My Daughter; My Enemy

Having actually passed out, succumbing to the head injury she received from the junky's toss to the dumpster, Jade was easy to move. She was taken to the warehouse where Peter was, put in a chair just slightly more comfortable than his, meaning it had a thin cushion on the seat. Her hands were duct tapped together, behind her back, and a piece of tape wrapped around her chest to hold her upright. Her legs were tied down too, just in case she was the real Jade Gallows, Andy and Yorkkie didn't want any trouble from her, Frank really didn't care. If she was the real Gallows, and not a girl named Barbara Castle, whether his relation or not, he had nothing to do with her. If she had been hired to kill him, she hadn't succeeded, she hadn't tried, as far as he knew. She hadn't killed anyone who was innocent in New York. She was none of his business.

Yorkkie had other plans for her, however. If the finger prints came back positive, she was Jade Gallows, the IRA's Vendetta, she was getting a one way ticket to England for prosecution and jail, if not a death sentence. Traitors to the Queen still got special treatment in England.

"Wake up," Frank ordered the girl, straggling strands of brown crossing her foggy vision.

Jade struggled to get her eyes to open, then to keep them open. The air was dry and stung her eyes. "Whu... Dad?" she really had no intention to say that, she had been hallucinating about her childhood in her unconscious state. "Ah dun wanna play soccah, Ah wanna play rugbah." She spoke in slurs, but the Irish accent was clear. She at least filled two thirds of the criteria to be Gallows: She was Irish, and she was a woman.

"Who are you?" Frank asked her, outraged now that he had been fooled, by little more than a bottle of hair dye and what looked to be blue contacts.

"Barbara Castle," she responded, quickly recovering once she understood what was going on. She remembered what had happened, she remembered being picked up by Frank, over hearing that Peter had given her identity away, and that she was in clear and present danger, now inside the warehouse, with Peter somewhere, giving them a positive I.D. of her.

"Bull shit," frank spat as he spoke, his anger apparent. "Barbara died when she was a child. Who are you?"

She refused to answer, keeping her mouth shut as she stared at him, bright blue eyes watching with a green background just barely visible.

"We'll let your finger prints tell us then." He turned around, walking out of the room.

Jade was now left alone with the incredible silence and sense of doom. She was sunk n ow. Though she had never been caught as "Vendetta" she had a long list of offenses for public drunkenness, mischief and other small, fineable, offenses. All it would take would be for Andy or Yorkkie to pull a string or two, unseal her juvenile records and she was dead.

All that was left for her to do was to wait, and to pray. She was still a devout Catholic.

"Hail Mary, full of grace..." she began to recite Hail Mary after Hail Mary, prayer after prayer. Her head tilted up towards the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

"Mother Mary, protector of the children, the lost and the lonely, deliver me from my sins. Protect me from myself and heal the wounds of my mortal soul..."

From behind a pane of one way glass Andy, Yorkkie and Frank watched her, listened to her praying.

"She knows she's caught." Frank's voice was flat as he spoke, uncompassionate and dull. His eyes watched the woman, anger building up inside. The obvious reason why she had picked the name was to get at him, she knew. She knew. She wasn't innocent, but still, he couldn't justify killing her on his terms. She would die soon enough.

"Tha' she does," Yorkkie said with a sigh, crossing her arms and looking at the picture taped to the glass. The picture was her with her red hair, green eyes. A colour mug shot from an arrest for public drunkenness last St. Patrick's Day in Dublin. "She ain't tha' bad lookin'. Shame she's gotta record as big as 'em green eyes 'o 'er's..." Yorkkie was staring at the picture.

"Since when do you have a thing for Catholic girls?" Frank looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow. Yorkkie had always been a staunch anti-Catholic Anglican; Church of England all his life. Frank, being of Italian roots, was Catholic, or at least he was when he was still a believer, when his wife and children were still alive.

"When ya get ol', a prettah face is a prettah face, Castle," the old Brit said with a smirk, watching his friend with careful eyes. "She's a good lookin' girl, ya can' say she ain'."

"Yeah..." Frank shook his head, not looking at the redhead in the photograph but the brown haired girl who had resembled his daughter so closely. She was good looking, but he couldn't think of her as a sexual being. Even though she was positively identified as Jade Gallows, Andy had received the return from London a few minutes ago.

Frank left the room as Andy came in, the two passing without saying a word. Andy wasn't sure if he trusted the friend of his late father and old friend, and Frank was certain he didn't trust the young gun.

"So tha's Vendetta?" he asked, looking at the woman who was still praying, her voice coming int the room through a speaker beside the one way glass. "Certainly is devout... At leas' when on 'er last days..."

"Ah wouldn't be so sure, Junio'," the older man warned her. "Ya ain't seen 'er in action."

"An' ya 'ave?"

"Just knew a guy 'ho did... Aftah 'er, 'e's a quad. She's prettah tough, Andah," Yorkkie's voice was distant as he spoke of the damage that the girl he was just complimenting had inflicted on a dear friend.

"Ah'll be careful when Ah take 'er back."

"Ya bettah be, son... She's a Siren, no doubt."