Hallowed ground, p.11
Hallowed Ground, page 11
A shrug. “I don’t know that I believe the claims made about her, but they are compelling.”
“Compelling how?”
“She found several missing children. A boy who disappeared on his way home from school. A girl who got lost in the backwater. And she warned of several powerful hurricanes, all of which occurred. According to LaVinia’s journals, Tillie could read both the past and the future, as well as tea leaves, people’s palms and Tarot cards.”
She sounded…wistful.
“You might not believe,” he said. “But you want to.”
“Non. I don’t chase castles in the air.”
“Who can say what’s possible?” he reminded her.
She shook her head. “And here I thought you were a practical man.”
“What’s more practical than recognizin’ you don’t know everythin’?”
“Point taken. Still, I find it hard to believe.”
“That’s because you haven’t had your experience yet.”
She looked at him. “My what?”
“Your experience.”
“And that would be…?”
“Something that happens and makes you realize everythin’ you thought you knew is gobshite.”
“You aren’t serious.”
“I had mine when I was ten.”
“Ten?”
“My cousin Jamie and I were explorin’ an old, abandoned gamin’ hell down by the docks. Lots of dark, angry energy. We were on the top floor when we heard someone cryin’.”
Ellie turned toward him in her seat. “Crying?”
“At first, we thought maybe it was Jamie’s little sister Mellie. She was always followin’ us. We figured she’d gotten lost in the place, so we started lookin’ for her. We went room by room through the whole place, and there wasn’t a soul there but for us and the rats. Then we realized there was a basement.”
Rain began to fall, streaming down the windshield.
“And then?” Ellie prompted.
“And then we played rock paper scissors to decide which of us had to go first.”
“Because you were scared?”
“Of course, we were scared. We were ten, and it was an unholy place.”
She went still. “Unholy?”
“Evil has a stink. A malignant presence you recognize when you feel it.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I lost, so I had to go first. All we had was a cigarette lighter to light the way, but it was better than nothin’. So, we went down the stairs and found ourselves in a huge, damp underground room. The front half was filled with old whiskey barrels and broken furniture. And a couple of cells.”
“Jail cells?”
“Aye. Steel bars and all. One of them had a bucket and a burnt mattress stained with blood. We almost turned around at the sight of it, but…”
“But?”
“We could still hear her cryin’.”
Ellie rubbed at her arms. “If you’re pulling my leg, I might have to shoot you.”
He smiled. “By then, I think we both knew it wasn’t Mellie that was cryin’, but neither of us cared to point it out. We walked further and found ourselves surrounded by a sea of cots. Must have been at least a hundred of ‘em, all laid out in long rows, like a hospital. There were still blankets on some of them. I remember thinkin’ a lot of people died here. You could still feel them. And you could still smell the blood. It was all over the floor. Giant brown stains, too much for a man to survive.”
“What do you think it was?”
“I don’t know. Not sure I want to. We were standin’ there, starin’ at the place when a door suddenly slammed. Scared the shite out of us. We turned to run, and there she was.”
Beside him, Ellie shivered.
“She was no more than five or six. So tiny and thin, her skin white as paper. Big black holes where her eyes should’ve been. She wore a red dress—fancy, satin, with a black sash—but no shoes, and she was cryin’ like her heart was broken. We could see right through her. Help me, she cried. Please, help me.”
“Did you help her?”
“Hell, no, we ran like our pants were on fire.”
Ellie rubbed her arms again, and her gaze met his, her eyes as dark as the clouds that gathered around them. “Do you promise it really happened?”
“Aye,” he said gravely.
“And you never found out who she was?”
“Nay. We were kids; we didn’t know where to look. And our parents could’ve cared less.”
“You shouldn’t have even been there,” she said sternly.
“No one cared where I was.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her. He was the one who kept trying to define them, and if he was going to use the word “friend,” that involved trust.
And sharing things, all of his bits and pieces laid bare for her to inspect, which made him feel…uneasy. Wary of what she might think. He wasn’t ashamed of who he was, but there were plenty in the world who judged him for it.
The thought that she might be one of them was deeply unsettling.
“My Da was IRA—Irish Republican Army,” he said. “All he cared about was raisin’ a good little soldier for the cause. Ten was too young to be of use. But when I turned twelve, he taught me bomb makin’. I guess he decided that I—”
“Twelve,” Ellie cut in sharply.
He shrugged. “That was life with the IRA. And I liked blowin’ things up. Problem was, I didn’t understand it wouldn’t be just ‘things’ that went boom. When I was fourteen, he used something I built to murder a man. I told him I would never build him another, and he gave me this.” He pointed to the scar that halved his face. “Then he kicked me out. It was rough for a while, but I survived. A few months later, I met my wife, Gilly, and—”
“Time out,’ Ellie said. “You built bombs?”
The careful neutrality in her voice pricked at his nerves. But he said, “Still do occasionally.”
And she stared at him.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” he told her, “and I’m no bloody terrorist. People are never my target. But there’s plenty of things out there that need destroyin’.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Are there?”
“This from a woman with a murder room in her house and a thirst for blood in her heart?”
“That’s not the same.”
“If you say so.”
She only shook her head. “And your maman allowed this?”
“My mam was an addict. As long as she had her fix, she didn’t give a damn what I did.”
A moment of silence punctuated that statement.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie murmured.
“She wasn’t bad,” he said. “She was lost. I got by.”
“It was just you?”
“Mostly. I had Jack, but his Da took him away to America when I was a wee lad. Didn’t catch up with him again until Gilly died.”
“He’s the one…who died?”
“Aye.”
Another moment of silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
And she was; he could hear it.
“I miss the hell out of him,” Sean told her. “But I felt better once I’d avenged him.”
“Avenged him,” she echoed.
“I blew the weapons manufacturin’ plant he was workin’ to expose when he died to hell, and killed the fucker who’d murdered him.” Technically, it was Rafe who’d shot the man that killed Jack, but Sean had been there at the moment of his death, and it was enough. “That’s how I know you can’t do what you’re plannin’ on doin’ alone.”
She turned in her seat to stare at him. “Tell me about Gilly.”
He’d expected her to pick up the gauntlet he’d tossed down. But apparently, she wanted to talk about him.
“Me and Gilly met on the streets of Belfast,” he said. “She’d lost her ma to breast cancer—the same shite that killed her—and chose the street to bein’ a ward of the government. We ended up in the same soup line, and it was love at first sight. Mick was born nine months later.”
“You were just children.”
He shrugged. “We’d both raised ourselves, so raisin’ Mick wasn’t a stretch. We got married two years later and had eight good years together before she got sick. She fought long and hard to stay with us, but in the end, she had to go.”
Ellie smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from her dress. “My husband was killed by sniper fire in Afghanistan six months after Ethan was taken.”
Sharing. Finally. “He was a soldier?”
“A Marine.”
“You married young, then?”
“When I was seventeen; I wanted out of Fancy’s house, and I’d known Pascal my whole life. It seemed like serendipity. And then Ethan came along, and it felt perfect.”
Silence fell. The tires sliced through the rain; on the horizon, clouds boiled toward them as the trees swayed with the force of the wind. The air was thick and damp, and heat lightning lit the sky in blinding white flashes.
Sean inhaled deeply, and the scent of jasmine flooded through him.
Ellie.
The warmth of her beckoned, so close he could reach out and touch. Her presence stroked over him in a way he couldn’t ignore, no matter his best intentions.
“He blamed me,” she said softly.
Sean looked at her. “For Ethan?”
“He said I should have never left him alone. Not even for a minute.”
“Spoken like a man who never spent any time parenting.”
Ellie gave him a startled look. “Yes. He was on tour for most of Ethan’s life. He wasn’t even there for his birth.”
“It’s an easy thing, to think you know what it is to raise a child.”
“He wasn’t the only one who blamed me.”
Considering the prime suspect in any child’s disappearance was first and foremost that child’s parents, her falling under suspicion wasn’t a surprise. Still, it irritated him. Anyone who knew Ellie—really knew her—would know she wasn’t capable of killing her child.
Should know, if they had a lick of sense.
What must she have endured when Ethan disappeared? The suspicion, the slander.
The doubt.
“The sheriff said he’d just run off and gotten himself lost in the swamp, but I knew better. I knew someone took him. Someone who was watching and waiting for the perfect moment. Someone who planned the whole thing.”
Her certainty made a chill move through Sean.
“When the cairn appeared,” she continued, “I knew I was right.”
“The cairn?” he repeated.
She blinked as if realizing she’d revealed something she hadn’t meant to. And for a moment, she was quiet, and Sean wanted to shake her until the words came loose. But then she sighed and said, “When I was eight, a boy named Robert Benoit disappeared from the parish. At first, everyone thought he was just lost, but three days after he went missing, a cairn appeared in the town square. It was painted in blood, and wrapped around it was the St. Christopher’s medal Robert had been wearing. The Sheriff said it was a practical joke. He dismissed it, and they never found a body, so the question of what happened to Robert was never answered. Then, seven years later, another child was taken.”
Thunder cracked with abrupt, unexpected violence, and the rain began to fall in thick sheets that hammered the windshield and slid down in a watery wave.
“Her name was Lulu Fontaine,” Ellie continued quietly. “She’d been stolen from the backseat of her maman’s car in the grocery store parking lot. Three days later, another cairn appeared, red with blood and wrapped in the lace from the dress she’d been wearing.”
Sean’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
She wasn’t dealing with a kidnapper. She was dealing with a killer.
A serial killer.
Bloody fucking hell.
“The Sheriff tried to write it off as another practical joke, but Lulu’s mother called her brother, who worked for the New Orleans police department, and he called the FBI. They came in and scoured the whole parish. Interviewed people, stirred up trouble in the backwater, made the Sheriff look like the dunce he was. But they never came up with any viable suspects. And there were no bodies. No body, no crime. Even with the cairns. So they left, and it all went back to how it was. Except that people knew a murderer lived among them. Seven more years passed…and then Ethan was taken.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. No wonder she had a murder room.
“I call him Voleur. It means ‘thief’.” She stared at the rain that streamed down the window beside her. “Only four more days until he returns. But this time, I’ll be waiting. Ready. And he will never take another child again.”
Sean felt sick; a heavy, leaden weight sat like a boulder on his chest. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. To realize that your son had been taken by a monster whose theft of the parish’s children had gone unchecked for years, a crime aided and abetted by a law enforcement officer whose job it was to protect the innocent and who’d chosen instead to do nothing—
Christ.
Sean was surprised she hadn’t killed someone.
“You’re sure the cairn was for Ethan?” he asked.
“Bathed in his blood.” A cold smile turned Ellie’s mouth, and again, his hands tightened on the steering wheel. “And crowned by the plastic bucket he was playing with when he disappeared.”
The weight on his chest grew. “You believe he’s dead?”
“I felt him die.”
Bile rose in his throat. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
She turned and looked at him. “I’ve watched you with Mick. You would know, too.”
The thought of it made him want to vomit. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry this happened to you, Ellie.”
She said nothing.
“We’re goin’ to get him,” he promised softly, and he knew the ugly violence he felt was echoed in his voice.
“He’s mine,” she said coldly.
“I can live with that. But you’re not takin’ him alone.”
“I don’t want your help.”
“I didn’t hear myself ask.”
“I told you: you don’t owe me. And this isn’t your fight.”
“Your fight is my fight. That’s how the whole friendship thing works.”
“A week ago, we didn’t even know each other!”
“So? That was then, this is now.”
“Why? Because I saved Mick? I don’t want or need your payback.”
Sean realized she was angry. “Why not? Why is lettin’ me help you such a bad thing?”
She only shook her head.
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
“We’re even,” she insisted. “You helped get Mae, so we’re even.”
“Bollocks!”
“Why are you so determined to do this?”
His heart was beating too hard again. “Because I have to help you.”
“But why?”
“The hell if I know!”
Her brows rose.
“I trust my instincts,” he grated, unable to explain something he didn’t understand himself. “And they’re tellin’ me I need to help you!”
For a long time, she didn’t speak, and Sean drove them through the thickening rain, battling the urge to re-state his case because he knew she would argue.
That’s all the bloody woman ever did.
But finally, she said, “That’s how I felt about Mae.”
And a relieved breath whispered from him. “Then you understand.”
“No,” she said. “But I’ll stop arguing.” She paused. “For now.”
“Good. Then it’s agreed. We’ll deal with Voleur together.”
She only sat back in her seat and stared at him. “He’s dangerous, you know.”
“Aye.” Sean smiled coldly. “I’m dangerous, too.”
thirteen
The auction was held below a well-known restaurant on the north side of the city. The entryway sat on the outside of the building and was accessed via a steep set of stairs guarded by two burly men who eyed Sean with open, unhidden suspicion.
Ellie didn’t know if it was the tats, the scar, or the canaille smile he gave to them.
But when he told them his name, they were allowed entrance and soon found themselves strolling through a surprisingly elegant room, the stolen contents of which were staggering in value.
There were paintings and statues, tapestries and stunning bronzes. Manuscripts, jewels, pottery; skeletons of creatures long dead and giant Ming vases. It was a stunning, audacious display, one Ellie was having a hard time wrapping her head around. She’d seen a fair amount of criminal activity in her work as a PI, but she’d never seen anything like this.
Sean wandered through the crowd beside her, his hand tucked firmly into the small of her back in a display that felt proprietary, but considering his apparent fondness for friendship, was probably just him being polite. And maybe a little protective, because when she tried to put some distance between them, he stepped closer.
“We stick together,” he murmured into her ear. “This is a dangerous crowd.”
“I don’t need you to hold my hand,” she told him.
“Look around the room. What do you see?”
Mafia kingpins; cartel heads; tribal gang leaders. Chinese billionaires and Russian oligarchs.
“Touché,” she said. “But I’m a big girl.”
His breath touched her, and awareness skittered across her skin. “Just stay close.”
As opposed to what?
Ellie wasn’t stupid. Attracting attention in this den of lions was not on her to-do list, but neither did she want Sean hovering over her.
His closeness was subterfuge, but it felt real, and that was dangerous.
I’ve not met anyone who tempted me since Gilly died. I wasn’t prepared for you, and I’ve handled it badly. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.
It did mean that. He just wasn’t willing to acknowledge it.
Not that it mattered. In the end, she didn’t have friendship to give. She barely remembered what it was to have a friend, let alone be one. It had been too long; too much had happened.
And she’d changed in ways no one could consider good.
So regardless of his plans, hers included keeping her distance.
“Compelling how?”
“She found several missing children. A boy who disappeared on his way home from school. A girl who got lost in the backwater. And she warned of several powerful hurricanes, all of which occurred. According to LaVinia’s journals, Tillie could read both the past and the future, as well as tea leaves, people’s palms and Tarot cards.”
She sounded…wistful.
“You might not believe,” he said. “But you want to.”
“Non. I don’t chase castles in the air.”
“Who can say what’s possible?” he reminded her.
She shook her head. “And here I thought you were a practical man.”
“What’s more practical than recognizin’ you don’t know everythin’?”
“Point taken. Still, I find it hard to believe.”
“That’s because you haven’t had your experience yet.”
She looked at him. “My what?”
“Your experience.”
“And that would be…?”
“Something that happens and makes you realize everythin’ you thought you knew is gobshite.”
“You aren’t serious.”
“I had mine when I was ten.”
“Ten?”
“My cousin Jamie and I were explorin’ an old, abandoned gamin’ hell down by the docks. Lots of dark, angry energy. We were on the top floor when we heard someone cryin’.”
Ellie turned toward him in her seat. “Crying?”
“At first, we thought maybe it was Jamie’s little sister Mellie. She was always followin’ us. We figured she’d gotten lost in the place, so we started lookin’ for her. We went room by room through the whole place, and there wasn’t a soul there but for us and the rats. Then we realized there was a basement.”
Rain began to fall, streaming down the windshield.
“And then?” Ellie prompted.
“And then we played rock paper scissors to decide which of us had to go first.”
“Because you were scared?”
“Of course, we were scared. We were ten, and it was an unholy place.”
She went still. “Unholy?”
“Evil has a stink. A malignant presence you recognize when you feel it.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I lost, so I had to go first. All we had was a cigarette lighter to light the way, but it was better than nothin’. So, we went down the stairs and found ourselves in a huge, damp underground room. The front half was filled with old whiskey barrels and broken furniture. And a couple of cells.”
“Jail cells?”
“Aye. Steel bars and all. One of them had a bucket and a burnt mattress stained with blood. We almost turned around at the sight of it, but…”
“But?”
“We could still hear her cryin’.”
Ellie rubbed at her arms. “If you’re pulling my leg, I might have to shoot you.”
He smiled. “By then, I think we both knew it wasn’t Mellie that was cryin’, but neither of us cared to point it out. We walked further and found ourselves surrounded by a sea of cots. Must have been at least a hundred of ‘em, all laid out in long rows, like a hospital. There were still blankets on some of them. I remember thinkin’ a lot of people died here. You could still feel them. And you could still smell the blood. It was all over the floor. Giant brown stains, too much for a man to survive.”
“What do you think it was?”
“I don’t know. Not sure I want to. We were standin’ there, starin’ at the place when a door suddenly slammed. Scared the shite out of us. We turned to run, and there she was.”
Beside him, Ellie shivered.
“She was no more than five or six. So tiny and thin, her skin white as paper. Big black holes where her eyes should’ve been. She wore a red dress—fancy, satin, with a black sash—but no shoes, and she was cryin’ like her heart was broken. We could see right through her. Help me, she cried. Please, help me.”
“Did you help her?”
“Hell, no, we ran like our pants were on fire.”
Ellie rubbed her arms again, and her gaze met his, her eyes as dark as the clouds that gathered around them. “Do you promise it really happened?”
“Aye,” he said gravely.
“And you never found out who she was?”
“Nay. We were kids; we didn’t know where to look. And our parents could’ve cared less.”
“You shouldn’t have even been there,” she said sternly.
“No one cared where I was.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her. He was the one who kept trying to define them, and if he was going to use the word “friend,” that involved trust.
And sharing things, all of his bits and pieces laid bare for her to inspect, which made him feel…uneasy. Wary of what she might think. He wasn’t ashamed of who he was, but there were plenty in the world who judged him for it.
The thought that she might be one of them was deeply unsettling.
“My Da was IRA—Irish Republican Army,” he said. “All he cared about was raisin’ a good little soldier for the cause. Ten was too young to be of use. But when I turned twelve, he taught me bomb makin’. I guess he decided that I—”
“Twelve,” Ellie cut in sharply.
He shrugged. “That was life with the IRA. And I liked blowin’ things up. Problem was, I didn’t understand it wouldn’t be just ‘things’ that went boom. When I was fourteen, he used something I built to murder a man. I told him I would never build him another, and he gave me this.” He pointed to the scar that halved his face. “Then he kicked me out. It was rough for a while, but I survived. A few months later, I met my wife, Gilly, and—”
“Time out,’ Ellie said. “You built bombs?”
The careful neutrality in her voice pricked at his nerves. But he said, “Still do occasionally.”
And she stared at him.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” he told her, “and I’m no bloody terrorist. People are never my target. But there’s plenty of things out there that need destroyin’.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Are there?”
“This from a woman with a murder room in her house and a thirst for blood in her heart?”
“That’s not the same.”
“If you say so.”
She only shook her head. “And your maman allowed this?”
“My mam was an addict. As long as she had her fix, she didn’t give a damn what I did.”
A moment of silence punctuated that statement.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie murmured.
“She wasn’t bad,” he said. “She was lost. I got by.”
“It was just you?”
“Mostly. I had Jack, but his Da took him away to America when I was a wee lad. Didn’t catch up with him again until Gilly died.”
“He’s the one…who died?”
“Aye.”
Another moment of silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
And she was; he could hear it.
“I miss the hell out of him,” Sean told her. “But I felt better once I’d avenged him.”
“Avenged him,” she echoed.
“I blew the weapons manufacturin’ plant he was workin’ to expose when he died to hell, and killed the fucker who’d murdered him.” Technically, it was Rafe who’d shot the man that killed Jack, but Sean had been there at the moment of his death, and it was enough. “That’s how I know you can’t do what you’re plannin’ on doin’ alone.”
She turned in her seat to stare at him. “Tell me about Gilly.”
He’d expected her to pick up the gauntlet he’d tossed down. But apparently, she wanted to talk about him.
“Me and Gilly met on the streets of Belfast,” he said. “She’d lost her ma to breast cancer—the same shite that killed her—and chose the street to bein’ a ward of the government. We ended up in the same soup line, and it was love at first sight. Mick was born nine months later.”
“You were just children.”
He shrugged. “We’d both raised ourselves, so raisin’ Mick wasn’t a stretch. We got married two years later and had eight good years together before she got sick. She fought long and hard to stay with us, but in the end, she had to go.”
Ellie smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from her dress. “My husband was killed by sniper fire in Afghanistan six months after Ethan was taken.”
Sharing. Finally. “He was a soldier?”
“A Marine.”
“You married young, then?”
“When I was seventeen; I wanted out of Fancy’s house, and I’d known Pascal my whole life. It seemed like serendipity. And then Ethan came along, and it felt perfect.”
Silence fell. The tires sliced through the rain; on the horizon, clouds boiled toward them as the trees swayed with the force of the wind. The air was thick and damp, and heat lightning lit the sky in blinding white flashes.
Sean inhaled deeply, and the scent of jasmine flooded through him.
Ellie.
The warmth of her beckoned, so close he could reach out and touch. Her presence stroked over him in a way he couldn’t ignore, no matter his best intentions.
“He blamed me,” she said softly.
Sean looked at her. “For Ethan?”
“He said I should have never left him alone. Not even for a minute.”
“Spoken like a man who never spent any time parenting.”
Ellie gave him a startled look. “Yes. He was on tour for most of Ethan’s life. He wasn’t even there for his birth.”
“It’s an easy thing, to think you know what it is to raise a child.”
“He wasn’t the only one who blamed me.”
Considering the prime suspect in any child’s disappearance was first and foremost that child’s parents, her falling under suspicion wasn’t a surprise. Still, it irritated him. Anyone who knew Ellie—really knew her—would know she wasn’t capable of killing her child.
Should know, if they had a lick of sense.
What must she have endured when Ethan disappeared? The suspicion, the slander.
The doubt.
“The sheriff said he’d just run off and gotten himself lost in the swamp, but I knew better. I knew someone took him. Someone who was watching and waiting for the perfect moment. Someone who planned the whole thing.”
Her certainty made a chill move through Sean.
“When the cairn appeared,” she continued, “I knew I was right.”
“The cairn?” he repeated.
She blinked as if realizing she’d revealed something she hadn’t meant to. And for a moment, she was quiet, and Sean wanted to shake her until the words came loose. But then she sighed and said, “When I was eight, a boy named Robert Benoit disappeared from the parish. At first, everyone thought he was just lost, but three days after he went missing, a cairn appeared in the town square. It was painted in blood, and wrapped around it was the St. Christopher’s medal Robert had been wearing. The Sheriff said it was a practical joke. He dismissed it, and they never found a body, so the question of what happened to Robert was never answered. Then, seven years later, another child was taken.”
Thunder cracked with abrupt, unexpected violence, and the rain began to fall in thick sheets that hammered the windshield and slid down in a watery wave.
“Her name was Lulu Fontaine,” Ellie continued quietly. “She’d been stolen from the backseat of her maman’s car in the grocery store parking lot. Three days later, another cairn appeared, red with blood and wrapped in the lace from the dress she’d been wearing.”
Sean’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
She wasn’t dealing with a kidnapper. She was dealing with a killer.
A serial killer.
Bloody fucking hell.
“The Sheriff tried to write it off as another practical joke, but Lulu’s mother called her brother, who worked for the New Orleans police department, and he called the FBI. They came in and scoured the whole parish. Interviewed people, stirred up trouble in the backwater, made the Sheriff look like the dunce he was. But they never came up with any viable suspects. And there were no bodies. No body, no crime. Even with the cairns. So they left, and it all went back to how it was. Except that people knew a murderer lived among them. Seven more years passed…and then Ethan was taken.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. No wonder she had a murder room.
“I call him Voleur. It means ‘thief’.” She stared at the rain that streamed down the window beside her. “Only four more days until he returns. But this time, I’ll be waiting. Ready. And he will never take another child again.”
Sean felt sick; a heavy, leaden weight sat like a boulder on his chest. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. To realize that your son had been taken by a monster whose theft of the parish’s children had gone unchecked for years, a crime aided and abetted by a law enforcement officer whose job it was to protect the innocent and who’d chosen instead to do nothing—
Christ.
Sean was surprised she hadn’t killed someone.
“You’re sure the cairn was for Ethan?” he asked.
“Bathed in his blood.” A cold smile turned Ellie’s mouth, and again, his hands tightened on the steering wheel. “And crowned by the plastic bucket he was playing with when he disappeared.”
The weight on his chest grew. “You believe he’s dead?”
“I felt him die.”
Bile rose in his throat. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
She turned and looked at him. “I’ve watched you with Mick. You would know, too.”
The thought of it made him want to vomit. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry this happened to you, Ellie.”
She said nothing.
“We’re goin’ to get him,” he promised softly, and he knew the ugly violence he felt was echoed in his voice.
“He’s mine,” she said coldly.
“I can live with that. But you’re not takin’ him alone.”
“I don’t want your help.”
“I didn’t hear myself ask.”
“I told you: you don’t owe me. And this isn’t your fight.”
“Your fight is my fight. That’s how the whole friendship thing works.”
“A week ago, we didn’t even know each other!”
“So? That was then, this is now.”
“Why? Because I saved Mick? I don’t want or need your payback.”
Sean realized she was angry. “Why not? Why is lettin’ me help you such a bad thing?”
She only shook her head.
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
“We’re even,” she insisted. “You helped get Mae, so we’re even.”
“Bollocks!”
“Why are you so determined to do this?”
His heart was beating too hard again. “Because I have to help you.”
“But why?”
“The hell if I know!”
Her brows rose.
“I trust my instincts,” he grated, unable to explain something he didn’t understand himself. “And they’re tellin’ me I need to help you!”
For a long time, she didn’t speak, and Sean drove them through the thickening rain, battling the urge to re-state his case because he knew she would argue.
That’s all the bloody woman ever did.
But finally, she said, “That’s how I felt about Mae.”
And a relieved breath whispered from him. “Then you understand.”
“No,” she said. “But I’ll stop arguing.” She paused. “For now.”
“Good. Then it’s agreed. We’ll deal with Voleur together.”
She only sat back in her seat and stared at him. “He’s dangerous, you know.”
“Aye.” Sean smiled coldly. “I’m dangerous, too.”
thirteen
The auction was held below a well-known restaurant on the north side of the city. The entryway sat on the outside of the building and was accessed via a steep set of stairs guarded by two burly men who eyed Sean with open, unhidden suspicion.
Ellie didn’t know if it was the tats, the scar, or the canaille smile he gave to them.
But when he told them his name, they were allowed entrance and soon found themselves strolling through a surprisingly elegant room, the stolen contents of which were staggering in value.
There were paintings and statues, tapestries and stunning bronzes. Manuscripts, jewels, pottery; skeletons of creatures long dead and giant Ming vases. It was a stunning, audacious display, one Ellie was having a hard time wrapping her head around. She’d seen a fair amount of criminal activity in her work as a PI, but she’d never seen anything like this.
Sean wandered through the crowd beside her, his hand tucked firmly into the small of her back in a display that felt proprietary, but considering his apparent fondness for friendship, was probably just him being polite. And maybe a little protective, because when she tried to put some distance between them, he stepped closer.
“We stick together,” he murmured into her ear. “This is a dangerous crowd.”
“I don’t need you to hold my hand,” she told him.
“Look around the room. What do you see?”
Mafia kingpins; cartel heads; tribal gang leaders. Chinese billionaires and Russian oligarchs.
“Touché,” she said. “But I’m a big girl.”
His breath touched her, and awareness skittered across her skin. “Just stay close.”
As opposed to what?
Ellie wasn’t stupid. Attracting attention in this den of lions was not on her to-do list, but neither did she want Sean hovering over her.
His closeness was subterfuge, but it felt real, and that was dangerous.
I’ve not met anyone who tempted me since Gilly died. I wasn’t prepared for you, and I’ve handled it badly. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.
It did mean that. He just wasn’t willing to acknowledge it.
Not that it mattered. In the end, she didn’t have friendship to give. She barely remembered what it was to have a friend, let alone be one. It had been too long; too much had happened.
And she’d changed in ways no one could consider good.
So regardless of his plans, hers included keeping her distance.
