Disturbance (38 page)

I screamed.

He cuffed me hard on the side of the head, yelled, “Shut up!” then stood. He pulled his gun from his own parka and ordered me to stand up. He pushed me forward, almost at a run, into the trees.

I heard Donovan frantically call my name, stumbled, fell, and felt Kai land hard on top of me. Hitting tree roots with my face probably hurt, but the pain of his landing on my arm hurt so much it blinded me to any other source of agony. He cried out as well but brought me to my feet again, holding hard to the parka, which still pinned my arms. He held the gun in his injured hand—however much his arm hurt, he still had a grip—and pressed it into the small of my back. We slipped and slid but made progress.

We came to a small clearing and stumbled again. This time he
let go, letting me fall hard to the ground, and yelled something I couldn’t begin to understand through the haze of pain in my head and arm. He winced and switched the gun to his good arm.

He told me to strip, and when I didn’t obey, he moved closer. I fought with kicks and my good hand. I hurt his left knee and even managed to scratch one of his eyes and bloody his nose, but every time he wanted to subdue me, he just pushed on the broken arm. He was strong and filled with rage. He hit me with the gun, nearly causing me to pass out, then pocketed it and started pulling off my clothes.

Think!

But it was damned hard. He had my parka off—the removal was excruciating—and in seconds had torn off my shirt, pausing now and again to strike me with his fist, as my muzzy-headed efforts at defense did little to slow him. My strikes became fewer and even less accurate. I grabbed at anything I could—his hair, his bootlaces—and did little more than untie his shoes. He hit me on the face again and again, slaps and punches, and pulled at my arm if I put up too much of a fight. He yanked off my pants—Donovan’s too-loose-on me pants—and pressed me into the ground as he reached down between us—unzipping his own pants.

Think!

“I killed Nick because he killed your mother,” I said.

He froze. His eyes narrowed.

In that one instant of letting up his assault, he heard exactly what I heard—the baying of a bloodhound.

Not Bool
, I thought. Bool was trained not to bay. But a dog. Other people. Voices. More than one. At a distance, but if I could hear them—

“Help!” I shouted, earning myself another fist in the face before Kai stood and then grabbed my parka and my pants—Donovan’s pants—and pulled up his fly.

He sat on a log, hurrying to retie his boots—a task he
grimaced through as he used his injured arm. The sadistic asshole I should have drowned yesterday, while I had the chance, was getting away.

I felt a surge of rage so pure it masked the pain. I staggered to my feet.

He was bent over his bootlaces, but he noticed me. I kept staggering as I moved closer to him—it wasn’t all pretense.

He smiled at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you and give you everything I wanted to give you today, you cunt.”

I really hate the c word.

I leaned forward, as if I was about to fall. Instead, I grabbed his hair in a death grip with my left hand and yanked like hell on it, swinging his head down as I brought my right knee up fast and hard into his face, then extended my right leg and kicked full force into his balls. When he doubled over screaming, I gave it to him again in the teeth with that same knee, let go of his hair, and let him fall to the ground. When he curled up there, I started kicking his kidneys. I circled him, kicking his head and his face and his arms and his ass. Hard. He curled tighter, I kicked harder.

In my mind, I was screaming at him, calling him every filthy name I had ever heard, which was an extensive catalog, but I must not have been doing anything except breathing hard, because I heard—eventually—someone trying to get my attention.

“Irene … Irene. Irene … it’s okay. You can stop.”

It was that best loved voice. I stopped. I looked up. Saw Frank putting his gun back in its shoulder holster, slowly walking toward us.

“I knew you would make it,” I said. I have no idea if any of that was intelligible, because my mouth was swollen. Frank later told me that he understood every word, and maybe he did.

He came closer. I warned him about the arm, which caused
him to look down at Kai in a way that made me say, “Not worth it.” He nodded and very gently pulled me into an embrace. I leaned against him. “I’m a mess.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Doesn’t matter at all. I can’t tell you …” And he couldn’t, but he didn’t need to.

“Frank, I would not be standing here with you if Donovan hadn’t helped me. I don’t know what you know about him, and you probably want to kill him, but seriously, I’m alive because of him.”

“I know. We’ll help him.”

He stepped away only long enough to disarm and cuff Kai, and to retrieve my parka for me. The front of the parka had some bloodstains on it, a mixture of them at this point, but the jacket was warm and I wanted it back. I got the pants, too.

Within minutes, the others were there, including Donovan, who didn’t look too steady on his feet. Jack took one glance at me, then at Kai, and had such a murderous look in his eye that Frank immediately said, “Irene says he’s not worth it. Since I found her on the verge of doing what you want to do, I’d let her be the judge of that.”

Ben had Bool with him and was praising him, while the big bloodhound practically pulled him over trying to get to me. “Hello, Boolean,” I said softly and felt tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Sorry about the baying,” Ben said. “I don’t know what got into him.”

“Why, Bool and I are old friends. That’s what.”

“I just hope he didn’t endanger you with that.”

“No, he helped save me.”

“Extra treats for Bool, then,” Jack said and, seeing Ben’s look as he took in the situation, added, “Frank says Irene’s already fed this guy’s own balls to him, so Bool won’t be able to have those for his treats.”

Frank had taken off his backpack and had a blanket and thermos full of hot tea for me. “It’s probably not too hot by now, but—anyway, it’s got a lot of sugar in it. You know the drill.”

It was still warm. It was good to get a little sugar in my system.

“You going to formally arrest this shit-heel, Frank?” Jack asked, nodding toward Kai.

Before Frank could answer, we heard a helicopter overhead.

“Sounds like the rangers are on the way,” Jack said. “That’s not the Sikorsky, and only their Bell could get here that fast.”

“Good. Let the Feds take him in—Las Piernas and all the other jurisdictions can work it out with them from there. We’ve got a couple of people to get to an ER.”

He asked Jack to radio Travis and tell the rangers where to find us. Jack had a device in hand that he used to read off coordinates. Within no time, the rangers’ helicopter was overhead. They found a place to land and joined us. I was surprised to see a familiar face among them.

“J.C.!”

“Oh, Irene,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Parrish is dead,” I told him. J.C.—Jay Carter—was among the few survivors of our first journey into these mountains with Parrish.

“So I understand. Thanks.” He was looking at me with so much concern, I almost started crying again. “Look,” he said, “I know that Travis wants to take you and another victim to the hospital, and he’s fired up the Sikorsky. Are you able to walk all the way to the road, or do you want us to give you a lift?”

“Her arm’s broken,” Frank said.

“How about a lift then?” I said. I eyed Kai uneasily though.

“He’ll wait here with a couple of the other rangers until we come back for him. I may even get our rescue guys to take him to a local hospital in a different chopper.”

Before long, we were on
our way to Las Piernas. Donovan insisted that he’d prefer to be taken to St. Anne’s, too. An EMT working with the rescue squad kindly helped to splint the arm for the trip and offered painkillers. We both passed up the offer, tempting as it was.

We had a lot of talking and planning to do.

When I first got to the Sikorsky, Donovan looked so dismayed by my now very swollen face, I said, “Remember, the other guy looks worse.”

He laughed at that, and Frank said, “She’s right.” Donovan laughed harder.

When Frank looked at him a little uneasily, I said, “I know what’s it’s like. Until you can cry, you have a risk of getting a little hysterical over the oddest things. I got the giggles over Parrish’s corpse a little while ago.”

“I was going to ask you about that,” Frank said. “Stabbed, shot, and garroted?”

“If it hadn’t rained on him, I would have thought of setting him on fire.”

Donovan laughed over that one, too. He needed bed rest.

“She beat the hell out of him, too,” Donovan said.

“Disarmed him and gave him his black eye,” I bragged.

“You …”

“We have got to do something nice for Rachel,” I said.

“I don’t know if I can hear any more of this right now,” Frank said.

I gave him a one-armed hug. “So tell me about your day.”

So Frank told me about visiting Quinn Moore and going on “vacation,” the text messages, Roderick Beignet, and all that Donovan had left in the Forester to help him find us.

“So that’s what happened to Parrish’s cell phone!”

“I took it from him when I was adjusting his backpack,” Donovan said.

“I used the first locator to find Donovan,” Frank said. “He was looking for you. Then he gave me his, and I went on from there, while Jack and Ben took him back to the helicopter.”

I told Frank about meeting Roderick in the Busy Bee Café and apologized for not telling him the truth about the damaged phone.

“I don’t care about that,” he said. “I know you were feeling hemmed in. I’m just so damned glad you’re alive.”

That went straight into the Very Big Book of Reasons I Will Remain Married to Frank Harriman for As Long As He’ll Have Me, but I was still uneasy. “If I had told you, you would have checked his background, and maybe we would have found out about Donovan’s daughter sooner—”

“Or maybe my daughter would have been killed immediately if Parrish worried the police were getting too close,” Donovan said.

Pete called not long before
we landed. Frank told him Donovan and I were listening to the call. I worried that he might try to accuse Donovan of something, but he didn’t. He started off by telling us how glad he was that we’d survived. But he had big news of his own.

“We caught Roderick Beignet. Donovan Cotter, your little girl is fine—not to say she hasn’t been scared by all this, but she’s happy to be rescued. Not sure if your mother-in-law is going to make it. Roderick’s been afraid to refill a prescription for a heart medication she needed, and he didn’t bother to try to get it any other way. They’ve taken her and the girl to St. Anne’s.”

“We’re headed there now,” Donovan said.

“Good. Miranda wants to meet the person she calls her ‘real dad.’”

He swallowed hard, then said, “I want to meet her, too.”

“So what did Roderick have to say for himself?” Frank asked.

“Since I put him under arrest, I can quote him exactly. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“‘My rights! My rights! What about my rights?’ I told him that, other than the ones I had just read to him, I didn’t think he had any, but he should check with his attorney.”

“He has one?”

“Well, that’s the kicker, Frank. He wanted to hire one of his nephew’s attorneys.”

“Who’s his nephew?” “Quinn Moore.”

“Quinn Moore!” It was echoed over at least three headsets.

“Thing is, none of those attorneys were interested in taking his case, mostly because he can’t afford them. He’s in a bind because we managed to get a judge to agree with us that Quinn’s assets ought to be frozen, given the indications we have that he participated in some serious crimes. Enough indication to get a warrant out on him, although we’re pretty sure he’s out of the country. Just not sure where.”

“Yet,” Frank said.

“Yet,” Pete agreed. “Anyway, turns out old Roderick is Parrish’s half brother.”

“Half brother?” I said. “I’ve never heard of him having any siblings other than his sister.”

“Same father. The parents divorced, the dad remarried, Roderick is the child of that marriage.”

“How many more of them are out there?” I asked.

No one had an answer.

I
spent a lot of time answering a lot of questions from people in law enforcement. Fortunately, our friend and attorney, Dina Willner—who had taken over Zeke Brennan’s law firm after he retired—loves a challenge. I don’t know how Dina managed to find the time and energy to keep all of us out of hot water, but she did.

I was able to talk the doctors at St. Anne’s into letting me go home two days later. Ethan had visited me as soon as I got back and told me to return to work only when I really felt able to do so.

“See you next week, then,” I said.

“You don’t know that yet,” he said.

“Neither do you.”

This led to a bet, which I won, but he got the best of me by teasing me endlessly when, on my return, I mentioned that I noticed the receptionist was gone. He made fun of the way I had tried to casually ask about it.

“Admit it,” he said. “You thought I was fishing off the company pier.”

“I wasn’t certain,” I said. “At least not about you. I apologize for that. But if you’re going to tell me she didn’t try to make a play for you—”

“I found a job for her at another station,” he said. “I couldn’t take much more of her making excuses to stop by my office.”

I raised a brow, picked up a pen, and tapped out a message on my desk in Morse code. He laughed and said, “It’s not bragging if it’s true.”

I stayed in touch with
Donovan. We were all able to breathe easier when we learned that he was not going to be charged with any crimes. Dina convinced the D.A. not only that Donovan was coerced into all his activities on Parrish’s behalf but also that he had a great deal to do with my rescue and the arrests of several Moths. I, of course, would never agree to testify that I was drugged by him, since, after all, I was out drinking with a friend that afternoon. Who could say what had happened?