Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (24 page)

In the window, Love raised his glass, tilted his head and gave an ominous smile in Casey’s direction.

“Shit,” he muttered, feeling chilled to his marrow. He’d only wanted to catch a glimpse of Pamela, just for a minute even.

And then he did see her, a dim ghostly shape at the library window. The light in there had been so weak in comparison to the other rooms that he’d not paid attention. Her silhouette, silver-white, was fractured against the diamond panes.

He took an involuntary step forward, instinct guiding him and then just as firmly stopping him. As much as he wanted to, he could not go to her now.

He moved behind the screen of trees carefully, stepping from shadow to shadow until he’d gained a good thirty feet and could see the long library windows much more clearly.

It was definitely her, hair a smudged nimbus of curls against bare shoulders. The dress was new, he didn’t recognize it. It was white, its lines as pure as her own. Designed to make a beautiful woman stand out like a white rose in the midst of a nosegay of gaudy posies. He’d understood from the first that she was different somehow, that she held herself with dignity and pride as though she faced the world as an adventure, with a wonder that disappeared from most during adolescence. Her clothing always became an innate part of her. Rather than a shield between nakedness and the world, hers seemed an organic outgrowth of her personality, her mood, her very being.

And suddenly he was weary of the fear, weary of looking over his shoulder for the next shadow to slip out from the cluster. He moved out of the trees with long strides, ignoring the slippery feeling in his knees. When he reached the front door, he grabbed the bell pull and yanked it hard before he could reconsider the insanity of what he was doing.

The man who answered the door had one of those faces that seemed like a bit of dust carefully arranged over bones. He managed to separate the ‘yes’ that he gave Casey into four separate syllables.

“Tell Mrs. Riordan that her husband has come to fetch her home.” He stepped past the stick-man into the marbled foyer. “On second thought, I’ll just tell her myself,” he added, spotting the muscle that was headed his way. The ballroom lay directly to his left, down a short corridor sheathed in slick black marble. He heard the butler’s prim ‘excuse me’ as well as the less polite expletives of the thugs that had been sent to eject him from the premises. He quickened his pace, the ebony walls seeming to briefly close in on him. His exhaustion was catching up to him swiftly.

When the ballroom doors flew open, Love was in the midst of a toast, his raised glass refracting the light in a dozen different directions. Even his well-schooled demeanor slipped a notch, a blaze of pure hatred lighting his features before he could manage to suppress it and resume his smooth façade. Before he could open his mouth, Casey spoke.

“I’ve come for my wife,” he said, voice hoarse with the adrenaline that pumped through him madly, making his muscles tremble and his bones turn the consistency of rubber.

Love raised his eyebrows. “I’ll see if someone can locate her, I’m not even certain she’s here.” Casey didn’t miss the sharp movement Love made with his hand behind his back. Calling off the thugs, Casey almost smiled, the bastard was afraid. And well he should be.

“Ye damn well know she is,” Casey said, the grip on his temper slipping swiftly. “Pamela!” he shouted. The gathering crowd bunched a little, the murmurs beginning in stifled whispers.

He’d a sudden notion of how he must appear to the assembled, a wild man in stinking clothes, claiming his woman like he was fresh from the cave. The surge of adrenaline was ebbing, exhaustion taking the upper hand. His fingers opened and the money, stiff and brown with Olie’s blood, drifted across the gleaming floor. A woman near him in purple chiffon fainted dead away, head clipping an antique spittoon on the way down. He didn’t so much as blink though, he didn’t dare. If he’d recognized his exhaustion then surely Love had seen it too.

“Where,” Love asked, voice still civilized, “did you get that?”

“Out of the pocket of the man ye paid to kill me,” Casey returned, and heard the low murmurs turn to gasps of disbelief. Where the hell was Pamela anyway?

“Perhaps,” Love said, syllables clipped off murderously, “you’d like to join me in the library?”

“I just want my wife,” he said, before collapsing to the floor in a faint.

HE AWOKE TO FIND HIMSELF on an ornate sofa, a pillow under his head and a fire crackling at his feet. All things considered, it was a much pleasanter atmosphere than he’d expected to awaken to.

“Pamela?” he croaked, aware suddenly of a sharp pain in the side of his face.

“Right here,” she hovered into view above him, face drawn tight with worry, eyes the heavy bottle green they always turned when she was upset.

Love stood over her shoulder, features arranged into a mask of concern. But Casey would never again be fooled by the veneer. He saw clearly through to the murderous rage that smoldered right beneath the skin. He was beyond fear himself now, though, and matched Love’s look. The man actually had the grace to blink.

Casey turned his gaze back to the matter at hand.

“Don’t fuss darlin’. I’m fine, just got a bit light-headed, I daresay a bite or two will set me right soon enough.”

“Light-headed,” she said, sounding slightly hysterical. “
Light-headed,
you bastard! I thought you might be dead this last week. Until I got the call three days ago, I thought you
were
dead.”

“I’m sorry for that,” he took her face in his hands and drew her down into his arms, ignoring the presence of Love Hagerty for the moment. She deserved that much comfort before he tore into the bastard. She was cold and shaking in his arms, and he felt a surge of protectiveness. He would never let this filthy, murdering whoreson near her again.

For a moment, the fear and fury of the last weeks fell away, and he was grateful to just be able to hold her, as he had feared he might never again. He breathed deeply of her scent and then drew away, looking her deep in the eyes. Then kissed her forehead gently.

“Will ye go an’ get yer wrap, darlin’? For I’m goin’ to take ye home now.” This was uttered not in the tone of a suggestion, but rather a command. Pamela took one look at the set of his jaw, and went in search of her wrap.

“You simply don’t know when to call it a day, do you?” Love had barely waited until Pamela had cleared the doorway, and Casey realized the man had allowed his hatred to push him into reckless behavior.

Casey laughed, a harsh sound without any humor in it.

“I’m not afraid of ye.”

“That’s very unwise,” Love said, the smooth tones and charming smile completely gone. Here was the face of the cobra that everyone spoke of in hesitant whispers.

“Unwise it may be,” Casey spoke calmly, and only one who knew him well would understand the deadly undertone to his words, “but I find myself not caring a great deal for wisdom these days.”

“That’s too bad, could be injurious to your health. I’m rather surprised you didn’t mention your suspicions in front of your wife.”

“I saw no need for it, this matter is between yerself and I.”

“You goddamn Irish punk, you still don’t understand who I am. My word is law in this town. My rule is absolute. You are only alive because that damn fisherman was so inadequate to the task of killing you.”

“Outside this town you are nothing. An’ yer rule is not absolute. Ye don’t rule me, ye never did, only ye were too big of a fool to understand that not all men are for sale.”

Love smiled, a smug expression that set off an alarm bell deep in Casey’s psyche.

“Oh yes they are, one way or another all men are for sale—women too for that matter.”

“No they are not.” Casey’s voice was quiet, but carried with the force of a blade.

Love shrugged. “Believe what you like, it makes no difference to me. Just know that next time I’ll hire someone who’s much better at their job.”

“Not if I kill you first.”

Focused on each other with such deadly intent, neither man noticed Pamela standing in the shadow of the doorway.

THE CHURCH OF THE ASSUMPTION was empty of worshippers, the spring air exerting a more forceful pull than the dark, quiet interior of the church. She had expected to find Father Kevin in his quarters, putting the finishing touches on Sunday’s sermon or on the basketball court, even priests being not immune to the lure of soft spring winds.

However, the basketball court was occupied only by two raggedy looking youths who wolf-whistled at her and then flushed when she asked if they knew where Father Kevin was. Her knocks at the private entrance went unanswered as well, so she entered the main body of the church and found him there, bowed over in the front pew, as if he were in great pain.

“Father Kevin, are you alright?” she asked, her quiet question sounding like a shout in the vast silence of the church.

He gave a barely perceptible nod. She touched his shoulder lightly, worried by his stance and his silence. He started as if she’d laid a brand to his shoulder, head snapping up. She stepped back in shock, his face was heavily flushed, pale lashes wet with tears.

“She’s gone,” he said, wiping at his eyes with one hand, the other hand fisted against his side.

“Gone?” Pamela echoed, frightened by his tone. “Who’s gone?”

“Emma—she’s dead,” he replied bluntly.

“What—when?” she stuttered, feeling the starch go abruptly out of her knees as she dropped to the pew beside the priest.

“Some old drunk found her by the Mystic, enough heroin in her to kill an elephant. Overdose, the police say, but she hadn’t touched the stuff in years, not since she got pregnant with Jake.”

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, the sound swallowed up in the great dark cavern of the church.

“Don’t you?” Father Kevin turned his head toward her, eyes glittering with unshed tears.

“Love,” she said, feeling as though she had something very sharp caught in her throat.

“He thought she was talking to the FBI, thought she ratted him out. So she got the treatment snitches get in this neighborhood.”

“Oh God,” she whispered, stricken to the bone with a sudden cold that had nothing to do with the chill gloom of the chapel. She could feel the odd breathless tingling in her lips and fingers that accompanied shock.

“Where’s her boy?”

“With Emma’s mother, that’s where he’ll live now.”

She clasped her hands together, squeezing them until they hurt, in an effort to stop the dizziness that threatened to engulf her. In her peripheral vision, she saw the ninth station of the cross—Christ crushed under the weight of the cross for the third time. She wondered how tired he’d been of the endless foolishness of men. How tired and pained by the cruelty and waste? Bent, broken and killed by it in the end. Maybe tired enough to turn His face and never look back?

“
May the souls of the faithful departed,”
she murmured, speaking from memory,
“through the mercy of God, Rest in peace.”

“Amen,” Father Kevin finished for her, the words as ingrained in him as they were in her.

She unclasped her hands with effort and it came to her there, clear, and with the force of epiphany. Unfortunately, Agent Gus had been right. There was only one way out of this mess.

“Of course,” she murmured, “of course.” She stood, forcing the trembling out of her body through sheer force of will. She felt the determination of the inevitable within her, but still there was a small voice inside crying ‘
why does it have to be this way?’

“What are you going to do?” Father Kevin, alerted by her tone, rose to his feet, worry written clear on the transparent features.

“There’s only one thing I can do now, there’s only one way to end this for once and for all,” she said with a grim determination, wondering why it had taken her so long to see what should have been clear to her from the start.

“Let the feds deal with it,” Father Kevin said. “Whatever it is you’re thinking of doing, will only be going from the frying pan into a huge fire. The feds will put Hagerty behind bars where he’s always belonged.”

“Prison isn’t enough,” she said quietly, “you’ve lived in this neighborhood a long time Father Kevin, long enough to know that. He’d have eyes and ears outside the prison walls to do his dirty work for him. How much longer would Casey have? A week? A month? Then there’d be an accident that wasn’t so accidental.” She shook her head. “No, I should have seen this before, I just didn’t want to face the truth.”

She took a deep breath and held a steady hand out to Father Kevin.

“It’s not likely we’ll see each other again.”

“Don’t do this,” the priest was pale now, freckles stark against his fair Irish skin.

“Shake my hand Father and wish me well, then just forget we ever had this conversation.”

He shook his head. “I can’t do that. Surely you can see that this is pure madness.”

“Consider it a last confession of sorts then,” she held his eyes steadily and he saw within the pure green depths of her own a strength that frightened him. “Anything I may have said or you may have guessed is sacrosanct.”