Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9 (13 page)

“There’s plenty of room on the upper floors, and the kitchen is big enough for an army. It will be a respectable place, too, once we clean it up. A nice place.”

For a moment he thought he saw it—– the light of possibility shining in her expression—– but it was fleeting, gone before he could be certain. She shook her head again and bit her bottom lip. “Is this what our marriage is going to be like? You make the decisions and I’m simply expected to follow along blindly?”

“Of course not.” She was missing the point entirely.

“Seven years, Jack. Seven years I’ve waited for you. And in all that time, I have been a thinking, functional adult. I’ve held down a job, I’ve attended night school and earned a degree. Living day to day, sometimes minute to minute, never knowing if you were alive or dead; wondering if you would ever come back to me.” Tears streamed down her face, unchecked. “You should have talked to me.”

“Kathleen, please,” he said, rising from the stool to go to her, but she held up her hand in a ‘stop’ motion.

“Don’t. I love you, Jack, but I need some time to think about this.”

He swallowed hard; his heart had become a solid, heavy mass in his chest, keeping him from taking a full breath. “What is there to think about?”

She didn’t answer. She turned away, averting her eyes. “I’ve called Erin. She’s going to pick me up and take me back to the house so I can get my things.”

The pressure eased slightly.
She wasn’t leaving him, she only wanted her things. Thank God.

“I can take you.”

She glared pointedly at the open bottle of Irish whiskey sitting on the bar. “No, you can’t.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“And I’m not willing to take the chance your self-perception is skewed.”

He clamped his lips together. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, she was right. He hadn’t been drinking a lot, but it was more than he should have had before even thinking about getting behind the wheel.

A late-model Chevy pulled up outside the front of the bar and honked the horn. “She’s here,” Kathleen said, her voice uncharacteristically flat. “I have to go.”

It took everything he had not to reach out and keep her from leaving, but one look at her face and he knew it would only make things worse. “When are you coming back?”

She paused at the door without turning back. “I don’t know.”

And then she was gone.

D
arkness had fallen, and it had been snowing for the past several hours. Jack’s mood darkened as it became increasingly likely that Kathleen wouldn’t be making it back anytime soon. He was torn between wanting to see her walk through the door and worrying that she would try to drive in the deteriorating weather conditions.

“Tell me again why you’re shooting pool with me instead of making love to your beautiful bride?” Brian said, lining up his shot.

“Because you picked the lock and forced your way in.”

“You hung up on me. And you have my car. Do you have any idea how long it took me to rip off all those damn cans?”

Jack grunted. Hell yes he’d hung up on him, because he wanted to avoid
this
. While he appreciated Brian returning the Galaxie can-free, he wished he would have left it in the lot and used the keys Jack had left under to floor mat to reclaim his own.

“She was pretty pissed about the bar, huh.”

“Yeah.”

Jack waited for the “I told you so”, but it didn’t come. Good man, Brian.

He leaned over and missed his shot. Brian stepped up and cleared the table before racking up again. “It’s hard, isn’t it?” Brian said without looking at him. “Coming home. Pretending as though nothing’s changed. Trying to remember how to be normal, when in your gut, you know that it’s just not possible.”

“Yeah.”

“But when I’m with Adonia, I don’t feel quite as ... broken.”

Jack nodded. Yes, that was it exactly. Kathleen made him feel whole again, or as close as he’d ever come. Her love and the dream of making a life with her were the only things that had gotten him through Hell. Kathleen was his
croie
. His heart. “Same.”

“So? What are you going to do about it?”

“What can I do? Kathleen’s really pissed. She left, man. And I can’t say I blame her.”

Brian looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You’re kidding, right? This is Jack Callaghan I’m talking to, isn’t it?” Jack curled his upper lip, baring his teeth, but Brian was not intimidated. “You do what any man would do. You get your ass in gear and go after your woman. You tell her you fucked up big time and ask her forgiveness.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“You go down on your knees and beg. Not where anyone else can see you, though,” he added with a smirk. “Don’t want anyone thinking you’re completely pussy-whipped, even if it is the truth.”

Despite his foul mood, Jack’s lips quirked.

“Oh, and promise her you’re going to take her to that place in the Poconos as soon as the check clears. Then bring her back here and make love to her till walking away again isn’t an option.”

The plan had merit. “How’d you get to be so smart?”

“Experience. I’ve fucked up a lot. Hey, you okay to drive?”

“Yeah.” He hadn’t had anything stronger than water since she left; maybe, in the back of his mind, he’d known he’d go after her all along. Maybe that’s what she wanted –—a demonstration of sorts.

“Then what the hell are you waiting for? Go get your woman!”

––––––––

T
he roads were worse than he’d thought. The freak March snowstorm caught everyone off guard, and the road crews were already dangerously low on salt and cinders because of the worse than normal winter. Jack was glad he’d put the snow tires and chains on the Galaxie, but even they weren’t much help on the slick metal grate of the bridge spanning the river.

When the back end started sliding out behind him, he compensated without thinking by turning the wheel hard, bringing the car back in line with the road (or where he thought the road was). Only a few more miles and he’d be at O’Leary’s Diner. That was where he’d likely find Kathleen, but if not, he’d go to her parents’ house next.

A plow pulled out in front of him, which was both good and bad. Good, because it improved the immediate road conditions in front of him, and bad, because it would take even longer to reach his destination.

Jack heaved a huge sigh of relief when he arrived at O’Leary’s and found Conlan and his son-in-law, Seamus, shoveling the lot. Conlan straightened and rested his hands on the shovel. By the displeased look on his face, he already knew about their disagreement.

“Mr. O’Leary,” he greeted respectfully. “I need to see Kathleen.”

After pinning him with the glare of a father whose daughter had been wronged, Conlan informed him that Kathleen had gone back to the house with her mother earlier. “I don’t know how ye managed te cock it up so badly so quickly,” his father-in-law told him, “but doona fash, lad. My Katie-belle loves ye, and she’ll forgive near anything if yer apology is sincere enough. Ye are goin’ te apologize, aren’t ye, son?”

“Aye. And I’m thinking perhaps some groveling will be involved as well, sir.”

The older man’s lips twitched. “I knew you were a smart lad.”

Jack thanked him for the vote of confidence and proceeded to the house. Unfortunately, Kathleen wasn’t there, either. “She left about an hour ago,” Kathleen’s mother told him, wringing her hands, her brow creased in worry. “She said her place was with you. I didn’t want her to go with the weather turning so foul, but there’s no stopping that one when she sets her mind to something.”

His heart swelled; then fear wrapped around it and squeezed, constricting it to smaller-than-normal size. Kathleen was out driving on these roads alone? Had he passed her on the way, so focused on staying on the road until he could get to her that he hadn’t even noticed?

His heart fell every time his low-beams fell on another vehicle off the side of the road, but none looked familiar. At one point, the car in front of him slid off the road and down into a ditch as he watched helplessly. He stopped to offer assistance, and was extremely glad he did when he saw that the vehicle contained a young mother and two little kids. They only lived a few miles out of his way, so he made sure he got them home safely.

By the time he got back to the Pub, it was very late. A great wave of relief washed over him when his headlights revealed Kathleen’s little Chevy Vega in the lot, covered with snow. How the thing had even made the trip was beyond him. He made up his mind then and there. The first chance he got, he was going to pay his friend Harry a visit and trade both cars in for a reliable, used four-wheel drive vehicle.

The place was completely dark, which was somewhat surprising. He’d left the outside carriage lights on (at least the ones that were still working), and a few over the bar, but there was no sign of them now. A brief glance up and down the street assured him that there had not been a widespread power outage; only the Pub seemed to be affected. It was unlikely that Kathleen would have turned off all the lights, which meant that given the age of the Pub and its current state of disrepair, he would be adding yet another expensive item to his ever-growing to-do list.

But if the electricity had failed in the Pub, why could he not spot the flicker of candles in any of the windows? Why was there not a wisp of smoke curling up from any of the chimneys?

The frigid temperature was nothing compared to the cold fear that gripped his heart. Had something happened to Kathleen? Had she tried to navigate her way through the place in the dark and gotten hurt? Or, God forbid, had she attempted to descend the rickety steps into the dirt-floored basement in search of the breaker box and fallen?

He hurried quickly to the back entrance, slipping and sliding on the way, only to find the back door wide open. A new chilling possibility entered his mind. What if someone had seen Kathleen go in alone and followed? Or what if someone had seen the closed Pub as an easy target, and Kathleen had gone in unsuspecting and... Jack clamped a wall down on those thoughts before they took over. No matter what the situation, that kind of thinking wasn’t going to help anyone.

A pile of snow sat just inside the door, deposited there by the swirling winds. A beam of light shone in from the dusk-to-dawn light in the lot, providing just enough illumination for him to know the room was empty.

Jack paused, listening.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled, forcing him to clamp down on the urge to call out for her. It was an instinctual warning, one he had learned not to ignore. Pine Ridge wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity, but bad things did occasionally happen. If the feeling in his gut was anything to go by, this was one of those times.

Jack stepped carefully across the floor on silent feet, calling upon his training, opening his senses. He cocked his head, listening beyond the gusts of wind rattling the windows and the normal creaks and moans of the old building.

He went to the bar area first, freezing in the door frame when the smell of hard liquor hit him. In the light of the streetlamps shining through the dirty windows, he saw the winking glass remains of several bottles. By the looks of it, every last one had been removed from the shelves and smashed.

For one brief moment, he wondered if Kathleen might have taken out her fiery Irish temper on the inventory, but quickly dismissed the idea. She had come back to him, told her mother her place was with him. And even if she was still angry with him, she wouldn’t do something as mean-spirited as
this
.

Which meant that Kathleen had been alone in the Pub with a malicious intruder. Someone had broken in either before she arrived or shortly after. Cold fear gripped his heart and overwhelmed him, nearly bringing him to his knees.

Please, let her be safe in our bed, asleep and unaware
, he prayed silently.
And let me find the bastard who did this before that changes.

He had to focus, he commanded himself as he fought for breath. Panic, going in half-cocked, wasn’t going to help her. She was a clever, smart woman. And, as he had reminded her only that morning, he was a highly-trained, skilled killer.

Jack slipped behind the bar, running his fingers beneath the taps for the hidden Glock he’d secured there as a precautionary measure, never imagining he would need it so soon.

His heart bottomed out. It was gone.

He moved further down, silently breathing in relief when he found his Ka-Bar knife taped behind the speedrack well. He would have preferred to have both, but he was as skilled with the familiar blade as he was with a gun. And in this case, an up-close-and-personal, silent kill was sounding mighty appealing.

A loud thump sounded on the other side of the wall, as if someone had punched it, followed by the low rumbles of a masculine voice. Jack stilled; it was too muffled to make out the words but the tone was decidedly angry.

The noise had definitely come from the storeroom, an interior room with only one obvious entry and exit. Jack knew of another, a throwback to the days of Prohibition. A feral grin curled his lips as he slipped into mission mode. He had a decided tactical advantage: he knew the layout, had a hidden entry/exit point, and years of SEAL training and combat experience. The bastard intruder didn’t stand a chance.

And if he’d dared harm a hair on his
croie
’s head, his death would be excruciatingly slow and painful instead of quick and efficient.

Jack tucked the fear away, a cold, practiced calm settling over him. This was what he knew, what he did best.

He crouched down and moved down the length of the bar until he came to the far end of the shelving, feeling along the wall for the release. When found it, he pressed down. The hidden pocket door slid noiselessly aside, revealing the secret passage.

Blade in hand and at the ready, Jack crept silently down the small corridor toward the entrance to the storeroom. The closer he got, the more clearly he heard someone moving around. Heavy feet shuffled across the dirty floor. A few mutters and grunts preceded the sound of a box hitting the floor, followed by muffled thumps and breaking glass.