Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games (9 page)

She could tell that whomever was about to enter the room wasn't Correy. Correy was slim and short. The footsteps were heavy, indicating a large man. She arranged herself on the bed and tried to calm her hurried breathing. Her eyes darted around the room, looking, searching for something, anything, she could use for protection. And then she saw the doorknob begin to turn and she found herself holding her breath.

He literally filled the doorway with his bulk. The man, Gil, stood at the entrance to the bedroom, a leer planted firmly across his face, his eyes never raising any higher than her nearly naked breasts. He took one step into the room and shut the door behind him.

H
e stood
in front of her, his hands on his hips and grinned, his eyes never meeting hers.

He looks at me like I'm a thing to be devoured
, Sarah thought, with rising panic. She slipped off the bed and stood in front of him, not sure why she moved, but not able to help herself. She wasn't trying to escape, exactly, but it didn't matter. The grin disappeared from the man's face and his lips curled back to reveal yellow and chipped teeth. He slapped Sarah hard, knocking her down against the bed.

“Bitch! Who told ya you could move?”

Sarah's mouth filled with the taste of her own blood. She scrambled across the bed and turned to watch him as he moved around the foot of the bed to cut off her escape. She had meant to give in. She'd told herself she would do what she had to do to survive. She didn't know why she couldn't stop herself from moving away from him.

He cracked his knuckles and advanced on her, his eyes again on her breasts. “Denny said you're too old for him so you're all mine, sis. I wouldn't think of yelling or anything coz I pretty much got the green light to do whatever I want, and it's up to you whether there's anything left of ya afterwards to go on to Maggie's or I haul your arse back to the factory. Ya understand me, bitch?”

Sarah stared at him and felt the helplessness sift through her. She couldn't do it. She could not allow him to climb on top of her. Her mind was a whirl of motion and a thousand different thoughts and images. Would she ever be the same again if she let him touch her? Would she be anything worth having back as a mother?

Her eyes narrowed as she watched Gil undo his belt and drop his pants on the floor. He still had his socks and boots on and Sarah thought she saw something flash from the top of his sock. He was wearing a shoulder holster but she couldn't see if there was anything in it. Whatever she did, she needed to do it now. She looked frantically at the nightstand by the bed but there was nothing there, not even a book or a paperweight.

“Denny said we can't use the bed so move over here by the couch. If I have to come get you, I'll make sure it hurts bad.”

She watched him waiting for her, his stiff member holding his shirtfront up like a sagging tent pole. She nodded and moved toward the couch. She had only one trick in her bag and if she screwed it up he'd kill her. But if she didn't at least try, she would surely die a slower, different way.

As she passed him, she turned to him and said, “I was hoping it would be you ever since we first met this morning.”

He grunted in surprise. She saw his eyes were not on her face. She counted on it. She pushed her chest out higher and placed her hands on his arms. “I want you to do me,” she said plainly. He hesitated just long enough, his eyes mesmerized by the swaying of her full naked breasts so close they were nearly touching his arm.

She brought her knee up sharp and hard between his legs.

He emitted a strangled breath and she pushed him off balance. He fell onto his back against the wall and folded up with a long, wailing groan. She didn't waste the moment. Using her fear and revulsion to push her to take the next step, she knelt over him and grabbed the blade she'd seen in his boot.

Don't think! Just do it!

“I'll kill you for this you bitch…” he groaned.

Sarah drew the blade across his throat and watched his eyes spring open wide as she did. A gasp of air hit her knuckles from his exposed windpipe. She knew it was enough and she couldn't wait any longer. Before she was even standing, she shed the negligee on the floor. She grabbed the gun from his harness, then ran to the dresser and jerked open the second drawer for the jeans.

She turned and listened to sounds from the hallway. She heard laughing and women's voices. Over her shoulder, she could hear that the wheezing had stopped. She pulled on a pair of jeans and grabbed a t-shirt from the top drawer.

She checked that the gun was loaded then tucked it into the back waist of her jeans. The knife was sticky with blood but she held it in her hand in case she met anyone on her way out. She glanced out the window and sent a silent prayer of thanks that it was already dark. She would have to leave through the window, across the roof. She was barefoot but it couldn't be helped. She didn't know how long she had before Correy reclaimed his bedroom, but she knew she needed to be long gone by then.

With the knife still in her hand, she pulled the window open and crawled out onto the sill. Correy's bedroom faced the back garden, not the front, and she counted that as a major stroke of luck. As she negotiated a five-foot drop from the window ledge, she glanced back in the bedroom to confirm what she already knew. Her would-be rapist lay propped up against the wall, his hands still cupping his naked crotch, eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling. She could see the line of red across his throat even from eight feet away.

She dropped onto the second roof below the bedroom window and crouched on all fours to inch her way to the roof edge. There was a first story roof eave over the back door entrance. Once she made it that far, she could drop the rest of the way into the bushes. She might come away with some bad scratches, but at least she wouldn't break anything. She could see the dark lawn stretching all the way to fence perimeter about one hundred meters away. Once she was down, she should be able to make it to the back fence at a dead run in seconds. The woods on the other side looked dense and thick, but that was to her benefit.

While she didn't worry about the fence being electrified, as she released her hold on the roof edge and dropped into a hedge of hazel shrubs by the back door it did occur to her that Correy might have security or dogs. She landed painfully in the center of the bush with branches lashing her face and neck and immediately fought to free herself. She took a quick inventory as she ran for the back fence. Her feet had taken the worst of it, but still only stings at this point. Figuring she'd stand a greater chance of running into sentries at the fence, she ran straight across the lawn. If a dog caught her, she'd kill it with her knife.

If she ran into a man, same thing.

The grass was cold and smooth under her feet. She felt the gun pinching into her back as she ran, but also felt an exhilaration as the evening air pushed against her and she saw the fence come nearer and nearer.

Nine days of abuse and imprisonment, threats and beatings. Nine days of crying silently for her losses, of praying and hoping for rescue, of waiting for something to happen.

And now she was running free. Running directly back to her boy.

And she'd be damned if anyone would stop her.

T
he work was
hard and Mike was glad of it.

Ten-hour days of plowing fields, feeding livestock, cleaning out stalls and pigsties, and mending fences left him falling asleep over his dinner and nights of dreamless, uninterrupted sleep. He slept in the barn near Petey, which suited him fine, and counted the days until he'd earned enough to ride back to Boreen.

Meanwhile, he stepped into the routine of hard physical labor and forced himself to put his worries away until the job was done. Aideen lived in town with her young daughter, but came each Sunday and Wednesday to cook enough to tide Mike and her father over for the days in between.

Her father was a right bastard.

Small and wiry, with a ferret face that seemed to push in on itself when he grimaced, Fionn Malone worked alongside Mike as if they were inmates on a chain gang. His dour and humorless manner infected the atmosphere of every room he entered. Mike was glad to retreat to the barn each night.

The second Sunday that Aideen came to cook and clean, she asked Mike if he would ride back to Boreen with her.

“Only, there are some
gougers
on the loose lately,” she said. “And I've left it too late today. You can ride back in the morning.”

Mike knew it was easily a two-hour ride each way and there was no way Fionn would pay him for the excursion. His shoulders sagged at the thought of delaying his trip across the channel by even one more day. But he couldn't let Aideen ride back in the dark either.

“I promise you'll be paid for your time,” she said. “I've got one or two things needing mending at my place, too.”

“Not married, Aideen?”

“I
was
married, Mike Donovan. But me Darryl was killed soon after the
Yank's Gift
.” When he frowned, she said, “Surely they call it that where you're from? It's because it's thanks to the Americans we're all living like savages, you see?”

“It's an American I'm looking for.”

“You and everyone else around these parts. But seriously, I wouldn't advertise the fact. People aren't too pleased with the Yanks these days. Just last week, a woman was tarred and feathered for saying she thought the Americans make good movies.”

“A bit drastic, surely?”

Aideen shrugged. “People are frustrated. The worst of it are the rumors that say the US was totally unaffected.”

“I'm sure that's wrong.”

“Are you? Seems to me it's exactly what you'd expect from ‘em. They start all this bother and we end up paying the price for it.”

That evening, Mike tied Petey to the back of Aideen's pony trap and drove her back to Boreen.

Before they left, Fionn had him clear out of the house for an hour while he and Aideen talked of family matters that didn't concern him. When he and Aideen rode back to town, Mike couldn't help but notice she'd been crying. He hoped she and her father weren't dealing with some kind of health crisis.

What else could it be? The old bastard was hardly in danger of losing his job.

The trip took longer by pony trap, and Mike swore he could feel every bump in the road. Plus, it wasn't an activity that overwhelmed him like the farm work did. His mind, especially with the quiet mood Aideen was in, was free to roam and think the worst. When he wasn't worrying about where Sarah was or what she must be going through, his thoughts inevitably turned to Gavin and wondering about how his community fared.

While he tried to believe they could survive without him, he had to admit the people living there—twelve families, sixty individuals all total—were remarkably capable of making some seriously stupid mistakes.

Fiona's pessimism aside, he couldn't help but think this break from his directorship would give Gavin the opportunity he needed to grow up a little.

He sighed as he watched the dark shapes along the side of the road morph and dissolve into bushes and leafless trees.

Who was he kidding?
What with Caitlin's mischief and Gavin's immaturity, the community was, without doubt, in total chaos right now. And here he was pitching hay and driving the farmer's daughter down country lanes.

The world really had gone mad.

While the night was quite dark, the hour probably was only a little past nine when they stopped at a house to pick up Aideen's eight-year-old daughter, Taffy. She was half asleep, stumbling to the pony trap for the short ride back to Aideen's apartment in Boreen. The girl was pretty, with large dark eyes. Her skin was dark, too, attesting to the fact that her father had been of a different race from her mother.

That night, Mike slept on an old mattress in the hallway of Aideen's apartment. He couldn't help but notice she behaved as if this was the first safe and secure night's sleep she'd had in months.

If she was so afraid, why she didn't just move back in with her father?
Then he remembered Fionn's glowering face as they loaded up the pony trap and figured he probably had his answer.

The next morning, he nailed a window sill back together for Aideen and cleaned out the worst of a neighboring apartment that people were clearly using as their own private dumping ground. The little girl, Taffy, was quiet and hung close to her mother, but Mike had been able to coax a small smile from her before he got ready to leave.

“I can't thank you enough, Mike,” Aideen said, handing him a sandwich of fresh bread and cheese.

“No problem.” He looked toward the channel, beyond which he knew Sarah must be battling to stay alive.

“It was a lot to ask,” Aideen said solemnly and put her hand on his wrist. “I want you to know that I'm aware of that. If you're ever…” she looked over her shoulder to see that Taffy was out of earshot, “needing a friend…a close friend, well, I'm here.”

Mike was surprised. Aideen was a handsome woman and no mistake. Her figure was slim, with large breasts, and he'd be lying if he hadn't imagined at least once or twice in a fevered moment the feel of her round bottom in his hands. But there was something off about the invitation that he couldn't place his finger on. Maybe because, as friendly as Aideen had always been, even as rotten as their acquaintance had started out, there had never really been any heat or chemistry between them.

Probably just another sign of the times, he thought wearily. When a woman finds she needs something that only the stronger sex can provide, like protection or rebuilding windowsills, she thinks of her own innate skillset first.

“I'll keep it in mind, Aideen,” he said, smiling warmly at her. “And I thank you for the kind offer.”

“Sure, it's nothing. Now you'd better get going. There's a gathering slated for later this morning and I'll feel better if you're well out of town before it gets going.”

“Is it some kind of anti-Irish parade, because I thought we were all Irish here.”

“No, it's just that, Irish or not, you're not from around these parts and this is a gathering about what to do with outsiders.”

“The Americans? Because I can almost guarantee you won't see too many of ‘em around here. They're rare.”

Aideen laughed. “People just need to vent, Mike. And if burning an American flag is going to make them feel better about the fact that they don't have milk for their tea, well, then they just need to do it.”

The section of town where Aideen's block of flats was located was nearer the waterfront than the road leading out of town. Mike realized when he finally had to dismount to lead Petey out of the narrow and crowded market streets that Aideen hadn't exaggerated the congestion. As he pushed through the crowd of gathered townspeople, he saw homemade American flags draped across rails and barrels, ready for the first match.

It felt like such a waste of time and energy to pour hatred into being mad at a concept rather than buckling down to the immense amount of work there always was to do these days. He couldn't imagine how many hours it must have taken the women in town to create those flags—some looked like works of art in their craftsmanship—only to destroy them at a party that wasn't going to make anyone feel better after it was over.

When he saw a young man lounging by one of the ale barrels waiting for the festivities to start, Mike had the nagging feeling that he'd seen him somewhere before. As he made his way through the crowd, he examined the boy's clothing and his hair, trying to place where in the world he had seen him. Suddenly, a snapshot formed in his head of a man jumping down from the horse-drawn cart on the ferry to look inside the back of the cart.

Was it the same guy?

Mike squinted and pulled hard on Petey's reins as he approached him. It could be him. But did it make sense that a week later he'd be back on this side of the channel?

“Hey!” he said, getting the lad's attention. “A word?”

The young man looked at Mike with the same expression Mike was used to seeing on Gavin's face when he knew he needed to be respectful but there were things he'd rather not be called on.

Guilt, I think they call it.

The boy instantly stopped leaning on the barrel and straightened up to take stock in whatever kind of threat Mike might be to him. “Whatdya want?” he asked, a vein of insolence in his voice.

“You seen an American woman?” Mike asked. “About this high, dark hair? Came through here a week ago in the back of covered cart?”

The boy looked at him in confusion, and the honesty of his look made Mike realize that he didn't know him after all, had never seen him before.

But by then it was too late.

“Oy! This bugger's asking about ‘is American girlfriend!”

Before Mike even had the chance to open his mouth to refute it, they were on him.