Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (24 page)

"Hey," he said with a smile, as he moved over towards her and touched her lightly on the arm. "It's too cold for sandals."

She grimaced slightly and his smile faded as he looked at her for a moment. He'd thought she had her arms crossed due to the chilly weather but on a second look, she seemed to be holding her stomach. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," she said shaking her head. "Sorry."

"Whoa—hey—hey—it's alright," he said as she bent over and threw up. He moved beside her and held her hair back as she retched several times. Rubbing her back as she tried to stand upright, he said, "Let's get you inside."

Inside the cabin the fire was still smoldering from the night before and the small space was warm, the pleasant smell of burning hardwood thick in the air. He closed the door behind them and guided her over to the bed where she stepped out of her shoes and lay down. He pulled the covers over her and sat on the edge of the bed.

"What's going on?" he asked, as he stroked the side of her face. "Are you alright?"

"I'm okay," she said, tentatively. "I just felt sick all of a sudden. I don't know why."

They sat in silence for several minutes until he stood and retrieved a wet washcloth from the bathroom. He hoped that whatever had come over her had just been a short-term result of stress and not something more serious. With Constance not being accustomed to seeing any kind of violence, he worried about the long-term effects the events of the last two days might have on her.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" she said, as he laid the damp cloth over her forehead. "That's why you're getting the car ready." She wiped away tears as he looked down at her and nodded.

"Not until tomorrow, though. I wanted to get you someplace safe and you are, but this place isn't set up for long-term living."

"You say that like we're never going to be able to go home, like we're just going to have to vanish forever. Declan, we can't just go away forever. What about my family? What will my parents do if I just go missing?"

"Hey, it'll be grand. It'll be grand," he said reassuringly. "No one's going missing. We just had to get out of there and get to a safe location where I could think this thing through, come up with some kind of a plan."

2:47 p.m. Eastern Time

Intersection of Rts. 92 & 60

White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

"I don't like it," Constance said, as she reached over from the passenger side of the Mercedes and touched his cheek lightly.

"Aye, I know," Declan said, as he felt her hand on his freshly shaven face. "I'll grow it back soon."

They had waited awhile for whatever had been ailing her to pass and had then prepared for a quick trip into the town that lay about forty minutes south. He had stored a lot of survival supplies in the cabin, but he didn't think the situation they found themselves in was quite that extreme. They could risk coming out for some creature comforts and real food.

She forced a smile. "Just one of the many changes I'm going to have to get used to, I guess."

She reached for the door handle and pulled it, then opened the car door.

"Take this," he said, withdrawing a small wad of bills from his coat pocket and handing it to her. "No cards, only cash for now. I'll be next door." He pointed in the direction of a small public library on the opposite end of the parking lot.

Constance made a face as she took the money before closing the door and disappearing into the entrance of the small grocery store. Declan watched through the large glass windows as she took a shopping cart and moved past the cash registers into the aisles. Wearing a burgundy knit beanie and heavy winter coat she stood out a bit, but the air outside was still cold enough that no one would think too much of it. While Constance felt the cold, the garb was intended more as a disguise. He wasn't sure yet, but he had a feeling that pictures of both of them were probably being displayed in the media. Unless the whole thing had somehow been covered up by the people who had tried to kill them—and he couldn't imagine anyone involved with Ruslan Baktayev being that powerful—you didn't witness a bombing and an assassination and then kill four people without attracting some attention.

He put the Mercedes into gear and coasted through the lot to the other end, where he backed the car into an empty space and got out. With his beard shaved off, a heavy coat and a West Virginia Mountaineers baseball cap on his head, he was sure that no one besides the most astute of observers would be able to recognize him from any photos that were being circulated. He climbed the four concrete steps and pulled the door to the library open.

Inside, the building smelled like aged paper. Two librarians looked up from a circulation desk as he entered, one saying, "Hello," with a halfhearted smile before returning to the stack of books in front of her. He quickly surveyed the room and made a note of the handful of people inside, most of them located near a bank of computers along the rear wall and none of them paying attention to the fact that someone had entered. He took a slip of paper from a basket marked
Computer Passes
and walked to an empty terminal at the end of the row. Logging in with the number and password on the slip of paper, he watched as the library's chosen search engine appeared on the screen. He scanned the page for a moment before his eyes fixed on a link near the top of the site's news feed.

Former bodyguard sought in connection with bombing; deaths of FBI agents and popular news personality
.

He read the headline again as a feeling of panic washed over him. Unconsciously, he shrugged his coat higher on his shoulders and pulled the baseball cap lower on his forehead as his mind began to race. He clicked on the link deftly and tapped his fingers on the mouse as he waited for the article to load. His body went rigid as he scanned the article, which contained two paragraphs that not only claimed the four men who had tried to kill him and his wife were undercover FBI agents, but also that he was being treated by the investigators as a person of interest in both the bombing and the assassination. He closed his eyes and willed himself to think clearly. Opening them again, he scrolled through the pictures in the article. They showed Abaddon Kafni and the remains of the C.H. Barton Center, plus there was a photo of him that had been taken in ninety-seven while he was a guest at a Massachusetts Correctional Institute. For once, he wished that he'd aged a little rougher than he had, as the fifteen-year-old photo still looked very recent. There was also an image of Constance from the Roanoke County Public School system's website where she'd worked for several years as a history teacher. In the article she was listed as being missing and wanted for questioning.

Clicking the red
X
at the top of the screen, he knew that he'd dramatically underestimated the men that were involved in covering up Abaddon Kafni's assassination at the hands of Ruslan Baktayev. While he'd known that he was facing a conspiracy, the extent of it was only now becoming clear. Whoever these people were, they had power and access beyond anything he'd imagined and they were trying to frame him for a crime he hadn't committed.

9:09 p.m. Eastern Time – Sunday

County Route 141

Lake Sherwood, West Virginia

"Declan, you can't just go to the university and start asking questions," Constance said. "These people know who you are. They've blamed you for killing four cops."

"I don't have a choice, Connie. You said it yourself—we've built a life together and until two days ago we were very happy. Now, do you want to abandon that life, your family, our friends, our business, everything? Because that's the other option; we run and we don't stop running, ever."

"There's got to be someone out there somewhere that can help us."

Declan knew there were two people that he could reach out to that were guaranteed to help without asking too many questions or getting other people involved. Fintan McGuire and Shane O'Reilly were both men he'd served alongside in the IRA. Being the only three surviving members of the Black Shuck Unit, they'd made a promise to look after one another and to keep their true histories a closely guarded secret. As far as Declan was concerned, that was a connection he would make only as a last resort. All either man could possibly do was help them run and hide, and right now Declan didn't want to run and hide. He had another idea.

"Aye, there is someone who I think would help us," he said. "Asher Harel."

"Who?"

"He's a friend of Abe's and the former Prime Minister of Israel. That's the problem, though, I can't just pick up the phone and call him."

"What about Osman or Nazari? Could they reach him?"

"I've already tried. They're traveling to Jerusalem for Abe's funeral. I left a message. We'll just have to wait and see."

"Then we just wait. You can't go back to the university. There's going to be federal agents crawling all over that campus, Declan. These people have told everyone that those men last night were cops and that you killed them. There's no way you're even going to get close."

"The campus is closed down. Classes have been stopped for the rest of the week, at least. All I have to do is get in, put a few pieces together and then get out. Someone there has to know who that security company was."

"Even if you get the name of the company, what's that going to prove? I guarantee you the FBI or whoever is already all over them."

"Maybe they are and maybe they aren't. You forget we're not dealing with a normal investigation here. They've covered up what happened to us. They've kicked Kafni's people out of the country. Who knows what else they might have done. Now, I know that Seth Castellano was the voice on that phone the last night, but I can't prove it. I have to be able to prove it if we're going to have any chance of telling the world and returning to our normal lives. Even Asher Harel can't help us if we don't have any proof of what's going on. We'd still be running away."

Constance sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'd rather run away than be a widow."

"You're not going to be a widow," he said, taking a seat beside her on the bed. "And running isn't a realistic option. These people aren't going to stop. At best, even with Harel's help, we'd be in hiding for the rest of our lives."

"Why are they doing this to us? What did we do to them?"

"The other night when I talked to Abe before his speech, when you asked me what it was all about? He told me that Ruslan Baktayev had escaped. He told me as a warning so that I could take steps to make sure both you and I were safe. One of the men I killed when I was working for Abe, one of the men who tried to kill him, was Baktayev's brother. Abe played down the idea of Baktayev being able to come after either of us, but he wanted me to know just in case. Then last night, before the plane carrying Abe's body left, Asher Harel approached me. He told me Abe was concerned about Baktayev committing the kind of attack in America that he carried out in a town called Beslan in southern Russia, because of the circumstances surrounding his escape from prison."

"What kind of attack?"

"Taking a school full of children hostage and holding them until his demands are met, only his demands can't be met. On American soil it would be a suicide mission and Baktayev knows that."

"So he'd kill the hostages before the police killed him?"

Declan nodded. "Aye, and whoever these people are, Abe was right, they've got to be the same people that got Baktayev out of jail. They want him to commit this attack and they want to keep his presence in this country quiet until he does. That's the only reason I can think of that anyone would have to try to harm us. Because we know Baktayev is the one who killed Abe, not just some random extremist like they're pushing in the media."

"Declan, I work in a school," she said. "Why would anyone in this country want to help terrorists kill children?"

"In Russia the Beslan attack was used by the government as a major power-grab and a lot of people have suggested that the government either organized it themselves or at least knew about it in advance, but allowed it to happen regardless."

"So whoever these people are they want to use this attack to gain power and Castellano is working for them?"

"Apparently so. Castellano's the link to finding them, but I can't just walk up to him and stick a gun in his face. I'd never even get close. But if I can find out who those men last night were I'd have something to work with, a lead to follow. The vehicles they were driving were just like the ones the security company at the Barton Center had, both the SUV and the sedan. They have to have been working for that company and that's where I need to start looking."

"But if that company is involved and you go there, they'll try to kill you again. What if you're not so lucky this time?"

He shook his head and smiled. "I may be Irish, but it's like you said last night, it wasn't luck that saved us the first time around."