Free Falling (13 page)

            The crowd laughed and Mike saw a few of the men on the edge wander away, presumably in search of their jars.

            “I don’t believe running away is the answer,” he said.

            “It is if there’s nothing here,” Siobhan said. “It is if the country is crawling with pikers and murderers and there’s nothing to eat and no help coming.”

            “Which is why we need to band together and help ourselves,” Mike said.

            Siobhan addressed the crowd.

            “I’m leaving Balinagh by the end of the week,” she said. “Anybody wantin’ me Dairy, you’re welcome to it.” She turned to look at Mike but spoke loudly to the people gathered. “I’ll not be coming back,” she said. “Whatever comes now.”

By the time Sarah rode into the western entrance to Balinagh, her back felt limber, her seat relaxed and her rhythm totally in sync with Dan.

Two years before she had given up trail riding for good—or so she believed. She had restricted herself to riding in the paddock or the enclosed jumping arena, carefully avoiding the jumps and anyone jumping them. The thought of going out into the pasture or on any of the trails—even with a group of other riders—had terrified her. When a friend at the barn where she rode gently pointed out to her that there seemed to be little point in her perfecting her riding technique if she refused to actually ride anywhere other than the paddock, Sarah did not have an answer. She knew what she was missing. She had trail ridden for years, and happily. She remembered the startled foxes and quail and the pleasures of the morning viewable only from horseback–the sunrise, the flowers, the birds, the smell of life, organic and exquisite. She knew what magic riding out in the world held. It was the reason she had begun riding in the first place.

She wasn’t sure exactly when her confidence had eroded and then left her altogether. All things considered, her fall had been a gentle one. There was no blood, no splintered bones, just a clean snap and a matter-of-fact drive to the emergency room. She had even fed her horse and released him back into the pasture before allowing a friend to drive her to the hospital. A broken shoulder, although inconvenient to her life outside riding, had not put her in a wheel chair or attached her to a colostomy bag. It had healed quickly and she had eagerly returned to ride. But, bit by bit, everything changed.

Before long she was running tapes in her head that she found difficult to stop. The mental tapes varied from day to day—images of her horse throwing her and her body rolling down barbwire-lined ravines, images of the horse panicking and racing through the woods and the brambles while tree branches lacerated her. The tapes ran in her head when she rode alone. So, she stopped riding alone. Then the tapes ran when she rode in the pasture or on the beautiful trails that wound up and around the Chattahoochee River near the barn where she boarded her horse. So she stopped going out on the trails.

Pretty soon, the tapes would start as soon as she swung up into the saddle. It was about that time that she met David and decided the courtship didn’t allow time to include horses too. She sold her horse and put her tack up for sale on eBay.

Sarah realized with surprise as she approached the village that her focus was so keenly on what she would find there that the fact that she was riding alone in an unfamiliar rural surrounding had not even come to mind. Realizing it now, she stopped Dan and stood up in her stirrups. She took in a big breath and let it out slowly as she watched the sky. She closed her eyes and felt in control of him, utterly and completely. She patted his neck. She had always been afraid of big horses. Her own horse back home, no bigger than a large polo pony, had been as docile and sweet as a golden retriever. Yet Sarah had virtually given the mare away and had breathed a sigh of relief as if she had unloaded a demon on wheels.

Sarah tightened her calves against Dan’s sides and he moved amiably forward. She could see in the distance that there was a market set up today.  

The laughter and the music reached her before she could see much of the market. Sarah smiled.
The Irish and their music
, she thought.
Do not let an international disaster stand in the way of what’s important.
When she reached the end of the main street she could see about twenty tents and tables set up, all of them crowded with people. A fiddler, the source of the music, was established in the center in a makeshift stage. A large group crowded around, laughing and clapping and generally looking like they’d never seen a street performer before. A few people looked at her as she walked Dan into the market. She could see a line of saddled horses off to the side, tied to a rope strung across the street. There were also four pony traps still attached to the ponies.

Pretty hard to steal a pony trap with the pony attached
, she thought, as she slid to the ground from her saddle.
A lot less tricky with a fully saddled horse
. She walked Dan to the line of horses. A couple of people turned, smiled at her and seemed to be watching her. She slipped the bit out of Dan’s mouth and pulled the bridle off his face until it hung on his neck. Then she wrapped the reins in a loose knot on the tie-up line. She loosened his girth to the very last notch.
Someone tries to steal him
, she thought with satisfaction,
they’ll be trying to do it with a 15-pound saddle flopping around Dan’s stomach.
She pulled the wine bottles from the saddlebags and turned to join the crowd.

“It’s not me, you understand,” the young woman said, dabbing at her eyes. “It’s me children, sure they’re so young and to see them so hungry…” She looked at Sarah and shook her head. “It’s fair to killing me, you see.”

Sarah nodded her head in commiseration. The young woman had a problem, that was clear. Sarah wiped the grime off the palms of her hand. The mug of tea she held turned the moist dirt to a film. Her eyes flickered, for the millionth time, to where Dan was tied.
I killed a man
, she thought, as she watched a man stagger to the line of horses, fish out his own, mount it with some difficulty and slowly jog away.

Yesterday.

The woman spoke again.

“If your husband could see his way,” she said. “I hate to ask. It’s not for myself, you understand. It’s for my babies.”

Sarah looked back at her. The market was winding down and she knew it was time for her to go, too. She still had to check in on Devon on the way home. She had traded the two wine bottles within minutes of offering them up for nearly four hundred rounds. Her hand touched the package in her lap. But the big prize was the semiautomatic in which the rounds fit. A Glock 19 complete with shoulder holster. No safety, a relentless push of the trigger would empty 15 rounds, a full magazine, one right after the other. Like a little machine gun, she had thought when she bought the gun. The woman who sold it to her had just lost her son but Sarah had not had the nerve to ask how. Her husband, a mute and somber man who stood at her side, knew the tourist cottage where Sarah lived. He would be by tomorrow to take the six sheep and dozen more bottles of Côte de Rhône Sarah had bartered in exchange for the gun.

She cleared her throat, put down the empty mug and stood up.

“I’ll ask my husband,” she said to the woman who sat, wringing a wet rag in her hands. “I’m sure he’ll be able to help you.”

“Oh, bless you, missus,” the woman said. “What with losing my Jamie, I don’t know how to thank you—”

“The cow,” Sarah said. “You said you’d trade one of your milk cows?”

“Yes, yes,” the woman said. “We have three, I’ll not be needing more than one, really. But if your husband could come and dig out the well. Not more than a few days, probably just a day, him being American and so clever and all.”

Sarah couldn’t put her finger on why, but there was something about this girl that unsettled her.

“Where are you located then?” she asked.

The young woman shook her head.

“Sure, it’s impossible to describe the way. Turn left at the cairn, turn right near O’Malley’s barn that burned down…”

“Meaning it’s not there any more.”

The girl laughed.

“So you see the problem in it.” She pointed to her saddled pony. “I can meet Himself right here, you just say when, and lead him to my place. And I can’t thank you too much. My children…it’s just that when my husband, when Jamie…” she began to cry softly and Sarah patted her on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Julie,” she said. “I am sure David will be able to help you and your little ones. What time tomorrow can you be here?”

“You tell me,” Julie said, grabbing Sarah’s hand and smiling with relief through her tears. “You tell me when, I’ll be here.”

Sarah would have preferred to have had at least one day with David before he was off and out again, but the young woman’s need was urgent. The well at her farm had caved in and they had no fresh water. Her husband had been recently killed in a freak accident (on horseback) and she had two children under five depending on her. Sarah knew well the feeling of fear and desperation to protect her child. And the thought of having real milk on a regular basis nearly brought tears to her eyes.

“Noon tomorrow,” she said, patting Julie’s hand. “He’ll be here.”

An hour later, Sarah stood next to her horse on the small rise and watched the front of the old stone cottage. It looked like it had been built in the fifteen century. If it hadn’t been falling into disrepair, it would’ve qualified as a quaint little Irish tourist cottage, complete with thatched roof. She had been standing there nearly fifteen minutes, wondering what it was she was seeing. It looked deserted. No smoke from the chimney and it was certainly cold enough to warrant a fire. She buttoned her jacket to her neck and inspected the sky. She had stayed in Balinagh too long. It would be well past dark by the time she got home.

No dogs barking to herald her presence. No smoke in the grate. Her eyes scanned the courtyard to see if there was a lifeless form humped out to explain all the other signs of lifelessness.

So this is where I decide
, she thought, watching the cottage.
This is where I ride into an ambush or decide to play it safe and just go home.
She looked up again at the greying sky. Bad weather was moving in. She sighed and moved forward, leading her horse.

I can’t not check on him
, she thought. I’m here.
I can’t not see, even though surely it can only be bad news.
She counted on her horse reacting first to any unseen threat in the forecourt or the perimeter of the cottage. She had clumsily loaded the handgun before she even left the village. She walked slowly, and the gun pressing against her side in its shoulder holster gave her a tinge of comfort. Directly in front of her, the small cottage sat in front of a truncated drive. On its north side was a shed that had been transformed into a makeshift carport. As she approached, she could see the rear bumper of a car protruding from it.  There was no sign of the pony.

She stopped in front of the cottage and scanned the windows for any sign of life. She had already rehearsed in her mind her escape route up the far drive on the other side of the carport. Somewhere off in the pasture, she heard a bird singing. She held her breath and waited. There was no other sound.

Still holding onto Dan’s reins, she stepped up onto the cottage porch. Now she could see that the door was ajar. Making up her mind, she turned to Dan and swung up into the saddle. She touched the handle of the Glock for assurance and moved down the drive to the other side of the car shed. She figured if there was anyone there, her action might flush them out for fear that she was leaving. She trotted down the side of the cottage, looking everywhere at once, stopping, listening. She returned to the frontcourt of the cottage and dismounted. She tied Dan to the porch railing, stepped onto the porch and pushed the front door the rest of the way open.

He was lying on the floor in front of the couch.

Sarah stepped over an overturned chair to the body. The cottage interior seemed to have been stripped of anything of value. She noticed a lone tea mug on the kitchen table. She knelt by the body and touched his neck, not sure whether she was looking for a pulse or just confirming that he was as cold as she knew he would be. The fading light through the window was strong enough to show that he had no visible wounds, no stabs or gunshot markings. Sarah looked around the cottage to see if there was anything she should bring with her, perhaps to Dierdre, perhaps something of her sister’s.

She shrugged off her sentimentality and turned to leave. There was nothing she could do for Devon now. It was at the moment that she resolved to leave that the flutter of fear and anxiety returned over the lateness of the day. It was also the moment she heard voices outside.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The man was standing by her horse, inspecting the saddle and running a large hand down the horse’s legs. Sarah stood motionless in the doorway and watched him, the gun in her hand but by her side. She waited for him to notice her or make a move. Unless he’d been talking to himself, voices meant there was another nearby. Sarah focused on the man,
the tactical environment
, and counted on her other senses to locate the second man.

The man by the horse saw her.

“Good day, missus,” he said, moving away from Dan.

Sarah resisted the urge to point the gun at him.

“Can I help you?” she said.
Why do we Americans say that?

“Help me?” The man frowned, his eyes catching the glint of the Glock at the end of her arm.

“Are you looking for Devon?”
Where the hell was the other guy?

“Devon’s dead, poor bugger.”

“I know.”
Obviously, I know. I’m in his cottage
.

“And you are…?”

“I’m a friend of Devon’s sister-in-law.”

“She’s the American.” A younger man in his late teens came from the direction of the car shed. “The ones rented the McKinney place, right?” He didn’t smile but something about him didn’t feel threatening to Sarah.