Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (21 page)

She had asked the same questions at least twice in the last several minutes and the same quiver was still present in her voice when she talked. The look on her face spoke volumes about her frame of mind. She was afraid and she had every reason to be.

"Oh, there's definitely more of them," Declan said, as he looked at the cell phone he'd taken from the heavily-damaged SUV that had attacked him on his way home. He and his wife had been parked at a gas station on the corner of West Virginia State Routes 60 and 92 for half an hour, ever since the phone had rang, a male caller on the other end. "Those guys weren't acting alone. The ones who came after me talked about someone paying them to be there."

"Paying them to be there? You mean they were hired to kill us? By who?"

He could tell by her voice that his wife was nearly at the point of hysterics.

"I don't know, but I suspect that was one of them that just called."

He picked up the phone and flipped it open. Hitting the green "send" button again, he lifted the phone to his ear. An electronic voice immediately picked up the line and repeated the same message he had heard when he'd tried to call the number back three previous times.
The TelPay Wireless user you have dialed is not available and has not setup a voicemail account. Please try your call again later.

He closed the phone and tossed it onto the dashboard. The first time he had called it the number had rung busy, but each time after the electronic message had picked up. He wasn't familiar with the company, TelPay, but he suspected it was one of the many prepaid wireless services that could be found in just about every convenience store or grocery chain in the United States. The only clue he had was the number's area code, 434, and that meant the phone had likely been purchased somewhere in Central Virginia and that the person using it was located there as well.

"Do you have any service on your phone?" he asked, as Constance sniffed away new tears.

She reached down to the tan leather handbag that sat on the floorboard between her feet and pulled out a dark red Samsung smartphone. "Two bars," she said.

He reached out and took hold of the phone, allowing his hand to touch hers softly for a moment.

"Hey," he said with a quick smile and a comforting look. "I'm not going to let anything happen to us, okay?"

She wiped her face and nodded as he took the phone from her hand and thumbed the display. Opening the android phone's web browser to the Google home page, he flipped it sideways and typed “TelPay” into the search engine. Moments later the search engine returned the page of a prepaid wireless provider based in Chula Vista, California, confirming his suspicions.

"Damn."

"What? What is it?" Constance asked, her head snapping up to look at him.

"Nothing," he said, raising his hands slowly, hoping to calm her startled movements. "The phone is from a prepaid wireless service, that's all."

"What does that mean?"

He shrugged. "It just means that the caller didn't sign a contract when they bought the phone. The service was paid for in advance which usually means the buyer either has bad credit or wants to remain anonymous for some reason."

"So there's no way the police can find out who it is that's after us?" she asked rhetorically.

Declan nodded. "Aye, that's what it means."

"There's got to be someone we can call, someone that can help."

Declan nodded. "Yeah, maybe. But if we call them we have to explain all of this, and we don't have time for that right now."

"Why don't you want to explain it, Declan? Tell me! Someone tried to kill you! People go to the police when that happens, they don't run away and hide!"

"So you've said."

"Stop saying that!" She stomped her foot hard against the floorboard.

"Look, we've covered this. I'm not going to anyone until I know you're safe. We don't know who these people are and we don't know who's involved."

Running directly to the police was a typical civilian response and in most cases it made sense. Most of the murders in the United States were committed by jealous lovers or enraged spouses and going straight to the authorities was the right thing to do, but not in this situation. It wasn't a coincidence that Abaddon Kafni had been killed the night before and that now someone was trying to kill the only people who had been within a few hundred yards of where he'd died. Declan was certain there was more to what was happening than could be plainly seen. What he needed to do was to get his wife to a safe place where he wouldn't have to worry about protecting her if someone came at him again. She may not agree with what he was doing, but she didn't have to – as long as she was alive.

"Look, I already know these phones can't be tracked down very easily. That's why people use them. I'm not trying to hide from the police; I just want to make sure you're safe. You have to believe me when I say this....I've never experienced a worse feeling than I did tonight, driving home knowing there were people that could be hurting you at that very moment. I won't risk that again."

Constance's expression softened.

"I just want you to be safe," he said, continuing to drive the point home that what he was doing was for her own good, "and then I'll go to the police and start trying to figure this whole thing out. You didn't see anything so there's no reason for them to talk to you anyways. There's no reason that you can't be holed up somewhere for a few days." In actuality, he had no intention of going to the police. While he hadn't told his wife, he'd recognized the voice on the phone. Picking up on the croaky sounding Creole accent, he knew the caller had been ASAC Seth Castellano; the police, for all intents and purposes.

"If these people can find our house and can find you when you're driving along a road then why can't they find a cabin in the woods?"

"Because it doesn't belong to us and no one knows we're going there," Declan said, although he knew the statement wasn't entirely accurate. In fact the cabin they were going to, which was still another thirty miles away, did belong to him. He'd bought it several years ago shortly after they'd been married, and had been preparing it over the last few years as an emergency shelter. He had, however, been very careful as to how the cabin was owned and his name didn't appear on any of the paperwork. Instead, it was owned by what was commonly called a dummy corporation, this one based in the Grand Cayman Islands. Without some serious international investigation backed up by legal proceedings, its ownership would be impossible to determine.

“Without powerful connections,” he continued, as he shifted the sports car into gear and left the gas station's parking lot, “it would take a very long time for someone to trace us to this location."

10:46 p.m. Eastern Time – Saturday

County Route 141

Lake Sherwood, West Virginia

Declan had insisted Constance stay in the warm car while he got the fire going. Now that the place was beginning to warm up, he escorted her inside and she stood still in the center of the room, taking in the rustic decor. After helping her out of her coat, Declan pushed a wooden Adirondack chair to the edge of the stone hearth so she could sit by the fireplace.She took her seat gingerly, as if she was being asked to sit on a rusty nail. He watched for a moment, and then moved to the galley kitchen at the right side of the cabin to begin a pot of coffee.

Standing on the edge of a lake at the end of a half mile dirt road that was barely passable without four wheel drive, the cabin's sturdy log construction was testament to a bygone era of rugged craftsmanship. Inside, it consisted of one large room, a small bathroom the only area with privacy. Directly across from the front door a stone fireplace jutted out from the back wall and tonight, for the first time in years, smoke spewed from the chimney.

The lake was situated ten miles west of the Virginia / West Virginia state line, in the Monongahela National Forest northeast of the tiny, unincorporated town of Lowry's Mill. With nearly twenty miles of one and a half lane road between it and anything closely resembling civilization, the cabin was as safe a place as someone wanting to hide out would find. Whether you were a dedicated homesteader, a paranoid survivalist, or someone delusional enough to want a hideout from the zombie apocalypse, you'd be hard pressed to find a more remote location and still be within driving distance of a few modern amenities. For Declan, the place was all about preparation.

Declan had bought most of the property he owned at auction, after a bank or some lien holding agency had foreclosed on it. In the case of the cabin, its original owner had been a retired widower who'd moved there to take up gold prospecting in the nearby creek beds after a life of working on aircraft for the United States government. The man had drowned while trying to retrieve some mining equipment during a storm and since he had no relatives the Greenbrier County government had ended up owning the property. By law, they'd put it up for auction to the highest bidder. Declan had shown up at the county courthouse despite a snowstorm and in a small bidding war between himself and two area residents, he'd paid twice what the property was worth.

Leaning against the green laminated counter top in the galley kitchen, he watched his wife as she stared into the fire. Here he was sure they would be safe for however long they needed to be, but living in a place this small and this secluded was out of the question long term. The presence of two obvious outsiders in the small town of Lowry's Mill would surely bring attention and eventually someone would put two and two together. He needed to come up with a plan, but it could wait until morning. Right now, he had something else on his mind.

Constance sat still, her hands in her lap, staring into the flames as they licked the top of the stone fireplace. Declan had no idea what she was thinking. Despite the brief argument in the parking lot of the gas station, few words had passed between them on the journey from Roanoke. He supposed she was just trying to take it all in. Having been raised in a devoutly Christian home, he knew that her experience with violence likely amounted to what she had seen on television. Seeing the bodies of the two men who had been following her had been a shock, for sure. He hated the idea of burdening her with even more information tonight, especially the revelation that he'd lied to her for nearly a decade about who he was and where he came from, but on the drive he'd worked things over in his mind. He'd tried to convince himself that there was no need to tell her, no need to cause her further pain and risk driving a huge wedge between them in their relationship, but ultimately he'd decided it was time that he came clean about his full history with Abaddon Kafni. If she was going to trust him throughout this situation, she needed to know everything.

"You know...I...uhh...I want to tell you more about how I know Abe and how all of this came about," he said, as he walked over and handed her a cup of hot coffee.

She looked briefly up at him and then back to the fire, taking the cup without a word.

In the last twenty four hours he had reacquainted himself with a way of life he thought he'd left behind nearly two decades ago and had hoped he'd never have to revisit. He'd faced down six trained killers like an old pro, but telling his wife how he'd done it scared the hell out of him.

"I wish I could tell you that none of this was my fault. That somehow I just happened to get caught up in this. But the truth is that Abe and I go much further back than just working security for him when I first arrived in the States."

Constance looked up at him, her interest renewed. The expression on her face scared him; it was vacant with the slightest hint of'
what now?
in her eyes. Disappointment settled in his stomach and he couldn't avoid the feeling that he would never look the same in her eyes again, no matter what he did.

"I'm not from Galway in the Republic," he began. "I was born in a town called Ballygowan about twenty miles south of Belfast and I lived there until I was eleven."

"Northern Ireland?" she asked rhetorically.

"Aye, Northern Ireland, and my family weren't fisherman who had a bad bout of pneumonia and left me orphaned."

The look on her face told him that she knew what was coming. While most Americans had only a slight notion of the thirty year war in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, mostly from romanticized books and movies about the IRA, he knew that she was better educated on the subject. Not only was she married to someone from Ireland, but she also held a master's degree in history and had more than a passing interest in the British Isles. In fact, their first conversation had been about the subject when they had met at a book store just over nine years ago.

"My da' was Paul McIver, elected MP of the North Down constituency located just south of Belfast. He and my mum were killed in 1980 by men linked to a loyalist paramilitary group called the Ulster Volunteer Force."

Tears formed in Constance's eyes, sliding slowly down her cheeks. She knew exactly where he was going with this. For a moment it looked as if she might try to comfort him, but instead she buried her face in her hands without a word.