Eye of the Falcon (Psychic Visions #12)(31)

“No. But it’s not the first time we’ve been watched.”

“Did they follow me here, do you think?”

“I think they probably followed your tracks. The question is whether they saw you on the side deck this morning.”

She froze. “I never thought of that.”

“That little deck is partially hidden by one of the wind barriers. But depending on what angle they looked from, you might have told them you were here.”

“Shit,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” he said drily.

When she reached him, he held out an arm. She held his forearm, not surprised by the steely strength of the muscles under her fingers. At the same time, she was surprised. The man was solid. She’d expected him to be strong but not this rock-hard steel.

With his assistance, she made her way down the short hallway into a very large open kitchen, dining, and living space. She stopped and smiled with pleasure. “This is beautiful.”

“It’s been a labor of love,” he admitted. He helped her to a kitchen chair and pulled it out for her. “Sit down here, and see how that’ll be. If you need a pillow, tell me.”

She sat down on the hardwood chair, wiggled slightly, and said, “It might be just fine.”

He had already returned from the couch with a couple cushions. He pulled another chair from under the table, plopped the cushions down, gently lifted her feet, and put them on top of the pillows. “When you walk on them like you’ve just done, it draws all the blood to the surface, and they’ll swell because they’ve been injured. Let’s keep them raised as much as possible.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem. But as far as being watched, any idea who it is?”

“I’m afraid it’s the kidnappers.”

He spun slowly to look at her. “You’ve never said anything about that. Have you remembered what happened?”

“Bits and pieces of it are coming back. Nothing clear, nothing I could seriously identify. I remember cleaning out my mother’s place almost a week after her death, being emotional as she had just passed away, finding something that upset me in her belongings. So, when I got home, I wasn’t as aware as I could have been. I unpacked the car and stored a bunch of it in the root cellar and might even have put on the teakettle, when I heard something outside. I raced for the back door and was grabbed. I fought, but they pulled a long hood over my head and body. I was picked up, thrown over somebody’s shoulder, screaming the whole time, until somebody hit me in the head.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember much after that.”

Instantly he was at her side. “Do you know which side you got hit on?”

“Yeah,” she said drily. She pointed to the left side of her skull. “I do remember it bleeding quite a bit off and on. But it was the least of what they did to me.”

He nodded. “I had a doctor come in to look at you.”

“The woman?” she asked.

“No, an old Irishman was here first.”

She stiffened slightly at the description. “Did he say anything?”

“Only that he’d seen stuff like this before and hoped never to see it again,” Eagle said. He poured her a cup of coffee, brought it over to her, and set it on the table within her reach. “He said you were systematically tortured. The bruises were multiple colors, indicating you were hit repeatedly in the same spots. Just as you started to heal, you’d get slammed again.”

Her throat closed with the memories, pain choking her even now. “They wanted something from me that I couldn’t give.”

“What was it?

“I don’t really know,” she admitted. “They just kept asking, Where is it?”

He stopped and turned, leaning against the counter, holding a big hefty ceramic cup full of coffee. “Tell me more.”

“It’s still kind of fuzzy. I know they were looking for information about what happened back in Ireland when I was a child.”

“Ireland?”

She studied him carefully and nodded slowly. “I heard your friend’s accent. I have to admit I stayed silent while he was here. I was scared of him.” She gave a sigh. “I was afraid he was one of the kidnappers. They had accents too.”

“That makes sense. I had wondered if you were conscious through any of that.”

“I was briefly awake as I was being checked over. I forced myself to stay quiet because I didn’t know who you were. And because of his accent,” she admitted.

“I guess the accent was just a little too close to those you had already heard?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what they were looking for.”

“I’m from Ireland originally.” She gave him a lopsided grin. “My whole family was involved in smuggling. I used to be the lookout as a young child. My father and his men had coves up and down the shores that they used. They landed in various places, unloading their goods, keeping them hidden until they could be sorted and divided up. My mother was part of the lookout crew.”

“What happened?”

“One day, when I was six years old, it all went to hell,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I never did get an explanation from my mother. She would never talk to me about that time in my life. When I tried to ask, not only would she hit me to silence me, as I grew up, she would turn cold and distant, as in she wouldn’t talk to me for days. The minute I would bring up something about the old country, I would be punished with the silent treatment. I very quickly learned that the pain from withholding love was more effective than any physical punishment she could have inflicted.” She shook her head. “So I really don’t know what happened back then.” She picked up her coffee cup, slowly turning it in her hands, swirling the hot liquid faster. “I just know I lost my father and my siblings to the disaster.”