Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (10 page)

“Emmett
Brannigan,” he said, his face paling. “I’ll open a room for us.
Hold on.”

He pushed the
door open again and headed back inside.

I turned to
Carl, raising my eyebrows. “Kind of get the feeling he’s been
waiting for someone to show up and ask about Emmett Brannigan?”

“Why would he
remember the exact name unless he thought it was extremely fishy?”
Carl asked. “Or he knows something strange.”

“He’s pretty
young, so would he even have spotted anything weird back then?”

He shrugged.
“He’s the only one close by, so we better make the most of him. Try
not to piss him off, Ava.”

I tried and
failed to look offended.

Whelan returned
with an anxious look in his eye. “Follow me.” He led us into a tiny
interview room that smelled like sweat and stale cigarettes,
despite the no smoking sign. As the Garda sat down across from us
at the small table, my stomach turned unexpectedly. We were about
to see a glimpse into Peter’s past, and Peter had no idea.

“You’ve given
me a little turn,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked
to be in his mid-thirties, and his eyes were too innocent for the
things he had seen. He was deeply tanned, with black hair and dark
brown eyes, but his skin had grown sallow once he said Peter’s
son’s name. “Nobody wanted to talk about that case. Nobody.” He
shook his head.

“Can you tell
us anything?” I asked.

His eyes
narrowed. “Why would you want to know?”

Carl cleared
his throat. “There have been a lot of similar incidents over the
years. We’re trying to find some closure for our friend, the boy’s
father.”

Whelan nodded,
his expression softening into one of pity and regret. “Peter.”

“You remembered
their names,” Carl said.

Whelan stared
at him. “I couldn’t forget their names if I tried.”

“Sergeant─” I
began.

He held up his
hand. “Call me Shay. This Sergeant crap has been the bane of my
life. Never mind that.” He shook his head again, and I could see we
had unsettled him.

“Shay, then,” I
said, suddenly embarrassed. “Is there anything you can tell us
about that night? We’re pretty sure Peter has blocked out some of
what happened.”

“Peter,” he
repeated. “I honestly thought he would have drunk himself to death
by now.”

“He’s made an
effort,” I said wryly.

Shay grinned.
He had a good smile. “You get a sense for these things
sometimes.”

“You must have
been young when it happened though,” Carl piped up.

Shay nodded. “I
was still a kid, really. Thought I knew it all, but I was barely
out of Templemore, and I hadn’t a clue what I was in for. They sent
me to Dublin, and I got a few lessons fierce quick. That case
though… I’ll never forget that night.”

He cleared his
throat. “They stop affecting you as badly, but you never get some
of them out of your head. Especially early on. And that was a weird
one. That case was never closed. And now here you are.”

He shuddered,
and I could see him trying to gather his thoughts. I felt a little
guilty for dredging up bad memories, but we did what we had to
do.

“When we were
called out that night, I threw up at the sight of them. Not just
the older couple or even the girl. She was younger than me, so it
got to me, but it was
him
. Peter. He was distraught,
absolutely out of his head crazy, and everyone assumed he had
something to do with it, but he was clean. And I could see it in
his eyes. He was in shock, absolutely horrified. They had to sedate
him in the end. He cried about the boy, kept calling out for the
monsters. The things he said.” He shook his head again. “How is he
now? He called us every day for a year, but then it all just
stopped.”

“He’s angry,”
Carl said, anger in his own voice.

Shay didn’t
seem to notice. “I don’t blame him. We couldn’t find a trace of the
child, and we were told to stop looking in the end. Nobody wanted
to talk, and I had the sense that the entire incident was being
swept under the carpet for some reason. The man I was partnered
with that night kept asking questions, then eventually committed
suicide. I took it as far as I could go, but they moved me on, said
someone else was going to take over. But they didn’t, because I
checked. Nobody took over. It was all dropped as if it never
happened. Always made me think.”

“Why would they
do that?” Carl asked.

Shay stared at
his hands. “I couldn’t ever find out. Sometimes, I think the
promotion was to shut me up.” He turned on his smile again, but
there was no life behind it. “This is where you tell me what you
know.”

Carl hesitated.
“We don’t know anything you could use.”

“And that means
what exactly?”

“It means you
wouldn’t believe us,” I said. “You didn’t believe Peter back
then.”

“About what?
The light? It wasn’t exactly a lead,” he protested.

“What light?” I
pinched Carl’s arm for support. I wasn’t about to hear anything
good; I just knew it.

“When he was
sedated, even before it, he kept going on about a monster and a
bright light saving him. He wouldn’t stop raving about it. But
after his uncle visited him in the hospital, he calmed down and
latched back on to the monster thing again.”

“What uncle?” I
asked through clenched teeth.

“I don’t
remember. I just remember I thought it was strange that Peter just
dropped half of his story on his uncle’s say so. It was a long time
ago.”

“But you saw
the uncle?” I persisted.

“I did, but I
can’t remember his face.” He shrugged. “Like I said. A long time
ago.”

I exchanged a
glance with Carl. Everything was fucked up.
Everything
.

“We can’t
breathe a word of this,” Carl said. “It’ll screw Peter up even
more.”

I nodded, but I
was still thinking of how much I hated everyone who wasn’t us.
Every time we took a step forward, we were tripped up by something
from the past. It was all connected. Had any of us stumbled into
each other’s paths accidentally? Esther had remarked on how strange
it was that she and I had remained hidden and survived to
adulthood, but what was really strange was that we had also met and
befriended each other.

I couldn’t
suppress my anger anymore. “Hey, Carl. Did
you
happen to see
any bloody bright lights before you fell into Arthur’s hands?”

Carl shook his
head uneasily, seeing where I was going with that.

“Mind telling
me what’s going on?” Shay asked in a stern policeman voice, but
there was an eagerness in his eyes, and I saw that he wanted to
close that case as much as we did. The incident ate at him, and
none of it made sense, so he was risking his job to tell us things
he probably shouldn’t.

“What’s going
on is that this world is a nasty place, and we’re all in the middle
of shit we have no control of. The kidnapped children? The ones
whose families are murdered, yet the houses aren’t broken into, and
there are no witnesses or clues left? Yeah, those. Those stories
have happened all over Ireland.”

Shay sat up
straight. “That’s impossible. We rang around asking about similar
cases. We were shut down in every direction. Are you telling me
there’s a serial killer running around again? Or the same one?”

I had forgotten
the police all thought Becca’s actions were the work of a serial
killer. I gave a hateful laugh. “The last one was just hunting her
food. This one has been going on for centuries. Here and the UK.
Probably further out, too.”

“Ava, stop,”
Carl said.

Shay’s eyes had
already grown cold. “What is this? A joke?”

“It’s not a
joke,” I snapped. “Do some basic research. Maybe grow a pair. Or
are you holding out for another promotion?”

Shay’s jaw
dropped, but I was already on my way out the door. I was angry and
upset and confused, and I wanted to take it out on everyone. I
stormed down the street until I found a bench. I sat there and
waited for Carl to come find me. By the time he sat next to me, I
was shaking. Whether with anger or fear, I really wasn’t sure
anymore.

“What the hell,
Carl?” I whispered.

He wrapped his
arm around me and pulled me close. “I know. I know.”

Everything was
out of our hands, and everywhere we turned, the clues had been
wiped away. I wasn’t cut out for finding information. I was only
able to fight, but I had no idea who I was supposed to be
fighting.

***

“Why are you in
such a hurry all of a sudden?” Peter asked as we drove down a
motorway in the early morning light. I had pretty much forced him
into the car to follow old stories across the country. I didn’t
know why. Okay, I did. I had to feel as though I were doing
something.

Meeting Shay
and hearing those extra details we hadn’t known had ruined any
stability I might have had. There was no coolness or calmness about
me anymore. I was out for revenge, and I was desperate to find out
who had been playing with our lives. I needed to reach the end.

“Might as well
get going on this,” was all I said.

He glanced at
me curiously, but he stopped questioning, which was good. Carl and
I had sworn not to tell Peter what we had done. In some ways, Peter
held his past fiercely in his hands, hiding it from everyone so
they couldn’t use it against him. We couldn’t tell him that we knew
something he didn’t remember. Still, it sickened me to keep it from
him. It sickened me even to think about it. I wasn’t sure of
anything, but Shay’s words had convinced me that an angel had
interfered. That left me with two questions. Which angel, and
why?

I had let it
bother me for two days straight before making Peter take me for a
spin. I was running out of options, and I figured his idea of
investigating the past, even the ancient past, was better than
doing nothing.

Out of all the
places affected by the scourge of child kidnappings, one area
seemed to be cursed by it over the years, relatively speaking.
Across a number of tiny villages in Kerry, an inordinate number of
the same type of tragedies had occurred. That such a small
population had garnered so many red flags made us figure it would
be a good area to start in. I just hadn’t expected it to be so
small and desolate.

We had left all
main roads at least two hours ago, and we had passed more cow dung
than I cared to think about. The roads became narrower, the breaks
in farm life far more irregular, and I knew we were in proper rural
Ireland, probably the Ireland that tourists came looking for before
they had their wallets stolen in Dublin city. Maybe I was feeling a
little more aggressive than usual, but the sporadically
overwhelming stench of dung wasn’t helping matters.

Still, even I
had to admit that the rough mountainous terrain and even the
occasional glimmering lake were attractive enough to admire. Maybe
some day I would have a real holiday somewhere.

We passed an
unusual number of random places decorated with flowers and plaques
to mark a fatal accident. I had the overwhelming sensation that we
were in a forgotten place, a place marked by death, misery, and bad
luck. I couldn’t shake the melancholy.

“Are you okay?”
Peter asked, biting into my self-imposed silence.

“Fine.”

“You’re a
little… twitchy today.”

I gazed at my
hands and realised with horror that I had been tapping and
counting. “God damn it,” I muttered. I had been trying my best to
wean myself off of my obsessive compulsive behaviours, but as soon
as I wasn’t paying attention, they came back in full swing.

“It’s okay to
need it sometimes,” Peter said softly, but he avoided my eyes.

I leaned back
and closed my eyes, listening to the sounds outside. It was
actually quite peaceful once I stopped feeling determined to hate
everyone and everything.

“Why here?” I
wondered out loud. “Why do they keep picking on these people?”

“That’s what
I’m hoping to find out. There’s a small village about a mile away.
Do you want to drop in there and see if there’s anything going
on?”

But there was
nothing there. Nobody who remembered anything. Nobody who wanted to
talk. Same with the one after that. The occurrences there had
happened too long ago.

“One more,”
Peter promised, persisting with the belief that there had to be
someone out there who knew something.

I didn’t feel
like giving up yet, so I was happy when he drove into the last
village in the area. The place was almost silent, eerily so. An old
man stood in a doorway and stared as we drove past, and my stomach
grew cold. I couldn’t imagine asking anyone questions in that
place.

A strange
feeling overcame me. No talking. No questions. Keep quiet and go
home.

“We’ll have a
drink in the pub,” Peter said. “You can bet your arse some old
crone will give us a story.”

“Please don’t
talk like that in there,” I whispered.

“What’s with
you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.
I just feel… quiet.”

He shook his
head, probably wondering why I was in such an odd mood, but I
couldn’t help it. Something was creeping over me the further we
drove. The village was smaller than I expected, but I saw at least
two pubs. We went into the smaller of the two, once we had parked
the car.

I readied
myself to drive home afterward, but Peter just nursed a shandy. The
bar man was nice enough, but nobody was overly friendly. We sat in
a corner for a long time, feeling the chill of unspoken words. I
tried to look touristy, staring at the wooden beams and old
Guinness post cards decorating the walls, but I felt myself
crawling inside a shell instead.

“This is kind
of creepy,” I whispered, but Peter wasn’t paying attention. He was
too busy staring at the bar, so I turned to see what he was gaping
at.