived in her heart. Rolling onto her side, her heart
away from John, she pulled the covers over her head. Unbidden, her
mind began to walk the trail toward death. Now that John wasn’t her
husband, she could just go and be with her team.

With a sigh, she closed her eyes and fell
into a dream.

She was walking down a familiar white
tunnel. As she walked, round fluorescent ceiling lights flickered
on. She had the sensation that she was walking out of the light and
into the dark over and over again. She heard laughter. Mike, their
operations officer, was teasing Jax, their medic, about placing
third in the hundred and thirty-five mile Badwater Ultramarathon.
Alex smiled. If she hurried, she would spend the night playing in
Paris. She began to jog, running mostly in the dark now, as the
lights flickering on behind her.

But the faster she ran the farther away they
seemed.

Jesse was laughing with Dwight, the other
weapons officer, about something the engineer Paul was doing. She
beamed with expectation and turned into the room. Sliding on a pool
of blood, her vision filled with the horror of her beloved friends’
bodies in pieces, bleeding onto the floor.

Screaming, she collapsed to the floor.

F

CHAPTER ELEVEN

John kicked the door open. Pulling Alex from
the bed, he held her to him until she stopped screaming. He moved
to her to his lap. His hands pressed her head against his muscular
chest while he caressed her hair. She knew he was talking but her
ears heard only the ragged breathing to a backbeat of blood
dripping onto the white floor.

“
Oh John,” she said when
terror shifted to sadness. Weeping against his shoulder, he rocked
her back and forth until her ears heard what he was saying: “Oh my
God, I love you so very much. You have to believe me. You are the
very heart of me.”

He pulled her face away from him. Looking
into her eyes to see if she was present, he said, “Please hear me
out.”

“
I can’t. I can’t. I
can’t.” She pressed her palms to her ears and shook her
head.

“
Oh love.”

He lifted her from the bed and carried her
to the bathroom. Sitting with her on his lap, he filled the tub
with water and bubble bath. Then, undressing her like a child, he
placed her in the bath before joining her there. She lay with her
head against his shoulder and his arms wrapped around her. While
the warm fragrant water worked to calm her fear, she cried into his
chest. He said nothing, caressing her skin, waiting for the storm
of emotion to pass. When she was silent and breathing deeply, he
moved to look at her face. Her eyes stared straight forward, glazed
as if she was in shock.

“
I’m sorry,” he
said.

“
Me too,” she
said.

“
I’ve never known how to
speak to you about this. I’ve spent the last two hours racking my
brain as to how to say everything.”

She shifted away from him.

“
Why were you
screaming?”

“
I saw them dead.” Tears
seeped from her eyes. “Blood everywhere… dripping on the
floor.”

“
The shock of my crap has
stirred things around in your brain,” he said.

“
I loved you.”

He jerked up to look at her. “Loved?”

She moved out of the tub. Grabbing a towel
from the rack, she went into their bedroom. She threw on
comfortable sweats and a T-shirt then began to pack. When John came
to the door, he nodded his head.

“
You’re
leaving.”

“
You’re married to someone
else, John. You should live with your wife.”

“
Stop. Alexandra, please
stop.” He fell to his knees before her. “I beg you.”

Alex blinked at him. She felt nothing–not
calm or sad or angry or afraid–just blank. Looking down at John,
she heard Ben’s voice, ‘He’s a psychological terrorist.’

Rage ignited deep within her belly. Fuck
Eleazar. This is my life. I’ve fought for my country. I’ve fought
for my friends. I will fight for my own God damn life.

“
All right. I’ll
listen.”

John nodded. While she watched, he dressed
in jeans and a T-shirt. He led her downstairs to the living room
couch, then went to the kitchen for a bottle of wine. When he
returned, Alex had closed the living room drapes and lit a fire. He
opened the wine then gave her a glass.

“
I don’t know where to
start,” he said.

“
Ok, I’ll start. What
language were they speaking?”

“
Ulster Gaelic. The
language of my youth. They spoke and I responded without thinking.
I guess some things never leave you. How do you know the PIRA?” he
asked.

“
You remember we extracted
that Irish singer?”

“
The tabloid picture of
you making out with him is right there,” he said. He pointed to a
grainy picture of Alex kissing the rock star on the balcony of his
hotel room. “Some old friends thought they could make some cash by
holding him hostage. Charlie liked the band and knew their manager.
You went to get him then couldn’t get him back to his life. So you
pretended to be his lover.”

“
We spent an entire week
with him,” Alex said. “He’s very into a united Ireland. As you can
imagine, I was incredibly bored and wanted to go home. He said that
if I wanted something to do, I should find this girl, PIRA, who
disappeared the year before. No one knew what happened to her.
Jesse and I checked around and found this whole messy drama
involving… Anyway, it’s not important. We were able to find her and
get her home. Somehow, both sides were satisfied. It’s one of the
only times they agreed on anything. It turns out that her father is
a big deal. I spoke Gaelic so he kind of adopted me. He’s really a
great guy–kind, funny, very grandfatherly. He told me that if I
could find his daughter, maybe I could find John Kelly.”

“
Why did he want
me?”

“
He said that John Kelly
disappeared as a child and they thought he was taken by the
British. I looked into it but never got very far. Well, that’s not
true. I have a lot of information–sightings, contact, pictures and
all the police documents. I never found John Kelly.”

“
Until
tonight.”

“
Right under my nose,” she
said.

She took a drink of wine then shifted to
look at him. “Your turn.”

“
I don’t know where to
start,” he said.

“
John Kelly was standing
next to his father when a bomb exploded. It’s believed that Ronan
Kelly set the blast then stopped for a smoke. The bomb exploded
early due to a faulty switch. Fairly common for that kind of
device,” Alex said. “Ronan Kelly died and John Kelly
disappeared.

“
I have a crime scene
photo of him…you… covered in blood… in shock. Ronan Kelly’s carotid
was punctured by a knife or stiletto. The police report says that a
Catholic nun came to take you to an orphanage but they never found
the nun or the orphanage.”

“
I have eleven siblings,”
John said.

“
John Kelly is the
youngest of twelve,” Alex said.

“
My sister Rita, she’s
just younger than Cian, was the nun. She walked me to her church,
cleaned me up, then we caught a ferry to England. We reached London
by rail.”