The Other Crowd (9 page)

“I hear it,” Eric whispered. “They’re here.”

“Nothing is…” For some reason the protest didn’t feel right. She didn’t know what was causing her sudden nervousness, or making her hear things.

It had to be an insect. Beetles were noisy, their carapaces clattering against wings in flight. It had sounded like that, like…a fluttering.

“Just a bug,” she whispered, and signaled they continue.

There were scads of colorful beetles native to Ireland. And if not that, it could have been a wasp or some big insect she was glad she hadn’t seen.

Gripping her ponytail to pull it forward over her shoulder, Annja let go of the guessing games and focused.

She reached the truck, pressed a palm along the metal side and walked the length of the bed toward the back. Something clanked behind her.

That was no insect.

Eric swore and slapped a palm to the truck bed. Annja’s heart pounded. The muscles in her neck and shoulders tightened. For a moment she stood like a statue, as did Eric. He’d tripped on something metal. So much for grace.

When alert, her senses heightened, picking up breaths and footsteps more easily than most. Both of them glanced west. No noise came from within the tent. The snoring had stopped, or else she was too far away to hear it.

Moving around to the back of the truck bed, she gestured for Eric to follow. Testing the back doors with her fingers, she was surprised to feel them give. They were not locked.

A male cry of pain alerted her. She heard a body hit the ground and the clatter of the plastic-encased camera followed.

“Eric,” she whispered slowly.

Footsteps crunched the dirt. Those were not Eric’s rubber-soled Vans.

Sucking in a breath through her nose, Annja calmed. At times like this, she had nothing to fear because she wasn’t a lone woman without protection.

She swept out her right hand. Tapping into the otherwhere she opened her fingers and closed them about the hilt of her battle sword. Slapping her left hand to the hilt, she prepared to meet whatever swung around the corner of the truck.

Bright light flashed, causing Annja’s pupils to constrict and reducing her ability to see in the darkness. She didn’t need to see who held the flashlight. Now that she had marked his position, she swung her arms out wide, twisting at the waist. The blade landed at his throat.

“Drop it,” she demanded. The flashlight beam wobbled and landed on the ground. “What’s in the other hand, too.”

The clatter of a pistol barrel hit the ground. The man was big; she had to look up to feel his breath on her face. Salty anxiety wafted from him.

“Who are you?” he growled in a British accent similar to Slater’s.

“I could ask the same. Anyone else out here tonight?” She pressed the blade into his flesh. It hadn’t cut, but she could change that quick enough.

“Hey!” His knuckles hit the truck bed behind him as he raised his hands in placation. “Watch it!”

“Bring the volume down. Or are you alerting your buddies?” Annja maintained a keen sense for her surroundings, especially any footsteps approaching from behind.

“I’m the only bloke on security tonight.”

“No one else? The tents are empty?”

“Yes, they all leave at nightfall.”

“I thought I heard someone snoring in the main tent.”

“I’m the only one. Trust me, duck.”

That would never happen. Annja twisted the blade to press the flat of it under his jaw, prompting him to lift his chin. “What did you do to my man?”

“Tranq dart,” he said. “It will knock him out for a couple hours.”

“Eric?” she called.

She heard a groan.

“You must have missed,” she said to the security guard. “Step aside.”

She followed his careful sideways steps with the blade of her sword, wedging it firmly against his neck. When he stood against the open sky his silhouette, imposing as it was, showed her he was barrel-shaped and probably more brawn than physically agile. That could either work to his advantage or, if she was quick, to hers.

Bending and performing a sinuous move, she snapped up the dart gun from the ground with her left hand. That moment of inattention got her a boot to the side of her shoulder. Her body collided with the rear truck tire. Yet she maintained her hold on both the gun and sword.

The security guard ran around to the other side of the truck.

Scrambling to her feet, Annja skipped over Eric’s fallen body. “Be right back. Stay there.”

“My leg,” he said, and groaned.

Stopping to listen, she heard heels scuff across rubble. Annja tracked the man to the truck cab. He could hop in and drive away, but not on her watch.

She dashed around the front of the truck and slashed her sword across his thigh as he took the first step up into the truck. With a yelp, he released his grip on the steering wheel and landed on the ground, arms splayed.

Pinioning him with the sword tip directly over his heart, Annja loomed over him. With her other hand she teased the dart gun’s trigger. It was spring-loaded, ready to fire.

“What’s in the truck?” she asked.

“Nothing but supplies.” His heavy accent was difficult to understand, but she got the hint. “Bloody trespasser,” he said.

Yes, she was. Thankful for the darkness, she felt sure if this guy reported a woman sneaking about camp with a cameraman in tow, it wouldn’t take long for anyone to put two and two together.

“Why don’t you let me take a look inside?”

“It’s shovels and buckets!” He finally decided to play along.

“Just a peek, then, to verify. Stay.”

Holding aim on him with the pistol, she backtracked to the end of the truck. Releasing the sword into the otherwhere gave her a free hand to dig out her Maglite. A flash of it inside the truck bed found it was empty save for, indeed, a stack of empty black buckets.

Did Slater’s camp believe security was necessary to protect a few supplies and a skeleton? She’d heard of rivalry at dig sites, but this was pushing it a bit far.

She thought she should have a look inside the tents, but as the man had stated, she was the trespasser. She didn’t need to cross any more lines tonight, especially since her original plan to sneak in unnoticed had gone haywire.

“We’ll be leaving, then, nice and quick,” she said.

Pulling the trigger, she aimed for the guard’s arm, and was pleased when he grunted as the dart pierced flesh. A good shot should put him out completely within fifteen to thirty seconds.

“Ah-ah.” She nudged his arm with her toe. “Just let that rush through your system. Good boy.”

His body relaxed under her foot. With a nudge of her boot toe to the side of his head, she verified he was out.

Slater would hear all about it in the morning, which gave her a few hours to come up with a good reason for scouting his camp in the middle of the night.

Rushing around the side of the truck, she expected to find Eric out cold, too. He sat with his shoulders braced against a tire. Annja knelt before him.

“Some kind of dart,” he muttered, huffing as if his breaths pained him. “I tugged it out of my thigh as soon as I felt the hit. It just cut through some skin but didn’t go deep, but I can’t feel my leg now, Annja. I’m paralyzed.” Panic eddied his voice up an octave. “I can’t lose my leg. I’m young. Girls don’t go for guys in wheelchairs. Well, some do, but those chicks are whacked. Annja!”

“It’s a tranquilizer. Your leg is asleep. The more you move, the more the adrenaline pushes it through your system. Though, perhaps it didn’t hit the bloodstream with the shallow cut. I think you lucked out, Eric. Just give me one minute.”

She retrieved the video camera and swept it across the camp one last time, including taking in the fallen guard’s face.

“Annja!”

Eric must be falling asleep. Or there could be others who had been alerted by their noise. The guard had no reason to lie about being the only one on-site, and every reason if he were protecting something valuable.

Annja shut off the camera, and raced back to Eric’s side.

“It stings,” Eric said as she went to help him stand.

“You’re going to have to hop along beside me,” she directed. “We have to move fast before anyone else discovers us. Put your arm around my shoulder and let’s go.”

“You got the camera?”

“Yep.” She helped him to stand and hop on one foot.

“How’d you get away from that dude? He was huge. And he had that gun.”

“Used my feminine wiles.”

“Wiles?”

“Quiet now. We’ll talk when we get back.”

Passing the truck and tents, she thought briefly about the strange feeling she’d had before finding the guard. That someone or some
thing
had been near her. Something she could not see, yet it had felt as if wings had moved the air about her.

With a careful scan of her surroundings, Annja led Eric into the dark countryside. If there were faeries out here, she’d try her best to avoid any raths or hawthorn bushes, anything the other crowd deemed their own.

Just to be safe.

They arrived back at the B and B around 5:00 a.m. After Annja inspected Eric’s thigh and declared it a superficial wound—the dart had torn his jeans and abraded the skin—he fell immediately to sleep.

She decided to view the video of the enemy camp in the morning. She’d managed three hours of sleep when the proprietress knocked on her room door, announcing breakfast below.

Eric’s knock followed shortly after that. He popped his head in the doorway as Annja was sliding from under the covers. She tugged the sheet up to her chest. She wore the same T-shirt she’d been wearing last night but below that it was just her underwear.

“You coming?” he asked.

Annja marveled that he was bright and shiny after so little sleep. Was she really getting old enough that she admired the resilience of youth?

“Of course I am. Nothing can keep me away from black pudding. How are you feeling?” she asked.

“You were right, it’s just a nick. I think it was more shock at actually being shot at than actual injury, you know? But I’m tough.” He flexed his biceps. “This is turning out to be way more exciting than following my dad around on documentary gigs.” He gave her a thumbs-up, then closed her door.

Fifteen minutes later, after some amazing luck at finding the bathroom empty and the shower stocked with towels, Annja sat at a table perusing the black pudding. It wasn’t mushy or in any sort of form she associated with pudding. It was actually sliced blood sausage that was then fried. Although there was nothing keeping her away from the delicacy, she changed her mind, and went with double the rashers and eggs. An extra helping of beans was served, too.

Mrs. Riley and her son joined her, along with Eric, who was very focused when he ate. He’d criticized the local cuisine, but he certainly had no problem putting it down when it was available.

“What’s that, honey?” Mrs. Riley asked as her husband entered, coddling something close to his chest. He headed for the refrigerator and opened it up.

“Wine from Mr. Collins.”

Annja saw Mr. Riley slide a dark wine bottle into the fridge. “Daniel Collins?” she asked.

“Yes, he’s got the nicest wines,” the man said as he wandered into the dining room. “He barters, did you know?”

“What did you trade this time, honey?” his wife asked.

“Ah? Oh, er, nothing of much import. Something I found in one of the delivery trucks.” Annja had been told the husband delivered auto parts to various repair shops in County Cork. “Never you mind much, it’s all in the goblet, don’t you know. That’s what Collins told me. Something about allowing the wine to breathe, and the width of the goblet opening. Nice to meet you, Miss Creed. My wife tells me you’re with the dig up yonder?”

“Actually, I’m here to film a segment about the people gone missing from the dig.”

“Ah, that’d be the fair folk, then.” Mr. Riley sat down and tucked a napkin in at his collar and began to murder the runny eggs on the plate before him. “You don’t expect to catch the wee things on film, do you?”

She caught his gleeful wink.

“Not at all. I’ve been told the fair folk are not seen but rather experienced.”

“It would bring a disaster upon you to attempt such shenanigans with your filming equipment. I was quite relieved when the BBC was shuffled out of town, don’t you know.”

“My crew is small, just myself and Eric. And I hope to explore the more…human aspects of the story while I’m here.”

The husband and wife exchanged glances. Did everyone believe in faeries except her?

“You know, Rachel Collins owns a genuine faerie spear,” Mrs. Riley said as she offered Annja another pour of paint-peeling coffee. “And Certainly Jones, well, he’s always sauced so we can never be sure what truths he speaks or if they are faerie tales. It’s all tales of faeries, then, isn’t it?”

Annja offered a closemouthed smile.

“To think it all started with Farmer Gentry’s arthritis,” Mr. Riley said around a mouthful of beans.

“Is that the name of the farmer whose land we’re digging on?” Annja asked.

“Indeed. He found the spear fragment when he was cutting turf to soak in.”

Annja lifted a brow. “Soak in what?”

“Himself. Peat is good for the muscles and bones,” he explained. “Gentry soaks every other day and swears he’s much more spry for it. Good for the arthritis, don’t you know. You tell me you haven’t seen those fancy salons in the United States that sell the peat baths for restoration and beauty for thousands of your American dollars?”

“I don’t really go to spas,” Annja replied. “It makes sense, though. The peat would retain vital minerals and carbon that could have a healing effect on the body.”

Mr. Riley nodded, pleased with the information he’d bestowed, and his wife patted his forearm.

Annja would have to remember that silver lining the next time she found herself mucking about in a fresh, deep bog.

M
R
. R
ILEY OFFERED
Annja and Eric a vintage black Mini Cooper to use for the day if they’d stop by the market and pick him up some cigars. Annja was ready to tell him he could probably barter with Daniel for those, too, but it was the least she could do in response to his generous offer.

More rust than paint coated the body of the compact road hazard. But after a few stops and starts Eric got a handle on the stick shift.

On the passenger side, Annja reviewed the night’s footage that she’d transferred to her laptop. Even enhancing the video and altering the brightness didn’t allow for much clarity. It had been a dark dig. But the skeleton did show quite nicely, which pleased her.

She was able to confirm the pelvic bone was female from the wide sciatic notch nicely revealed on film.

She couldn’t be sure, but the pale gray smudges along the femur looked like fabric. It was very unlikely that fabric would have survived so long in regular dirt, but not impossible when buried in a peat bog. Peat retained moisture well, which preserved things like skin, bone and some fabrics. Heck, it even cured arthritis, according to Mr. Riley. A sample of the thread strands could be dated with the proper lab equipment. Wesley Pierce had contacts in Cork. They’d be able to learn a lot about the corpse if they could test the fabric.

She much preferred to do things on the up-and-up. She wondered if Michael Slater would be open to her testing the fabric strands if she asked nicely.

Plugging in the satellite card, she then went online and searched for information about the area along the Bandon River. That brought up a surveyor’s map. The forest and bog were noted, but the makeshift road to the river was not.

Next she researched nineteenth-century Ireland.

The first few pages of hits detailed the potato famine and the incredible trials and struggle the Irish people—and countries including Belgium and Prussia—endured for that period in the mid-century when their most prized and fruitful crop had been blighted by a fungus, leaving a quarter of the population starving, unable to pay rents and seeking mass emigration. The loss of crops—a way of life—had killed millions within a five-year period. To this day, the country’s population was still less than it had been in the nineteenth century.

It was very interesting, but she still couldn’t figure how that would make the one skeleton worth protecting with security and why people were disappearing. Anything left behind from the famine period could not be particularly valuable.

And to consider Mrs. Collins’s makeshift diamond, Annja could only shake her head. She decided to let the information brew.

Eric reported the town was just ahead, beyond a field of grazing sheep.

It was time to find Beth Gwillym and hear her story.

E
RIC LET
A
NNJA OFF
at the door to West County General Hospital, then drove off, looking for a parking space.

What the hospital offered was standard issue. Drab green walls enclosed the sick and their caregivers in a dreary environment. The smell of antiseptic and bodily discharges permeated the air. Fluorescent lighting cast over the staff, who were clad in more drab green and looking as downtrodden as the sick.

Annja walked with purpose. She bypassed admissions, knowing she’d be asked if she was family. After determining the entire first floor was for emergency and outpatient services, she took the stairs to the second floor.

Would Beth’s family know their daughter had been admitted to the hospital? she wondered. Wesley had seemed a little too clueless when it came to information about his employees. He should have files with addresses and emergency contact information.

Reading the charts fitted sideways into metal holders outside each door, Annja finally located Beth Gwillym. Just as she touched the door marked See Front Desk for Visiting Regulations, a stern voice stopped her in her tracks.

F
IVE MINUTES LATER
Eric found Annja wandering the hall some distance from Beth’s room. He’d left his camera equipment in the Mini, which was smart. No need to draw more attention to what they were doing. “No luck? Is she sleeping?” he asked.

“I’ve been firmly told by a nurse that I’m not allowed to visit unless I’m a relative.”

“That rules out questioning her.”

Annja took the measure of the hallway. The nurse’s station stood four doors down from Beth’s room. The receptionist was out of sight. Annja had noted the woman wore thick glasses and had to lean in close to read the computer monitor. It would be easy to slip past her. But nurses came and went from all directions, including the occasional nun. She could risk slipping in and waking Beth, but would she even speak to her? She may not remember seeing her yesterday afternoon after coming out of the forest in her ravaged state.

And if she did, that didn’t guarantee she’d speak to a stranger about her experience.

She needed a friendly face to ease Beth’s possible distrust.

“Why don’t you take a peek at her chart?” Eric suggested, gesturing to the metal file holder near Annja’s head. “I have a digital camera in my pocket. If we’re sneaky we can take shots of the whole thing, then duck out and read them.”

“Eric, that’s illegal.”

But beyond dressing up as a nun, Annja was out of ideas. She only wanted to help Beth, and learning anything about her condition could lead to who had done this in the first place.

“In there.” Annja gestured to the men’s bathroom across the hall. Sneaking down the hall and slipping the chart from the rack, she pushed open the bathroom door. Eric was waiting in the handicapped stall. “Hurry.”

Obviously shocked at her daring, he clutched his digital camera near his chest and gaped.

“This freaks you out?” she said as she opened the file and held it for him to snap a shot. Page after page they worked. “You’re the one who suggested it.”

“Everything about you freaks me out, Annja. Turn.” He was snapping faster than she could turn. “I was just kidding. Sort of. Maybe. My leg still aches from last night. And you dispatched that behemoth security guard with your bare hands. This is cool, in a freaky kind of way, you know?”

“Make sure you get a clear, high-resolution shot.”

“I am the cameraman. Don’t worry about my work. You just hurry. I think I hear someone coming.”

“Turn and face the door.” Annja stood on the toilet seat and crouched so it would appear that only Eric’s feet were inside the stall.

The door creaked open. Someone came in and used the urinals, then left.

“He didn’t wash his hands,” she said, and jumped down. “I think we’ve got it all. Let’s go.”

O
UT IN THE CAR
, Eric moaned about his wound tingling but Annja didn’t offer sympathy. She scanned the hospital records on her laptop. Eric’s handiwork had produced clear and readable images; it was as if she held the actual records in hand. Medical terminology was not her thing. It read like hieroglyphics—yet hieroglyphics she could decipher after some study.

“Anything?” Eric asked.

“Not sure. She’s diabetic. I wonder if she might have missed an insulin dose, got disoriented and wandered off?”

It was possible, but Annja felt sure Beth would have been in much rougher shape upon her return. And diabetics always carried an emergency kit on them, didn’t they?

Then she read something she understood.

“It wasn’t lack of insulin. Overdose on lysergic acid diethylamide.”

“LSD?”

She narrowed her brows at Eric. “I don’t want to know how you know that.”

“Come on, Annja, everyone who’s been through high school knows that. And look at you, acting all Goody Two-Shoes when you just stole private hospital records.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“So she was on LSD?” he asked.

“Sounds like it. And she overdosed.”

“Is that the same thing as magic mushrooms?”

“No. They would have made a notation if they’d suspected as much. I think you’d have to eat a lot of mushrooms to actually overdo it, anyway. A drug overdose may have led her to wander away from the site and get lost.”

“Sure,” Eric said. “But I didn’t pick up any ‘hey, you want to get high?’ vibes from anyone in the camp.”

“Neither did I. And it feels wrong. Wesley mentioned magic mushrooms, and insinuated that maybe a few of the crew members had eaten them, but this is different.” She tapped the laptop with the tips of her fingernails, thinking. “Maybe it wasn’t voluntary but administered? If Beth had been kidnapped, and taken forcibly from the site, then drugged—that would explain her thinking she’d been taken by the other crowd, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “It’s not as cool as the real thing—captured by faeries—but I can dig it. But she was gone, like, what? Almost two days? And would they have kept her high on LSD that whole time? That’s one hell of a trip.”

“No kidding. I’m missing something here, and I’m not sure I’ll have it until I can talk to Beth and get the truth. I wonder what the residual effects of an overdose are?”

“Do you think we should go for a hike through the forest edging the dig?”