“Dammit, Constance,” I muttered. “You aren’t my mother.”
“I’m not your wife either, thank God,” she quipped softly. “But, someone has to look after you, and until we clear Felicity, it looks like I got the job whether I want it or not. Now, hold still.”
“Bastard!” Austin snipped.
“I thought I told ya’ ta’ shut up!” Ben snarled at him.
“I’ll be fine,” I reiterated to Mandalay.
“Come over this way,” she instructed, tugging on my arm. “I need more light.”
“Constance…”
“Jeezus, Row,” Ben urged with a healthy measure of exasperation in his voice. “She ain’t gonna take no for an answer, so will ya’ just let ‘er look at it and get it over with?”
I didn’t say another word, but I did let out a heavy sigh before following her a few steps over to the floor lamp. Then, giving in to yet another of her demands, I twisted my head so she could have a closer look.
“Mmhmm,” she hummed. “It’s not too bad. I don’t think you’ll need any stitches.”
“Thanks, Doctor Mandalay,” I returned, unable to keep the sarcasm from bleeding through.
She ignored the dig and instead simply produced a second dishtowel from her other hand then carefully pressed it against my lip. It was damp and cold where the fistful of ice it was wrapped around had begun to melt through.
“Here, hold this on it for a while.”
“If I do, will you stop mothering me?”
“No.”
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could really say in response, so I sighed again and held the icepack against the lower half of my mouth as I mumbled, “Okay. Fine. If it makes you happy.”
“Well isn’t that just a pretty picture then,” Austin grumbled. “Just couldn’t wait, could you, ya’ bastard?”
“Hey,” Ben barked. “What did…”
“No, Ben,” I snapped, cutting him off. “Let him say what’s on his mind.”
“Aye, I suspect you don’t want to be hearin’ that, now do you,” my brother-in-law responded with an angry snort.
“Keep it civil,” Ben instructed, taking a half step to the side, so we could see one another. “Both of ya’.”
“Actually, yes. I do want to hear it, Austin,” I replied. “Just what couldn’t I wait for?”
“Her,” he snipped. “Felicity’s in jail, and you’ve already got yourself a cailin here in her house…”
“A what?”
“Are ya’ daft?” he spat, thrusting his chin toward Constance. “Your girlfriend there.”
“Gods, Austin, get a clue. She’s an FBI agent,” I returned incredulously. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
Constance slipped out her badge case and flipped it open as she stepped toward him. “I’ve already identified myself as a federal officer, here’s my ID,” she told him coolly. “And, he’s telling the truth. I’m not his girlfriend.”
He simply harrumphed in return, giving her credentials only a cursory glance.
“So, are you trying to tell me everything was just fine until you saw Constance standing there at the door, and that’s why you decided to take a swing at me? Because, I hate to tell you this, but I have trouble believing that.”
“Aye, I was planning to hit you anyway, that’s a fact.”
“Yeah, no shit. Want to give me a clue as to why?”
As an answer he simply repeated his earlier question. “What have you done to my sister?”
“I haven’t done a thing. Just what the hell makes you think I did something to her?”
“She’s in jail, ya’ bastard.”
“Dammit, Austin, you think I don’t know that? I didn’t put her there, you idiot, but I’m trying my damndest to get her out!”
“That’s not what I’ve been told.”
“By who? Shamus?”
“Aye.”
“Yeah, well why am I not surprised by that? What does get me though is that you believed him.”
“Well, you might as well get used to it, then.”
“Really? So when did you all of a sudden start taking his side?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, I think maybe it does. What the hell did he tell you, Austin?”
“The truth.”
“The truth, or his truth? Because we both know they aren’t the same thing.”
“Says you.”
“Gods,” I muttered, worry filling my voice. “What the hell did he say to you, Austin?”
“He told me the things you’ve forced my sister to do.”
“He what?”
“The devil worship. The sacrifices. Everything.”
“Gods, Austin, give me a break, will you? You, of all people, know better than that. Hell, you’ve been one of the first to defend me when he’s started in on that crap before.”
“Aye, but that was before I knew the real truth.”
My frustration was starting to get the better of me. “Real truth? What real truth? What are you talking about?”
“Stop lying, you bastard. He still has the letters.”
The only thing keeping my irritation from reaching a volatile flashpoint was the sudden dousing of confusion applied by his words. “Letters? Dammit, Austin. Just spit it out. What the hell are you talking about?”
“The letters Felicity sent, begging him to help her escape from you,” he growled.
“The what?” I snapped back at him, incredulity tightly wrapped about the words. “Give me a break. He doesn’t have any such thing and you know it.”
“Aye, but I do. I’ve seen them. And, they’re written in her own hand, by God.”
CHAPTER 20:
The only thing I truly remember hearing on the heels of Austin’s retort was Ben’s voice as he all but spat the word “bullshit” into the room. If my brother-in-law responded to it verbally, either I didn’t hear him, or his words simply weren’t registering because I was no longer paying attention to his rhetoric.
In fact, I wasn’t paying attention to anyone.
Of course, even if I had been able to blurt my own objection, once again there was no need, because Ben delivered the comment with enough disdain for the both of us. Besides that, the single word summed everything up in a neat and wholly unambiguous package. There was nothing for me to add.
It took a moment for me to notice that all normal sound had been replaced by a loud ringing as my blood raged through my body. My ears and face began to feel hot, and the room seemed to waver as an emotional claustrophobia swaddled me in an ever-tightening blanket of anguish. I couldn’t even describe what I was feeling as blind anger, because it went so far beyond that.
It was a good thing Shamus wasn’t the one in the chair because this was all simply too much. I’d finally had everything I could possibly take, and the fragile self-control I’d maintained thus far was a rapidly fading memory. I couldn’t say for certain what I would have done had it actually been him sitting there, but it’s a good bet that an ambulance and some manner of charges being filed against me would have been a big part of the aftermath.
I stood there, unmoving. I didn’t even utter a sound as Austin’s words replayed in my head. I simply stared back at him while every painful event in my recently shattered life joined together and came to a dangerous climax. Then, just as I felt myself pitching over that precipice toward a violent eruption, something far more frightening happened.
Calm swept over me in a comfortable shroud.
Cold, emotionless, calm, and with it came a strange sense of clarity. It was, however, a form of lucidity that I couldn’t readily identify. I knew full well that while it could in fact be reality, it could just as easily be the edge of insanity. But, at this point, it simply didn’t matter one way or the other.
Thoughts ricocheted around the inside of my skull, and I inspected them with mild interest, still remaining staunchly silent.
There wasn’t even the most miniscule thread of doubt in my mind that what Austin had professed was exactly what Ben had said it was-pure, high-grade fertilizer. There could be absolutely no truth to it whatsoever, and that was simple fact. On top of that, it was fresh ordure. It simply stank too much not to be. But, unfortunately, I also knew that right now, Austin firmly believed every word of the steaming pile he had just shoveled.