Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
Emily’s pulse hadn’t slowed since Ciara had told her Finn was hanging out with Rory and his bloodthirsty gang. She walked fast, eager to get back to her car and over to the wharf. She couldn’t get the thought of her little brother being in a gang war, surrounded by people intent on killing or maiming him.
“Finn’s just a kid,” she murmured. “What does he know about fighting?”
“He never got into a fight at school?” Jack asked.
“No,” she said. “He was a rule-follower.”
Jack cocked an eyebrow. “Bullies didn’t pick on him for that?”
“Never.” Emily chewed on her lower lip. “His peers liked him.”
“He has no fighting skills whatsoever?”
Emily shrugged. “Our father insisted we learn self-defense as soon as we landed on Irish soil. Having grown up a Traveller, he’d had to fight his way out of a number of circumstances. He didn’t expect me or Finn to live the life of a Traveller, but he knew we could run into the same prejudices if people learned of our association with them. He didn’t want us to be defenseless and made certain we could hold our own long enough to get out of a bad situation.”
“Hopefully, Finn remembers those lessons.” Jack walked beside her, matching her pace. “Hasn’t he ever had to use those lessons working at the pub?”
She snorted. “He hasn’t, but I have.”
Jack chuckled. “How so?”
“Let’s just say they came in handy when certain customers disrespected my personal space.”
He grinned down at her. “What did you do?”
Her brow wrinkled. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done. She’d been pissed she’d had to do it. “I broke one man’s nose and another’s thumb when I had to remind them of their manners. Their mothers must not have taught them ladies did not appreciate being pinched on the ass, breasts or anywhere else. And ladies don’t like being cornered coming out of the ladies room and groped by drunk asshats.”
The smile slipped off Jack’s face. “They deserved more than a broken nose and thumb.”
“Yeah, well, I made my point,” she said, a smile tilting the corners of her lips. “Each one of them came back to the pub and apologized. They’ve been model customers since. They even look out for me when other guys try stupid shit.”
“I imagine running a pub isn’t easy. Especially for a woman.”
Emily glared at Jack.
Before she could call him sexist, he held up his hands. “I don’t mean that you’re not fully capable, but men can be bastards. Too many of them have little respect for women. It has to be an uphill battle every day for you.”
The spark of anger faded. Emily sighed. “It was better when my father was there to help. We made a good team. He liked people, and they liked him. Finn’s a lot like him. Da made sure Finn learned self-defense, but what Rory and his gang have in mind is different. If they attack someone, they’ll likely be using weapons that could cause a lot of damage and even death. Finn could end up on the other end of a knife, in a hospital, in jail or dead. Oh, why did I come back to Ireland and bring Finn?”
By that time, they’d arrived at her Mercedes. Jack pulled the keys from his pocket, unlocked the doors and opened the passenger side for Emily.
As she settled into her seat, Jack asked, “Why did you come back to Ireland?” Without waiting for her answer, he closed her door, rounded the car and slipped into the driver’s seat. “You never got to that part in your story.”
“Because I was stupid,” she said. “I needed to fulfill my mother’s dying wish and thought it would be better to do it in person.” Emily pulled out her cell phone, brought up her map application and entered the address for the wharf.
Jack started the engine, pulled out onto the street and turned in the direction the map indicated.
“The thing is, I could have fulfilled her wish via a phone call.” She stared out the windshield, not seeing the road ahead, her mind replaying the memory of her mother lying on her deathbed, holding her hand through the protective gloves.
“What was her wish?” Jack’s voice pulled Emily back into the present and the problems she had to face.
“She wanted me to tell my father that she still loved him and always had.”
Jack nodded. “How long had they been apart?”
“Thirteen years,” Emily said. “I promised I’d tell him, and I should’ve done it through a phone call, but no. I had to make a trip to Ireland and bring Finn to meet the father he’d never known since we’d left when he was an infant.” Emily snorted softly. “We should’ve stayed in the States.”
Jack navigated through the busy streets of Dublin, coming to a stop at a traffic light. “What made you stay in Ireland?”
Emily’s face softened, and her heart squeezed hard in her chest. “Finn was only fifteen. I had just finished college. I was fully prepared to take on the responsibility of seeing him through the rest of his schooling and help him find his way in life. If my mother could still love my father after all those years, he couldn’t be all bad. Since I had a message to deliver anyway, I thought it would be good for Finn to at least meet the man.” She smiled. “I was nine when we left Ireland. I missed my Da, but life went on. I thought we left because they’d divorced, and my father didn’t want anything to do with his children. When my mother said they hadn’t, I wanted to know why he hadn’t wanted to be a part of our lives.” Her eyes filled with tears. “After I delivered my mother’s message, I asked him.” She swallowed hard on the lump in her throat.
Jack didn’t press her to continue.
Emily appreciated that he didn’t. She needed time to compose her words. “You see, the man who threatened my father’s family—my mother, Finn and myself—hadn’t only threatened them, he’d followed us on a day trip out to Wicklow National Park. My mother was taking us to see the wild horses. The man ran our car off the road. My mother almost died in the wreck.
“When my father found out who’d done it, he went after him with a tire iron.”
Jack stopped at a traffic light and turned to capture her gaze.
“They fought, but in the end, my father killed him,” Emily said softly. “The leader of the Travellers witnessed it. He told my father he would turn him into the Garda if he tried to leave Ireland, and he would have to pay a monthly sum from his profits at the pub to the Travellers to keep the peace. He also said that he would do nothing to protect his wife and children. That would be all on my father.”
“So, your mother moved with you and your brother back to the States.”
Emily nodded. “My father showed me the letters she’d sent him through the years with pictures of us. He didn’t trust that the Travellers would leave us alone, so he told them they’d divorced, and he had nothing to do with us. He had my Uncle Paddy send letters to my mother from a post office south of Dublin where she had her letters delivered to him.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “He loved her all those years. He was so happy to see us and sad to hear of my mother’s passing. We were only supposed to be here for a few weeks.”
“But you’ve been here ever since.” Jack shot a smile in her direction.
“That’s right.” She shook her head. “After all the years thinking our father didn’t care about us, it was hard to believe that he’d never stopped loving us.”
“What about the guy who held the secret over him?”
“We were in Ireland for two months when he died of a brain aneurysm after a fight in a pub.” Emily’s lips quirked. “My father gave free drinks on the house to celebrate my mother’s life and sacrifice. The next day, he applied for a passport and scheduled a trip to the States to visit her grave. He stopped paying the extortion money he discovered wasn’t going to the community but straight into his blackmailer’s bank account.”
“Any trouble with the Travellers after that?” Jack asked.
Emily shook her head. “None. We settled into our lives. Finn finished high school, and I worked with my father, running the pub.”
“Is that what you wanted to do?” Jack asked. “What about your career? You said you finished college. What was your degree in?”
Her lips twisted. “Marketing. Which was perfect. I was able to put my marketing skills to work improving the business. I like that the pub has been around as long as it has, and in my family all that time. I was able to trace our ancestry back to the late seventeenth century.”
“What about a family of your own? Who will inherit the pub after you?” Jack asked.
Emily grimaced. “I dated in college, but nothing stuck.”
“What about in Dublin?”
“I have yet to find someone I can imagine spending the rest of my life with. I’m not in a hurry. I always thought being in love was finding that person you couldn’t live without.” She lifted one shoulder. “But then my parents loved each other, yet they lived without each other. Which begs the age-old question, is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” She gave him a crooked smile. “You see how confusing love can be?”
Jack nodded, his gaze fixed on the road ahead, his mouth set in a grim line.
Emily frowned. Had she struck a nerve? “But enough about me. What about you? I didn’t even think to ask, are you married or do you have a girlfriend back home, wherever home is?” She shook her head. “See how little I know about you?”
He chuckled. “There’s not much to know. I haven’t really had a home for a number of years. I don’t tend to stay in one place long enough. Being in the military established that habit. Since getting out, I’ve bounced around the world performing mercenary work until an old army buddy of mine told me about the Brotherhood Protectors and that they were hiring in Europe. It fit my lifestyle. Since I don’t settle in any one place long, I stay in short-term rentals and limit my personal effects to what I can carry in a duffle bag.”
Emily studied him as he spoke. “I don’t know too many women who would be happy with that kind of living arrangement. I take it you’re not married.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not married.”
“Divorced?” she asked, wondering if she was pushing too far. In her limited experience dating, men usually didn’t like to talk about past relationships. “You don’t have to answer that.”
“You’d have to have gotten married at some point to be eligible for divorce.” He shook his head.
Emily stared at him. “You never married? How is that possible?” She waved a hand at him. “I mean, look at you. You’re good-looking, love to travel and served your country. What’s not to love?”
He remained silent.
“Or did someone break your heart?” Emily asked softly.
His jaw tightened. When the light changed, he hit the accelerator harder than was necessary.
Emily’s old Mercedes lurched forward.
She’d touched a nerve, an old wound that apparently had never healed.
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything, feeling bad that she’d pushed that far. “I’m sorry. I can understand why you’d want to avoid falling in love again. Did she make it worse by going off with your best friend?”
Jack shook his head. “Worse.”
“How much worse could it be?” Emily asked.
“She died.”
The flat tone of his voice hit her as hard as his words.
Emily sat for a long moment absorbing his pain, feeling the weight of his loss and having no words that could begin to make it better.
I’m sorry seemed inadequate, so she didn’t bother voicing the empty words.
When her mother had died, people would come up to her and say those words. They’d done nothing to ease the pain. Nothing could ease the pain but time.
“Tell me about her,” Emily said softly.
Jack came to a jerky stop at yet another traffic light and stared at the vehicle in front of him.
Emily didn’t really expect him to comply. He probably didn’t like reliving painful memories.
The light changed, and Jack eased her vehicle forward. “We were both young, with our whole lives ahead of us when we found each other at a forward operating base. She was in supply and logistics. I was an Airborne Ranger. My team performed dangerous missions, rooting out and destroying Taliban terrorists. If anyone was supposed to die, it should’ve been me.”
“What happened?” Emily asked, her voice not much above a whisper.
“I was out on a mission that dragged on longer than it should have. She was scheduled to redeploy stateside within the week. She volunteered to deliver supplies to an orphanage she’d been to half a dozen times before. Her truck rolled over an improvised explosive device. She never made it to the orphanage. When I got back from my mission, her body had already been shipped home. All our plans died with her. We wouldn’t get back together in the States. I’d never get to ask her to marry me. We’d never have a life together.”
Emily reached across the console and laid her hand on his arm. She didn’t speak, just touched him, letting him know he wasn’t alone.
“Because I was on a deployment and we weren’t married, I couldn’t be there for her funeral. I couldn’t say goodbye ,” he said.
Her heart felt like a useless organ, even though it pumped blood through her veins, it didn’t warm her skin or any other part of her body.
“You had no closure,” she whispered.
“None,” he admitted. “My mind couldn’t grasp the fact that she was gone. Everywhere I turned in the camp, I expected to see her. Her face haunted my memories when I entered the mess hall, and her laughter echoed through the lines of tents and buildings. I saw her in the scrawny flowers she’d planted outside the door of the supply tent. Hell, I almost hit a man for stepping on the fragile bits of greenery that had yet to produce a bloom. It was as if he’d stomped on her. I’d never killed anyone with my hands.”
Emily’s eyes widened. “Did he die?”
Jack shot a glance across the console. “No, but it was close. I was gutted and crazy angry, my emotions completely out of control. I volunteered for point on every mission and did insanely stupid things that could’ve gotten me killed. I think, deep down, I wanted to die. Yet, I was still alive. I knew that if I didn’t get a grip soon, I’d get kicked out of the army, sidelined or sent to a mental hospital.”
“How could you even function?” Emily asked.
“I had my family,” Jack said without hesitation. “And by family, I don’t mean blood relatives. I mean my brothers-in-arms—those people I trained with, fought alongside and lived with in the trenches who always had my back. I was closer to them than anyone with my DNA flowing through their veins. I would’ve been a mess without them.” He laughed. “I was a mess with them, but they didn’t abandon me. They kept me moving until I could move again on my own.”
“I get that,” Emily said. “That’s a lot of the reason I stayed in Ireland. When my mother passed, I knew I couldn’t fall apart. Finn needed me to keep it together. Inside, I’d lost the rock that had anchored me all my life. The trip to Ireland was supposed to be short, a chance to get away from all the memories, to give us time to digest and get back to our lives in the States.”
Jack turned right at the next street, following the directions on the map.
“When we were reunited with our father, he welcomed us with so much love and longing, I immediately felt like we’d come home. Like our mother would have wanted us to be with him. My father and I shared the responsibility of seeing Finn through the rest of his schooling, supporting him in his transition to adulthood and surrounding him with my mother's love for us that lived on through our father.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how I would have made it without my father’s support.” Her voice caught on the lump in her throat. “Now that he’s gone and Finn left home to make a life of his own... I wonder if I’m meant to continue with the pub, the family legacy, or sell it and start over somewhere else. I miss my mother and father. I can’t lose Finn as well.”
“One thing I learned through losing Laura and some of my brothers in battle is that you think life can’t go on, but it does. You keep putting one foot in front of the other and get through it carrying the scars.”
“And the memories of the good times,” Emily added. “You never know if the next person you meet will have as big an impact on your life as they did. You could find a new best friend and partner to love.”
“I didn’t want that pain,” Jack said, his voice gravely and full of emotions he seemed to hold in check. “I barely made it through the first time.”
Emily’s heart hurt for him. After all the years, he couldn’t move past losing his first love. “If you had known what would happen in any of those situations ahead of meeting your Laura or the men who meant so much to you, would you have avoided getting to know them?”
Jack was silent for a long moment before answering, “No.”
“I lost my father after only having him back for a few short years. I’m glad I had him for that. After years of thinking he’d abandoned us, I’m glad I had a second chance with him. I’d do it all over again, even knowing I would lose him.”
Silence fell over the inside of the Mercedes as they neared the wharf.
“This is a big place,” Jack said. “Do you know where your brother works here?”
“He works for a private cargo handling company by the name of Mulhaney. Keep following the map.”
As they neared the destination point on the map, Jack found a place to park the car. They got out and continued on foot.
As they weaved their way through giant stacks of shipping containers, the sound of heavy machinery echoed off the walls of metal. As they neared the center of the Mulhaney operations, shouts intermingled with the sounds of the cranes and engines. The shouting grew louder the closer Emily and Jack moved toward the water.
Suddenly, they emerged from the walls of shipping containers into an open area beneath the giant cranes that plucked the huge metal boxes off the backs of tractor-trailer rigs and placed them into the bellies of ships.
The cranes had stopped as if poised, waiting for the next truck to roll into the yard. In the open area, a dozen men stood in a circle, shouting across at each other. Some of them held what appeared to be tire irons or crowbars. With each word shouted, they punctuated the air with the metal bar and moved closer to the opposing side. The men shifted enough that Emily could see what they were looking at. At the center of the circle were two men rolling on the ground, throwing punches and wrestling to gain control over the other.
“Holy shit,” Emily muttered. “What’s going on?”
“Looks like a fight.”
Emily’s gaze raked over the participants, searching for Finn. “Where’s Finn? I don’t see Finn.” She started forward.
Jack’s hand shot out, stopping her. “You can’t get in the middle of that.”
“But my brother?—”
“Do you see him?”
She shook her head. “No. But I can’t tell who’s on the ground. It could be Finn.”
“Then let’s move closer without drawing attention,” Jack said. He took her hand and led her back the way they’d come. He hurried to the end of a row, ran around the back and started back toward the crowd of fighting men. When they came in view, Emily and Jack were closer.
“I still can’t tell if Finn is the one getting the shit beat out of him,” Emily said. “We have to stop it.”
At that moment, all hell broke loose. The fight went from being between two people to all the men jumping into the fray.
Jack held onto Emily’s arm, keeping her from rushing forward.
“Let go of me,” she shouted. “Finn could be in there.”
“If you want to help him, call 999. Get the Garda here, tell them what’s happening. They’ll send enough people to make a difference.”
She pulled her phone from her pocket. With her hand shaking, she punched a nine and another.
Before she could enter the third nine, a giant forklift roared out from between the shipping containers, heading straight for the crowd of men fighting, honking its horn like a runaway freight train.
Emily watched in horror, imagining the carnage the forklift would cause when it plowed into the fight.
Shouts rang out. Men scattered. Some helped others to their feet and dove out of the path of the oncoming vehicle.
By the time the machine reached the center of the fight, everyone had dispersed, running in all directions.
The forklift driver stopped where the fight had begun, the driver turning the vehicle in a three-hundred-sixty-degree circle as if daring the men to come after him.
Once they were out of danger, half of the men started toward the forklift, shouting and waving their tire irons and fists. The other half formed a circle around the heavy machine, ready to defend the forklift and its driver.
The wail of sirens bounced off the walls of containers, growing louder.
The aggressors advancing on the forklift paused.
When the first Garda vehicle leaped past shipping containers into the open, the aggressors turned and ran, disappearing into the maze of metal boxes.
A second and a third patrol car joined the first and came to a squealing stop beside the forklift.
Only then did the forklift driver step out of the covered cab.
Emily gasped. “That’s Finn.” She shook free of Jack's grasp on her arm and ran toward the crowd of men and uniformed police.
Jack was right behind her.
Desperate to get to her brother, Emily pushed her way through the men until she came face to face with her brother.
Ignoring the officer talking to him, Emily flung her arms around Finn, her heart hammering against her chest. “Finn!” she cried, holding onto him, afraid to let go. He could have been killed. She could have lost her brother and broken her promise to her mother to look out for him.
“Em,” Finn pried her arms off his body and set her at arm’s length. “What are you doing here?”
“I needed to talk to you. I—” She glanced around at the men surrounding him. Rory Gallagher and some of the guys she’d seen in the shelter glared at her and Finn. “What’s happening?”
Finn’s jaw hardened. “You need to leave.”
She shook her head. “Not unless you leave with me.” She touched a hand to his arm. “Come home, Finn.”
“Go, Emily. I have a new life. I don’t need you anymore. Go back to your flat, to your pub and leave me alone,”
Emily stared at her brother. He stood taller, his muscles were filling out, and he had a hardness to his face that hadn’t been there before. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t belong here,” he said. “I don’t need you to pretend to be my mother. You may have turned away from your heritage like my father, but I haven’t. I’m here now,” he said, as he glared down at her. “I’m with my brothers.”
As if to emphasize Finn’s point, Rory and his men inched forward.
“But—” she started.
“We have nothing left to say to each other.” Finn physically set her aside and addressed the Garda. “You asked me what happened; I’ll tell you.”
A hand reached for hers and drew her out of the crowd. “Let’s go.”
As Jack gently guided her away from the crowd, Emily looked back at Finn talking to the Garda officer, Rory and his men talking angrily. “I can’t leave my brother.”
“You can’t force him to come home,” Jack reasoned. “He’s legally an adult.”
“But he’s still just a teenager.” Emily glanced back once more, knowing the truth. She had no control over her brother’s life. As much as she wanted to keep her promise to look out for him, she couldn’t if he pushed her away.
The danger of escalating tensions between the Radical Nationalists and the Travellers Finn had chosen to align with terrified Emily. “We have to do something. Do you really think finding the people pushing the propaganda will help?”
At the Mercedes, Jack opened the passenger door for her, his face grim. “At the rate the anger and violence are growing, I don’t know.”
Emily slid into the seat. Her brother’s rejection and the image of all the women and children taking refuge in an old distillery basement weighed heavily on her mind.
They had to do something before more people were injured or killed.