Padraig

by Mia Malone

  “We’ll take turns,” Cal said, and raised a fist.

  ***

  Jenny

  Something was moving in the forest, and it wasn't me because I stood still and tried to be completely quiet. It was pitch black all around me, and the faint light from the moon had disappeared behind clouds.

  There was another crack, and I wondered if it was the men from the cabin.

  God, please, I begged. Please let me live. Please.

  A low, strange huffing sound echoed through the silence, and I knew it wasn't the men from the cabin. I did not know what kind of animal produced that sound, though. Moose? Surely it wasn't a wolf? It might be a cougar which wouldn't be better at all.

  I pulled out my phone and turned it on again. It had been so sweet to hear Paddy's voice, and it had given me hope and the strength to keep moving, but hours must have passed since I called him, and I was tired and afraid. My battery was down to one percent, but I had a connection. I couldn't make any calls, but if I were lucky, I'd get a text out before the phone closed down, so I hit Paddy’s contact details, and typed quickly.

  “Out of battery. I’ll keep running. I hope I’ll make it out of here, but if I don’t, you should know I love you. So, so much.”

  I hit send, heard the swoosh indicating the message was sent, and watched the dim light from the phone. There was another huffing sound, and it was closer than before.

  “Love you too. I’ll find you. Hide, and I'll find you.”

  Oh. God.

  Fuck that goddamned animal. Fuck my awful ex-husband. I would fight. Paddy loved me, and I would keep going. As long as I had an ounce of strength in me, I’d keep pushing.

  The battery suddenly died, and it was dark again. I tucked my phone into a pocket, took a few deep breaths, turned toward where the sound had come from, and roared. There was a soft crack, and I took a step forward, shouting and waving my arms.

  Then I turned and started running again, down the hill. Toward safety.

  I stumbled over a fallen tree and scraped my shins, but I got up and kept running.

  ***

  Padraig

  He put his phone away and went down on his knees next to the bleeding man on the ground and used a hard hand to turn his head.

  “She’s out there,” he said. “Lost in the forest, and it is dark. There are animals and your asshole friends are chasing her. She’s afraid for her life. Why?”

  “I’m sorry,” Martin slurred.

  “I don’t care how fucking sorry you are. Why did you take her?””

  “They wanted to get back at the Wolves MC. And their president, Doug… something. I told them she was his woman.”

  “You thought Jenny was –”

  “I just wanted to mess with her,” Martin snarled. “She never wanted me. Threw me out and I haven’t had anything worth shit since then.”

  “You didn’t have anything back then either,” Paddy retorted. “The way you were, you never had her, and you will pay for what you did to her.” Martin whimpered and tried to move away, but Paddy didn’t let go. “She is mine now, so I’ll be the one who makes you pay,” he said, leaned in closer and growled, “And for what you did today… I will fucking kill you.”

  There was movement behind them suddenly, and Paddy pushed Jenny’s ex-husband down firmly, straightened and turned. Doug and a couple of his men were pushing three men in front of them. It was clear from the bruises on the men’s faces that they had not been captured easily.

  “One more out there,” Doug grunted. “Fucking Norwegian and his rifle is still there. Can’t find the fucker.”

  “We'll keep looking,” Gibson said and nodded toward Cal.

  Both men walked off, and Paddy sighed.

  “Any word from Jen?” Doug asked quietly.

  “Got a text. She’s afraid. Will keep running. She’s out of battery so we can’t track her.”

  “Fuck. Two more hours, then we’ll have some light. Bear and Gabe are following her tracks, but it’s hard in the dark. The men you sent are searching from below.”

  “Yeah,” Paddy said but didn’t elaborate and turned away.

  Be careful, Jenny, he thought. Please be careful.

  “Paddy!” Mac called out.

  Everyone was moving suddenly, and Paddy swung around. Martin had gotten up on his feet and was making his way toward the forest. He was limping and held one arm awkwardly against his ribs. Did the idiot really think he'd get away?

  Before either of the men reached him, a shot rang out. Martin fell forward and stayed down.

  “Fuck,” Paddy sighed and looked around to see who’d fired their gun.

  “Niels,” a man mumbled in a Russian accent, and twitched his head toward the forest.

  “What?” Doug asked.

  “Niels’ niece was raped. Five years ago, back in Norway. She killed herself. Niels loves his sister and does not like rapists,” the man stated laconically.

  Then three cars drove into the clearing in front of the house, and people poured out of them.

  The Feds had arrived.

  ***

  It took forever to sort shit out, and Paddy grew increasingly anxious. When the darkness shifted into gray, he reached for his phone only to have one of the damned federal agents tell him they still had questions and a helicopter would be in the air as soon as they had enough light. Paddy was about to protest, but Doug stumbled for no reason at all and bumped into him.

  “They’re on her trail,” he mumbled, covering it up as a cough. “They’ll find her.”

  ***

  Jenny

  I couldn't believe my luck when I heard the crunch of gravel under my feet. I slowed down and kneeled. Somehow, I'd accidentally crossed an old timber road. Letting my hands slide over the open path, I decided that it was overgrown, but not entirely. Someone had used the road, although probably not recently.

  Not long after that, the pitch black started shifting so I could see the outline of the trees, and my steady pace took me down the mountain faster than I could have hoped for.

  My feet hurt in a way I knew I had some serious blisters, and I was tired and thirsty. It didn’t matter because I was moving, and sooner or later, I’d find someone who could help me.

  It was almost daylight when I saw a road, and far away there were houses. I aimed for them, hoping I’d be lucky again. A lot of old farms were abandoned, but maybe this one wasn’t.

  Then I saw two motorcycles in the distance, so I stepped back to hide among the trees and watched as they moved toward me, hoping it wasn’t the men who had kidnapped me. They would have figured out what way I was running by now, so it could be.

  When I recognized the bright red helmet one of them wore, I raised my hands and ran toward the road, waving frantically.

  Bobs hit the brakes so hard gravel sprayed, and Petey had to swivel to the side to avoid driving straight into him. They caught me when my knees buckled and pushed a bottle of water in my hand and I heard their curses, but there was only one thing on my mind.

  “Paddy. Give me a phone, I have to call Paddy.”

  ***

  Padraig

  His phone rang, and he ignored the agents’ frowns as he tore it out of his pocket. It was an unknown number, but he knew who it was anyway.

  “Jenny?” he asked.

  “Paddy,” she replied on a sigh.

  “Where are you?”

  “Two miles outside Stonebrook. Bobs and Petey found me.”

  He heard several phones start ringing, but his eyes went to Joke's. Even before he began to smile, Joke exhaled and tilted his head back to look at the pale blue sky. Then Jenny's whereabouts hit him.

  “You’re outside Stonebrook?”

  “That’s what they tell me,” she said. “I’m tired.”

  She would be. He tried to come up with the distance she’d run through the night, but any number his mind told him was incredible.

  “They’re taking you to the hospital?”

  “Do
n’t be silly,” she said with a weak laugh. “They’ll take me home. I’ll call Lee, she’ll check me out. We’ll be at your place when you get there.”

  “I'm leaving now,” Paddy said. One of the agents put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off and moved the phone away from his ear. “I am leaving now, and if you try to stop me, swear to God, I'll shoot you.”

  “Paddy,” Jenny said.

  She was laughing, but he heard the exhaustion in her voice.

  “I’m leaving now. I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

  “I’ll be there,” she said.

  “Jenny,” he murmured and turned his back toward everyone, not caring if they heard, but wanting it to be private. “I love you.”

  There was a long silence, and then she sniffled.

  “I love you too, Padraig,” she whispered.

  “See you soon,” he said and closed the call.

  Everyone was watching him in silence when he turned back to the mixed crowd in front of him.

  “She's outside Stonebrook, Bobs and Petey found her, they’ll take her home. She must have run well over twenty miles through the night.” His eyes went to Gibson. “She won’t go to the hospital. Said she'll call Lee to check her out. Says she wants to go home. My house.” Gib nodded, and Paddy turned to Joke. “I'm leaving. You're coming.”

  Joke nodded, and when one of the agents made a sound of protest, Mac stepped forward and started explaining in many words how the get-together was now over and how they could contact him in Wilhelmine for further statements from everyone.

  Paddy reached his home before the others, and he knew they held back to give him time with Jenny before they all barged in. He wouldn't have cared anyway and jumped off his bike while it still moved up his front yard. It fell to the side, and he didn’t care about that either, or the fact that a group of people was standing outside his house.

  She was on the couch, sipping from a bottle of water.

  He’d never seen anything more beautiful than the smile on her face when he sank down to his knees on the floor in front of her. Then he put his arms around her, leaned his head into her lap, and tried his best to hide the fact that tears were running down his cheeks.

  “Jesus, Jenny,” he murmured into her midriff when his heart was back to beating a normal, steady rhythm. “Scared the shit out of me.”

  “I know,” she said and moved a hand over his hair. “Me too.”

  He straightened a little and tilted his head back to look at her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sore.”

  “You must have run more than twenty miles.”

  “Nuh-huh. Eighteen.”

  “Oh, baby-girl.”

  “Annie used an app on her phone, and that's what we came up with.”

  She tilted her head to the side a little, so he turned and saw both his daughter and Lee, trying to look like they weren’t in the room.

  “Hey,” he said and felt how Jenny wiped off his cheeks.

  “Oh, Dad,” Annie murmured.

  Then Joke walked in, looking like he was about to cry too. Mac, Gibson, and Doug followed, and Paddy heard voices outside. He squeezed Jenny gently and stepped back to let her brother hold her, and then the others. Slowly, Paddy relaxed, and the awful ball of ice that had settled in his gut when he walked in and saw her blood on the wall began to ease off. He felt shaky suddenly, and his head spun a little. Then his stomach heaved, so he walked out on the back porch and leaned on the wall to the side, away from everyone in his home. The need to throw up faded away, but his eyes burned, so he closed them and focused on breathing slowly, in through his nose and out through the mouth like he did during yoga practice. It calmed him down again, and he was wiping his cheeks when Gibson walked outside, pulled the door shut behind him, and their eyes locked.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Paddy said, feeling a little stupid.

  Jenny was safe, wasn’t she?

  “You should know that everyone is in awe.”

  “What?”

  “Watching you through the night, Paddy. Focused on one thing only, ordering everyone around and not letting go of your control for one goddamned second. Holding your shit together like you did? None of us could have done that, and we all know it.”

  “No choice.”

  “There’s always a choice, Padraig,” Gibson murmured softly. “You picked the right one, though.”

  “No, Gib. There wasn’t any choice, and you’re wrong. You’d all do exactly what I did. I hope to God you’ll never have to find that out, but you would.”

  Gibson nodded once, and they stood in silence for a moment before they walked back into a house full of people. It seemed to Paddy as if half the town passed by during the day, and he wanted to be alone with Jenny, but he couldn't take away their need to see for themselves that she was okay. She dozed off on the couch, and while she slept, several women came with buckets and mops and washed her blood off the wall. There were faint traces they couldn't get out, but it looked a lot better. Four men from his crew brought out their tools and repaired the broken table and someone replaced the lamp that had cut up Jenny’s arm. He had more food in the house than he’d ever seen. Cases of beer appeared from nowhere, and when he ran out of coffee, someone made a call and a girl from the super market showed up a few minutes later.

  He talked to everyone, thanked them for coming, and he didn’t have to pretend to be grateful. He’d been pissed at the way everyone had been gossiping about him, but when he saw how the town rallied together for one of their own, he knew that living somewhere else would have been so much worse. The sense of belonging and being a part of a large, extended family swept over him like sweet honey, and he smiled.

  ***

  Jenny

  Doug had been livid when he heard why I’d been kidnapped and I did not think the look on his face boded well for the group called Muerta. I asked about the man who had betrayed them, and Doug simply told me he wouldn't be a problem for anyone ever again. I assumed it meant the man's current whereabouts were in a not so shallow grave, but I didn't want to know, so I didn't ask. Paddy told me that Martin was dead, but the only thing I felt was relief that Paddy hadn't been the one killing him.

  I wouldn’t tell him why Martin had hurt me. It wasn’t Paddy’s fault that I’d loved him and not my husband. I hadn’t deserved to be punished for it the way I had been, but I’d been the one making the shitty decision to marry Martin, and then stayed married to him. Not Paddy. During the night, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t say anything about it, not unless I absolutely had to, and Martin was dead, so I didn’t have to.

  Then Day threw the front door open and ignored everyone as he walked through the house, cursing and waving his arms. Being on a plane and then in a car instead of chasing shitheads through the night had apparently not made him a happy man. He glared at Paddy, the group of people moving around in Paddy's house, and me. When he let go of me, he'd pointed at Paddy and then walked outside. I grinned when I saw the five men huddling outside.

  “They’re planning to wreak mayhem and destruction?” Lee murmured and slid an arm around my waist.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Good.”

  I grinned down at her.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “If they don’t, then I will. I never thought I’d say this, but I’d kill those criminal assholes in a heartbeat if I had the chance.”

  “Lee, really?”

  “We were so helpless, Jenny. Paddy was all over the place, barking out orders like a general, the guys were driving around. Bethie was searching records. Annie and me? We provided friggin’ soup for everyone and waited. Helpless.”

  “Oh, sweetie, no,” I murmured. “We all do what we can when shit hits the fan. When Corinne and Robbie were shot, I made soup too. And it helped. When bad things happen, someone has to bark out orders, but someone has to provide sustenance or else the orders will fade into nothing. You wer
e all doing your bits.”

  “And in the end, you saved yourself,” she said.

  “The men were taken down, and two men from town drove me home but above all, people are here today feeling okay. They’re happy, but not only because I got away. It’s also because of how someone held things together while I got away.”

  “Thanks, Jen,” she murmured.

  “You’re welcome. And tell Beth, thanks for the help.”

  “You can tell her yourself actually. She’ll be here in a few days.”

  “Really?”

  I hadn't met her, but Lee had talked about Beth Johnson a lot, saying she was the only one in her former group of in-laws that was worth anything at all. It would be nice to meet her.

  “She and her bestie from college are driving across the country and will stop by here. They’re heading for the west coast. They’ve decided to drift around the world for a while, so they’ll catch a plane out of Los Angeles.”

  “How is she coping?”

  Beth’s husband had been shot in the line of duty a couple of months earlier, and she had been devastated. A few months wouldn’t fix that.

  “Not at all,” Lee sighed. “Too much of Will in Chicago, so getting out of there will be good.”

  “Let me know when they’re here.”

  “Will do. They’ll be here one night only, Wednesday or Thursday next week.”

  “Okay.”

  As I watched, Paddy motioned for Doug to join them, and then he waved at Cal. They had a plan apparently. I didn’t want to be involved, so I went over to talk to Maddie Alvarez and ended up eating way too many of her fantastic chile rellenos.

  When everyone left, Paddy wanted to carry me from the couch to his bedroom, which made me share that I knew perfectly well how to move my legs something I would have thought I'd proven that night. He grumbled and walked close to me as if he thought I'd topple over any second, which wasn’t far from the truth. My whole body hurt, I had scrapes all over my legs, Lee had taped up the cuts in my arm, and the blisters on my feet were majestic. All in all, though, I was relatively unharmed. It felt good to lie down, though.

  “Jenny…” His voice was just a sigh in the darkness, and his arms twitched.