Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games (19 page)

She was shaken from her thoughts by a quick kiss on the cheek from Papin.

“If I can't make it on your same boat,” Papin said in a whisper, “I'll be along directly so just wait for me.”

“You've got your ticket?” Sarah felt like an anxious mother asking if her child remembered to bring her lunchbox to school.

“I do. Wish me luck and I'll see you as soon as I can.”

“I love you, Papin,” Sarah said. “Be safe and don't take any chances.”

“Love you too, Mum,” Papin said, and then she was gone.

Desperate times
, Sarah thought rubbing her arms in agitation as she watched Papin stroll straight up to Jeff, a provocative saunter in her little hips. She saw him zero in on her before she even crossed the streets. If he had been a cartoon, he would have licked his lips, she thought with disgust. Papin began to converse with him. From her position, she could see Jeff's expression but not Papin's. And his expression was X-rated.

She saw Jeff's glance flick back to the ferry entrance as two plump Indian women and a man trundled onto the gangplank. But his attention was brought instantly back to the little gypsy girl in front of him as Sarah saw Papin pull apart her blouse, exposing her breasts to him. His reaction was immediate. He left his post and went straight for her, his right hand already fumbling with his belt buckle.

If Papin, who he had now scooped up in his arms and was straddling his waist with her legs, hadn't whispered a different plan into his ear, Sarah was sure Jeff would have taken her right there in the street. Without even a backward glance at the ferry gangplank, Jeff, his hand firmly on Papin's bottom, turned and trotted with her into a nearby storefront.

Praying she wouldn't vomit, Sarah bolted from behind the hedge and headed for the gangplank.

S
arah walked purposely
to the gangplank, not running, not looking over her shoulder. It took all her strength not to look to see if she were being watched by anyone other than Jeff. Two older men stood in front of her at the ferry threshold, their tickets in their hands. When it was her turn to board, the ferry master never even looked at her face, just took the ticket and waved her onto the boat. Even then, she didn't dare turn around, fearing it would be a public announcement of her attempted stealth.

She slunk to the bow of the boat as it pointed toward Ireland across the St. George's Channel and sat on one of the wooden benches that lined the ferry. In the middle of the boat were several horse carts, and even a few bicycles, as well as several large tarp covered platforms of food and provisions.

Papin had said there were only two crossings today, weather permitting. They deliberately planned on Sarah making the first one. That way, if Papin missed the boat she could still cross and reunite with Sarah before nightfall.

For a change, Sarah was grateful for the harsh breeze that tore through the little cargo of horses, food and people. It meant she wouldn't look out of place with the blanket pulled over her head like a hood. She knew she hadn't been the first one onboard, but she was still surprised and dismayed to feel the boat lurch away from the dock so soon after she sat down. Again, she forced herself not to look for Papin in the group of passengers. Likely she would have to take the second crossing after all.

Her stomach roiled with a mixture of dread and exhilaration as she watched the dock on the Welsh shore become increasingly smaller the further the boat moved into the channel. Papin had said the trip would take three hours if the weather wasn't an issue. Sarah glanced at the sky. Grey clouds, but nothing that looked threatening. The second ferry should be on schedule for later that afternoon.

With the United Kingdom receding over her shoulder, Sarah felt the tension in her shoulders relax. She looked ahead and tried unsuccessfully to catch a glimpse of the Irish coast. It was 36 days after the attack. As much as she tried to focus on how far she'd come and how she close she was to John, Sarah couldn't ignore the lump of unease that squirmed in her gut. She couldn't stop wondering if Papin had been able to deflect Jeff—the same man responsible for David's murder! If she had any doubts about whether he could kill Papin without remorse, she only had to remember the sound of his raucous laughter as her husband bled to death at her feet.

Had she just been so desperate to get across the channel that she was willing to sacrifice the girl? How could she have believed so readily Papin's foolish plan for distracting the monster?

Sarah stood up restlessly and felt the sweat trickle down her back in spite of the chill air. She gripped the railing and, for one mad moment, thought about jumping into the water and swimming back to Wales. A woman standing near her watched her with suspicious eyes and pulled her young daughter away, as if Sarah might contaminate her somehow. Sarah pulled her blanket hood down more to shield her face.

A wave pounded the front of the ferry and Sarah felt her stomach leap up into her throat, carrying her meager breakfast with it. She turned her head and vomited over the side of the railing. She heard a shriek of dismay and guessed she'd probably sprayed the couple behind her. She wanted to apologize—even if it was just a chagrinned look—except the next wave launched another bout of roiling seasickness. She pushed her face into the wind and tried to concentrate on the horizon or the clouds, but her stomach wasn't to be fooled. It heaved its contents again moments after the next sharp movement of the ferry cresting the rough sea. The vomit was underfoot now and Sarah fought to stay upright in the slick mess. She inched her way further apart from the closest group of people—the elderly black couple, who'd caught the first onslaught of her sickness—and wedged herself between a stack of secured wooden crates and a barrel of what smelled like dead fish. Cramped in this space with no need to hold herself upright, she let the nausea wash over her in a relentless series of contractions.

Later, she would be glad for the few moments of peace from worry and anxiety that the experience gave her. In an hour, she was weak and empty, cold and wet, but the sea had smoothed out and her nausea abated. It was then that she had time to torture herself with thoughts of all the people she had let down and lost.

David.

John.

Evvie.

Papin.

She took each person and addressed her wrongs to them, one by one. She itemized how she had failed them and how her failure had cost them. With the exception of John and Papin—whom she wasn't absolutely sure were even alive—the price of loving Sarah had been their very lives. She was travelling back to Ireland again. The last time she had come to this country, she was with her husband and their young son. John had morphed away from that sweet, naïve boy in a matter of days of their arriving in Ireland

As for David, he had survived just a little over the first year.

As sick as she still felt, she forced herself to remember Evvie's twinkling eyes, her sorrow at her betrayal by her daughter, her playfulness with Papin.

Papin. So much in need of a mother, so full of loss and disappointment. With every surge over every wave, the ferry took Sarah further and further away from her. A sacrifice Papin could bring herself to make…because she loved Sarah.

They all loved me. Every tragic one of them loved the wrong person when they decided to love me.
Sarah covered her face with her hands, smelling the vomit on her sleeves as she did.
And all I've got left now is prayer and hope that I haven't lost the children, that I haven't lost Papin or John.

The rest of the trip passed. For an hour or longer, Sarah realized she had been seeing the coast of Ireland ahead coming steadily nearer without really seeing it. It occurred to her that Angie might have people on this end waiting to catch her. She touched the gun in her pocket. It was not possible to believe that she had come this far, lost so much, only to be stopped now.

She set her jaw resolutely and stood into the wind to face the shoreline as it grew larger. She knew she didn't want to be the first or the last one off the boat—just in case.

Should she slip into the water? It didn't look that deep and it would help her avoid any unwanted welcome party on the other end. On the other hand, she didn't know what submerging guns did to their efficacy, but she didn't feel good about taking the chance of rendering her one weapon useless.

When they reached the other side, the ferry slammed into the tire-lined cement pier with a sickening thud that sent many of the passengers sliding into one another. There didn't seem to be an orderly process for disembarking, which suited Sarah. For her purposes, chaos and confusion could only be her ally. She dove into the middle of the exiting crowd, her hood pulled over her head, and prayed there was no one to care. It seemed a fairly pathetic plan against attack, but in the end, it didn't matter. No one accosted her, no one even looked at her as she dropped onto the bulkhead at Rosslare Harbour and quickly melted into the crowd of travelers and villagers milling about the wide cement pier that serviced the channel.

Her hand on her gun and her head down, Sarah moved into the heart of an active farmer's market that separated the harbor from the little village of Boreen that supported it.

Now that she was on firm ground again, her empty stomach made itself known. She had no money and no food. She walked past tables of roasted meats, cheeses and wine—there were even iced bottles of cola filling a large wooden drum. She couldn't imagine how they had survived this long with no replenishment or distribution or bottling plants. Surely, they were an unimaginable luxury at this point in The Crisis. There were, nonetheless, she noticed, several people lining up to buy a soft drink with whatever they had in the way of payment.

Tempted to steal a bun from the bakery table, Sarah wasn't sure she wouldn't be severely punished, possibly killed, for the crime.
You just never knew these days
. She kept moving through the market, heading for the pastures on the other side of the small village—really only a short line of houses and a store on one side of the street—where she would wait until the second ferry was due in. That would be several hours from now. She smelled the aroma of fresh baked bread and wished she could get something for Papin when she arrived.
She'll be hungry.

Pray God she isn't hurt.
Sarah pushed images out of her head of Jeff beating Papin for her ruse. Jeff strangling Papin with his filthy, murdering hands…

She began to trot through the village, partially to chase the images away, partially to remove herself from the painful temptation of the food she could not have. She reached the end of the village lane and turned inland, hopping over a disintegrating stonewall that might have been there since the time of the Normans. The more she moved up the hill into the fields, the better view she had of the harbor and the channel. Unfortunately, she couldn't see Wales no matter how high she climbed, just endless water that stretched seemingly to infinity.

Wales, and Papin, were a long way away.

Sarah sat in the pasture and looked down at the harbor. From here she would be able to see the ferry as it left again. She would see it when it came back with Papin onboard. She watched as the clouds rolled in and the sky darkened. She watched as the ferry master lashed the ferry to the dock and disappeared into his pier house to wait out the storm. Sarah found a stand of trees and huddled under them, watching the lightning flick through the branches while the thunder bellowed.

When the storm abated, she ran to the pasture's edge to see that the ferry still sat, the light now too dim to chance another crossing today…no matter who had paid for a passing.

The disappointment when she realized she wouldn't see Papin today, that she would have to spend a night apart from her—still not knowing if the child was safe—brought Sarah to her knees. She slumped in the pasture and stared at the sight of the ferry, locked down and immobile for the night.

“
Y
ou'll
do
something about that little
hoor
, Mike Donovan, or I'll scratch her eyes out and feed ‘em to the hogs!”

“I'll handle it, Anna.”

“I'll not be eased by smarm, mind!
Do
something or I will! My Davie can't seem to stay away from that
sleeveen
and I've a mind to throw in a pair of bollocks to sweeten the deal with yon pigs!”

God's teeth, I'll kill that fecking Caitlin!

“She'll not be bothering your Davie any more, Anna. I promise you. What you do with your husband's bollocks is entirely up to you.”

“Are ya being funny, Mike? Only maybe you've developed a sense of humor on your travels that don't translate here.” Anna stood with her hands on her hips, the very picture of the irate wife.

“Not at all, Anna,” he said soothingly. “I'll take care of it, you can be sure.”

The woman snorted and stomped out of the cottage he used as an office. Fiona sat in a corner of the room, her feet up on a chair. She shook her head at him.

“Don't you have work to do?” he asked, irritated. “Is this what went on while I was gone? A bunch of layabouts and no work?”

“Oh, I'm pretty sure you don't want to go
there
, brother dear,” Fiona said, getting slowly to her feet. “I told you Caitlin was becoming a handful.”

“Screwing the other women's husbands in camp?” He shook his head in bafflement. “Is she just bored or barking? Or both?”

“I don't know, but it was well beyond Gavin's ability to handle, that's for sure.”

“Fine, Fi. I get it. I'm back now. I'll handle it.”

“How? Are you going to put stocks in the center of camp? I hear that worked well in America in the seventeen hundreds. Oh, wait, no it didn't. How about stripping her and shaving her head? Although I have to say, our Caitlin is just perverse enough to enjoy the attention.”

“Good God, was she always like this?”

“You mean when Ellen was alive?” Fiona softened her tone when she mentioned the name of Mike's dead wife. “I don't know. Might be we just didn't see it then.”

“Well, whatever, can you send her in to me? Do you know where she is?” Mike ran a frustrated hand through his hair and pushed aside the stack of maps on his desk. He had been trying to sort out where the existing pits and snares were located around the perimeter of camp to decide if more needed to be dug.

Gavin had earlier helpfully pointed out that there weren't enough men in the camp to man the ones they already had.

“And John, too? If you should happen to see him.”

Fiona stopped as she was moving toward the door. “I'll try.”

Mike glanced up in time to catch the sympathetic look she gave him. His homecoming had been everything he had expected it would be.

It hadn't been pretty.

John was one of the very first people to watch him ride into camp, and the look on his face when he saw Mike was one that Mike would take with him to his grave. If he'd had it all to do over again, he would've told Aideen
sorry-for-your-troubles
and gone on to Wales without a second thought. Although Mike knew he couldn't have.

But to see the look of stark betrayal on John's face was as damaging a wound as if John had accused him of killing his father.

While he shared much of his adventures that first night and what news he had with the camp, John continued to avoid him. Whatever had existed between them before—as friends or even avuncular camaraderie—was gone, likely forever.

Mike would always be, in John's eyes, the grownup he'd had to depend on because he was too young to go after and rescue his mother himself.

And Mike had failed. Failed him. Failed his mother.

And the killer of it was that John needed him. He needed a father and he needed everything that Mike wanted very much to give him.

But he'd have none of it.

“Right,” he said as Fiona turned away. “Just Caitlin, then.”

S
arah waited for two days
. Two days of ferries arriving and leaving again. Two days of people coming from and going to Wales.

And no sign of Papin.

Sarah sat hunched on the perimeter of the pasture looking down at the harbor as she had done for two full days.

Why didn't Papin come?
All the answers to that question were immediate and unwelcome. She had been prevented. She was dead.

Sarah couldn't stay much longer. There was no more dangerous spot for her than at this ferry crossing. But she couldn't leave either. She stood now and turned away from the harbor and looked across the pasture westward. Fewer than fifty miles in that direction—two days of walking if she hurried—was Donovan's Lot,
and John
. If Papin had come when they had planned, Sarah would be home by now. Her stomach lurched in frustration.

As the light receded from the sky, marking another day wasted, Sarah found she could wait no longer. Papin wasn't coming, for whatever reason. It was time for Sarah to move ahead.

As soon as it was morning, she would return to town and do whatever she had to do to get back across that fucking channel.