Jackson
“Drop the knife!” Jackson ordered. “What are you, crazy? You have armed agents against you here, not a sweet sixteen-year-old kid!”
“I will let her go if you just leave!” the leprechaun said.
The voice was feminine. Of course, with the red wig and the get-up the person was wearing, it was hard to tell.
Skye was looking at him with steady eyes while being held by the leprechaun, and he knew she would do what was necessary when the time was right.
“Drop it,” came another voice.
And he saw Zach was right across from him, his Glock drawn as he looked at the leprechaun.
“Drop it,” he said, “because here’s the thing. You may think you can draw that knife faster than I can shoot a bullet. But I’m good. Sorry, I mean really, really good. Drop the knife. Then you can tell us where to find Colleen Donegal.”
“Never!” the leprechaun whispered. “Colleen . . . no. She belongs where she is!”
“Why are you trying to hurt Sean Donegal?” Skye asked her, speaking carefully since the young woman had the business side of a blade against her throat.
“Hurt Sean! I’m trying to save him, to give him something real!” the leprechaun said.
“Okay, well, what you’re doing is very, very wrong!” Jackson told her. “Please. We don’t want to hurt you in any way. We need to understand what is happening. If you need help, we want to help you—”
“You don’t want to help me!” the leprechaun cried.
Talking didn’t seem to be doing the trick here. But no matter how good he and Zach might be with their weapons, taking a shot might be the end of Skye instead of the leprechaun.
“Please—” he began.
But that was when something suddenly flew through the air—so suddenly that every one of them was given a few seconds pause.
He caught a brief glimpse of the flying object.
It was a mini gold ball.
And it struck the leprechaun dead center in the forehead, giving Skye a chance to duck back, break the leprechaun’s hold, catch her knife hand with such a slam that knife went flying, and then catch the leprechaun’s arm in a twist, bringing the leprechaun to its knees.
Angela came striding into the clearing. She was smiling. “Hey, I’m horrible on a mini golf course, but that was a pretty good swing and hit, eh?”
“Perfection!” Skye assured her. And walking to the leprechaun, she jerked the bright red wig off and stared down at what now evidently appeared to be a woman.
“Where is Colleen?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the woman said.
“Okay, then, let’s start with this. Who are you?” Jackson demanded.
“The pictures, Jackson, in the files we were given. I know who she is!” Angela said.
And then, he did, too.
“Elizabeth. Elizabeth Fitzgerald. A woman Sean Donegal holds in great esteem was the one to kidnap his granddaughter. You have a choice. Help us now. Or if real harm befalls her, I can guarantee you we will see that you’re prosecuted to the highest limits of the law,” Jackson told her.
She started to sob. “No, no, no! Do what you will. I will tell you nothing! She didn’t deserve him. She never deserved him. And with her gone, he would give his care and his attention to me!”
“His secretary?” Zach asked. “I know the man is kind, but did you think he’d adopt you or something? You’re a little old after all.”
“And yes! If she wasn’t around . . . I could have been the child he wanted, needed!”
“From what I could see,” Zach told her. “Colleen seemed to care a great deal about him.”
“Did she? Oh, no, I don’t think so. She was so excited to come to America! Sean was born to live and to die in Ireland! And she wouldn’t have gone with him. She’d have found American friends, dated an American boy! She would have left him and I . . .”
“Oh, I’ve got it!” Skye said. “You would never leave him. You’d console him and try to be there for him . . . as a daughter? Or were you after him sexually?” she demanded.
“That’s filthy!” Elizabeth exclaimed.
“But who knows, right, it could have worked. His kid or his wife. You wanted to console him, and you wouldn’t have cared which,” Skye said quietly.
“Well, at least we know why you couldn’t meet us until the morning,” Jackson said with a shrug. “Still . . .”
He paused. Angela had been with him. Now, she wasn’t. And when he looked back toward the park event, he saw she was running back toward the haunted house attraction.
“Zach, Skye, you got zip tie cuffs?” he asked.
“Of course,” Zach told him.
“I’ll get Detective Conor Murphy on the phone,” Skye told him.
“Good call. Please cuff our young leprechaun and watch her here for a few minutes. I’ll be right back!” Jackson told him.
He began to run himself. As he reached the front of the ride, he could see that Angela was in one of the ride cars.
The banshee was sitting with a young man in the car right before her.
If only the fellow knew!
He wasn’t sure how Angela had snared a ticket or so quickly, or perhaps she had flashed her badge as he did, hurrying, trying at first to catch up with the car she was in, jumping into that which was right behind when he could not.
Banshees . . .
Banshees, banshees, everywhere.
They passed through the cemetery.
And then looking ahead, he saw the real banshee slide out of the ride car, easily wafting toward the coffin.
And he saw Angela, almost as smoothly jumping from her car, avoiding the track, and following the banshee.
Then he heard a wailing. A keening.
The cry of the banshee.
And rushing to join them, he saw they were both standing over the coffin.
The coffin with the girl with the ink dark hair, her features obscured by the thin veil of gray material that had been lain over her.
Angela didn’t wail. She screamed for someone to call 911, they needed medics fast.
When he reached her side, Angela was ripping the veil off the body, and was checking for the girl’s pulse, then her respiration.
“She’s breathing, barely, and she has a pulse, but it’s so weak, Jackson—”
He was on the phone himself. Someone might have dialed 911; and then again, they might not have done so.
“Nothing broken; I think it’s drugs,” Angela said. “Maybe—”
“We should get her the hell out of here!” Jackson said, lifting the young woman from the coffin.
There had been screaming all around, battling the sound of Deidre’s keening.
But the banshee fell silent, looking at Jackson worriedly.
“She’s alive and we’re going to keep her that way!” Jackson told the banshee.
Of course, by then, the ride had stopped. And as Jackson carried the young woman out, he saw that emergency personnel were already there.
He spoke quickly with a young paramedic, and in seconds the young woman was whisked onto a gurney and rushed to an ambulance.
“I’ll go with her,” Angela said.
“As will I, lass!” Deidre said.
Of course. Deidre had truly cared, all the while. And somehow . . .
Somehow, she had known Colleen Donegal had been drugged to complete silence and lain in the coffin! How? And of course . . .
He felt like an idiot; he should have suspected such a ploy by someone working as a leprechaun with access to the haunted house.
Security and officers had arrived on the scene, but along with them was Conor Murphy. He already knew that it had bizarrely turned out that Elizabeth Fitzgerald was the
“leprechaun” who had kidnapped Colleen Donegal and had been on his way to meet Zach and Skye at the clearing behind the haunted house when he’d heard the hysteria happening in the haunted house.
Angela was off in the ambulance, which was good. Hopefully, the young woman would come to and do so soon. Angela was always an amazing people person; she would be able to give the young woman both the empathy and the understanding she was going to need.
And while confusion was still reigning by the haunted house, he and Conor Murphy flashed their badges and said that they were working with a suspect.
They needed to move on to back; and yes, the attraction needed to be closed for the evening, and the rest of the “corpses” needed to be checked on immediately.
Medical personnel had arrived with the kind of help quickly needed. Jackson and Conor could leave the area and join Zach and Skye without worrying that the haunted house wouldn’t be thoroughly investigated.
“Why?” Conor murmured as they walked back through the trees. “Why would Elizabeth want to harm Colleen Donegal? It makes no sense.”
“From what I’ve gathered, jealousy. Jealousy was the entire motive.
Elizabeth believes that if Colleen is out of the picture, Sean will love her above all others.
We never figured out if she wanted a May/December marriage or if she wanted Sean to adopt her.
Though she did say that the former was filthy when Skye suggested it. I just don’t know,” Jackson said.
“So bizarre,” Conor said. “A little woman. What? Maybe five-foot-even. How on earth did she manage to drag Colleen through an old tunnel and get her into the haunted house, get rid of a mannequin in a coffin and get Colleen into it?”
“Security cameras—” Jackson began.
“Not in the woods. And one of the officers was saying that there’s a back door to the haunted house thing—all the buildings here are temporary.
At Christmas, they bring in Santa’s house at the North Pole, the elves’ workshop . . . entertainment companies are great at all this.
And to keep their insurance, they have safety nets, emergency exit doors, things like that.
I believe there are a few security cameras, but only at certain twist and turns in the ride. ”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Jackson murmured.
“Pardon?”
Jackson laughed. “Sorry. Something my mother used to say.”
They could see Skye and Zach and their leprechaun prisoner and quickened their pace to reach the pair.
“What happened over there?” Zach asked worriedly. “We saw the craziness, the hysteria, and we weren’t sure—”
“I don’t care what’s going on! I won’t tell you where Colleen is!” Elizabeth the leprechaun shouted at them.
Jackson hunched down and looked at her, shaking his head. “Elizabeth, we found Colleen. Now, you get to go straight to jail.”
“No!” she cried, and then she began to sob and despite the horrible thing that she had done, Jackson found himself feeling sorry for her. Maybe they’d eventually understand.
“Shall I take her in?” Conor asked quietly.
Elizabeth suddenly erupted in fury. “No, no, no. You’re not taking me anywhere. Don’t you idiots see what’s going on here? This whole awful thing was his idea. If Sean adopted me and Conor married me, he’d have all that money!”
*