by Misty Evans
Four defense towers anchored each corner, the river running on the northeast and forming a wintery backdrop. A lazy fog rose from the icy river, mixing with the diluted sunlight and giving the whole place an eerie feel, even at this time of the morning.
They drove down to the ruins, Jon having to get out and open the entrance gate before they could continue inside to the main area that contained an interior building in equal disarray and a four-story tower and keep. As they got out of the truck, the sound of their slamming doors echoed throughout the place, scaring a dozen or so doves from the eaves.
“This place has to be ten-thousand square feet of haunted,” Colton said, looking around at the defense towers and multiple stories. “I don’t do ghosts, by the way. Terrorists, criminals, hell, I’m even up for international art thieves at this point. Not ghosts.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts,” Jon said. “Knock it off.”
“You do, don’t you? All that Indian ancestor shit?”
Jon cuffed him on the back of the head. “Could you be any more stupid? Or rude?”
“Come on, man. Don’t make me go in there.”
Jon’s phone rang, Cher belting out her song. “Jaya? You okay?”
“Shelby and I did some digging and got info on the castle. Blackrock sits on an old Viking fortress site dating back to 980 A.D. Changed hands violently several times over its many incarnations between the Vikings, Irish Chieftains, and eventually, English kings. Shelby says it’s not in State care nor looked after by the Office of Public Works, so it has to be privately owned, probably for the land more so than the castle. A lot of local investment groups have been buying and selling land to build tourists attractions on, but she hasn’t been able to track any records on it or the owner at this point. Still waiting on some calls. She found no mention of anyone named Ferris on any of the sites she’s checked in relation to real estate in that area. No ties to anything illegal either with Interpol or the FBI.”
“Okay, thanks. You holding up?”
“I’m excellent. Don’t worry about me.”
Like that was gonna happen. “Bells and I are going to poke around a bit. You might look into any ghost stories and legends that have to do with the castle and the tinkers, whoever they are. The gal at the B&B said something about it being used as a halting station for them for a while. Is she talking about Gypsies?”
“That she is, although tinkers is a derogatory term.” Jaya sighed. “Halting stations are government subsidized housing, which the castle never was or that would’ve shown up in Shelby’s searches.”
“They might have used it as a pit stop, but I don’t see evidence that anyone’s here right now, Ferris included. It’s pretty…sad.”
“Snap some pictures and send them to me, would you? I want to see it.”
A few minutes later, he’d taken a dozen shots, happy he’d caught the gloomy air of the place, thanks to the dappled sunlight and fog providing the only filter he needed.
He was sending the latest to Jaya when he heard Colton shout from off to his right. “Dude! Shit. You gotta see this!”
Colton had somehow managed to find a door leading out of the enclosure at the northern end and Jon ducked under hanging vines to emerge into thick fog. “Where the fuck are you, Bells?”
“Over here.”
Jon stepped over a fallen tree branch and saw a thin path with an iron fence up ahead. Colton waved from the gate.
As Jon closed the distance over the uneven ground, he saw skeletal trees in the distance, and then pulled up short. “What the…?”
Rows and rows of headstones poked up from the ground, most partially broken and deteriorating like the castle.
“Guess the ghost believes in burying her menfolk,” Colton smirked. “You seriously gonna tell me this place isn’t haunted?”
A graveyard and an abandoned castle. How could this place not have any records other than the history Jaya and Shelby had dug up, and what did it have to do with the O’Sullivan cross and Finn’s kidnapping?
Colton brushed past him. “There’s no one here but the dead. Let’s go back to the pub.”
“Give me a minute,” Jon said, snapping a picture of the headstones. “I want to look inside.”
“That’s going to take longer than a minute,” Colton groused.
“Not if you help.”
The inside of the main structure was dank and dark. Jon turned on his tac light and continued taking photos for Jaya. He wasn’t sure why—it wouldn’t help with the investigation, but she wanted to feel in on this tour and he was going to make sure she did.
Having already received the first batch of photos of the outside, she’d sent him a couple of texts.
So creepy. So cool.
Wonder what it was like to live there?
He found himself wondering the same thing.
Behind him, he heard Colton following. Colton liked being outdoors and shooting things. He had little interest in history and, because of his upbringing as an orphan, wasn’t much interested in family or roots either because he didn’t know what his were.
Jon followed a long hallway on the second floor that led to stairs over a ginormous open room. Birds had made homes here in the rafters, a large owl opened one eye at the glare of the flashlight as Jon swept the beam over the high ceilings, busted out windows, and open room below.
As the beam hit the fireplace and snaked downward to the middle of the floor, his pulse jacked. A dark substance that looked fairly fresh had formed a small river on the floor.
Blood.
Animal?
He used the light to trace the flow back to the source, but it disappeared under a table. Continuing to sweep up and over the table, his pulse jumped again.
A man sat slumped in a chair, chin on chest, a rope tying him upright.
“Shit.”
Please don’t let it be Finn.
Jon shot down the stone staircase, hopping over debris, and heard Colton on his tail. Together, they hot-footed it to the table and chair, Jon sweeping the rest of the room for signs of whoever had done this.
The man was dead, his hands cut off at the wrists, the stumps having allowed him to bleed out. Colton, now with a glove on one hand, carefully lifted the head to look at his face and Jon saw the flicker of relief cross his features in the shadowy light. “It’s not him. Finn.”
“Sean?”
Colton shook his head. “What do you want to bet this is our mysterious Mr. Ferris? I don’t think the ghost was all too happy with him.”
“Goddamn it.” Jon swept the area, then the room again, with his light, looking for anything that might give them a clue as to what had gone down here and who it had involved. “Sean O’Sullivan, what the hell have you done?”
“You think Sean killed him?”
“What do you think? You know him. Is he capable of this?”
Colton cocked his chin at the man’s face. The jaw hung open and was caked with blood. “The tongue’s missing.”
“The killer removed his tongue?”
Colton released the man’s hair. “And cut off his hands. Whoever did this, it wasn’t Sean.”
“In some cultures, thieves who get caught stealing have the offending hand cut off.”
Colton cradled his gun. “And liars have their tongue removed. Very biblical.”
Religion was a foreign concept to him. “Like in Catholic church biblical?”
His friend shrugged.
Biblical or not, the killer had doled out painful revenge. “This seems fairly recent. The blood has dried but it’s not that old.”
“Do you think they tortured him to find out Sean’s whereabouts?”
“Makes sense if he was involved in Sean’s scam to find the cross and sell it.”
“Shall we vamoose and call Queen B?”
“Not yet.” Jon had the feeling this castle was like the one Kieran lived in. “Maybe there’s a hidden room or a bunker where Ferris was keeping stuff—guns, info, the cros
s even. Let’s look around some more.”
Colton did an exaggerated sigh. “Fine, but I’m sticking with you in case we run into that ghost.”
“You think I can protect you against a spirit?” Jon joked.
“Fat chance. If this ghost woman shows up, it’ll be all on me to charm her out of killing your ass. You know I have a way with the ladies, even the spirit variety.”
Jon didn’t return until afternoon, having searched the castle inside and out. He and Colton looked liked they’d seen a ghost when they entered the kitchen where Shelby and Jaya were fixing sandwiches.
Jaya lowered the knife she’d been using to layer plum jelly on a piece of white bread—the rye stuff turned her stomach—and went right to Jon, throwing her arms around him. “You look like hell.”
Jon hugged her hard. “That place is huge, but we found something that might be helpful.”
Colton and Shelby were exchanging hugs and a kiss too. Jaya stepped back, letting Jon shrug out of his coat. His gun and holster stayed on, but he removed his phone from his pants pocket and set it on the beat-up island next to the cutting board. Jaya returned to her sandwich, finished cutting it, and handed him half. He gobbled down a huge bite and then thumbed through pictures on the phone, finding the one he wanted.
“There was a buyer interested in purchasing the cross,” Jon said. He’d already told them about the discovery of the dead man. He stopped on a photo of a piece of paper with a picture of the O’Sullivan cross and some scribbling on it. “We found this under a floorboard in what might have been an office at some point.”
“There were lots of hidey-holes in that place,” Colton added, accepting a bottle of water and a sandwich from Shelby. “An underground room too, like a panic room or something.”
“We could spend days investigating every nook and cranny.” Jon zoomed in on a different photo, showing another paper. “This was with the picture of the cross. It looks like a bill of sale.”
Jaya peered closely at the amount written in the total column. “One hundred forty-eight million euros? For the cross?”
“That’s like $177 million dollars,” Shelby said. “Someone believes it’s quite valuable.”
“So maybe it does contain emeralds that belong to the Brits or Vatican,” Colton added around a mouthful of ham and cheese. “We still have no idea if this Ferris dude was the buyer, seller, or in-between man.”
“His name isn’t—wasn’t—Ferris.” Shelby began building another sandwich for herself. “I ran him through facial rec and got a hit. His name was Mathew Fitzpatrick.”
“Well, that explains it.” Colton wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You can’t trust them bloody Fitzpatricks.”
They all gave him a look.
“What?” he asked. “JK, guys. I know nothing about the Irish, but around here, it’s as bad as Good Hope. People judge you just by your last name.”
Jaya knew what he was getting at. “That can happen anywhere.”
“True,” Shelby said, adding another layer of cheese. “Maybe Ferris was his code name.”
“If he’s in the Bureau’s system, that means he’s a wanted criminal in the States, right?” Jon asked.
Shelby licked mayonnaise off her finger. “His family is in the jewelry business, legitimately, but Interpol has long suspected Mathew fenced stolen goods using the family’s contacts throughout Europe and Russia. They just haven’t been able to prove it. He was a treasure hunter who managed to find one of the most sought after treasures in history about ten months ago—a ship filled with gold coins, jewelry, and other valuables that sank off Ireland’s coast several hundred years ago. He found it, brought it up, and then didn’t make his investors happy because he disappeared with at least half the coins and jewelry. Several of those investors were Americans so the Bureau got involved. The family claims they haven’t seen or heard from him since he disappeared and Interpol hasn’t had one legitimate lead.”
“Well, Matt’s not giving up any information now,” Colton said. “Dead men don’t tell tales and all that.”
Jaya slid Jon’s phone around and played with zooming the picture in and out. “What’s it say on the top of the bill of sale? Is that a business name?”
Jon touched the screen and a different picture filled it, this one a close-up of the printing on top of the paper.
Sir Ref’s Inquisition and Expedition Services.
“Sir Ref?”
“Ferris,” Jon said, “spelled backwards.”
Shelby smiled. “So it is a code name. You’re pretty smart, you know that?”
“The illustrious treasure hunter got rich, bailed on his investors, and now hunts for other elusive treasures under a fake name using an illegitimate business?” Jaya asked. “Wonderful.”
Jon shrugged. “Sean might have hired him to find the cross, or used him to get a buyer once he located it. We really have no idea.”
Jaya played with the last bite of her sandwich. “And it gets us no closer to finding Finn.”
Shelby’s phone buzzed. Her face blanched when she looked at the caller ID. “Sorry. Gotta take this.”
Snatching up the phone, she boogied out of the kitchen but not far enough away that they couldn’t hear her. “Yes, sir… I know, sir, it’s just I heard some locals talking about him and this castle, so I did a drive-by, hoping to catch him. The place was abandoned except for his body. Uh huh…yes, of course. I was just about to do that…”
Jaya, Jon, and Colton exchanged looks. Jon picked up his phone and sent a text to Beatrice. “Guess we better get the full resources of SFI on this before the Garda ties our hands.”
A moment later, Shelby returned, looking slightly chagrin. “Running Fitzpatrick through the system triggered an alert to my boss. I had told him I was taking a couple vacation days to come here with Colton. He wondered what I was up to.”
Colton rubbed her back. “You in trouble?”
“I think he believed me when I told him I came across Fitz by accident.”
“Honey, you’re the worst liar around.”
She jabbed Colton in the ribs. “Am not!”
He chuckled, rubbing his side. “Gotta call the locals now?”
“Afraid so. My boss also wants me to notify Interpol.”
They all groaned.
Soon, Jon was on a call with Beatrice, and Shelby was also on the phone, answering questions from a local detective. Jon had stepped outside where it was already growing dark, thanks to the prevailing gloom that seemed to hug this area near the coast.
Jaya watched him through the kitchen window, noticing Kieran and his dog making rounds and herding the half dozen or so sheep toward the barn.
Jon was handsome in the twilight, his hair no longer pulled back in a low bun and a couple days’ worth of beard along his jawline. He leaned on the stones just outside the door and she could hear bits and pieces of his conversation, but she didn’t care to eavesdrop. She needed to come up with an idea that would help find Finn, but if these experts, with all their skills and technology, hadn’t figured it out yet, how was she supposed to?
Sensing Jon was going to be a while, she phoned the care facility in Good Hope to check on her mother. She’d already called once that day, but she needed to hear that Momma was safe and doing all right one more time.
She missed her mother’s voice, and the light in her eyes when she saw Jaya coming. The tender words she’d spoken to ease Jaya’s hurt when she’d been a girl and people had picked on her. She missed her mother standing at the stove cooking. Rocking in her favorite chair. Culling herbs in their tiny garden out back to make her tonics and blends. Their house hadn’t been more than a shack, but Jaya missed the rough wooden floorboards, the herbs hanging from the rafters. Her mother’s humming as she smudged her tarot cards and gave readings to those brave enough to seek out the Indian Gypsy, as the locals called her, to find out about their futures.
The gal at the front desk answered and connected Jaya to her mot
her’s nurse, Vivienne. Vivi had been with the home for as long as Kala had been there. “She’s doing a little better this afternoon,” Vivi said. “Ate well at lunch and is having a nap.”
“No one has called or shown up and bothered her, have they?” Jaya asked.
“No one but the bodyguard you sent. She’s had a peaceful day. Is this about your dad, Jaya?”
“Sort of. He’s gotten into a fix with some bad people and I’m trying to make sure Mom isn’t caught in the fallout.”
“We’ll keep a close eye on her, I promise you.”
“Thanks, Vivi.”
“Will you be back soon?”
Through the window, she saw Jon rub his forehead. He looked tired. “As soon as I can.”
They disconnected and Jaya went outside to wrap her arms around Jon from behind. He’d heard her coming and welcomed the embrace, patting her hands.
Her stomach was holding its own, but she had the sudden urge to wrap up in a blanket and go to sleep. Hormones? Jet lag? The fact that it was growing dark at five o’clock? Whatever the reason, she wanted to crawl into bed, and she wanted Jon there with her.
He ended his call with his boss. “Beatrice asked how you were doing. She congratulated me. Us.”
His voice sounded slightly surprised. Jaya hugged him tighter, laying her cheek against the back of his shoulder. “No leads?”
“Not much. She and Rory are using special tracking software that Emit Petit developed a few years ago to look in to everyone’s history and contacts, including your dad, mom, and Finn. Also Fitzpatrick’s Sir Ref services, but that could take days. I want to go back to the pub next door to the B&B and talk to some people there and see if anyone saw your dad or Finn, or knows anything about Fitzpatrick.”
“Mmm.” Her hope of a warm bed and Jon’s arms around her wasn’t looking good. “Want me to come with you?”
“Nope. You stay here. I’ll take Colton.”
“Will you be gone long?”
Jon turned in her arms and looked down at her. His dark eyes glittered. “I’ll be back as fast as I can.”
“Good, because I want to find my brother, but I also need actual sleep tonight, and I want you next to me.”