“I won’t renege on the deal. This is what I wanted to do from the very beginning. I know I did something wrong. I know there’s nothing I can do to reset that. But I would have done this even if you weren’t keeping my wife and son…as…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t want to say the word hostages. This was an extraordinarily delicate situation and he didn’t want to further screw everything up with the use of inflammatory language. “As your guests,” he said.
Heather was agitated. She was normally so levelheaded; that was part of the reason he’d been attracted to her in the first place. She was the opposite of Judith in many, many ways. In the year he’d known her, she hadn’t often lost her cool, but these were extraordinary circumstances. He could not afford to let her blow it now.
“It’ll be OK, Heather, trust me,” he said softly. “Look at me, honey. Look at me. Trust me. This will work. Take a deep breath. Come on.”
She took a breath and nodded. “You’ll come back with the money?”
“Of course.”
“And you’ll make them give us food and water?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
In the distance Tom could hear the sound of a motorbike.
“That’ll be Danny coming,” Matt said. “Do we have a deal?”
“We do from me,” Tom said.
“From us too,” Ma said. “We’re reasonable people, Dr. Baxter. We live here by ourselves. We don’t do harm to anybody. We don’t invite people to our island, but if they come, coppers or government, we expect them to be respectful.”
“Of course. We made the mistake and I’m very sorry about it.”
“We didn’t want any of this—” Ma said.
“Sorry to interrupt, Ma, but we have another issue,” Jacko said.
“What is it?” Ma asked.
“We found the Krauts and we’re keeping them up at the house, but they really want to go,” Jacko said.
“Tell them the ferry needs fixing,” Ma said.
“Gotcha,” Jacko said.
“Any other problems I have to solve?” Ma said and took a long drag of her cigarette.
“The children can’t possibly stay in that room overnight. You’ll have to move them,” Heather said.
Oh, shit. We’ve won this. Don’t cause any trouble, Tom was screaming at her telepathically.
Heather amazingly seemed to pick up on his thought. “Well, at the very least, we’ll need some bedding and something to eat and drink, and you’ll have to let us visit the bathroom, otherwise it’s going to be very unpleasant in there,” Heather said.
The motorbike was very close now. It was driving up to the farm. Everything was hushed, waiting.
A line of clouds.
The silent stars.
The silent yellow sickle moon.
“Danny’s gonna lose his shit,” Jacko muttered.
“We’ve done our parley and we made a deal,” Matt said. “Danny’s gonna have to like it or lump it.”
“Yup,” Ivan agreed. “Like Matt said, she wasn’t blood.”
The motorbike pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse.
The eerie quiet grew deeper.
Flies.
Moths.
Vacuum.
Void.
Everyone waiting.
Suddenly there was a scream. “I reckon they told him,” Kate said.
“You might be onto something there, Katie,” Jacko said with a chuckle.
There was the sound of a scuffle, and the door to the farmhouse burst open with a gift of silver light.
There was a terrible wail, like a dog dying.
The sound of arguing.
Then silence.
A silhouette in the doorway.
Danny was carrying Ellen’s body in his arms.
“Oh, shit,” Matt whispered. “Jacko, be ready for him to do something dumb.”
Danny carried Ellen into the farmyard. Like all the O’Neills, he was tall and skinny. He had thinning red hair and dark eyes.
He looked at Tom. “Is he the one?” he asked Ma, spitting the words out.
“Take it easy there, mate, we’ve fixed this,” Jacko said.
“Yeah, they told me what you fixed,” Danny said. “You think I’m going to take your dirty money? You think I’m gonna take one cent of that? For her?”
Danny set Ellen gently on the ground. She was a rag doll, broken in a dozen places. Danny caressed her face, shaking. “She was everything. She was better than all of you lot put together and you bloody know it!” Danny said.