The Undivided (40 page)

Dinner was served before five every evening in St Christopher’s Visual Rehabilitation Centre. Like the hospital from which she’d so recently been discharged, the meal schedule had more to do with the time the cooks finished work and the nurses changed shift, than the time people might want to eat. Hayley ate in the dining room with the other inpatients, an eclectic mix of people, who, like Hayley, had been recently blinded — either by accident or degenerative eye disease. They were all learning how to deal with it.

By seven thirty she was usually hungry again, but by then the dining room was closed, and although there were scheduled activities for the residents of the facility, they didn’t involve anything more than a cup of tea and biscuits. Fortunately, Kerry had brought her a plastic container full of homemade shortbread earlier in the day. Now Hayley was out of actual hospital — although she had a visit every day from either her father or her stepmother — the whole family only visited as a group on weekends. Neil had school, and homework, and football practice and her parents both had jobs.

Kiva Kavanaugh still required her entourage, regardless of Hayley’s problems.

Hayley munched on Kerry’s deliciously buttery shortbread
and leaned her head against the cool glass of the window, wishing she could see the city lights. She still hadn’t accepted she was going to be blind. She didn’t want to master blind chess. She didn’t care if she could take up archery with a spotter, or sailing, or skeet shooting, or one of a score of sports the chirpy counsellors here kept trying to interest her in. She wanted to go back to school. She wanted to hang with her friends at Frascati Mall, not have them visit her one at a time in this determinedly cheerful place where they sat with her in painful, drawn-out silences, because they didn’t know what to say.

The idea that her life could have changed so dramatically just because she ran out onto a suburban street, was incomprehensible to Hayley. And even if she
could
believe it, she didn’t want to.

Ren’s mother had been to visit her again, without the publicist, thank God, leaving Hayley with a set of crystals that Kiva’s homoeopath had assured her would aid her recovery. Thus far, Hayley hadn’t noticed a difference, but Kiva’s blindness-curing crystals certainly gave the rehabilitation therapist and the counsellors something to smile about.

Hayley hated her ‘independent living’ lessons, too. Learning what they were trying to teach her about sewing safely and using an iron — a pointless lesson, she thought, when the obvious solution was simply to buy stuff that didn’t need ironing — meant admitting she
needed
to learn it. That meant accepting her sight was irrevocably gone.

Her first day at St Christopher’s, they’d shown her around and told her all about the things she needed to relearn, like cleaning her teeth and applying make-up, doing her own laundry, cutting her toenails and managing money, now that she couldn’t tell one note from another. Rather than cheer her up, the list depressed her — a perfectly normal reaction, they promised her cheerfully, and something they’d help her work through.

She wasn’t blind, they said, she was
challenged
. ‘Visually
impaired’ was the politically correct term.
Up the creek without a paddle
was the expression Hayley considered more appropriate.

Deep down, Hayley knew the counsellors were right. She would have to accept her disability eventually. She really didn’t have a choice, and she’d been lucky. With the head injury she’d sustained, she could have been injured much worse, suffered brain damage or even been killed.

Admitting that, however, felt like giving in.

Hayley didn’t want to nobly accept her fate and go forward like a little trooper. As petulant and unrealistic as she knew it was, Hayley wanted her life back the way it was before.

‘Damn you, Ren Kavanaugh.’

Hayley said it aloud, because blaming Ren out loud helped to mask her own woes. Her predicament was his fault. She’d never have been standing in the path of Murray Symes’s car if it hadn’t been for Ren. And as if her injury wasn’t bad enough, he’d compounded his mistake by being mixed up with that girl and some drug dealer.

People had been cagey about what they thought Ren’s disappearance meant, but Hayley could read between the lines. Even though they hadn’t discussed it with her, everybody considered Ren dead, killed by Dominic O’Hara’s henchmen, who’d busted him out of gaol to keep him quiet.

It was plausible, she supposed, except she knew Ren better than anybody. He was no drug dealer’s lookout, although she was finding it increasingly difficult to convince herself Ren was still alive and well out there somewhere and staying away by choice.

The Ren she knew would have moved heaven and earth to reach her, if he’d thought she was in trouble. That he hadn’t so much as tried to call her was enough to make Hayley think the cops might be right about Ren being dead and lying in a shallow grave somewhere.

She heard the door open, but didn’t react. It was probably her roommate, Carrie, back from another thrilling evening of listening to the TV. Carrie was twenty-five and losing her sight to diabetic retinopathy. Far from being pissed about it, Carrie was facing her future with equanimity, which might have been why they’d roomed her with the cranky seventeen-year-old who didn’t want to accept the truth.

Despite that, Hayley liked Carrie. She figured there wasn’t much to be gained by burdening her roommate with her bad mood.

‘Did you want some of my mum’s shortbread?’ Hayley asked. She could make out a shadow roughly the size of a person coming toward her. When the shadow didn’t answer, she realised it wasn’t Carrie. For one thing, her roommate was in the throes of a passionate love affair with Elizabeth Taylor’s new White Diamonds perfume, which Carrie’s fiancé had given her for her birthday a couple of weeks before Hayley arrived. On a good day, you could smell her coming down the hall.

‘Love some,’ her visitor said.

‘
Ren?
’ she squealed.

‘Yell it out a bit louder,’ he said with a smile in his voice. ‘I don’t think they heard you in Antarctica.’

Hayley dropped the box of shortbread onto the floor in a shower of buttery crumbs and threw herself at him. Ren hugged her tightly as she burst into tears, not sure if she was crying from relief, happiness, shock or fear.

‘Christ
almighty
, Ren,’ she gasped, tears running down her cheeks. She sniffed inelegantly and wiped them away. ‘Where the hell have you been? Have you called your mother? Do the cops know you’re back? Why didn’t you tell someone —’

‘Hey!’ he said, placing his finger on her lips to silence her. ‘Enough with the questions. I’ll explain everything, but we can’t talk here.’

‘We could go to the common room,’ she suggested. ‘There’s
a phone in there, too, if you want to call Kiva. She’s been sick with worry, you know. We all have. God, Ren, she cancelled an opening.’

‘Wow,’ Ren said. He sounded genuinely touched. ‘Kiva missed a red carpet because of me? That’s epic.’

‘You have to call her, Ren. Everybody thinks you’re dead.’

‘And I will be, if we don’t get out of here soon,’ he promised her in a tone that made her realise he wasn’t joking. ‘Can you just walk out of this place or do we have to sign you out?’

‘I can leave.’ She sounded a little worried by the question. ‘It’s a rehab facility, not a hospital. They don’t close the place to the public until after nine. Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere we can talk,’ he said. ‘I’ve got so much to tell you, Hay, and some of it’s going to be really hard to swallow. But …’ He hesitated. She could feel his nervousness. ‘Look, just trust me, okay?’

Before she could answer, the door opened again. ‘You done saying hello to your girlfriend yet?’ an unfamiliar female voice asked impatiently. ‘I’m getting funny looks from people out here, and I’m guessing they’re staff because the patients can’t, well, you know … look.’

‘Who’s that, Ren?’

‘It’s Trása,’ he explained, taking Hayley’s hand. ‘She’s … a friend.’

Hayley was instantly suspicious. She knew all Ren’s friends. There wasn’t a Trása among them. In fact, the only one she’d ever heard of was …‘Is that the girl you were with the day of the accident?’

Ren was silent for a long time before he said, ‘Yeah … that’s her.’

She stepped back from Ren and folded her arms, wishing she could read his expression. ‘The girl claiming to be Jack O’Righin’s granddaughter?’

‘Yeah, sure … look, can we talk about this later? We need to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘I want to take you someplace that’ll … explain things.’

‘Explain what, exactly?’

‘Explain …’ Ren was floundering. He couldn’t find the words he needed to convince her. Ironically, he probably wouldn’t have needed to convince her of anything, had she not realised he was still hanging around with that blonde cow. ‘I know some people who can help you, Hayley. People who can fix what’s wrong with your eyes.’

‘And what exactly is wrong with my eyes, Ren?’ she asked, filled with a contrary urge to be difficult. How dare he think he can just waltz in here after disappearing for weeks, and expect her to just go along with whatever he had planned? And with that girl, too.

God, what if someone saw him coming in here? What if someone’s called the cops?

‘Your occipital lobe is damaged,’ he said, his voice filled with impatience.

‘How do you know?’

‘The whole frigging world knows, Hayley. You’re a feature in
OK! Magazine
.’

She’d forgotten that. She hadn’t realised the latest edition had hit the stands yet.

‘And when have you had time in your busy schedule of breaking out of gaol, being on the run and not calling anybody who cares about you, to book me in with a specialist who can fix my damaged brain?’

Ren let out an exasperated sigh. ‘I have a twin brother.’

If Ren was hoping to distract her with shock tactics, that was a doozey. ‘
What?
’

‘I have a twin brother,’ he repeated. ‘He … knows people who can help you. Trása’s a friend of his.’

She was still trying to get her head around his first revelation. ‘You have a twin brother?’

‘Matching tatts and all.’ She could hear Ren moving about the room as if he was checking out the street below and the bathroom to ensure they were alone. ‘His name is Darragh. He’s waiting outside to meet you, something I’d
really
like him to do before the cops get here.’

Hayley didn’t know what to say. Suddenly everything she thought she knew about Ren, that girl, her accident … it all seemed pointless now. ‘My coat’s on the hook behind the door.’

She heard Ren grab the coat and let him help her into it. Then he took her hand and squeezed. ‘It’s gonna be okay, Hayley,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’

‘I should probably call Dad and let him know I’m going.’

She could feel, rather than see, Ren shaking his head. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. If you tell Patrick you’ve seen me, he’ll be obliged to call the cops.’

Hayley wasn’t so sure. Her father, deep down, was something of a closet anarchist. At least that’s how Kerry fondly described him. When it came to Ren, the child he’d saved from drowning, Hayley suspected he’d happily break any number of laws to protect him. But Ren was right. It was pointless endangering either her father or her stepmother unnecessarily. ‘My dad wouldn’t betray you, Ren. You’re like a son to him.’

‘Yeah … but let’s not take the chance, eh?’ he suggested. ‘Besides, if it ever came out that Patrick knew where I was and didn’t let the cops know, he’d be in a whole mountain of trouble. Let’s not make it harder for him.’

Hayley nodded in reluctant agreement. ‘Don’t let go of my hand,’ she ordered, unable to think of anything else more profound to say.

She heard the door open and sensed Trása waiting for them.

‘Hayley, Trása. Trása, Hayley,’ Ren said as he led her into the hall, introducing them almost as an afterthought. ‘Are we still good?’

‘I think so,’ Trása said. ‘But someone’s coming. I just heard the lift.’

‘Maybe we should go back inside before … Crap,’ Ren muttered under his breath.

‘What’s wrong?’ Hayley asked, hating that she was so reliant on everybody else to tell her what was happening.

‘Trása,’ Ren said urgently in a low voice. ‘Get Hayley to the car. I’ll meet you down there.’

Something was wrong, Hayley knew, but she couldn’t tell what it was. Ren had suddenly tensed and she could hear footsteps coming toward them.

‘Ren!’ she hissed. ‘Who is it?’

‘Detective Pete.’

There was a moment … a split second of suspended time as Ren recognised the cop and the cop recognised him …

Then Pete let out a shout and Ren bolted.

Although his first instinct was to head down, Ren went for the fire escape, and took the stairs, two at a time, toward the upper floors. He had to buy Trása time to help Hayley, and if that meant leading every cop in the building all over the St Christopher’s Visual Rehabilitation Centre, so be it.

He had something of a head start on Pete, who must have stopped long enough to call in Ren’s sighting. Ren heard the fire escape door opening below him as he hit the fifth floor landing. He jerked the door open and bolted down the hall, then realised that by running he was drawing attention to himself. He slowed to a walk, took several deep breaths to calm his racing heart, and tried to look like he belonged. It wasn’t easy. He’d come out of the fire escape into a medical ward and it certainly wasn’t visiting hours.

Trying to look as if he belonged, he stepped out of the ward, turned right, and spied another fire escape at the very end of the corridor.

‘Are you right there, mate?’ a man asked as he passed the nurses’ station. The man who questioned him wore a set of
scrubs, plain blue pants and a pale shirt covered in fluffy white bunnies, with a stethoscope around his neck. Ren wasn’t close enough to see his ID, but he figured — fluffy bunnies notwithstanding — he wasn’t someone to be trifled with.

‘Yeah … um … I’m looking for my parents. They came in last night with my little sister … they said she’d be up here.’ Ren tried to sound calm, hoping his constant checking of the hallway behind him didn’t look suspicious.

‘What’s your sister’s name?’ the nurse asked.

‘Hayley,’ Ren replied. ‘Hayley Boyle.’

‘She’s not in Medical,’ the man told him, turning for the computer. ‘I can check where she is for you, though, if you just want to wait there a min …’

Ren never heard the rest of it. Down the hall, the fire escape door opened and Pete, with two security guards on his tail, spied their quarry and took off in pursuit. With the nurse yelling at them to stop, and something about this not being a football stadium, Ren bolted down the hall toward the second fire escape.

‘Kavanaugh! Stop!’ Pete yelled.

Oh, yeah … like that’s gonna happen.

Ren didn’t waste his breath responding.

‘You’re cornered, Kavanaugh!’ Pete bellowed. ‘There’s nowhere to run!’

Shows how much you know, Pete
, Ren replied silently as he spied the door to the next stairwell, the sound of pounding footsteps behind growing closer. Without taking the time to look, he grabbed at a cleaner’s trolley parked by a utility room near the stairs and shoved it into the path of his pursuers. They went down with a clatter as Ren jerked open the fire escape door and bolted down the bare concrete stairs to the next floor.

This time, Ren didn’t wait for them to find him. He let himself out on the third floor, bolted straight past the service lifts, and made for the main elevators further along the hall, near the
entrance to the closed Physio department. Gasping for breath, he pressed the button and waited. He was rewarded a few achingly long moments later with a ding advising him the lift had arrived. Ren tapped his foot impatiently until the door opened. He smiled at the young woman in the lift, unable to hide his grin of relief at the shout of frustration from Pete and the security guards as the doors closed on them.

‘Are we going up or down?’ Ren asked.

She turned to him, holding her cane in front of her. ‘Down. Are you all right? You sound a little … breathless.’

‘Asthma,’ Ren said, as the elevator rocked to a halt on the first floor. He stood back and let the woman and her cane exit first, and then, with his head down and shoulders hunched, he stepped out of the lift, took a sharp right into the next corridor and opened the first door he came to.

It turned out to be the chapel.

The silence rang in Ren’s ears as he lowered himself to the carpeted floor, breathing hard, his pulse racing. He wasn’t sure how long it would take them to find him. He figured they’d have to work out what floor he’d got out on, and then — assuming there were cameras and he was lucky enough that nobody was watching the monitors — maybe go back through the surveillance tapes to discover where he’d vanished to, after he emerged from the lift.

Ren looked up, wondering if there were cameras in the chapel, but the ceiling boasted no obvious surveillance equipment or any telltale tinted glass domes that might hide cameras. The crucifix on the altar seemed to be glaring at him, accusing him of something. With his arms resting on his knees, he closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the panelled wall. It was a risk, trusting Trása to get Hayley clear. Trása was good at eluding the authorities, but she was only on their side by default. With luck, her desire to be released from Marcroy’s curse when they
got back to their own reality was enough to keep her motivated. There was always a chance she’d ditch Hayley to save herself. If she did that, Ren decided he’d add his own curse to Darragh’s threat — and he realised he knew how, thanks to the
Comhroinn.

He just hoped Darragh and Sorcha wouldn’t panic and try to rescue him. He could get out of this on his own. Their help would merely complicate matters.

Ren forced his breathing to slow and opened his eyes.

The chapel door swung open. There was nothing he could do. Nowhere he could run.

The cop who found him was in uniform. Detective Pete must have called in reinforcements. And she was armed. She drew her weapon and pointed it at Ren.

‘Don’t move.’

Ren raised his hands. He’d been right about them arming the cops once they suspected he was in the building. He could only hope Trása was already outside with Hayley. Maybe they’d been distracted by their search for him long enough for her to get Hayley to the car with Darragh and Sorcha.

Hayley’s fate was now in the dubious hands of his brother and his first attempt to drive.

But Ren’s fate was in the hands of this cop.
Will she really shoot if I make a break for it?
He was taller than her and quite a few pounds heavier. If she hesitated, he might be able to get past her, and back into the hall — a grand plan provided he did it in the next five seconds, before the hall filled with more cops.

‘Found him,’ the cop announced into her shoulder-mounted radio. ‘He’s in the chapel.’

So much for
the next five seconds
plan.

‘Aren’t you gonna be the hero?’ Ren said with a sigh. There was no point fighting someone pointing a loaded gun in his face, and the longer they were focussed on him, the longer Trása and Hayley had to get clear. Darragh could come back for him some
other time. Brógán and Niamh had broken him out of gaol once. They could do it again.

‘We’re on our way,’ someone crackled in reply. It sounded like Detective Pete, but the radio distorted the voice too much to be certain.

The officer took a step backward. ‘On the floor, Kavanaugh. Face down.’

Ren sighed. ‘It’s okay. I know the drill.’

He did as she ordered, wincing but not resisting, as she slapped the cuffs on him and then helped him to his feet, a lot more gently than the ERU guys had done. By the time Detective Pete arrived, panting heavily from the pursuit, she was pushing Ren out of the chapel and into the hall, which was — as he’d feared it would be — teeming with police.

‘Looking a bit unfit there, Pete,’ Ren remarked, as the detective bent double for a moment while he caught his breath.

Pete didn’t rise to the bait. He straightened up, said, ‘Come on, Kavanaugh,’ then grabbed Ren by the shoulder and pushed him down the corridor, through the main foyer, past the curious stares of staff and visitors, and out into the bitter, rainy evening.

There was an unmarked Gardaí car parked in front of the facility. Pete opened the back door, pushed Ren into the back seat with his hand on the top of Ren’s head, slammed the door, and turned to issue orders to the other Gardaí who’d followed them.

Ren sat forward, finding it too awkward to lean back against the seat with his hands cuffed behind his back. The driver was sitting hunched over the wheel as if he was freezing, bundled into a Gardaí standard-issue duffle coat with the collar pulled up, his hat down over his eyes.

‘Stay calm, brother,’ the driver advised. ‘We’ll be gone from here soon enough.’

‘
Jesus Christ!
’ Ren’s jaw dropped. Darragh was driving the Gardaí car.

His brother turned and grinned at him over the collar of his stolen coat. ‘Turns out I know how to drive, after all. Sort of.’

‘What the fuck are
you
doing here?’ Ren turned to see where Pete was. The detective was still talking to the other cops. But he was barely three feet from the car. They only had seconds before he was in the car with them. ‘How did you get here?’

‘You underestimate both Sorcha’s skill and her desire to ensure the Undivided safely return to our rightful realm,’ Darragh said, grinning like an idiot. ‘Should we leave now?’

‘No! God, no!’ Ren had visions of Darragh careening out into the traffic, alerting every cop in the vicinity there was another escape underway. ‘Wait …’

‘Wait for
what
?’

Ren glanced at the cops outside the car. ‘Wait until Pete gets in and then
ease
away from the curb.’

‘Why do we want him to come with us?’

‘We don’t. We can drop him off somewhere once we’ve lost the rest of the cavalry. We just don’t want to make a scene. Where’s Hayley?’

‘In the other car. With Trása. They’re already heading for the rift. Your friend is very pretty.’

Ren glared at Darragh. ‘You found time to notice
that
?’ Then another thought occurred to him, which swamped his surge of jealousy. ‘Hang on … they’ve left already? How? Who’s driving?’

‘Trása.’

‘She doesn’t know how to drive!’

Darragh shrugged, apparently unconcerned. ‘She assured me she understood the fundamentals.’

‘Oh my God …’ Ren was suddenly nauseous.
Great plan you’ve got going here, Kavanaugh: save Hayley from injuries sustained in one car accident, so you can get her killed in another.

The back door of the car jerked open. Darragh quickly turned his face forward. Between the turned-up coat collar, the hat and the poor light, his face was hidden. There was no telling, however, how long they had before this paper-thin ruse was discovered. If Sorcha hadn’t already killed the cop who’d been driving the car before Darragh got behind the wheel, he might stumble out any moment, to raise the alarm.

If she had killed him … well, that didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Pete ordered, leaning back in his seat.

Darragh took his foot off the brake and the car rolled forward. So far so good.

‘What? No seatbelt?’ Ren asked, hoping to keep the detective’s attention on him and not on who was driving the car. Pete hadn’t yet noticed that his driver was not the same driver he’d arrived with.

Pete looked at Ren askance. ‘Oh, so
now
you’re worried about breaking the law? That’s rich.’

‘I’m reformed,’ Ren assured Pete, bracing himself. He had a feeling he knew what was about to happen. Sure enough, Darragh spotted a gap in the traffic and the Gardaí car surged forward, darting into the oncoming traffic. There was a squeal of brakes, blaring horns and curses.

‘Bloody hell, Andy!’ Detective Pete exclaimed, as they careened into the traffic. ‘Who taught you to drive?’

Darragh turned to look at them over his shoulder. He was grinning like a fool. ‘Nobody. I don’t actually drive. Are you all right, Rónán?’ The car began drifting into the next lane.

‘I’m fine. Watch the freakin’ road!’

‘Sorry!’ Darragh turned his attention back to the traffic. The car was all over the place. He really had no idea what he was doing.

But Pete had seen Darragh’s face. He stared at Ren for a moment. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ he said and reached into his jacket for his weapon.

‘He’ll drive even worse if you shoot him,’ Ren said.

The traffic carried them forward — miraculously without hitting any other vehicles. Pete pulled out his gun and pushed it against Ren’s leg.

‘Pull over, or I’ll shoot your friend’s kneecap out.’

Darragh glanced in the rear-view mirror, assessed the situation in an instant, and jerked the steering wheel, oblivious to the other traffic on the road, trusting them to get out of his way. The unmarked Gardaí car hit the curb with a thud in front of a car dealership. It crashed over the curb and came to a stop against the chain-link fence. Darragh shut down the engine and glanced back at Ren. ‘I am sorry, brother. My heroic rescue attempt appears to have failed.’

‘It’s okay. I appreciate the gesture.’

‘Put your hands on the steering wheel where I can see them and don’t move,’ Pete ordered Darragh and Darragh did as he was told without complaint. With the gun still pressed into Ren’s knee, the cop stared at Darragh for a long moment, then at Ren and then at Darragh again.

‘Jesus wept. There are two of you.’ He pulled a long plastic cable tie from another pocket and handed it to Darragh. ‘Cuff yourself to the wheel.’

It was now or never, Ren realised. If Pete called this in, they’d both be arrested and it was unlikely they’d get away a second time. Even with Brógán and Niamh on the case and an endless supply of
Brionglóid Gorm
— God, if only they’d had time to bring a bag of that magic blue dust through the rift with them — it would take a major effort to spring both of them out of gaol, and that was surely where they were headed. And even if they could be rescued by people from another reality, the problems back in their own reality caused by their absence were mounting every moment they were away.

It suddenly occurred to Ren how selfish his plan to rescue
Hayley really was. Not only had he drawn Trása and Darragh into his folly, he wondered if Hayley even
needed
rescuing?

All he knew about her condition he’d read in
OK! Magazine
.