Never Never (22 page)

S
arah stood holding
Siobhan in her arms as she watched Mike move woodenly across the drawbridge. Her breath was coming in pants and she kept shaking her head.

This can't be happening.

Gavin stood next to her, swearing impotently as he held his rifle to his shoulder, his eye on his father, his finger on the trigger.

It seemed to take hours for Mike to walk the thirty feet across the drawbridge to the waiting army outside. From where she stood, Sarah couldn't see who was waiting for him. She stayed out of Gavin and Tommy's line of fire and prayed it wouldn't come to that.

True to their word, nobody rushed the castle and Kevin began cranking the windlass on the door the second Mike stepped across the moat.

“Terry!” she screamed. “Tell me where he's going!” She looked up but Terry had already run back to the front parapet. Siobhan began to whimper.

Gavin's arms sagged to his side as he held his gun. Sarah knew a part of him was sorry not to have the chance to kill the bastards. She turned and looked past him at the trebuchet in the middle of the courtyard. Tommy was slumped against it despondently.

“We can't just do nothing,” she said as she ran to the trebuchet. “We can't just wait for them to kill him.”

“You heard them,” Tommy said as he shook his head. “It's the price for the rest of us staying safe.”

Terry was back on the catwalk. Sarah looked up.

“If you get a clear shot—” she said, but Terry was already shaking his head.

“The bugger never came out of the tent and now Mike's gone inside,” he said.

Sarah felt a knot of despair hardening in her stomach.

“Keep watching!” she said before turning back to Tommy.

“Do we really have
nothing
? Nothing but a damn
cow
to throw at them? Are we really this helpless?”

“We needed more time to prepare,” Tommy said sadly. “We just
got
here.”

Sophia and Gavin joined them. Sophia cried quietly as she held baby Maggie wrapped in a sling across her chest.

“I'm so sorry, Sarah,” Sophia said. “Mike is the bravest man in all of—”

Sarah felt the anger she'd tried to repress for so long build inside her. She saw Shaun herding the other women back inside the castle wing. They trudged toward the stairwell in acceptance and dejection.
Everyone was writing Mike off and already moving on! How had this happened?

“How did Saoirse get inside the castle?” she shouted.

“What…?” Shaun looked helplessly at the group and then walked over to them. “What are you talking about?”

“Saoirse was inside the castle last night,” Sarah said. “How did she get in?”

Gavin leaned toward Shaun menacingly. “She came through the secret tunnel, didn't she?”

“I knew it!” Sarah said.

“All right, yes, but I never thought she'd come here,” Shaun said, rubbing the perspiration from his face.

“Mrs. Morrison told me and Tommy about the tunnel—” Gavin began.

Muffled sounds of gunfire filled the air—five shots like a series of cars backfiring one right after another. Sarah felt her knees weaken.

Mike…

But Shaun and Gavin were already running to the first stairwell leading to the castle interior.

“It's coming from the clinic!” Shaun yelled.

T
he second soldier
in the mouth of the tunnel seized up and clawed at the jamb of the door. The wound pulsated over his right eyebrow. Behind him, Fiona saw two more soldiers, their faces peering out of the darkness.

Without even looking she knew Declan had found the gun Mike left. She glanced at Beryl and knew there was nothing she could do for her. If the poor woman wasn't dead yet she soon would be.

There were no more gunshots.

Fiona snapped her head toward Declan's bed to see he was slumped backward on the bed, his gun hanging loosely from his fingers. A cold gush of dread rippled up her spine.

Noooooooo….

A moan from the dying soldier in the doorway forced Fiona's attention back to the tunnel opening. She leveled the gun in her hands at the two soldiers in the tunnel.

“Drop your rifles!” she shouted but her words sounded like a terrified squeak. The two soldiers didn't move.

“I need help!” Fiona screamed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the puddle of blood beneath Beryl grow wider and wider. “Help me! Somebody!” Her hands felt slick with sweat as she threaded her finger around the trigger. She felt the gun shake in her hands.

Please, let him not be hurt too badly. I beg you, please…

Suddenly the door behind Fiona flew open. Her shoulders sagged with relief and she dropped the rifle to the floor and ran to Declan.

Gavin aimed his rifle at the two soldiers.

“Drop yer weapons and get the feck outta there now!” he bellowed.

The two soldiers slid their rifles across the floor and stepped over the bodies of their two comrades.

Shaun moaned and ran to his mother's body.

Fiona hovered over Declan, her hands hesitant to touch him. He lay on his bed, a bullet hole between his closed eyes.

Fiona uttered an unearthly howl of pain as she leaned over his body and snaked her arms around his bleeding head.

“No, no, no,” she moaned, sobbing, her hysteria rising higher and higher to echo off the tall stone walls.

M
ike wasn't surprised
to see Hurley hadn't come out to greet him. While Mike hadn't specifically given orders to shoot him, it was understandable that the bastard might think he had. Three soldiers—their faces implacable—stood in front of the large tent that faced the castle. They carried guns but didn't aim them at him.

Why would they? It was obvious he was readily sacrificing himself.

The wound in his shoulder throbbed deeply which kept him alert against the waning affects of last night's pain medicine.

One of the soldiers stepped forward and patted Mike down. The other two shouldered their guns and glanced up at the parapet of the castle to see that they were being watched.

“The commander will see you,” one of the soldiers said, jerking his head to indicate the tent entrance.

Mike was grateful he wasn't bound. At least not yet. If there was a hope in hell of getting out of all this, he'd need the use of his hands. Although even if he were to somehow overpower Hurley—with a fecking army on the threshold of the castle and no food inside to last a siege—it still wouldn't do any good in the long run.

He forced himself not to look up at the castle. He knew Sarah wasn't watching and if Gavin was, it would only weaken Mike to see him. As a soldier held the tent flap open for Mike, he walked in. There was a lantern in the center of the tent. Two of the tent corners were reinforced with transparent plastic panels that allowed the weak Irish sunlight to light the interior.

Hurley sat at a small table. He was a large man with a bulbous bald head. His well-developed arms strained inside his uniform sleeves. He appeared to be studying a map. He did not look up when Mike entered.

An unearthly fury seemed to erupt from the soles of Mike's feet that blotted out the fear, the unknown, and the gnawing agony in his shoulder.

“Is it possible I might know
now
why you are here?” Mike asked, biting off every word. One of the soldiers moved to flank him. He grabbed Mike by his shoulder. Mike flinched as the pain came alive in explosions of agony. The soldier twisted him around and jammed the butt of his rifle into Mike's stomach.

Mike gasped and sagged to his knees. The pain radiated out from his solar plexus setting his entire torso on fire.

“Get out,” Hurley said. For a mad moment, Mike thought he was talking to
him
.

He grasped the side of the table and hauled himself to his feet. The soldiers disappeared out the door of the tent behind him.

“I apologize for that,” Hurley said. “But my men know I don't like being interrupted at my work.”

Mike would have answered if he'd had enough breath but he was still recovering from the gut-wrenching pain of the stomach blow.

He tore his eyes away from Hurley's face and looked around the tent to see if there was something—anything—that might help him fight this lunatic. So far, all he saw was a military nutcase with an agenda—and a hundred soldiers backing him up.

“You're wondering how we know each other,” Hurley said, watching Mike slowly straighten as he recovered from the attack. “I visited you once before. At your fort.”

So it's true. He's the bastard who attacked the compound last fall. The bastard who killed Kendra. And shot Declan.

“But where our connection truly matters,” Hurley said, “is through my brother, Bill.”

Mike shook his head as if to clear it.

“I'm told you hung him this last summer.”

Ever since the lights were snuffed out by the first EMP five years ago Mike had killed more men than he could count. But Bill Hurley's death at his hands was one he had absolutely no qualms about. The man was an evil murdering rapist and while Mike had taken no pleasure in hanging him, he hadn't had any trouble sleeping afterward either.

How did Hurley know about it?

“Your brother was tried for the rape and murder of two of our compound women.”

“So you don't deny you hung him from a tree outside the convent of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow?”

An ice pick of fear drilled its way into Mike's gut.

Hurley knew the name of the nunnery. A convent so secret even the Vatican had forgotten about it. A convent impossible to find unless you'd been there before.

Chezzie
.

Chezzie was the only one who knew what happened that day. Chezzie was the only one who had left.

And the only one who knew the way back.

“I can see by your face that you figured it out on your own,” Hurley said. “The man you let get away came back to seal all your fates. Poignant, really. And a valuable lesson to go forward with: never leave any unfinished business. That is if you had a life ahead of you to go forward with. Which you don't.”

Mike forced himself not to react. He urgently needed to move, to cross his arms, to shift his feet—to control the welling sense of futility and dread building in his chest.

“You're probably wondering why I would believe the word of a liar and a felon. That's a reasonable question,” Hurley said. “And it is why I had the charge confirmed by people I'm sure even you would acknowledge as credible.”

Mike felt a hopeless shudder wrack his body.

The bastard's been to the convent.

“I'm not at all surprised the convent stayed untouched for so long. It wasn't at all easy to find.” Hurley eyes were alive with menace. “Let's just say it's not
untouched
any longer.”

Mike's heart was pounding at the thought of the kind of evil he must be in the presence of. “If you hurt them—”

Hurley lunged to his feet and knocked the table from between them, his face red with rage, spittle flinging from his lips.

“My men raped and killed every person at the convent for the crime
you
committed against my brother,” Hurley said as he closed and unclosed his fists and a violent tic pulsated over his left eye. “You think you are the law? This country is
mine
. Justice and punishment are mine. And mine alone.”

Mike no longer heard him. His mind was buzzing with the inability to think beyond the man's words of death and torture.

It can't be true. Even if the bastard was sick enough to do it, surely his men…
Flashes of enraged, destroying armies down through history—the Celts and Vikings rampaging and killing, destroying and massacring innocent villagers—formed in Mike's mind.

His stomach roiled as his mind tried to reject the image of the convent being assaulted in this way.
Mother Angelina…the good sisters…no, it couldn't be…