“My parents died in the explosion along with seven other civilians. Of course, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I found out it was O’Rourke who planted the bomb. That didn’t come out until long after we moved here.”
Jillian interrupted, raising her voice. “Meanwhile, O’Rourke had been in the Maze prison outside of Belfast,” she said, the words pouring out as though she couldn’t stop them. “My father was approached by a friend of his who was in the IRA, about a potential prison break from the Maze. He wanted to know if our family would shelter an IRA escapee for a few days until the IRA could slip him out of the country. My father agreed. We were told that someone would be staying in the basement. We were also told to stay away from him, that only my father could go downstairs and talk to him. When the prison break occurred, O’Rourke was the one who came to our house. We were just teenagers then.”
Jillian pointed her gun at Jake and Beth again, motioned with the barrel and said, “Keep drinking.”
They hesitated and then raised their bottles to their lips. Beth’s eyes were starting to glaze a little.
“Beth, drink slow,” Jake whispered. “We’re going to need our wits about us soon.”
She gave him a puzzled look but nodded.
Jake was starting to feel the effects of the alcohol. It helped mute the pain from his knife wound.
“One day when we came home from school,” Jillian continued, “O’Rourke was in the kitchen looking for something to eat. He wasn’t supposed to leave the basement but he did anyway. He talked to us for quite a while, and then told us not to tell my father and he went back downstairs.”
“Ian was fascinated by him. He skipped school the next day and visited with him in the basement all day.”
Jake interrupted, “Ian? He was around then?”
McGill said, “Yes, Ian and I were best friends, more like brothers really, for years. That is, until O’Rourke showed up. Then Ian changed. He became distant. He later joined the IRA as a hit man. Now, that’s his living. He’s a contract killer, an assassin, hitman, whatever.”
Jillian gazed across the room, her eyes dark. “Ian was so excited that night. All he could talk about was O’Rourke and what an exciting life he lived. Ian envied O’Rourke for exactly one day, and then Ian despised him. Despised the mere mention of his name, just as we all did.”
Jillian stopped talking. Her green eyes filled with tears — one rolled down her cheek. She took her left hand and wiped it away. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Ian skipped school the next day too. That was the day O’Rourke left. Pat and I came home from school and found them. O’Rourke had beaten and raped my mother. He hurt her. Broke her cheek bone, gave her two black eyes and a broken wrist. She was a small woman, like me, not very strong.
“While O’Rourke was raping her, Ian showed up. He tried to stop him, but O’Rourke was stronger then and beat him up. O’Rourke broke his nose and one of his ribs. Tied him up and gagged him. Then he turned back to my mother and raped her again. This time he made Ian watch.”
Jillian started sobbing. “That’s not where it ended, though. My father couldn’t deal with it, that my mother was raped … so we left Ireland and moved here to Savannah. My mother, Pat, and myself.”
Jake stared at her, trying to shake off the blurriness clouding his mind.
McGill stood up and walked over to Jillian, placing his arm around her.
Jake was still trying to put all the pieces together and make sense out of what was happening. Too many things still didn’t make sense. Too many things still seemed logistically impossible.
McGill said, “It’s a long story, but maybe you’ll understand why Jillian and I got involved in all this. O’Rourke supposedly resigned his post with the IRA the next year and joined forces with Sinn Fein. But he didn’t really sever his ties with the IRA. No, he still secretly served as the IRA’s Quartermaster General. He was also on the IRA Nutting Squad. That was like IRA internal affairs, you know, policing their own.
“O’Rourke ordered the bombing of a shop on Shankill Road. A Loyalist area. He was targeting a meeting of the Ulster Freedom Fighters in a room above the shop. Ten people died and fifty-seven more were injured. The Loyalists responded by entering a pub in Greysteel on Halloween night, yelling ‘Trick or Treat’ and spraying the pub with a machine gun. Jillian’s father was in that pub that night. He died because of the retaliation of an attack O’Rourke had ordered.”
When McGill paused, Jillian added the final chapter. “Then the biggest of all the news broke not long ago,” she said.
“All this time, O’Rourke was a spy for the British Secret Service. A sleeper who infiltrated the IRA and Sinn Fein, gave away their secrets, and undermined their causes. He’d been proclaiming peace but he didn’t know what peace was.”
Jillian went silent. She wiped her face with her shirt sleeve and took a couple of deep breaths. She looked Jake in the eyes, “Don’t you see, we had no choice? O’Rourke had to die. He didn’t deserve to live another moment.”
CHAPTER 51
Kaplan stood on the second-floor balcony railing, balanced precariously nearly twenty feet above the ground. He reached above him and gripped the decking on the third-floor balcony. Then he pulled himself up to the next level, threw his legs over the railing and positioned himself flush to the wall and out of sight of the French doors.
Just two minutes prior, he had feared he would be exposed when Annie’s neighbor saw him on the balcony and hollered out a greeting. Kaplan had given him the hi-how-are-you wave and a grin, and then acted nonchalant until the neighbor disappeared inside.
After waiting for more revelers below to move out of sight down the alleyway, he had jumped onto the railing and climbed the twelve feet to the third-floor balcony where he now stood, silent and waiting.
He peeked through the glass into Annie’s bedroom. The room looked empty. Then he saw something move. Moments ago, he’d seen Scout perched in the bay window downstairs. Now she was walking through the room toward him, her mouth making the familiar meow motions. He stifled the curse that wanted to burst through his lips. She must have seen him jump the balcony, and had run upstairs to play. If he didn’t silence her, someone inside the house would investigate.
He eased the door open. Scout tried to exit onto the balcony but Kaplan pushed her back inside the room, then he stepped inside, gently closing the door behind him.
Scout rubbed against his legs. He picked her up, rubbed her head, then placed her back on the carpet and motioned the cat to shoo. Scout sauntered out the doorway and then took off down the stairs as if spooked by something.
Kaplan stood behind the doorway, glancing down the stairwell. He heard voices downstairs. He could hear Jake asking questions. He heard McGill and Annie answering.
He heard Annie say, “O’Rourke had to die. He didn’t deserve to live another moment.”
He felt sick to his stomach. Betrayed by the woman he loved. The woman he thought he knew was part of a scheme that had killed several people and might very well kill several more.
His mind clouded with a thousand thoughts. He quickly moved to the night stand next to Annie’s bed. He opened the drawer where she kept a loaded handgun. The handgun was gone. He reached for the phone to dial 911 but the handset was gone. His cell phone was broken, the result of his carelessness when Jake had hung up on him. Then he heard Jake call her Jillian.
Jake. He had to free Jake. And Beth. The truth had to come out. Annie, or was it Jillian — whoever — and McGill and the big man…they had to be stopped.