Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games (5 page)

“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.”

T
he 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 women 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.

“It's more important than ever that we not fight them. You see that, right? These bastards are insane.”

“We got more sometime in the night.”

Angie nodded. “I was awake when they came in. I heard ‘em talking and we're nearly there now.”

“Where's there?”

“I don't know but the trip's almost over.”

Sarah looked away and saw a wedge of daylight from underneath the tarp. She was surprised to see the legs of a gray horse go by. That wasn't Aidan's horse. A stranger had just passed them on the road. She looked at Angie but she had her eyes closed.

They were on a road with other people. And for the first time, Sarah wasn't too drugged. She thought for a moment.
If I scream out and alert someone that we're back here and…and it doesn't work, they'll kill me. And John is an orphan. Or they'll kill me and they'll kill whatever innocent traveler happened to hear me.

Her eyes filled with tears as she watched the legs of another horse and another mounted traveler pass the cart.

Sarah bent her head and prayed. She had prayed many times since this nightmare had begun. The difference was, this time she prayed a desperate plea that had been lodged in her heart since she had first awakened in the back of this filthy cart from hell.

She prayed God would help her believe Mike was coming for her.

A
t midday the following day
, the cart stopped. After several minutes, one of the men reached in and pulled Angie out of the back. Moments later, Angie lifted the tarp and gestured for Sarah to come out, too. When Sarah stuck her head out of the back, she saw the cart was poised on a long pier leading to a steam-powered ferry. There were no other people or vehicles around them.

She jumped down on the pier to join Angie. Aidan, sitting on his horse behind them, never once took his eyes from the two of them. She could see the bulge of his handgun under his jacket. Just turning her face to the sharp and bracing air of the sea brought tears of relief to Sarah's eyes after the dank, claustrophobic world under the tarp. It took a moment for the realization to register that they were about to leave the country.

Angie smoked a cigarette and turned her face upward to catch what few rays of sunshine escaped from the bank of grey clouds overhead. Sarah couldn't help but wonder how in the world Angie had rated this honor
.
She hadn't been out of the cart long enough to have performed a sexual service for any of the men.
Maybe a promise of it had been enough?
That also didn't make sense given the number of rapes so far on the trip.

“If they intend to ransom us,” Sarah said, keeping her voice low, “why are they taking us out of Ireland?”

Angie looked at the gaping sea as the waves lapped against the dock. “You're right. It doesn't make sense.”

“What do they want with us? What possible benefit are we to them?”

Angie glanced at Sarah and her eyes dropped to Sarah's breasts.

Sarah spoke with frustration. “If
that's
all they wanted, they can do that right here in Ireland.”

“It doesn't make sense,” Angie repeated, looking back at the water. “They're definitely taking us to England.”

“You're English.”

Angie looked at her. “I was in Ireland on holiday when The Crisis hit.”

“So why aren't you thrilled to be returning to England?”

Angie shrugged. “Like you, I don't really have family back there.”

“You're lying.” Sarah glanced at the men as they spoke to the ferry driver. “Are you with them?”

“Why would you say that? Are you barking?
Them
?”

“Then what is an English girl doing in Ireland—”

“I told you! I was on holiday!”

“Where is it you said they grabbed you?”

“Other side of Darnagh. I was camping with me boyfriend.”

“Oy!” Aidan barked at them. “You two keep your voices down.”

Sarah ignored him. “What happened to him?”

“They knocked him out and took me.”

Sarah watched her closely. “That story sounds rehearsed. You're with them.”

Angie's eyes hardened and her face took on a transformation. “Fuck,” she said. “Well, it doesn't matter now.” She threw her cigarette down and ground it out with the toe of her boot. A boot, Sarah now saw, that looked remarkably new and shiny. Angie turned and motioned to Aidan behind her. “Get her back inside and tell Jeff to move over. I'm done sitting in this shite.”

As Aidan jumped down from his horse, Angie looked at Sarah. “Look, the one thing I told you that
is
the truth is that if you mind yourself nobody else gets hurt. Tell them inside, too. Everybody behaves, and we all arrive alive.”

Aidan grabbed Angie's hands and cut the knot in one swift movement. Without another word, he pulled back the tarp and grabbed Sarah by her arm. She looked wildly around to see if there was anyone anywhere to see that she was being shoved into the back of a cart full of sobbing, doomed women.

There wasn't.

Back inside and under the tarp, Sarah leaned against the side of the cart and felt the first jolting pitch as the vehicle moved onto the small ferry. She looked at the lone woman across from her, staring blindly into space in numbed shock. From a gap in the tarp, Sarah could see the blue of the ocean of St. George's Channel behind the woman's head.

And beyond that, England.