A/N's: Hey, Sharnhorst read my "Shades of Gray" fic. Thanks! Were this story not already dedicated to you, I would dedicated it to you.
Chapter Two
Franklin Laidley died three weeks later. He went to be cheerfully one night and did not wake the next morning.
Sharni cleared her things out of the room she had occupied at Mint Castle, said goodbye to Jani, the housekeeper, and went back to the village. Her Aunt Carol and Uncle Robert owned the village pub, The Thistle, and this had been Sharni's home since her parents had died in her fourth year. Her old room looked as if had the day she first went away, and she was happy to be in it again for a while.
A month passed. Sharni heard from Dublin General that a sister's post would shortly become vacant. She made a trip to the city to attend an interview and was eagerly welcomed back by the hospital officials, who had been sorry to lose her. There were a few weeks still to go before she could take up her new post, but she returned to Mint with the cheerful feeling that her future was happily settled. She wished she could say the same for the island.
She was in The Thistle one evening, pulling a pint for Dr. McNeil, when the door opened and Maria Stratton came rushing in like a whirlwind.
"He's done it!" she exploded. "The rotten swine. Ian Laidley's sold Mint Island and never had the common decency to write and tell us himself."
She held up a copy of News & Around, a weekly news magazine. "We've all been taken over by some huge industrial conglomerate." She was almost in tears of rage. "We belong to Calloway Industries," she said bitterly.
She began to read out odd passages from the article.
Calloway was thirty-seven and had started from nothing, turning himself into a multimillionaire in an astonishingly short time.
"What does he look like?" said Carol. "Is there a picture?"
"Ay, on the next page." Maria flicked the page over.
Everyone craned to see the large black-and-white picture of a harsh face with deep set eyes and a shockingly familiar goatee.
"I'd not care to meet that one on a dark night," said Carol. "Did you ever see a face like that?"
"Ay!" said Maria and Sharni with one voice. "We have!"