Heading Home (13 page)

“The men?” Gilhooley
pressed. “Can you get them on it? Quietly?”

The hell of it was, Declan
thought Gilhooley’s plans for securing the camp made sense. The
fact that Mike wouldn’t even listen to a different way of doing
things was worse than arrogant, in Declan’s opinion, it was
irresponsible. He hated going behind Mike’s back like this but
Gilhooley had been right about that too:
sometimes you have to do things you know are wrong for the
good of the community.

He nodded.

“Good man,” Gilhooley
said, hopping down from the table and giving Declan a hearty clap
on the shoulder. “Between you and me, we are going to have a
community to be proud of.”

9

The man had both hands
around the woman’s neck. As Mike ran toward them he watched her
claw at the hands, her mouth opening and shutting like a fish
starving for breath before Mike could reach her. He gave the man a
hard clout against the base of his skull and the woman fell at his
feet with an elongated groan. When her husband turned to Mike,
clearly ready to take him on until he saw who it was, his eyes went
from murderous intent to shame in seconds.

Mike turned to the woman,
Annie, who Declan already had in his arms on the ground. One of her
eyes was blackened and the crimson red imprint of her husband’s
hand could clearly be seen against the stark white of her cheek.
She looked at Mike and shook her head, her voice still too raw to
be anything but a rasping whisper.

“Not his fault,” she
said.

Mike looked at her husband
who now stood, his head hanging, his arms limp at his sides. If he
had his way he’d take him out behind the tents and the huts and
beat the living bejesus out of him. But it would only make himself
feel better.

It wouldn’t make one bit
of difference for next time.

“All right, Annie,” he
said, holding out a hand to help her up. “Go see Fi for something
for that eye. Go on, now. Me and Dec are going to have a word with
Padraig.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she
said again, more clearly, her eyes going from Mike to her
husband.

“I heard you. Go on now.”

He watched her as she stumbled down the
gravel path toward Fiona’s cottage. She looked back once, then
turned and ran.

“You’re a right sod,
aren’t you, O’Connor?” Mike said, fighting to keep his
calm.

“She fell,” Padraig said.
“It was an accident.”

“Dec, take this miserable
piece of excrement to the holding hut. Pray he doesn’t have
an
accident
,
himself, along the way, only I’ll not fault you if he does. Things
happen.”

Declan nodded and took
Padraig by the elbow then drove his fist hard into the man’s
stomach. Padraig groaned and bent over double retching. He fell to
his knees.

“Oh, sorry, mate,” Dec
said. “My hand slipped.”

Padraig struggled to his
feet but he was looking at Mike as if expecting him to intervene or
at least chastise his deputy.

Maybe I have been too
lenient,
Mike thought
incredulously
. If this sod thinks I’ll
raise a hand to pull Dec off him, he must think I’m fecking soft in
the head.

“Don’t look at me,
arsehole,” he said, roughly. “Blokes who beat women deserve
every
accident
that comes their way.”

Padraig looked at Declan
with real fear and moved quickly ahead of him holding his stomach.
Mike watched the two move toward the makeshift jail.
Bullies are always the biggest fucking
cowards
.

He slapped his gloves
against his thigh in frustration.
What was
he supposed to do?
Maybe Gilhooley
should
take over the
camp. Mostly it was just a huge pain in the arse babysitting
operation anyway. He watched Declan’s retreating back and could
hear Padraig’s beginning verbal protestations at being treated this
way.

He’d be well and bloody happy to be rid of
every whiny, cursed one of them.

Fiona watched her brother
come across the main courtyard of the camp. He looked like he had
the weight of the world on his shoulders, she thought. At only
forty, he looked old.

Annie O’Connor had left
only moments earlier, a piece of cool liver on her eye and a cup of
tea under her belt. Fiona liked Annie. She’d helped deliver her
last bairn—one of the first to be born after The Crisis hit. Her
husband was a different story altogether.

Fi stood in the doorway of
her cottage with her hands on her hips as Mike climbed the porch
steps. “That Padraig is a right bugger,” she said. “But she wants
him released.”

“Aye, I know.”

“He should be punished,
Mike! This isn’t the first time he’s hit her.”

“But the family needs him.
He’s a hard worker.”

“When he’s not hitting on her.”

“What can we do? She
married him. She’s got three kids by him.” He sagged into a kitchen
chair and dumped out a leather roll of carving tools and a
sharpening stone. She went to the kitchen to fetch another mug and
poured tea from the pot on the table.

“Just makes me sick,” she
said.

“I know. But if I fine him
or punish him in some way…”

“He’ll just take it out on her.”

“Exactly. Her only option is to leave him,
if she will.”

“She won’t.”

“Well, there you are then.”

Fiona walked over to the window, paused and
then waved. “You know Brian has been kissing babies and taking tea
with every single family in the compound.”

“I heard,” Mike said with disgust.

“Might not hurt if you were to get out
more.”

“
I’m not prancing about,
Fi. If they want me, I’m right here.”

“If you don’t campaign, it’ll just be Brian
out there making promises and smiling all friendly like.”

“These people know me. There’s nothing new I
can tell them about who I am.”

“That’s just it. Maybe they need to hear
something new.”

“Seems to me everyone was
fine with the way we were doing things.”

“That is true,” she said
carefully. “And it’s also true that since the Middle Ages every
village had its lord.”

“I never acted too grand!”

“I’m not saying you did.”
Fiona turned from the window and sat down at the rough wooden table
across from Mike. “And you’ve done immense good for all of us.
There’s not a man, woman or child who’d say different, but we’ve
grown too big to be governed by one person without having a
say.”

“I always listened.”

“And then went ahead and
did what you wanted to do.”

“Yes, I made decisions.
Unpopular ones, sometimes.”

“Mike, we need a voice in
how we’re governed, not a loving but firm despot. Now you can come
to grips with that and campaign your arse off telling folks how
things’ll be different with you in charge…or you can step down.
Continue on this way and you won’t have a choice.”

Mike grunted but didn’t answer. “Who were
you waving to? That bogger, Gilhooley?”

Fiona stood up again. “No,
I saw Dec walking back to our place. I wanted him to know I was
here.”

After three sharp raps on the front door and
before Fiona could reach it, the door swung open. Mike looked at
his friend and frowned. It was unusual for him to come into the
camp by day, unless it was to eat lunch with Fiona.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Dec leaned over and gave
Fi a kiss. “It is,” he said. “I put O’Connor in the brig. Was all I
could do not to drill a new hole in his head. He’ll do it again,
you know.”

“Anything else?”

“I finished the inquiries
on young Ollie. You were right. Sounds like he lashed out in a fit
of anger and she zigged when she shoulda zagged.”

“It was an accident?” Fiona asked.

Declan frowned. “Well,
let’s just say he didn’t
mean
to kill her, but if he’d had better hold of his
temper none of it would have been an issue.”

“So it’s manslaughter, not murder,” Mike
said.

“Whatever the
difference
that
makes,” Dec said with disgust. “Eeny is just as
dead.”

“Her family?”

“Wants his gonads nailed to a tree.”

“They’re devastated,”
Fiona said, sighing.

“Aye, but so is Ollie,”
Dec said. “And not just because his neck’s in the noose either.
He’s beside himself with grief and guilt. He loved her.”

“If you say so.”

Declan turned to Mike.
“We’re lucky our two jailbirds aren’t interested in busting out.
The hut isn’t secure. We need a better place of
detention.”

“We don’t have the
available men to build it.”

“We would if we took them off plugging holes
in the fence.”

“No way,” Mike said. “Our
security comes first.”

Declan sighed. “That’s
what I thought you’d say.” His eyes turned to Fiona. His look was
inscrutable. She knew he wouldn’t argue with Mike any more on the
topic. She also knew he wouldn’t go along with it much longer
either.

The heather was vivid and thick around Sarah
as she rode Dan down the narrow path that led to her old cottage.
The shades of mauve and purple seemed to move and meld into each
other from both sides of the trail.

It had been too long since she’d saddled up
just for the pleasure of riding. With so much to do in camp, taking
a pleasure ride around the pastures and fields seemed like an
extravagance she couldn’t afford. That was especially true now that
she was leaving within days.

But she was glad she’d
forced the issue today. Not only would she be saying goodbye to all
her friends—and Mike—but also to the big mixed thoroughbred, Dan,
who had seen her through almost every important adventure of her
life since The Crisis.

Seen her through and carried her
through.

If there was any way she
could take him with her, she would. A tall bay of nearly seventeen
hands, Sarah had been literally terrified of him when she first
realized he was her only form of transportation after the bomb
dropped. Her fear—as a result of a riding accident in her teen
years—had taken months to overcome. And Dan had done that for
her.

Now, riding down the Irish
country lane, feeling the slow rocking movement of his gait beneath
her hips, she was reminded of how soothing it was to ride him. How,
in almost every case of stress and panic she’d experienced in the
last eighteen months, a long ride had almost always made things
better. She looked over her shoulder at John, now nearly too big
for his pony, Star, but too loyal to give him up, and Papin—never
one for horseback riding but always open to doing whatever was
necessary to please.

Well, almost always.

Sarah frowned as she
watched Papin sit on her polo pony. She spent more time clutching
the pommel than the reins but it didn’t matter. Her pony, Jack,
would take care of her. Something was wrong with Papin, that much
Sarah knew. She just didn’t know if it was
teenage-girl-everything-blown-out-of-proportion wrong.

Or
really
wrong.

And with Papin’s horrific
childhood pressing in on her, that could be a pretty big
distinction.

“Are we nearly there?” Papin asked in a
bored voice. “Me bum’s dead and I’m feeling queasy again.”

“It’s right up the road,”
John said. “Past those stone pillars there.”

“We’ll cut across the
pasture here,” Sarah said, dismounting. Nobody lived at the old
cottage she and David used to live in, but the pastureland was
still good and the fence was intact so the community used it for
grazing. She unlatched the gate and swung it wide so the other two
could pass through. Then she led Dan through, closed the gate and
pulled herself back into the saddle.

“Wanna race, Papin?” John asked. “It’s a
good quarter mile yet and the land’s flat.”

“No,” she said, gripping the pommel even
tighter. “My luck ol’ Jackie here will find the one divot in the
whole field.”

Sarah realized that Papin
was more insecure than usual about riding. The two of them had
covered nearly fifty miles last year on horses over countryside and
never once did she see the girl gripping the pommel instead of the
reins. Something had spooked her.

“You okay, Papin?”

The girl turned and
grimaced at her. “Why wouldn’t I be? Am I not keeping up or
something?”

“No, you are. It’s just
that I noticed you seem a little hesitant.”

“Because I won’t race
around the pasture like a damn
eejit
and risk getting my neck
broke? Some mother you are! I’d’ve thought you’d want us to be
careful.” Papin dug in her heels on her pony, prompting it into a
jerky trot, but Sarah noticed she didn’t ungrasp the
pommel.

They rode in silence until
the small white cross was visible. Planted by the fence on the very
spot he died. Sarah would have preferred to bury him in the little
church graveyard near Ballinagh, but she hadn’t been around to make
that decision.