Collateral Damage_A Tethered Novel Read online

  Collateral Damage

  A Tethered Novel

  Jessica Wayne

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also By Jessica Wayne

  About the Author

  Copyright 2018. All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  To anyone who has ever felt the gripping fingers of loss or the helplessness that follows.

  Keep looking forward to the sunrise.

  Prologue

  Ireland 1849

  Timothy stared down at the gravestone as if he believed it was only a nightmare. Surely she wasn’t really gone. Thirty years they’d been married, and he had loved her every single day of it. He would never see her smile again, never hear her bright laugh, or smell her hair that somehow always carried the scent of flowers. How would he navigate his future without her?

  A sheep bayed in the distance, but he barely heard anything over the sound of his own heartbreaking. Those who had attended her service had long since moved on, but here he was, stuck in a trance unable to tear his eyes away from the last shred of happiness in his life. From her name etched into cold stone:

  CAIT ELIZABETH MCGINLEY

  Beloved wife and healer.

  How could her life be summed up in one sentence? There was so much more to her, so much more that should have been said about her when she’d been alive. She had been everything to him and had spent her entire life helping to heal the sick and injured.

  The pain of losing her and knowing he would never see her again was nearly too much to bear. He wiped a tear from his cheek and knelt in the cool grass to press his hand to the stone. It seemed strange to him that the headstone was cold beneath his touch when she’d been so warm in life. Since the moment he’d met her he’d known she was a force of good in this world. One that would hopefully overshadow the pain he’d felt at losing his two best friends. Aengus and Myria had long since moved on, brother and sister who believed they could only rely on each other. They had shut him out when things had gone wrong, and that was something he couldn’t forgive them for.

  As it turned out, his Cait had completely eclipsed the pain of that loss with her love, and he’d believed that perhaps he had never truly loved anyone before her. Now that she was gone, he knew he would never love another. How could he?

  Anger overwhelmed him when his thoughts drifted back to Myria. She was the very reason he was now stuck in this hell of a life without his wife. He was far too angry to remember just why she’d cast the spell she had. Logically, he understood it had been the only way to save her brother from a lifelong heartache. But here he was, feeling the pain she had spared her brother, and they were none the wiser. Had they ever tried to reach out to him before? Of course not. They were entirely too wrapped up in their own lives to worry about what he was doing.

  He and Cait had raised no children, so she was the last person in his world who knew his secret. He had no one left. When she had fallen ill, she had made him promise that one day when the curse was broken, he would live a happy life. That he would marry again and have the children she’d been unable to give him during their time together.

  She had told him not to waste the years he had, that they were a gift and a way to do good in the world she had believed he was capable of. But what he always had truly wanted was his one lifetime with her. Now he was completely forgotten and forced to walk this earth alone. And it was all because of a naïve witch who had dabbled in mystics she couldn’t have comprehended.

  He briefly considered going to her, telling her what she had done to him. But what good would that do? It would change nothing. He doubted even she knew how to undo the spell cast on him. And even if she did, she wouldn’t risk hurting her brother by taking away his chance at happiness.

  No, there was no hope for him. He would have to continue on with his life, living without fully living. No happily ever after’s or anyone he would be able to grow old with. He was nothing but a forgotten victim in a world full of empty possibilities.

  What good could he do? He felt no goodness left in his heart.

  He closed his eyes and willed the lump in his throat to disappear. There was nothing he could do about it now, nothing but wait and hope that one day his curse would end, and he would be allowed to die like everyone else eventually did. Perhaps one day he could see his Cait again.

  The wind picked up, and he breathed in the fresh scent of the country he had loved for so long. A country that no longer felt like home without the laughing, smiling, red-haired woman he had loved passionately for the last three decades.

  Timothy pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and turned away. It was time he began moving forward the best he could.

  With each new step he took, his anger for all things magic grew until he made himself a promise. He would never get involved with another person who possessed abilities beyond everyone else. Never again would he offer his help to a witch who had no comprehension of the consequences of her magic.

  He refused to ever again be someone else’s collateral damage.

  Chapter 1

  Boston 2017

  Timothy McGinley made his way down the busy streets of Boston towards McGinley Antiquities. He had built the company from the ground up over the last sixty years and was more than proud of the well-known reputation they had for being the best artifact authenticators around.

  At least in his business, it paid to be well over two hundred years old. He could spot a fake from a mile away since he had more than likely seen the original up close and personal.

  He had chosen to walk this morning instead of taking his car, opting instead to stroll amongst the people enjoying their morning in the fresh blanket of snow.

  He turned into a coffee shop and ordered his usual cup of black coffee, before slipping back onto the bustling street. It was nearing Christmas time, and Boston was blanketed with snow that shimmered as the sun shined down on it. Had he not seen it every single season for nearly a hundred and fifteen years, he might have been just as enamored by it like everyone else.

  Now though, he simply ignored it and moved about his day. He had no reason to celebrate, no reason to even think for a moment this might be the last time he’d experience it.

  He couldn’t
die, and therefore life had lost the edge. He had spent years doing anything he had ever dreamed about. He had fought in both world wars, skydived, climbed Everest, and ran the Boston marathon every year. Why? Because he was bored.

  What else was there to do when you were going to live forever?

  “Morning, Mr. McGinley!” his secretary called as he stepped into the foyer of his office building.

  “Morning Jess, what do you have for me today?”

  “We got a new shipment of artifacts from a warehouse in Dublin. They are waiting in the curating room for you as we speak.”

  “Great. Meetings?”

  “A conference call at ten a.m. with the London Museum of Natural History and a face to face at noon with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.”

  “What would I do without you Jess?” he asked with a smile and stepped into the elevator. She was pushing forty and ever since her divorce last year, she’d been on a long line of serial dates that made her feel less than adequate compared to the twenty something’s wandering around who were doing their best to pull in an older man. He knew that because he made it his business to know everything there was to know about those he surrounded himself with.

  He also knew that she was an incredibly sweet woman who wanted nothing more than to be loved and that his head of security and the only one who knew his real birthday, Ashton Hamilton was completely smitten with her and was just too afraid to say anything. Had Timothy’s heart been anything but a tool in his body, he might have tried to set them up. But as it stood, he didn’t give a damn about the feelings of others. Why the hell should he when no one gave a shit about his?

  He had no interest in finding himself trapped in another spell, so he made sure he vetted his employees to the max. He refused to allow any magic around him unless he was the one studying it.

  Which, he had been doing, unsuccessfully, for the last sixty-two years. He had tried everything he could think of to break the spell, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t muster up even an ounce of magic.

  He had only confirmed what he’d always known, you were either born with it or not. There was no way to give yourself abilities if it had never been in your blood to begin with. If there had been, he’d be long dead by now.

  Timothy stepped out of the elevator and onto the top floor of the McGinley building. His office spanned the entire fifteenth floor and was by far his favorite place in the entire world.

  A dark mahogany desk sat in front of the floor to ceiling windows that spanned the entire space and overlooked the city he had grown to love. A bar on the left side of the room was stocked with the best whiskey money could buy and artifacts he hadn’t been able to part with, so he’d purchased them himself, lined the walls on either side of the room.

  The bathroom was the only part of the area that was separated, the door of which was near a large king size bed since he slept here most nights. He had an apartment on the other side of town that served as his private entertaining space.

  In all his years he had never fallen in love again, but he definitely enjoyed the company of a woman, even if it were only for a night or two. No matter what he did or who he did it with, nothing ever changed-- he was still lonely, even if he wasn’t alone.

  He took the messenger bag off and pulled his laptop out. After going through the typical routine of checking his messages and returning e-mails that may have come in since he’d last checked them, he headed downstairs for his favorite part of the entire job: checking the new arrivals.

  Each time he held an artifact in his hand, it somehow eased his loneliness. As if, the fact that the object was nearly as old as he was, sometimes even older, it had seen the things he had over the years. Witnessed the horrors that the human race was capable of. It was hard to see the beauty in others when you’d lived through countless wars.

  “Morning, Mr. McGinley!”

  “Morning, Jake, what do you have for me today?” Timothy greeted his shipment manager as he stepped onto the fourth floor from the elevator. It was where they kept the majority of their artifacts, unless the item was too large for the elevator, in which case they took it to the basement.

  “A new shipment from your home country, boss.”

  Timothy couldn’t help but smile. His favorite shipments were those that came from home. They served as a heartwarming reminder of the place he’d left so long ago and hadn’t stepped foot in since.

  “Wonderful.” He smiled as he pulled on gloves and opened the first crate. Inside, packed delicately, were eleven worn pennies from the first issue to Ireland in the 1280’s. They weren’t particularly rare and therefore didn’t hold an incredible amount of monetary value. However, they would be invaluable to collectors worldwide. He set them back in the crate and cataloged, before moving on to the next one.

  The next crate held an assortment of gold jewelry that had been crafted sometime in the early 1800’s. He recognized one particular design, as it was strikingly similar to one he’d purchased for Cait as a wedding gift.

  The gold cuff was worn down, so the Celtic knots that encircled it were barely recognizable. It didn’t surprise him, gold wasn’t as hard as steel and didn’t hold up nearly as well to the years as the latter.

  He cataloged it and set it aside to move on to the next item in the crate.

  All in all, it turned out that nearly ninety-five percent of the shipment had been legitimate artifacts, with only a few having been replicas made to appear as if they were the real deal.

  He finished logging everything into the books and took his gloves off. He stood for a moment, surrounded by things that were old and full of memories of multiple lifetimes. Just as he was.

  “Are we all good?” Jake asked as he walked into the room, chipper as usual. From his research, Timothy had learned that Jake Parish was the only child of two doctors who had their own practice here in Boston. He preferred to play video games rather than going out with friends and other than his online profiles used for gaming—specifically computer games—he didn’t use any other type of social media. It had surprised Timothy when he’d interviewed him, to see that Jake was fit. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to go off a stereotype, but he hadn’t expected the gamer profile to be matched with an athletic build.

  Timothy handed him the books, “There are a few items—some glasses and plates—that were only replicas of the real thing. I placed those in the crate near the door. The others have been authenticated and logged and are ready for auction or to be shipped back to their owners.”

  “Awesome. I’ll get them taken care of. Uh, Jess said you are running a few minutes behind for your conference call and asked me to let you know they are waiting on the line.”

  He looked down at his watch surprised to see that nearly two hours had passed while he’d been down here. “Thank you, Jake, I’ll head up to my office.”

  “Sounds good boss. I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

  Timothy nodded and headed for the elevator. As the doors closed in front of him, he mentally ran down the list of items on the agenda for his conference call with London. They were begging him to fly out and authenticate a pair of chalices found recently.

  Since he wasn’t fond of air travel, he didn’t care how long it had been around, it still seemed strange for human beings to by flying through the air, he had politely passed on multiple occasions.

  If they continued to press the issue though, he might have to at least send someone over there. Jake came to mind. He had recently graduated with a masters in History and had studied overseas dating artifacts they found in Cairo, Egypt. Perhaps he’d be interested in the promotion.

  With the idea taking root, Timothy stepped on to the floor of his office and over to his desk to answer the blinking red light.

  “Hello gentlemen, I apologize for keeping you waiting. What can I do for you?”

  * * *

  Timothy hung up the phone relieved they’d gone for his idea. He buzzed Jess and asked her to let Jake know he needed to spea
k with him, then he stood to stare out of the large windows that overlooked the city. His city, the only place that had felt like home to him since Cait had died and he’d left Ireland all those years ago.

  He’d spent a couple years traveling all over the country and had lived in Illinois, Texas, and even California once it had been deemed a state before he finally settled in Massachusetts and started his business. He carried both mental and physical scars from the battles he’d fought throughout the years. The physical wounds had healed but still turned into the ragged edges of skin that were a roadmap of his injuries. He had thought perhaps the scars would disappear as well, but it seemed he wasn’t even allotted that luxury.

  He heard the elevator doors open behind him and turned to see a somewhat nervous looking Jake standing just inside his office.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes.” Timothy offered him a smile. He liked the kid, had since the moment he’d met him and hoped he would take this promotion and use it to build a career above the stockroom. “Have a seat.” Timothy gestured to the chair across from his desk and took his own seat while Jake made his way over. “I have an opportunity I think you’ll like.” When Jake stayed silent, Timothy continued. “The London Museum of Natural History has asked for our help in authenticating and dating two chalices they discovered during a recent dig. I would like to send you.”