The Undivided (43 page)

Still holding her hand, Marcroy glanced over his shoulder at the Druid. ‘If you get back to him in time, Ciarán may still be alive. He’ll open another rift for you … assuming he doesn’t run you through the moment you heal his wounds. And if he doesn’t live … well, I’m sure if you go to the Druid Council and explain that you, a lowly
Liaig
, and their great hero, Ciarán mac Connacht, facilitated the Undivided jumping through a rift into a world without magic so they could break the
Tuatha
law against bringing an
eileféin
back to this world, they’ll understand.’ Marcroy turned back to Hayley and smiled at her with devastating charm. ‘Did you want to see the magic of
Tír Na nÓg
, my lady?’

Hayley nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Marcroy put his arm around her waist. ‘Then hold on, sweet Hayley Boyle, and let me show you the wonders of
my
world.’

Putting her arms around the
sídhe
, Hayley closed her eyes, and a moment later, the stone circle disappeared with the fading echo of Brógán’s cry of protest.

Hayley didn’t care any longer. If this was a dream, she just hoped that this time she wouldn’t wake from it for a long, long time.

By dawn, Darragh was in agony. He was chilled to the bone, his ankle throbbed mercilessly, and he was cramped by the awkward position he’d maintained all night. He didn’t think Sorcha had fared much better, but she was stoic by nature — or perhaps just pigheaded. If she was suffering, she did not intend to complain about it.

They had waited in vain for the crowd around the stone circle to dissipate. There seemed to be a great deal of confusion down there about what had happened to Rónán and Hayley. When Darragh accessed Rónán’s memories of her, they left him feeling just as protective of her, just as anxious to see her safe.

What he hadn’t bargained on was that the Gardaí were now treating a large part of the golf course as a crime scene. The authorities of this realm had no explanation for the disappearance of Rónán, Hayley and Trása and it seemed they weren’t going to leave without one. All through the night, working under portable lights bright enough to blind anybody foolish enough to look directly at them, the Gardaí had scoured the area around the crash site and the old stone circle with its inexplicable burn marks, trying to figure out the answer to the mystery.

The strip of rough separating the fairways where Darragh and Sorcha were concealed was just outside the perimeter of the
area cordoned off by the Gardaí. Unless Darragh and Sorcha drew attention to themselves, they were safe for the time being. Unfortunately, they couldn’t go anywhere. They might — if the Gardaí were distracted — be able to get down out of the branches. They were a good fifty paces from the other strip of rough where the old stone circle lay. But with Darragh barely able to walk, it didn’t matter. They couldn’t go anywhere until the Gardaí and all their equipment and assorted hangers-on had left.

Despite the drizzling rain, which hadn’t let up all night, the Gardaí looked like they were settling in for a good long stay.

Still, it had been entertaining to watch the shenanigans going on below them, which was useful, because if either of them fell asleep, they risked falling out of the tree. Although they’d only caught fleeting snatches of conversations, Darragh soon concluded the Gardaí were at a loss to explain what had happened. That amused him. All this so-called technology and they didn’t have the first clue about rift running.

He was bothered by the tone of their conversations, however. They seemed convinced that Rónán, with Trása as his accomplice, had kidnapped Hayley and had some nefarious purpose in mind for her. Their discussions often repeated the fear that the first forty-eight hours were critical if they hoped to find Hayley alive.

As daylight crept over the city, increasing their risk of discovery, the full extent of the carnage they’d wrought over the golf course became apparent. The fairways were scoured with deep tyre ruts, the greens gouged out by spinning wheels, the damage compounded further by the many other vehicles driving on to the course bringing Gardaí, search teams and the media, who’d set up a veritable war camp in the car park, waiting for news.

Just on dawn, a newcomer arrived. He climbed out of a Gardaí car that pulled up a few paces away from their tree. As soon as the woman who seemed to be directing the other Gardaí
spied him, she waved, finished her conversation with another Gardaí officer wearing white overalls, and came toward them. She walked across the rough, almost directly under Darragh’s feet, and stopped just inside the tree line and the meagre shelter it offered from the patchy rain.

‘What are you doing out of hospital?’ she asked the man. Darragh recognised him immediately. It was the Gardaí detective Rónán had called ‘Detective Pete’.

‘I’m fine, Inspector Duggan,’ he said. ‘It’s just a concussion.’

She frowned at him. ‘Then come back to work when you’re not concussed,’ she suggested, a little impatiently. The Gardaí inspector turned to walk away.

‘There were two of them!’ Pete said.

She stopped and looked at Pete. ‘We know. We caught him on CCTV at St Christopher’s. He had that girl with him. The one claiming to be Jack O’Righin’s granddaughter.’ The older woman frowned. ‘Now go home, Pete. You’re no good to me in your current condition and we’re going to need all hands on deck to save Hayley Boyle from these lunatics.’

‘I’m not talking about the girl. There were two Ren Kavanaughs.’

The inspector walked back beneath the trees to where Pete was standing and put a motherly hand on his shoulder. ‘Pete,’ she said, ‘it’s been a long night, and it’s not your fault he got away again. Go home, lad. Get some rest. We’ll keep you posted.’

‘I wasn’t seeing things, Inspector Duggan. Ren has a brother. An identical twin brother.’

‘You saw this alleged identical twin brother?’

Pete nodded. ‘Of course I saw him! He was driving the car they stole from me!’

‘Is he the one who knocked you out?’

‘No. That was the little bitch who popped up out of nowhere in the front seat and knocked me for six. But I swear, Inspector,
I’m not delusional. There’re two of them out there. We have to find them.’

The inspector nodded in agreement and then raised her hand and beckoned another Gardaí officer to her — the driver who had brought Pete to the golf course. When he hurried forward to see what she wanted, she turned to address him. ‘Take Detective Doherty home, please.’

‘But ma’am!’ Pete objected. ‘I’m not seeing things. You have to believe me! There
are
two of them!’

Inspector Duggan kept walking across the fairway to the stone circle, where she resumed giving orders to the Gardaí. Beneath the trees, Pete cursed angrily, but allowed his driver to escort him back to the car.

Darragh glanced at Sorcha, who’d watched the exchange with interest. ‘They don’t believe I exist,’ he whispered, smiling.

‘Excellent!’ Sorcha whispered back grumpily. ‘Then we can just jump down from here and walk away. They won’t see you if you don’t exist.’

Darragh understood Sorcha’s frustration. They would be here for a long while yet. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to push away the pain. He could ignore the cold and the cramping, but his ankle was pounding. What a terrible world this was where one could suffer so, and not have the ability to heal or be healed, by magic.

Not long after Pete was driven off, another car bounced across the fairway. This wasn’t a Gardaí car. Darragh recognised it from Rónán’s memories.

It was Kiva Kavanaugh’s Bentley.

Darragh signalled silently to Sorcha, who shifted slightly to get a better look. The appearance of the Bentley caused a frenzy among the waiting press, but the Gardaí charged with holding them back kept things under control. The car pulled up directly beneath the tree, as Pete’s car had. A uniformed man hurried out
from the driver’s side of the car and opened the passenger door. A moment later a slight woman wearing a tailored pants suit and wrapped in a luscious white fur coat emerged.

‘Who is that?’ Sorcha mouthed silently at Darragh.

‘Rónán’s adopted mother,’ he whispered back.

The woman turned to the uniformed man before they left the car, and hugged him briefly.

‘You wait here, Patrick,’ she ordered, clutching the man’s shoulder comfortingly. ‘I’ll speak to them. They’ll just stonewall you and tell you everything is fine.’

The chauffeur nodded and closed the door as Kiva marched across the wet ground. Darragh watched the woman with interest, his own observations overlaid by Rónán’s confused emotions.

Rónán’s feelings were a mishmash of affection and frustration, fondness and irritation for this woman. Kiva Kavanaugh was a generous and giving woman, but easily distracted, easily influenced, self-centred and she spent far too much of her time worrying about what the gossip magazines were writing about her.

Their real mother was nothing more than a vague memory, even for Darragh, so he was fascinated by this pseudo-mother he now shared with Rónán through their memories.
Is she the way out of this mess?
he wondered. He watched her gesticulate as she demanded answers from Inspector Duggan, who seemed rather put out that the actress had been allowed through the police barricades and onto the golf course.

‘Mother of God!’ a voice hissed below them. ‘Ren? Is that you?’

Alarmed, Darragh glanced down to find the man who’d been driving the Bentley staring up at them. Patrick, he recalled the man’s name was, a name accompanied by a warm feeling of trust and affection that rivalled, if not exceeded, Rónán’s affection for his mother.

But was this a man they could trust?

Darragh would know soon enough.

‘Don’t look up!’ Sorcha hissed at him angrily. ‘Someone might be watching!’

Patrick immediately looked away, which gave Darragh hope. If the man was planning to betray their presence, he could already have shouted out for the nearby Gardaí and they’d be swarming the tree as they spoke.

‘What have you done with my Hayley?’ Patrick called up to them in a loud whisper.

The question was critical, Darragh realised. This was Hayley’s father.

‘Nothing,’ he whispered loudly, scanning the people on the fairway for any indication their conversation had been noticed. ‘She’s fine.’

‘Then where the fuck is she, lad? And don’t give me any bullshit.’

Ah … that was the problem.
We sent her through a rift to another realm so her blindness could be healed by magic
, wasn’t going to get him very far.

‘I can explain,’ Darragh told him in a low voice. ‘But not here. Can you help us?’

Patrick risked a glance up at them. ‘Who’s yer one?’

‘A friend.’

‘She the one pretending to be old Jack’s kin?’

‘No.’

Patrick hesitated, thrusting his hands into his pockets, as he turned to look at Kiva. She was wagging her finger at Inspector Duggan, loudly demanding to know what the Gardaí had done to find her son and rescue her cousin’s daughter, because clearly this mystery girl nobody could identify was pulling all the strings and her poor Ren was just a dupe in her evil plan. Apparently, Kiva didn’t accept for a moment that Ren was responsible for
Hayley’s disappearance, even though by the sound of it, she’d seen the CCTV tapes from St Christopher’s already and was in no doubt as to the identity of the young woman’s kidnappers.

‘You promise me my girl’s not been hurt?’ Patrick asked after a time.

Darragh nodded. ‘I swear.’

Patrick looked around for a moment. ‘Can you get to the car park?’

‘We’d never make it,’ Sorcha said. ‘Darragh is injured.’

Patrick glanced up at her uncertainly. ‘Who?’

Darragh nearly fell out of the tree in shock when he clearly saw the chauffeur’s face for the first time. ‘I’ve sprained my ankle,’ he explained quickly. And then he turned to Sorcha and mouthed
Call me Ren
. There would be time later to explain who he really was.

Patrick debated the issue for a long, tense moment and then, with an air of studied nonchalance, walked casually to the back of the car, which was parked directly beneath the overhanging branch where they were concealed. He popped the trunk with the remote control and bent over the large empty compartment, pretending to fix something inside.

‘You reckon you can jump into the trunk?’ Patrick asked, glancing toward the car park. The media were desperately trying to get a shot of Kiva. The raised trunk offered a small and not very effective shield against their long, curious lenses. The trunk of the tree shielded them from the Gardaí around the stone circle.

‘What if someone sees us?’ Sorcha asked.

‘Then we’re all screwed, lassie.’

They didn’t have any time to quibble about it, in any case. Patrick was offering them a way out, although once they were in the trunk of the car — a trunk considerably larger than the one they’d confined Warren in — they would be at Patrick Boyle’s mercy.

Darragh had no choice but to trust Rónán’s feelings, and his own, about the dependability of this man. ‘Move back.’

Patrick did as he asked and Darragh turned to Sorcha. ‘You go first.’

She nodded and with a lithe grace that belied the cold night they’d spent cramped in the branches, she lowered herself down, landing in the Bentley’s trunk with hardly a sound.

They waited, holding their breath to see if anybody had noticed, but nobody raised the alarm. Kiva was still telling off Inspector Duggan. The press were still trying to get a shot of it, and the rest of the police were too intent on searching the ground for clues.

‘Okay, now your turn!’ Patrick hissed.

Darragh didn’t land nearly so silently or elegantly as Sorcha. As soon as he landed, however, Patrick started to close the trunk. Darragh managed to move around a little until he and Sorcha somehow managed to fit. It was then that Sorcha gasped as she spied Patrick’s face clearly for the first time.

‘Don’t know how long it’s gonna be before I can let you out, laddie,’ Patrick told them softly, as Darragh elbowed Sorcha sharply to warn her to remain silent. ‘Try not to make any noise.’

‘Thanks for this, Patrick.’

‘You can thank me, lad,’ Patrick Boyle told him with a frown, ‘by bringing back my girl.’ And then he slammed the trunk shut, and they were plunged into darkness.

Sorcha wiggled uncomfortably behind Darragh. It was cramped but blessedly dry and surprisingly warm.

‘Wonderful plan,
Leath tiarna
,’ she said softly. ‘We are now locked in the darkness at the mercy of the man who thinks you kidnapped his daughter.’

‘He won’t betray us,’ Darragh whispered back.

‘Why?’ He could hear the scepticism in her voice. ‘Because he looks like Amergin?’

He knew she’d seen it. That’s why she gasped. ‘Amergin took a magical oath to protect the Undivided. I believe that oath holds true for his
eileféin
.’

‘Amergin stole your brother from you and threw him through a rift with the express intention of sundering the Undivided at the behest of a
sídhe
,’ she reminded him, her body pressed against his like a sleeping lover.

‘But don’t you see?’ he asked softly, wishing there was room to turn and face her so he could explain what was suddenly so clear to him. And hoping there was nobody outside listening to them. ‘Amergin sent Rónán to his
eileféin.
Why would he do that?’