Chapter 15
Issa stared at Eagle in horror. “You want them to attack?”
“An attack is always better than sitting and waiting. And better if they don’t know exactly what or who they’re attacking,” he said. “I don’t sit here and take bullets for anybody.”
She slowly closed her mouth. “You have a plan?” she asked hopefully.
He shrugged. “I don’t know that it’s a plan exactly. But I’m not helpless.”
She glanced around. “Do you have any place to hide? Any escape routes they wouldn’t know about?”
“No, but I do have traps set all around the outside of the property. They won’t get to us without us knowing.”
“They got to the outside of the interior fence without us knowing,” she pointed out. “So how can you say that?”
“Because I just set up a few more traps.” His tone was cool as he showed her the cameras pointed at his latest additions.
That shut her up. At least for a moment. Then she shook her head. “I should leave. Just drop me in town and drive away.”
“What good will that do? They will still come after you, no matter where you run to.”
She winced. “Then what can I do?”
He crouched down in front of her. “You can go through your mother’s boxes, so we know exactly what we’re up against.”
Her gaze widened. “I totally forgot.” She struggled to her feet.
“No, none of that.” He scooped her up and plunked her down on the kitchen chair. “Sit here. I’ll get the boxes.”
She glanced around but saw no sign of them. “Where did you put them?”
“In my office.” He turned and walked away. When he returned a few minutes later, he carried both boxes.
She’d settled with her feet up on a second chair. He put the bigger box with the paperwork on a third chair beside her. The leather keepsake box he put down slightly midway on the big table.
“We’ll start with the paperwork from your mother.”
“Good. Because I’m not sure I’m ready to open the other one,” she said shortly.
The cardboard box was full. At least a dozen brown manila envelopes were inside and a couple smaller envelopes, like to mail letters in. She stared at them for a long moment. But she never made a move to open them. He stepped forward and said in a low voice, “You want me to help?”
She nodded. “It would be a lot faster if you did.”
He took everything out of the box, set the box off to the side, sorted the envelopes into a stack. He handed her an envelope and took the second one for himself.
She opened the first flap and gasped. “This is my birth certificate.” Tears came to her eyes as she added in a hoarse whisper, “And my brothers’.”
He stepped up behind her and read the names. “Well, at least it’s your name.” He checked the rest of them. “Your three brothers were born twelve and fourteen and sixteen years ahead of you. Twelve years between you and the last one. That’s a lot of years.”
She nodded. “I know. I don’t know if I was an accident or if they just kept trying for more.”
Behind the birth certificates was her parents’ wedding certificate.
“This one appears to be important family documents.” She slowly went through them. “Here is my father’s birth certificate. These are my brothers’ and my mother’s.” She was drowned in data by the time she hit the middle of the file. “This is all very fascinating, but it really has nothing to do with my current issue,” she said when she got to the end.
“No, but it’s a huge gift. To have all that information. It means you can trace your family roots, and then it’s your choice if you want to reconnect or not.”
She sighed. “True enough. But not yet. It feels all too wrong.” She put down the envelope and reached for the one in front of Eagle. “What’s in this one?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It looks like a ledger.”
It was only one-quarter of the thickness of the envelope she had already gone through. There were maybe a dozen sheets of paper in it. On one column was a set of three letters. The second one contained a description, followed by three columns listing money, like a total and how much was paid out in a running total.
She frowned. “It’s probably my dad’s records.”
“From smuggling?”
She nodded. “I know he paid the men after a shipment was sold.”
She quickly flipped through the different sheets, seeing nothing to change her opinion. When she got to the end, she shrugged and said, “All this information is more than twenty years old. I highly doubt it’s got any relevance today.”
She put the envelope on top of the others, and he handed her the first of them. She turned it over in her hands, frowning. “I’m surprised it’s not labeled.”
“You can go through and label them now,” he said drily.
She shot him a look. “I know I’m taking my time. I’m just realizing how painful some of these memories are.”
“I understand. I also understand we could be under an imminent attack, and it would help to have the answers these men are looking for.”
She gave him a shuttered look and nodded. She opened the top envelope and pulled out its contents. It was everything to do with her brother Ethan. His school reports, records, copies of his immunizations. Basically a synopsis of the twenty-two-year-old’s life, from a doting mother’s perspective, although most of the information stopped when he finished school. Sniffling, Issa said, “My eldest brother’s school records. I suspect there’s one for each of us.” She closed the envelope and put aside on the tabletop, grabbing the next one. “Yes, this is for Sean, my middle brother.” She closed it went to the third one. “This is Liam’s envelope.” He was eighteen when he died. It hurt to look at the pictures from school and see the smiling face she could barely remember. She touched his face and shook her head. “How could he have been such a major part of my life for so long, and now it’s almost impossible to remember who he was?”
“And the last one?”
She opened it up. “It’s mine.” Inside was a single picture of when she’d been a very young child. On her shoulder was a falcon. She sat back, and this time the tears would not be held back. Hadrid.
As she stared at her childhood photo, her fingers stroked the feathers of the only creature who understood who she was.
*
“Have you always had an affinity for birds?” Eagle asked.
But she didn’t look up. Instead, she seemed lost in the passage of time. Her finger slid down the feathers of the bird resting on her shoulder.
As he thought of the relationship he had seen between her and Roash, he could see she had a deep-rooted passion that had obviously started in childhood. “Was that your falcon?”
As she raised her gaze to meet his, he could see the tears sparkling over her beautiful blue eyes. “Yes. No.” She shook her head. “It seems he was always a part of me.”
“What happened to him?”
Her shoulders hunched. “When I lost my father and brothers, I also lost Hadrid. I don’t know if he lived, died, was captured, or stolen away.” She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead though.”
“Why’s that?”
She gave him a challenging stare. “Because I no longer feel him.”
And that was at the heart of the matter. He pulled out a chair and sat down quietly beside her, but he didn’t drop his gaze. But at least he was no longer looming over her. He kept the two of them linked as he searched for the truth. What he could see was that, as far as she was concerned, she spoke the truth. Whether she had actually felt the bird’s life presence or not, he had no idea. He’d never felt such a thing with another person, let alone an animal. But, in her mind, she couldn’t feel the falcon, so he didn’t exist anymore.
“And do you feel that way about Roash?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, I felt him and Humbug both. Plus a couple others, but they weren’t as strong.” She sniffled slightly. “None are as strong as the bond I had with Hadrid.”
He let out his breath slowly as his body sagged in the chair. “When you say feel, what do you mean?” He didn’t know any other way to ask such a question except directly.
“I could feel him inside my head, chattering away at me when he was upset, when he was happy, and when he was in distress. I could also feel him in my heart. He was there when I woke up in the morning, and he was there when I went to sleep at night. When he soared in the sky, it was as if I was there with him.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “After he died, and we moved to America, there was nothing for so long. Yet I tried so hard. I called the birds all around me, looking for that same connection. I was like an amputee missing not just an arm but both legs. I was completely crippled. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t speak for so long. The voice in my mind had gone silent, so my own voice did too.”
She dropped her gaze to stare down at the picture. She sniffled once and then again. Regaining control, she slowly placed the picture down and covered it with her hand, not to hide it, but as if she could see the images through her palm. When she raised her gaze again, some of the sadness had slipped back.
He could see her grief, but it wasn’t as sharp.
“I joined the falconry club for that reason. I thought surely everybody else would have the same connections. My parents had told me to stop making up stories. My brothers used to laugh at me. But, in my heart of hearts, I knew what I had was real. So when I found out there were clubs with people dealing with the same birds, I was sure I’d found people like me.”
“And did you?”
A ghost of a smile peeked out. She shook her head. “Just as there are men and their dogs, and old ladies and their cats, there were men and their birds. But nobody I spoke to had the kind of deep connection like I was talking about.”
She gave a broken laugh. “Of course I was limited to who and what I could ask about without appearing to be crazy. I learned early that nobody appreciated me discussing my relationship with my falcon. They were quite happy to use it for their own purposes, but they certainly weren’t open to acknowledging that such a bond was possible.”
He latched onto the one word that he could understand. “Use it?”
She wrapped her arms around her chest as if once again cold.
But he figured it was more the chill of time and bad memories than the actual temperature of the room.
She gave a lopsided grin and said, “Can you see any other reason why a six-year-old would be a lookout for smugglers? A role I’d played since I was three.”
His cup landed on the table with a bang. He leaned forward. “Are you saying the falcon was the lookout, and somehow he communicated to you what was going on, whether the men were safe or not?”
Her smile brightened. “Exactly. That’s also the reason why my mother was inside the house during those times. I’m not sure she believed in what Hadrid did, but it gave her an excuse to stay inside.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s a lot of trust to place on a trained bird.”
“He didn’t have any other use as far as my family was concerned, and they didn’t like him. However, he was one of the reasons I could never be punished. My father and my mother both feared reprisals from Hadrid. His claws and talons were huge. If he hadn’t been so useful, my father would’ve shot him.”
She said it so starkly that Eagle didn’t have a problem believing her. He sank back in his chair. “Well …”
She chuckled. “Yes. We were a little rough around the edges. But the reason why I stayed safe was because of Hadrid. As long as he worked with me to keep the men safe, they understood his value. But, if he were to fail, then his existence would have been snuffed out instantly.”
“Did he ever fail?”
She stared at him. Great big wells darkened her gaze as she turned inward. “My mother said he did. I don’t see how he could have. But that night was dark and stormy. He was out flying, as always, searching, looking far below to see who was coming and who was not. I had directed him up the coastline and then back again, around the roads close to home. And he found nothing. He never did. I told my father that. And all went as planned. And then I don’t know what happened. Somehow somebody found out what my dad was doing.” Her voice was bleak and dry. “I could hear the gunfire, the shouting. And then there was nothing. Just silence.” She took a deep breath. “And Hadrid never called me again.”
“What did your mother do?”
Issa frowned. “I don’t remember exactly. She was with Angus, a family friend, one of my dad’s men. I was surprised to find him there, so I hid. I was scared, calling out, searching for Hadrid everywhere.”
“Searching? Were you running from window to window to look for him?”
She snorted. “In my mind I was reaching out in every direction I had sent him, calling, beseeching him to come home. I couldn’t live without him.”
“And?”
She shook her head. “I never felt him again. I kept trying, unable to believe the truth. But the house filled with men. My mother snatched me up a few days later. We rushed away in the night to never return.” She stared at Eagle. “The kidnappers knew me. They knew me from way back when. Most of the kidnappers were young, but one was way older. Although I never saw the boss, so I don’t know about him.”
“Maybe they were the same ages as your brothers back then?”
She shrugged. “How would I know? I barely remember my brothers as it is. Too many years were between us, and I was an oddity. I had a huge falcon as my guardian. That gave me almost a mythical supernatural presence. My brothers both hated Hadrid and were afraid of him. But my family received a certain reverence from everyone else, and they basked in the attention. But dare I fail …” She got up, shifted her position, and sat down again. She looked to the coffeepot. “Could you get me another cup?”
He bounced to his feet, shaking his mind free of what she’d told him. He couldn’t imagine how odd that would’ve been, or why the falcon would’ve latched himself onto her. That she could send him out and keep watch was surely just a coincidence. The men had been damn lucky to have operated under the eyes of the law for so long. At some point, of course, their luck was bound to run out. Then they would’ve blamed her and the bird. He shook his head, wondering about men, such as those in her family, as he picked up the coffeepot and brought it back. As he raised it to pour the liquid into her cup, there was a single gunshot, and the coffeepot exploded in his hand.