Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Read online

  Going Gone

  Book 2 of the Irish End Games

  Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  San Marco Press

  Contents

  Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  Going Gone

  Book 2 of the Irish End Games

  * * *

  Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  * * *

  San Marco Press

  * * *

  Copyright 2013 by Susan Kiernan-Lewis. All rights reserved.

  * * *

  The adventure continues when tragedy strikes the family of three displaced Americans in Ireland. Sarah Woodson is brutally taken across the Irish Sea to the pastoral beauty of England’s Cotswolds and discovers the horrors of a post-apocalyptic sex slave trade.

  * * *

  Determined to escape her captors—including a monster who’s vowed never to let her leave England alive—and to survive the impossible journey of a thousand miles through the harsh Welsh wilderness, Sarah uses every resource she has to find her way home again. Going Gone is an tale of heart-stopping proportion showing the resiliency of the human spirit and the unfathomable depths of a mother’s love.

  1

  Mike Donovan looked up from the drawings in front of him on the makeshift wooden desk, his reading glasses perched on his long, very un-Irish nose. His sister, Fiona, stood in the opening of the lean-to, an empty cook pot resting on one hip, watching him. He sighed and removed his glasses, tossing them down on the desk.

  “We’ve got a problem,” she said, pursing her lips as if she’d just tasted a lemon.

  “Whatever it is, Fi,” he said, “couldn’t you have softened the blow with a cuppa?”

  “It’s Gavin,” Fi said, jerking her head to indicate the direction of Mike’s son. “And young John.”

  He looked up with interest. “John?” he said, frowning. “What trouble has Gavin gotten the boy into now?”

  Gavin was a good lad, and immensely helpful as an extra hand, but he lacked the judgment that would enable any sane body to call him mature. The fact that he had taken Sarah’s boy, John, under his wing as the little brother he never had was rarely to anyone’s benefit.

  “Their roughhousing knocked the chicken stew in the dirt. It’s only fit for the hogs now.”

  “None of it could be saved?” Mike stood up. Wasting food was a serious offence. Probably would have been even before The Crisis, but now it could mean the difference between life and death. And there were none of them that didn’t know that to the very marrow of their bones. “Where are they?”

  “Waiting for you. In the barn.”

  “Shite.” Mike stood to his full height then ducked to avoid hitting the short lean-to’s ceiling. His hand rested on the belt around his waist.

  “You’ll not beat them?” Fiona asked. She stepped out of his way, as if half expecting him to bowl her over in his eagerness to reprimand the boys.

  “Gavin’s too old,” he said tiredly. He glanced at his sister, whose eyes snapped with irritation over the ruined stew.

  “And little John?” she said. She stared him down, challenging him. He knew what she was thinking. Sarah’s boy. You wouldn’t dare.

  “Tell Gavin to take the night watch on the south pasture,” he said. He knew he had to send him mounted. No sense in sending the daft bugger on foot—although Mike was sorely tempted to do it—in case he needed to sound the alarm. “But he’s wasted enough food for one day. He can do it on an empty stomach.”

  “And John?” Fiona repeated, more gently this time.

  “He knows what’s coming,” Mike said gruffly. “Tell Gavin to go. I’ll be on my way directly.” He could see his answer satisfied her, which annoyed him. “And maybe you can find something in the way of replacing the meal we’ll be needing in a few hours?” he added acerbically.

  She nodded and hurried off toward the barn.

  Shite. Mike took a moment to look over the edge of the camp to where David and Sarah’s cottage sat. He hated that they refused to join the community. But they let John come as much as they could spare him. And they knew the rules as well as he did. Even so, he didn’t relish telling the American soccer mom, who only countenanced “time-outs” and lengthy written exercises as punishments, that he was about to beat the pants off her boy with a leather belt.

  David and Sarah arrived at Donovan’s community late in the afternoon. A skinned rabbit was carefully wrapped and stashed in a hamper sitting on Sarah’s knee. Every time Sarah came to the camp she was surprised at how much had been built to make it the little bustling community that it was.

  The first person she saw was Fiona Donovan. “Hey, Fi,” Sarah said, hopping down from the cart. “Brought ya a bunny for your crock pot.”

  “Sure, I’ll never understand your American humor,” Fiona said, taking the meat from her and giving her a hug.

  “John in shouting distance?” Sarah asked, looking around the settlement. A large campfire anchored the middle of the camp, with recently constructed huts, tents and bedrolls fanning out around it.

  “Oh, he’s around here somewhere,” Fiona said. “Good afternoon to you, David,” she said, as David jumped down from the cart seat. “You’ll be wanting to put the animals up in the barn. Just leave the cart where it is.”

  David unharnessed the pony and led him away from the center of camp. Fiona and Sarah walked over to the large black pot hanging from a hook over the fire ringed in stones.

  “Mmm-mm. Smells good.” Sarah peered in the pot.

  “If you lived here,” Fiona said, leaning over to pick up a steaming kettle of water, “you’d eat with us every night.”

  “We’re doing fine over there.”

  “Who said you weren’t?” Fiona said, pouring boiling water into a large, chipped teapot. “It’s not just about protection or getting enough to eat. It’s about fellowship, Sarah.”

  “I know, and I agree with you.” Sarah continued to crane her neck, searching.

  Fiona handed her a cup of tea.

  “Hey, Mom. Looking for me?”

  Sarah turned to see John who had materialized at her elbow. She had recently learned not to hug him—at least not in public. Her smile dissolved when she looked more closely at him. “John, what happened to you?” She reached out to him.

  “Nothing happened to me,” he said, pulling away from her grasp. "Stop it."

  His eyes were red and his face tear-streaked. Sarah knew it took a lot to get tears from her boy. She looked at Fiona and was rewarded with a hasty glance away. “What happened, Fi?”

  “Nothing, Mom,” John said. “Why can’t you leave it alone?” He turned on his heel and bolted away from her.

  Sarah watched him g
o, her mouth open, then turned back to her friend. “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “Not if the lad doesn’t want me to. Drink your tea.”

  Sarah turned in the direction John had gone and forced herself to let it go. He was all in one piece. That was the main thing. Whatever had happened, he didn’t want to share it with her. She had to admit that had started to happen more and more. On top of everything else, she thought miserably, I’m losing my little boy, too.

  She sipped her tea, letting the heat slip down her throat and soothe her. A young woman approached and spooned up a bowl of soup. Sarah couldn’t help notice how outlandish the woman, Caitlin’s, outfit was. Dressed in skintight leggings with a low-cut top, she looked like she was dressed for a night of clubbing, not eating stew by a campfire. The girl made a dramatic show of looking at Sarah from head to toe before sneering and turning away.

  “What the heck is her problem?”

  Fiona sighed. “Well, Caitlin is a special case, there’s no mistake. But still, you can’t be too surprised not to have people waving flags when you show up, what with you so standoffish and all.”

  “Standoffish? Are you serious?”

  “Sarah, we’ve talked about this before. You and your setting up in Deidre and Seamus’s old cottage far outside our walls—”

  “First, Fiona, you don’t have walls, and second, you know we took their cottage because it’s hidden from the road. We’re safer there.”

  “There’s nothing safer than numbers,” a voice boomed out, making Sarah spill her tea on her jeans. Mike Donovan definitely had a big way about him, not the least of which was his voice. Using it now, while he was still a good twenty yards away, her first thought was incredulity that he had heard enough of their conversation to enter into it.

  “Hey, Mike,” she said. “Still banging on that drum, are you?”

  “Sure, and I’ll be banging on it until you and David come to your senses and move out of the McClenny place and over here with us.”

  Mike squatted down next to the two women and Sarah couldn’t help but think it wasn’t an easy feat with his long legs. “You doing alright, Sarah?” His eyes pierced hers in anything but a casual inquiry and his directness made Sarah catch her breath.

  “We’re doing good, Mike,” she said, smiling at him. “We’re hanging in there.”

  The look he gave her said that was not the question he had asked. Before she had the chance to divert him along safer lines, a commotion behind him in the direction of the stables did it for her. She looked past him to see David and John walking quickly toward them. John was trying to talk to David and was running along beside him. David was walking, his chin high and confrontational, his fists clenched at his sides.

  “I want a word with you, Donovan,” he said abruptly as he approached the group.

  Mike stood up slowly and turned to face him. Sarah saw him rest his hands on his hips in a gesture of calm and insouciance. She stood up too.

  “Woodson,” Mike said calmly.

  “It’s none of your business,” John said hotly to his father. “It’s my business and I’ve taken care of it.”

  David ignored him, his eyes drilling into Mike Donovan. “Some of the guys at the stable mentioned to me that you beat my son today?”

  Sarah gasped and couldn’t help looking at Mike and then John.

  “It’s none of your business!” John said, jerking his father by the sleeve to get his attention. “I screwed up.”

  “I asked you a question, Donovan,” David said, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “That’s right,” Mike said. “John knows the rules. He broke ‘em. He was punished for it.”

  “You…you struck him?” Sarah asked, looking at John with the streaks of dirty tears down his face.

  Mike turned to her. “I gave him a hiding, same as I’d do to anyone if through horseplay and uncaring they deprived the community out of hard-earned food.” He turned back to David. “You think this is a game, Woodson? You think we’re camping out here? This is life and death, man.”

  “You arrogant bastard,” David said. “You got your own private dictatorship here, don’t you? Donovan’s Kingdom.”

  “No, Dad,” John said walking over to Mike and standing in front of him. “It’s not like that. I was wrong. It’s the rule. We gotta have rules. Especially now.”

  Sarah gritted her teeth and took a long breath to keep control of her emotions, but she saw David lose his own as his face contorted into a mask of fury and intent.

  Just when she knew he was about to launch himself at Mike, the earth rumbled beneath their feet and a roar of thunderous noise bombarded the camp, building to an excruciating pitch until the noise obliterated everything.

  2

  From the pieces of knapsack and useless bits of metal trinkets found embedded in the surrounding oak trees, they guessed he had been a peddler.

  The sound of the explosion had sent half the camp running toward the south entrance. Mothers ran screaming the names of their children, the unbearable sounds of terror ratcheting higher with every step.

  Mike reached the area with the first wave of the panicked. He stepped carefully into the brand new clearing, which was smoking and foul smelling. “Head count!” he shouted, looking around with a pounding heart. It wasn’t one of their watch sites—in fact, everyone knew it was strictly off-limits—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a place a bored child wouldn’t wander off to. He listened to the voices, some tremulous and tearful, others angry, as they reeled off their names in the order that had been decided. Each head of household called out his surname and the phrase “all accounted for” to indicate the whereabouts of each member of his family was known.

  When Donovan announced his own name, with only Gavin to account for, the thought came to him, like a deadly asp slithering into his sleeping bag, that he did not know where his son was.

  The Woodsons were at his elbow within minutes. Not formally a part of the group, they remained silent as they surveyed the damage. “Who set it off?” Sarah asked.

  Donovan held up a hand to her, demanding silence as he listened to the members of his group call out their names to assure him that their community remained intact.

  As he listened, his eyes scanned the trees and the smoking hole before him where the landmine had been triggered, and he registered that the birds had stopped singing, the camp dogs had stopped barking.

  Death has a habit of stalling everything about normal daily life, he thought bitterly.

  “Da? You okay over there?”

  He gave a shuddering sigh at the sound of his son’s voice, calling to him from across the camp. He glanced up and nodded at Gavin.

  By this time, the crowd had stopped calling out their names and were, instead, jostling babies, pulling children back from the lip of the smoking pit, and kicking at the rim and surrounding area with boot toes and sticks.

  One woman’s shrill voice pierced the din of noise above the others. “God have mercy, Mike, are there any more here?”

  Donovan turned to look at David, who stood grimly by his side. David shook his head, refusing to look at him.

  “No, Maeve,” Mike called to the woman. “Just the usual areas. You all know them.”

  “Well, what made it go off, then?” another man called out. “Were we being attacked, or should we be looking to pick pieces of raw mutton off the trees?”

  Mike noted the angry voice, soon joined by others, and he resisted the urge to look at David—the man responsible for the smoking hole and the slowly building hysteria in his community.

  “Go back to camp,” he said tiredly, trying to sound commanding. “I’ll investigate and make a full report at dinner.” He turned to David who, maddeningly, didn’t seem to feel any responsibility for what had happened. If anything, he looked as if he had a mind to resume the fight with Mike over John’s whipping. Steeling himself to stay calm, Mike glanced at Sarah. “Take John back to camp,” he said. When she hesitated, look
ing instead to David, Mike added an edge to his voice. “Now,” he said. Without a word, she grabbed her son’s hand and tugged him away from the two men.

  Mike stood with his hands on his hips looking at the destruction. “I want the rest of the landmines dismantled,” he said icily. “If you want to bury them in front of your own cottage, you’re welcome to.”

  “That’s not what your group said three months ago when I found these mines stacked in an abandoned army depot in Glyncannon. Three months ago, your people begged me to plant them on your perimeter.”

  “Three months ago we were bulldozed by your paranoia.”

  “I’m not sure anyone would believe you were bulldozed, Donovan. Fact is, you were outvoted. Your group wanted the security. Just because some wandering tinker crept up on the camp and got himself blown up doesn’t mean the mines aren’t still a good idea.”

  “Just get rid of them.”

  “We haven’t had an incident in three months and now you think you’re living in Brigadoon?” David looked at him with disgust. “How do you know this guy wasn’t the advance guard of an attack? How do you know the landmine didn’t send the message to his gang that we aren’t ripe for the picking?”

  Donovan strode over to a nearby ash tree and pried out a metal button with flowers stamped on it. He came back to Woodson and threw it at him, watching it ping off the man’s chest. “This guy was a peddler,” he said heatedly. “He wasn’t the advance man on anything except maybe in his plan to trade a few buttons for a hot meal tonight.”

  David shrugged. “For all you know.”

  “Yeah, for all I know. But I’m in charge so get rid of them.” He turned to look at the smoking hole again. “It makes me sick to think I let you talk me into them in the first place.”

  “Maybe you were more concerned about protection a few months back.”