“Project MK Ultra?” Donovan suggested.

Albert shook his head. “Serious now. Unless you're suggesting she was programmed to do exactly that and someone activated her for that reason and made her kill. Seems very far-fetched.”

Donovan sat down on a concrete window seat outside the coffee shop and sighed. Suddenly a thought came to him. “Her sister...” He jumped up. “I have to go.”

“Oh, no!” Albert shouted at him. He ran after Donovan, but Donovan was too fast for him.

Donovan ran all the way back to his house. He took all the short cuts and back streets he knew, not wanting Albert to follow him. There was a secret room underneath the living room where he kept files on a lot of things he had been involved in as an FBI agent and as an attorney. It was the room full of files that interested him. The cases he wanted to remember for some reason. One of them was labeled Mara Lang.

It was the only file he had kept on the Lang family. Not because he wanted to remember, but because he had to. He looked through the file and found a picture. It was taken high up on the hills. He had never realized where it was, but now he did. He took the picture and left the file.

When he swung the secret door to the living room open, he heard the door.

“Storm Donovan! Come the fuck out! You need to tell me what's going on!” Albert's voice rang through the building.

Donovan pulled the door shut again and went back down. He did not want to talk to Albert right now. He opened a door to a tunnel that lead to the garage. It was the only passage he had installed himself. He had it done when he had built the garage. In the passage, just before the door to the garage, there was a small vault. He opened it and pulled a gun from it. He had used a Sig Sauer nine millimeter in his FBI days and he kept a couple around the house. He had left the other one in his nightstand again, as he did not want to walk around armed, but he felt he needed to have a weapon on him now.

He opened the final door and ended up in a storage hold in the garage. He pushed past the cleaning utensils and stepped out. He ran for the Jag and opened the garage door and the gate. When they opened, he gunned it, tearing out into the streets of DUMBO.

Inside the building Albert heard the roar of the engine of the E-type and he ran out. “Donovan!” he shouted as he crossed the step. He swore and shook his fist at his friend. He ran down the driveway a few paces, but Donovan's car disappeared rapidly. Swearing still, he reached for his phone.

“Keith! I need one of your guys to work some of their magic. Get into the car insurance databases and track a car for me. No, I don't have a fucking warrant, just do it! Just track Storm Donovan's Jaguar!”

Donovan raced into the countryside above the city. He knew now where he could find Justine Lavoie, and he reckoned he would find Naomh Walsh there too. He just hoped he would be in time.

The traffic was hellish, of course. Whenever you needed to get somewhere pronto, the traffic seemed to be worse than ever. Donovan kept his foot down and swerved in and out of the traffic as he drove along the Hudson River side. He even used the sidewalk to bypass some of the jams. It took forever to get out of Manhattan, but when he did, the road was suddenly clear. He flew up the interstate as fast as he could, racing to the top of the hill he had recognized from the photograph.

At the top of the hill there was a parking place. Kids often drove up there to make out in the evenings and during the days, people went there to enjoy the city lights. He had been there a few times for those very reasons and he had recognized it this time as he went through the picture. When the link was made to Mara Lang, he knew what had caused Justine Lavoie's deranged behavior; he remembered the picture in the file and now he knew where she was heading.

He pulled up next to the limousine and jumped out of the Jag. Then he saw them, on the grass just beyond the railing. There was blood in Naomh Walsh's thick curly hair where she had been struck and Justine Lavoie was giggling as she raised a knife above the woman's back.

“Stop!” he roared, pulling the Sig from his belt and aiming it at Justine Lavoie's head.

The girl giggled again. “Oh hi, pretty boy! Glad you're here. I'm just making her look pretty.” She brought the knife down and drew it through the flesh at the back of Naomh's shoulders. The sudden pain brought her back to consciousness with a scream.

Donovan pulled the trigger twice. He saw Justine Lavoie's arm snap and the blood spray from the flesh. She dropped the knife and jumped up.

A black SUV pulled up with screaming tires. From the corner of his eye, Donovan saw Albert get out.

Justine Lavoie twirled in a little dance step. He was surprised she was able to ignore the pain she must have in her arm. He saw her bend down to pick up the knife again and reach down to continue what she started. But her blood had sprayed the grass a wet red. As she stepped onto the red patch, she slipped. Her reactions were slow and she could not recover her balance. It seemed like an image from a dream to Donovan. Everything seemed to slow down. She fell backwards in slow motion and toppled over the edge of the small cliff. He felt himself rushing forward, but he could not reach her. He saw her tumble down and could all but hear her body break on the road below.

 

Chapter Twelve

“What the fuck are you keeping from me?” Albert asked Donovan as he handed him a cup of the hospital machine coffee. “How the fuck did you know she'd be there?”

Donovan looked up at him. “How the fuck did you know where I was?”

“Buddy at the NSA. Insurance database, GPS, blah blah blah. Boring story. My question is more interesting. How did you know?”

Donovan sighed. “Mara Lang. I kept a file on her. She and her brothers went there before Quinn was locked up. There was a picture. It was the day before she died.”

Albert looked at him, then he looked at the operating theatre below them. A surgeon was stitching up Naomh's back. She was sedated. She would be alright, but would have a very nasty scar for the rest of her life. He wanted to ask him what had caused him to think of that, but another question was more obvious. “Why did you keep a file on Mara Lang?”

Donovan sighed. “You know it was my car that hit her?”

Albert nodded. “But that's not all, is it?”

Donovan shook his head. “I was the prosecuting attorney in the smuggling case Quinn Lang was convicted in. Mara Lang came over from Québec for the trial. She wanted to be there for her brothers. But something else happened. Not sure why, but she became obsessed with me.”

“Obsessed with you?”

Donovan nodded. “That's how she ended up under my car. She tried to stop me from driving away from the courthouse. Wanted to talk to me, tried to seduce me. When I turned her away and drove off, she got in front of my car and I drove over her. The cops did not put that bit on record, knowing it would ruin their case against Quinn Lang. Any suggestion of me being involved with his sister, a minor at that, would break their case apart.”

“So that was all hidden from the public eye. But how does that involve Justine? Or Aoibhe?”

“I guess her sister sent her letters and pictures of me. Told her how much she was in love with me. The girls were nearly inseparable. When she died, Aoibhe lost it and she ran away from the boarding school. She wasn't thinking straight. Her brothers would have brought her out to New York if she'd just waited, but she probably tried to make it back here on her own. On her way something happened and she ended up in the water. Then the L'Aigle family pulled her out. She must have banged her head or something, or the trauma of being in the river and the psychological shock combined messed with her memory.