In the Grey (48 page)

John pointed through to
the bed next to Max.

“
He has a new nose and
more stitches,” Patrick said.

“
We were lucky to find the
leaking vessel,” John said.

“
Where is Josh?” Patrick
asked.

John looked up to see
Eloisa moving Raz’s bed. She settled it next to Alex’s
bed.

“
May as well keep them all
together,” Eloisa said. “That way, those soldiers don’t need to be
all over everywhere.”

“
Captain Olivas?” John
asked.

“
Give me a minute,” Eloisa
smiled.

White Boy helped an
orderly move Troy’s bed over to the rest of them. White Boy nodded
to Patrick. Trece talked with the Marines. They started moving the
beds into a circle. With Alex and Max at the bottom, Steve’s bed
was moved to the left of Max, with his feet near Max’s head.
Leaving a space in between, they moved Raz to the opposite
position, to the right of Alex’s bed. Troy’s bed took the top
position in the star.

Trece, White Boy, and the
Marines stood with their backs to each other in the
center.

John looked from bed to
bed. Blue lights bounced up and down on each monitor.

“
Let’s get some rest and
something to eat,” Patrick said. “Rebecca and Erin are upstairs
with Sami and Wyatt. They’ll want to see these guys. We can get
something to eat and be back before they want us.”

John looked at him for a
moment. With a nod, he turned to go. He was almost out of sight
when he turned back. For the briefest second, he could have sworn
he saw the light of the Blue Fairy floating above the soldiers in
the center of the circle. Her glorious blue light shone down on the
ones he loved.

When he blinked,
everything was back to normal. He smiled and followed Patrick out
of the ICU.

F

Thursday
afternoon

November 25 – 4:19 p.m.
MST

FBI Headquarters, Denver,
CO

Eoin heard movement in the
hallway. He got up to look through the small window in the door
behind him. No one was there. Eoin sat down at the table and
slumped down in his coat.

He’d been in plenty of
trouble in his life. But Cian had always been there. Cian did the
talking, the asking for lawyers, and the arguing for better
treatment or a bathroom break. Cian was the one who had got him to
go on a hunger strike on their last prison stint.

Eoin was completely and
totally alone this time.

The Americans couldn’t
have been nicer. It was “Right this way, sir.” “What would you like
for lunch, sir?” Someone had appeared every hour to take him to the
restroom. He’d spoken to his wife on the phone around
noon.

All of their niceness only
made Eoin that much more terrified.

He heard a sound again,
and the door opened. A man came into the room with a couple of FBI
agents.

“
Thank you,” the man had a
London accent. The man gave the FBI agents a British fuck-off
smile.

The Yanks didn’t recognize
the smile.

“
Let us know how we can
assist,” the FBI agents said.

“
I will,” the man
said.

The man closed the door
behind the agents. He gave Eoin a long, assessing look.

“
You don’t remember me,”
the man said.

“
I remember that you’re
the scary man in Cian’s backyard,” Eoin said. “I remember that
you’re our Fionn’s da and Johnny’s step.”

Eoin nodded. The man
smiled.

“
Never actually heard your
name,” Eoin said.

“
Tom Drayson,” the man
smiled. “It’s my great pleasure to meet
the
Eoin
Mac Kinney.”

“
Uh oh,” Eoin said.
“MI-6?”

Tom nodded.

“
Assigned to Belfast in
the troubles?” Eoin asked.

Tom nodded.

“
Wait a minute,” Eoin
glared at Tom. “Did you kill me da?”

“
You know who killed your
father,” Tom said.

“
How . . . ?” Eoin crossed his arms. “No,
I don’t.”

“
I was there,” Tom
said.

“
Oh,” Eoin
said.

Eoin gave him an impish
smile. Tom sat down in the chair across the table, and Eoin’s
terror returned. Tom smiled.

“
Let’s get out of here,”
Tom said.

“
I think not,” Eoin said.
“I remember what happens to a volunteer when MI-6 comes for a
chat.”

Eoin nodded. Tom laughed.
Tom’s laugh was so similar to Fionn’s that Eoin smiled, and then
gasped.

“
Fionn!” Eoin jumped to
his feet. “I didn’t even look for the boy.
He . . .”

“
He was with his
girlfriend,” Tom said. “Hector James and Hermes are with them
now.”

“
Fionn has a girlfriend?”
Eoin looked surprised.

Tom grinned.

“
I thought he
was . . . you know . . . like Max?”
Eoin said.

“‘
s on the DL, Da,’” Tom
imitated Fionn’s rich Scottish accent.

“
That’s our boy,” Eoin
laughed. “We taught him that. So who is it?”

“
I’ve been sworn to
secrecy,” Tom said.

“
You may as well tell us,”
Eoin said. “The boys will.”

“
They haven’t yet,” Tom
smiled.

Eoin’s jaw dropped with
indignation. Tom laughed.

“
I’ll tell you that her
father is an old friend,” Tom said. “At the time Fionn was born, I
was sure I’d never see her father again.”

“
He’s dating Helene!” Eoin
looked so pleased that Tom laughed. “That’s brilliant!”

“
I’ve said nothing,” Tom
said. “Come now; let’s get out of here. We have things to talk
about that would be best done in a more private
setting.”

“
Like Long Kesh?” Eoin
sniffed with indignation at the Maze prison where he’d spent many
of his formative years.

“
Yes, I’m going to take
you to hell,” Tom said.

“
They stopped demolition!”
Eoin raised an eyebrow. “I would not be the first Mac Kinney
to meet his death at the hands of MI-6.”

Tom gave Eoin a long
assessing look. For a moment, they were like two scarred warriors
staring across a blood-soaked battleground. Tom gave Eoin a
nod.

“
I was thinking we could
walk along the path here,” Tom said. “My son runs here a few times
a week. Or so he says.”

“
Fionn?” Eoin looked
surprised. “I don’t know what he tells you, but between school and
work, and the lad’s general sloth . . .”

“
Johnny,” Tom
said.

“
Oh. Him,” Eoin said.
“That’s different. Okay. But if something
happens . . .”

“
If something happens to
you, Eoin Mac Kinney, I’ll not survive ‘til nightfall,” Tom
smiled. “No one can protect me from Cian Kelly.”

“
He’s not
here.”

“
He’s waiting in the
lobby,” Tom said.

“
Why didn’t you say so?”
Eoin jumped to his feet.

Tom grinned at Eoin and
tapped on the door. Eoin went out the door and waited for Tom. They
walked through a maze of hallways, took two separate elevators, and
were cleared through a barred door with the smug guard in the front
and they were in the lobby. Cian anxiously paced back and forth in
front of the door.

“
Cian!” Eoin
said.

The men hugged.

“
Don’t say a thing,” Cian
eyes shot daggers at Tom. “You know what this is?”

“
He told me,” Eoin said.
“But you know . . .”

Cian looked at
Eoin.

“
He’s Rita’s husband,”
Eoin said. “You know what Rita’s like.”

Cian and Eoin’s heads
turned. They gave Tom a probing look.

“
I’ll tell you the whole
story,” Tom said.

Cian and Eoin looked at
each other for a moment before nodding.

“
Good,” Tom said. “I think
the path is this way.”

Cian held the door for
Eoin and Tom.

“
I don’t think the path’s
right here,” Eoin said.

“
Let’s ask,” Tom
said.

Tom called out to a
harried young woman. She wasn’t going to stop, but realized that
she knew Eoin and Cian from the bakery. She gave them directions,
and they set out on foot.

They walked along in
silence until they reached the Sand Creek Greenway. They took the
worn bridge over the river and turned right down a wide gravel
path. The snow and ice clung to the edges of the creek.

“
This is nice,” Tom’s
voice held the texture of someone trying to be positive.

Cian and Eoin looked at
each other for a moment, and laughed.

“
It’s not home,” Tom
grinned.

“
What do you want from
us?” Cian asked.

“
Debrief, mostly,” Tom
said. “Eoin did some amazing work today. I’d like to know how and
why.”

“
I’m not talking to you
unless you tell me about my da,” Eoin said.

Eoin’s voice cracked with
emotion. Cian glanced at his best friend before giving Tom a fierce
look.

“
Your father was my
friend, Eoin,” Tom said. “He was working to end the
troubles.”

“
My da was no traitor,”
Eoin said. “He was volunteer through and through.”

“
He was,” Tom said.
“During his last turn in Maze, something in him
changed.”

“
Mind control,” Eoin
said.

“
You know, I never thought
of it, but it’s possible,” Tom said. “His last stint was brutal. I
met him a month or so later.”

Tom fell silent. They
walked along the wide gravel path. The river widened out to their
right. A pair of ducks landed on the water. Tom steered them toward
the creek.

“
Is the water always that
color?” Tom asked.

“
It’s rust from the old
mines,” Eoin said.

“
Colin says this is an EPA
Superfund site,” Cian said.

“
That’s not hard to
believe,” Tom said. “Any idea what that means?”

“
None,” Eoin
laughed.

Tom smiled. For a moment,
they were just three men watching the golden water flow across the
sandy bottom. Tom broke the spell by turning to Eoin.

“
I think it was you, Eoin,
who convinced him that the troubles had to end,” Tom said. “You
were so bright, funny, and you were there, in hell. He felt guilty,
but . . . All of us – me and my side, you and yours
– we were dancers in a complicated play that never went anywhere
and only ever ended in death.”

Eoin noticed the moisture
in Tom’s eyes.

“
Any idea why this river
smells like shite?” Tom asked.

“
It’s a pungent mixture of
laundry detergent and . . .” Eoin said.

“
Shite,” Cian
said.

They laughed. Tom looked
across the water before turning back to Eoin.

“
Those words – ‘dancers in
a complicated play,’ that’s what father said, Eoin,” Tom said.
“When he was beaten to death, not because he had done anything, but
because someone thought he might, I . . . Something
in me snapped. They brought me back to London and gave me time off.
I went to Scotland, to the farm where we live now. I watched sheep
and wandered the hills for months. One day, I got a call. ‘The
Kellys have moved to London. There’s a price on the boy’s head.
Would you come and take a look?’”

Lost in his own thoughts,
Tom watched the river.

“
I wasn’t going to go,”
Tom said. “I put in my retirement first. One last job, they said.
No one else had been close enough to the PIRA to figure out what
Rita and the boy were up to.”

Tom shrugged.

“
So I went,” Tom said. “I
was to pretend to be visiting from Scotland. I was to make contact,
develop a rapport, and find out why Miss Rita Kelly and the child,
John Kelly, were in London. I walked into the church office
and . . .”

Tom gave a soft
smile.

“
Your sister, Cian, she
was typing or really trying to type,” Tom said. “When she looked up
at me, my whole life changed. She asked me something simple: ‘Can I
help you?’ Or ‘What can I do for you?’ I don’t remember. I told her
everything from my work in Northern Ireland to watching your father
being beaten to death for no reason. You know what she
said?”

Cian and Eoin shook their
heads.

“
Well, there’s only one
thing for it,” Tom said.

“
What’s that?” Eoin
asked.

Tom smiled.

“
That’s what I said. She
said, ‘You’ll have to marry me, help me raise my Johnny, keep him
safe, and live happily ever after, because so much pain and trouble
deserves a happy ending.’”