Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9(34)

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.