Eye of the Falcon Page 10

  “Not as painful as I expected. Yet, I won’t be running marathons anytime soon.”

  “You think you’ll run one later? That would be worth seeing.” He grinned. “Do you feel like having breakfast at the table?”

  “I’d love to, but I just put some cream on my feet.”

  “Put the socks back on and walk carefully so you don’t slip.”

  She nodded and sat up. “Did you see where Roash went?” she asked anxiously. “I let him out this a little bit ago.”

  Eagle shook his head. “I wouldn’t worry about him though. He seems to have a pretty good instinct for what’s important.”

  “I gather it was feeding time at the zoo?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, I can see that. That is the hard thing about keeping raptors. For them to live, another animal has to die.”

  He nodded. “I supplement with fish and any roadkill I can. But nothing takes away from the fact these birds need live food most of the time.”

  “I’ve known several big raptor rescue centers that incubate eggs. Doing a constant rotation of hundreds of incubating eggs at a time seems like the most economical answer.”

  “I do that too. And somehow it makes it slightly easier.”

  She nodded with understanding. “I know. Nice to keep mice. I found that very difficult though.” While talking, she put on the socks, and, with a hand on the headboard, she stood. She shook her head. “What is it about actually standing on your own two feet that makes the world suddenly a whole much easier place to live in?”

  “We’re meant to be on our feet.”

  “So true.” As he watched, she took several hesitant steps toward him. “Did you feel it out there?”

  “Feel what?” His tone never changed; his gaze never left her progress.

  “You know what.”

  He lifted his dark-chocolate-colored eyes to study her face. Then gave a quick nod. “Yes, I felt it.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No. But it’s not the first time we’ve been watched.”

  “Did they follow me here, do you think?”

  “I think they probably followed your tracks. The question is whether they saw you on the side deck this morning.”

  She froze. “I never thought of that.”

  “That little deck is partially hidden by one of the wind barriers. But depending on what angle they looked from, you might have told them you were here.”

  “Shit,” she said softly.

  “Yeah,” he said drily.

  When she reached him, he held out an arm. She held his forearm, not surprised by the steely strength of the muscles under her fingers. At the same time, she was surprised. The man was solid. She’d expected him to be strong but not this rock-hard steel.

  With his assistance, she made her way down the short hallway into a very large open kitchen, dining, and living space. She stopped and smiled with pleasure. “This is beautiful.”

  “It’s been a labor of love,” he admitted. He helped her to a kitchen chair and pulled it out for her. “Sit down here, and see how that’ll be. If you need a pillow, tell me.”

  She sat down on the hardwood chair, wiggled slightly, and said, “It might be just fine.”

  He had already returned from the couch with a couple cushions. He pulled another chair from under the table, plopped the cushions down, gently lifted her feet, and put them on top of the pillows. “When you walk on them like you’ve just done, it draws all the blood to the surface, and they’ll swell because they’ve been injured. Let’s keep them raised as much as possible.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not a problem. But as far as being watched, any idea who it is?”

  “I’m afraid it’s the kidnappers.”

  He spun slowly to look at her. “You’ve never said anything about that. Have you remembered what happened?”

  “Bits and pieces of it are coming back. Nothing clear, nothing I could seriously identify. I remember cleaning out my mother’s place almost a week after her death, being emotional as she had just passed away, finding something that upset me in her belongings. So, when I got home, I wasn’t as aware as I could have been. I unpacked the car and stored a bunch of it in the root cellar and might even have put on the teakettle, when I heard something outside. I raced for the back door and was grabbed. I fought, but they pulled a long hood over my head and body. I was picked up, thrown over somebody’s shoulder, screaming the whole time, until somebody hit me in the head.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember much after that.”

  Instantly he was at her side. “Do you know which side you got hit on?”

  “Yeah,” she said drily. She pointed to the left side of her skull. “I do remember it bleeding quite a bit off and on. But it was the least of what they did to me.”

  He nodded. “I had a doctor come in to look at you.”

  “The woman?” she asked.

  “No, an old Irishman was here first.”

  She stiffened slightly at the description. “Did he say anything?”

  “Only that he’d seen stuff like this before and hoped never to see it again,” Eagle said. He poured her a cup of coffee, brought it over to her, and set it on the table within her reach. “He said you were systematically tortured. The bruises were multiple colors, indicating you were hit repeatedly in the same spots. Just as you started to heal, you’d get slammed again.”

  Her throat closed with the memories, pain choking her even now. “They wanted something from me that I couldn’t give.”

  “What was it?

  “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “They just kept asking, Where is it?”

  He stopped and turned, leaning against the counter, holding a big hefty ceramic cup full of coffee. “Tell me more.”

  “It’s still kind of fuzzy. I know they were looking for information about what happened back in Ireland when I was a child.”

  “Ireland?”

  She studied him carefully and nodded slowly. “I heard your friend’s accent. I have to admit I stayed silent while he was here. I was scared of him.” She gave a sigh. “I was afraid he was one of the kidnappers. They had accents too.”

  “That makes sense. I had wondered if you were conscious through any of that.”

  “I was briefly awake as I was being checked over. I forced myself to stay quiet because I didn’t know who you were. And because of his accent,” she admitted.

  “I guess the accent was just a little too close to those you had already heard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what they were looking for.”

  “I’m from Ireland originally.” She gave him a lopsided grin. “My whole family was involved in smuggling. I used to be the lookout as a young child. My father and his men had coves up and down the shores that they used. They landed in various places, unloading their goods, keeping them hidden until they could be sorted and divided up. My mother was part of the lookout crew.”

  “What happened?”

  “One day, when I was six years old, it all went to hell,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I never did get an explanation from my mother. She would never talk to me about that time in my life. When I tried to ask, not only would she hit me to silence me, as I grew up, she would turn cold and distant, as in she wouldn’t talk to me for days. The minute I would bring up something about the old country, I would be punished with the silent treatment. I very quickly learned that the pain from withholding love was more effective than any physical punishment she could have inflicted.” She shook her head. “So I really don’t know what happened back then.” She picked up her coffee cup, slowly turning it in her hands, swirling the hot liquid faster. “I just know I lost my father and my siblings to the disaster.”

  She raised her gaze. “I had three brothers. I was the youngest by twelve years. But I don’t remember any of them.”

  “Did the kidnappers work with your father?”

  “They didn’t say t
hat specifically. I thought, from their questioning, that they were looking for someone who had betrayed them. That betrayal caused the death of my brothers and father. There was also mention of money, as if they didn’t get their share of the loot, but I don’t know what that means,” she said. “It was decades ago. They should have just moved on, like I did. But the one thing you need to know about the Irish is that they never forget. And these men, … my family included, lived on the edge of the law. They were smugglers. They didn’t believe the law applied to them. We all lived a secret life.”

  “A lot of people in the world are like that.” He snorted. “But, if the kidnappers were cheated out of their share of a deal, it could be what they are looking for. But why now? Maybe they were looking for your mother, and, when they realized she was gone, they went after you.”

  “They kept asking for answers,” she said, puzzled. “They wanted to know why I didn’t know what was going on. They wanted to know why I hadn’t seen it coming.” She shook her head at his confused look. “I was six at the time. My mother was around somewhere, but I had no idea what was happening that night. I didn’t even understand the logistics of what they were doing. I understood my parents and brothers were doing something illegal. But what illegal means to a child, well …” She raised her shoulders in a shrug. “How much of any event can a young child understand?”

  “But your mother was a lookout too?”

  “She was. But she always stayed inside the house.” Issa didn’t know how much to tell him. Why did any of this matter? But still he needed to know enough to get a clearer picture of these men and what they might have been after.

  “Alone?”

  She nodded. “Of course my mother would say she was with me all the time, and my father believed her. At the time, I thought that’s what her being with me meant. I would stay outside. She would go inside and wait. I didn’t realize until later that ‘being with me’ didn’t mean the same thing to everybody.”

  “She went inside, and you were left outside? And this is how your family operated?”

  “We’d do that every month,” she said. “Until that one fated night when everything blew up, and I have no idea what happened.” She shook her head. “I just know there was a huge fight down below. There were gunshots. There were multiple men involved, not just my brothers and father and those who worked with them. And, no, I don’t know who they were or how many there were. You have to remember, I was only six.”

  “Your mother never said anything about it?”

  Issa gave him a hard look. “I went through hell trying to get information from her. But she would never talk.”

  “And what upset you in your mother’s belongings?”

  She frowned. “Something in one of boxes I opened.”

  “What was in it?”

  She shrugged. “Envelopes. Lots and lots of envelopes. Along with that was a leather keepsake box from my mother. I didn’t get a chance to look at any of it clearly.” She stopped, then realized there was no point in keeping the information from him. It had all happened a long time ago. “I caught a quick glance of one of the documents about my father having a criminal record or criminal charges pending, but I didn’t read it so don’t know the details. At the time I didn’t think I was up to dealing with the loss of my mother and my memory of who my father was.”

  “We need to look at those.”

  “That was the plan all along. Escape, find the boxes, get revenge.”

  “Revenge?” he asked carefully.

  Her lips quirked. “At the time I thought the kidnappers had killed Roash and Humbug. The men took great delight in telling me how they’d tortured and killed all my birds.” She sighed. “And, if I’m honest, it was the thought of getting revenge that kept me going. I wanted to make them pay for what they did.”

  “This might be a good time to tell you that I got a phone call last night from a woman saying she runs an animal reserve called Exotic Landscape.”

  Issa tilted her head and studied his face. “Interesting. Do you know her?”

  “No. Her name is Tabitha. She said something about Stefan. She had been in contact with Humbug herself.”

  Issa stared at him. “That’s the second person who’s said they’ve spoken to Humbug. Is that possible?”

  “You tell me. Stefan appeared to be almost resigned. So we have somebody who called himself a psychic, and someone who runs an animal shelter and called herself a sensitive, both talking to Humbug.”

  “What did they say about Humbug?”

  “He’s in trouble, and he needs you.”

  She straightened, wanted to race outside to find Humbug, but she’d barely make it to the doorway. “We have to go help him.”

  “That’s a nice thought. Any idea where he is?”

  She turned to stare at him. “No. But, if you could drive me home, we could get those boxes and look for him too.” A frown whispered across her face. “That is, if anything is left of my cabin. It could be all burned to the ground. If so, it’s all gone.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Denver,” she said. “Just south of the city.”

  “That’s a good start because I live outside Denver too, but to the north.”

  She frowned in confusion.

  “You’re at my home, which means somebody transported you to a place within traveling distance from here.”

  She stared at him. “I don’t know how many days I was on the road. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I’m not really sure where I am now.”

  “I highly doubt you came from more than one day’s walk away from here.”

  She mentally thought about the distance she’d walked and said, “I traveled for several nights. Just not very fast.”

  “Drink your coffee, and get some food down you, and, if you think you’re up for the drive, and you know how to get to your place, we’ll take a trip.”

  She brightened. “Can we go now?”

  He shook his head. “Food first.”

  He brought out some homemade bread as black as the ace of spades and chock-full of seeds.

  “That looks fantastic,” she said in delight.

  “Good because it’s the only kind of bread I eat around here.” He placed the butter in front her, big slabs, and gave her a knife.

  With him at her side, she worked her way through the first slice of bread and halfway through the second one. She put it down and shook her head. “Sorry. My eyes are bigger than my stomach.”

  He looked at her for a long moment and nodded. “That’s fine. I thought you might be overdoing it.” He took the remainder of bread, broke it in pieces, and gave the rest to the two dogs lying quietly by the door.

  She watched the pair enjoy the treat. Both were a decent size. One had more a sheepdog with a pinch of Rottweiler look to him, giving him a guard-dog air. The other one could have been a mix of dozens of breeds and appeared to be an overgrown pup. “I don’t remember seeing the dogs.”

  “That’s because I kept them away, afraid they would hurt you just by their sheer size. I haven’t let them in your room. This is Gunner and Hatter.”

  She smiled. “Will you let them come see me now?”

  “Yes.”

  At his command, both dogs approached her. The larger one laid his head in her lap and looked up at her with a sorrowful look that said he had wanted to come to her for days. The second dog nudged her hand, looking for his fair share of love too. She fell in love. She crooned to them gently as she said hi to both dogs. “Can they come with us?”

  He shook his head. “They stay here with the birds.”

  She didn’t say anything to that. “It would be great if I could go home.”

  “Let’s just be clear about one thing,” he said as he grabbed his keys, shoving them in his pocket, and putting on a holster with a sidearm. “I will take you home to get the paperwork, but no way in hell are you staying there.”

  She frowned. “Are you saying I’m a prisoner?
”

  He shook his head, his gaze clear and direct. “You’re here until this is over. You’re not leaving my side. Got it?”

  She studied him for a long moment and found there was none of the anger and terror rippling through her that she’d had from the other men. This man wanted to protect her. The others wanted to harm her. This man was honorable; the others were full of hate. Eagle stood casually, confident in his decision. He wasn’t looking to terrorize her. Neither was he looking to comfort. But his statement was a fact. She could take it or leave it.

  For the moment, she took it. She’d make up her mind about the rest later.

  *

  Outside there was a sense of urgency to the morning. The birds knew it. They’d never been wrong yet. He just didn’t know in what form the trouble would arrive. Before it did, he wanted to get her the hell away from here. Preferably where he could get answers. And, if she had answers back at her place, then that was where they were going.

  She looked like a tiny waif in his extra-large clothing. He grabbed an old afghan, brightly colored, as if someone had used yarn ends, indiscriminate of one color palate. With that spread out over the truck passenger seat, he came back and scooped her up, ignoring her protests that she could walk on her own, and stepped outside on the front porch. He set the alarm and carried her out to the truck. He buckled her in and closed the door, walking around to the driver’s side. He drove to the gate, opened it, drove a bit farther, then closed and locked the gate behind them, leaving the dogs to guard his property.

  He turned onto the highway. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, just surprised at how fast we ended up pulling out.”

  “We need answers. Too much shit is going on.”

  She nodded. “I’m not arguing. I’m just surprised. When I woke up this morning, I was thinking it was the day I needed to start living again.”

  “What you need is to be back in bed. Hopefully we can pack you some clothes and get you back home again.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment. And he realized the term home was probably what she was stuck on.