“But taking a cart through the water…” John frowned as he watched the current in the river eddy around the grasses hugging the bank. “That’s desperate. They could tip over so easy.”
“I imagine they are desperate,” Mike said, and then was sorry he had. The boy didn’t need reminding of how bad the situation was for his mother. Mike couldn’t help but notice how pale he looked. Earlier he’d chalked it up to the fact that John’s life had just been devastated, but now he watched him waver in his saddle. It wasn’t just mourning or fear. The boy looked ill.
“Climb on down here, John,” Mike said. “We can’t do anymore today.”
“Every minute we stay here is a minute Mom is moving away from us.”
“They have to rest, too.”
“Maybe they don’t. They’ve got a cart. Maybe they take turns driving and they just go all night.”
“The horses’ll need to rest. As do we. Untack your pony, son.”
He watched John slowly give up the idea of pressing on. As much as he clearly wanted to, it was also just as clear the boy was spent. He slid silently from his saddle and snaked the reins over the animal’s neck to lead him to the camp.
Mike hated to speak the words, especially as how the boy looked to be holding himself together with a wing and a prayer, but they needed saying and then they could move on. He took a long breath. “I’m so very sorry about your father, John. Truly sorry.”
John nodded, his eyes collecting with the tears he’d worked hard not to shed. He turned away from Mike to loosen his pony’s girth. “Thanks,” he said so softly that Mike nearly didn’t hear him. Mike gave him a moment and the two made camp wordlessly until Mike had a small fire going.
“There’s only cold jerky and tack,” Mike said. “But I thought the fire would be…good.” He wanted to say comforting. He felt so helpless in the face of such world-shattering grief. He handed John a piece of the chewy goat jerky. The two sat facing the fire without speaking for several minutes.
“What did you do with the mines?” Mike finally asked.
John looked up, surprised. So caught up was he with his own thoughts, he appeared to have momentarily forgotten that Mike was there. “Dad left them at the goat pond between the pastures.”
“He didn’t throw ‘em in?”
John shook his head. “At least not before I left.” He looked up at Mike. “You think you can use them now?”
“Somehow. Yeah. We can use them.”
“That’s good,” John said, staring into the fire. “It’s nice to know he was right about them after all.”
Except the reason he was right about them was the death of him, Mike thought darkly.
He noticed that John still held the jerky in his hand, untouched. By the fire’s light, he could see a fine sheen of sweat on his face. “John? You feel alright, boy?”
John looked up at him dully and then turned his head to vomit in the dirt behind him. Mike caught him in his arms before he could fall over into a faint. He held the unconscious boy in stunned helplessness.
After a fitful sleep with Mike sponging his face every few minutes through the night with cool water, John had rallied enough by daybreak to be able to sit up on his own, though he was still weak. Mike had run through every possibility of what could be ailing the child but he didn’t recognize the symptoms. He wondered at first if it could be something only American children got, but he quickly discarded the idea. The Woodsons had been in Ireland a full year now—ever since the lights went out all over the world trapping them here, far from their home in the States. Whatever had made him sick, at least he seemed to be getting a little stronger as the day wore on.
“We need to get going,” John said weakly. “Every minute we stay here—”
“I know, son,” Mike said. “I know. And we will. As soon as you’re strong enough to sit a saddle.”
“That may be too late, Mr. Donovan!”
“Shhh, boy. Preserve your strength.” It couldn’t be something he ate. He hadn’t eaten anything. Mike packed up the camp and saddled both horses. The sun, what there was of it, was directly overhead. Barring any complications or unseen impediments, they should be able to make it back to the main camp by nightfall.
The anguish in Mike’s chest at having to turn back was matched by the look in John’s eyes. He went down to the river to fill a bag to douse the remnants of the fire ring with, and gave the lad the privacy he needed as the tears streaked down his face, and his young heart filled with the painful hopeless longing for the mother he would now not see today.
* * *
They had to stop twice. Both times Mike was forced to dismount and settle John on the ground. Both times he felt the fevered cheeks and uneven, rasping breathing and wondered in creeping unease if there would be anything for Sarah to return to.
Dear God, am I supposed to rescue her in order to bring her back to sit by two graves?
“I’m feeling better, Mr. Donovan,” John said weakly.
“You look better,” Mike lied, handing him a cup of water, heartened that the lad didn’t seem to need any help drinking it.
“I guess thanks to me we’re not going to make it home tonight, are we?”
Mike watched the boy’s face as defeat and fear competed for dominance in his gaunt expression. “We’ll get home when we’re meant to,” he said.
“Only, if I’d never followed you, you’d be half way to Dublin by now. If we never find her, it’ll be my fault.”
“Stop it now this instant! Stop that kind of talk, young John Woodson. Is that what you’d want your mother to be hearing you say?” The woman’s voice jolted Mike to his feet.
He slapped his hat against his pant leg as Fiona entered the campfire leading a tall grey mare. “Holy shite, Fiona!” he exclaimed. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“You know, if I’m able to sneak up on you then you do know that just about anyone in the county could, too, don’t you?” She knelt down next to John and Mike was gratified to see her quickly take charge. She smoothed the boy’s hair across his forehead and pressed the back of her hand to his cheek. “Looks like the fever’s just broken,” she said. She patted him on the shoulder and smiled down at him. “I know you feel like hell, me darlin’, but you’re on the mend.”
“Great,” John said weakly and closed his eyes.
“What the hell, Fi,” Mike said as he took her horse and pulled its saddle off. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s glad you should be that I’m here, Michael Donovan!” she said, sitting down next to John and laying his head in her lap. “I have news, so I thought to take the chance I’d find you. Although I must say I was hoping to find you a bit further along than this. You’re just four hours from camp, you know that?”
Mike sat down next to her and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I know. The lad’s sick. I needed to get him back.”
“Take a minute to hear what I’ve learned and then you can go on and make up the time. I’ll bring young John home after he’s had a wee nap.”
The thought that he could resume the search for Sarah brought Mike to his feet. It wasn’t until then that he realized he had deliberately and consciously tamped down his anxiety and frustration about having to turn back. He stood and grabbed his saddle, swinging it up on the bay’s back in one fluid movement.
“Tell me as I saddle up.”
Fiona glanced at John to make sure he was sleeping and joined Mike as he tightened the girth on his gelding.
“I’ve got three things to tell you. First is that Caitlin is causing problems again.”
Mike frowned and pulled the stirrups down from the saddle. “What kind of problems?”
“Well, she’s always been the one saying how this is all the Americans’ fault and like, but now she’s saying…” Fiona lowered her voice. “She’s saying how David deserved what he got and that it was justice.”
“She’s fecking barking,” Mike said with disgust.
&n
bsp; “Sure, maybe, but there’s them that’s listening to her. Because she was Ellen’s sister—and is your sister-in-law—she fancies she’s got a certain status in the camp, you see. There’s some told me she’s set her cap for you, Mike.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“She’s telling some that the two of you’ll be married before Michaelmas.”
Mike snorted. “Well, it’s nonsense and gossip.”
“Don’t be brushing it off as just gossip, brother dear. You’ll have to deal with it sooner or later, no mistake.”
“Fine. Next?”
Fiona took a long breath and put her hand on Mike’s arm to force him to stop packing his saddlebag. “You cannot be gone for long, Mike. We need you.”
He turned to face her and he felt his impatience bristling off of him.
“Put a time limit on it,” she said firmly. “Say, a week. If you don’t find her in that time, she’s lost to you. Accept it and come back to us.”
“I won’t promise that.”
“Because you’ll throw away the good of the community to run after another man’s wife?”
Mike reacted as if she’d slapped him and Fiona knew she’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. But the fact is, it’s not just Caitlin saying all this is the Americans’ fault and yet you go running after one of them—”
“One of them? Fiona, this is Sarah.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know if you do, girl. Sarah, who’s had her husband murdered and been dragged off, hurt and terrified, her son left behind—”
“Lower your voice,” Fiona hissed. “You’ll wake him. I love Sarah, you know I do. But there’s anti-American feeling over all and you’ve got to put the needs of the community over—”
“I don’t care if she’s Osama bin feckin Laden,” Mike said heatedly. “I’m going after her and I won’t come back until I find her.”
Fiona stared at him, but her hands dropped from her hips, defeated.
“So what’s the third thing?” Mike asked as he turned to resume packing his saddlebag.
She took a step back from him. “The third thing is that three armed men took a couple of women from a village on the other side of Balinagh.”
Mike stopped to turn and listen to her.
“They killed their men, too.”
“Is that all?”
“Rumor is they’re English and headed back there.”
“Cor! That’s two hundred miles away.”
Fiona could see she’d stunned him with her news. His hands stopped working on the saddle and his eyes looked out into the night as if somehow he might catch a glimpse of the one he sought.
“It’s worse than that, Mike. If this is the same group what took Sarah they’re not on the Welsh coast but nearer to London. Forget making it to Wexford or Arklow on old Petey there.” She nodded at Mike’s horse. “We’re talking across the Irish Sea and a trek of a thousand miles.”
8
The question that haunted Sarah, even in her dreams, was: should she fight them now and try to escape or, as Angie seemed to believe, should she endure and wait for her moment?
When she thought of all that she had waiting for her—John, thoughts of her parents—it all seemed even further away than before. For the first time since coming to Ireland she allowed herself to think the unthinkable: she was never going to get back to the States and she would never see them again.
This was blasphemy and absolutely not allowed in the Woodson cabin. But as she sat in the back of the cart, pressed in tight with six terrified women and not knowing what her future could be, if she even had one, the idea that she would someday be pumping gas again on Beach Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, was as ludicrous as thinking she could escape her current nightmare by making herself invisible.
She had spent a good deal of time blocking certain thoughts from her mind. Thoughts so debilitating and useless that they stripped her of every ounce of strength or power she ever had. She willed herself not to think of John being told that his father had been killed. She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands to will herself not to envision his sweet face as he realized he might never see his mother again. She willed herself not to think of David, not his laugh or his beautiful eyes or the way he held her and always made her feel safe and loved. And when she failed, as she so often did, she felt herself just a little bit weaker, a little bit more lost.
Should she try to escape? Or should she bide her time and just make sure she survived the journey? Should she fight? Or should she just endure? And with every minute she hesitated, she moved farther and farther from John.
Could she make them believe she was passive? After attacking the rapist in the road the day before, she thought it would be hard to rewrite their concept of her. Either way she chose would have unpleasant consequences, that much she knew.
Which one is the way back to John?
Her eyes settled on Angie, who was watching one of the new girls nervously. When Angie saw her looking, she edged over to her.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” she said, indicating the chubby blonde who sat bolt upright on the floor of the cart, knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes darting everywhere.
Sarah understood what she meant. The girl didn’t look frightened. She looked pissed off. That was dangerous.
“Oy, what’s your name?” Angie whispered loudly to the girl.
She flashed an annoyed look at Angie but answered. “Janice,” she said sullenly. “Do you know who these tossers are? Do you know what’s going on?”
“No,” Angie said, “I just know not fightin’ ‘em is the way to stay alive.”
The girl gave her an incredulous look. “Stay alive? You think they mean to murder us, then?” The three girls who had been dumped into the cart with her began to squawk and cry. An abrupt pounding on the side of the cart came from where the two men sat on the driver’s seat. “Shut up in there, ya cows, or we’ll shut ya up!”
“Feck you, ya fecking bastard!” shrieked Janice. She started to stand up in the cart. Sarah gasped at her foolishness and she and Angie both lunged to grab her and pull her back down, but it was too late. The cart came to an abrupt stop, throwing all the women against each other and the floor.
Sarah waited and held her breath as the tarp was wrenched off the cart and she could see that it was night. The man Aidan rode up on his horse and took his hat off, slapping it against his leg. “What’s going on, Jeff? We’ll never meet the boat at this rate.”
Boat? Sarah would have tried to get Angie’s eye if there wasn’t so much going on.
“Which one of you bitches yelled?” Jeff, the man who had murdered David, stood at the foot of cart. Even in the semi-dark, Sarah could see the fury and the madness in his face. She felt herself involuntarily shrinking back into the farthest corner of the cart.
Janice still stood, but Sarah could see a little healthy fear had infused her. She wiped her hands on her slacks. “I just wanted to know where you was taking us, like,” she said. When he didn’t immediately respond, she added, “The men in my village will come after you. You can’t steal us away like we was nothing.”
Sarah stole a glance at Angie, but she was watching the exchange between Janice and Jeff with intense fascination. Sarah wasn’t absolutely positive the woman wasn’t smiling.
“Will they now, darlin’?” Jeff held out a hand to her and beckoned her to come closer to where he stood. “Then perhaps we should just let you go if you’re going to be so much trouble to us.”
The word nooooooo was trying to form in Sarah’s throat and in her mouth, but nothing came out except the softest groan. She watched the drama before her like it was a bad movie, one with an inevitable and terrible ending. She watched Janice hesitate and then move boldly forward to grasp Jeff’s hand and be helped out of the wagon to the ground. Jeff turned and raked the tarp back over the rest of the women.
The darkness covered the w
omen and deadened the sounds of Janice and Jeff’s voices until there was nothing but silence. After several minutes, the cart began to move again.
Janice never returned.
Sarah watched the faces of the other women, the two who had been taken before her, and the three who had been taken with Janice. Their eyes were wide, the whites of their eyes stark in the darkness. There was no scream, no cut-off shriek to herald whatever fate had befallen poor Janice. There didn’t need to be. Every single desperately terrified woman sitting in that cart from hell knew exactly what had happened to the poor, brave, stupid girl.
They rode in gut-clenching silence, each of them processing the evil that held them, the monsters who had ultimate power over them, and the sickening fear of what tomorrow would bring. Sarah’s attention was focused on tomorrow, too, but also on a niggling thought that had begun to bother her and just wouldn’t go away.
She couldn’t be sure, but just before Jeff threw the tarp to cover them she was almost positive that he looked at Angie.
Sometime the next morning, Sarah was awakened by a terrible odor. Pulling herself up to a sitting position, she realized that more women had been added to the cart. She now had a young woman nearly in her lap, and when she looked around she could see there were two additional people in the cart. She licked her lips and tried to assemble her thoughts coherently.
There was no way she would have naturally slept through the cart stopping and three more people joining them. Her mouth was dry and her head pounded. Up to now she had assumed they were the effects of her concussion, but now she believed it was much more likely they were all being drugged. How else would they easily and silently pass close by villages and townships with their cargo of stolen women? It was one thing to cow them all into an enforced silence, but even threats are powerless against hysteria. She looked over the somnolent heap of sleeping women and saw that Angie was awake.
“They didn’t let her go,” Angie said, her voice low but clear. “Janice? They didn’t just let her go.”
“You think?” Sarah’s voice was raw and raspy. She tried to remember the last time the men had stopped and given them water.
Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Page 5