T for Treachery – Azure Spark. Part 20
[
Music treat at
the end.
This story will be posted in full after the Challenge
for those of us that like to read everything in one complete telling,]
TREACHERY – Tuesday 1 AM
Tossed. Tumbling through turbulent water toward treacherous
rocks. Thunder in my head. Eyes seared by the explosion. Nothing, not even
stars.
Dead. That was their intent. Arms around me, tugging me. Kama towing me.
“Don’t thrash.” A shout penetrates the storm that
tramples my mind. “I can see. I’ll get us ashore.”
“Where? A cove? I remember only rocks and cliffs.”
“There has to be one nearby. I glimpsed Bardsey Island
from the yacht.”
Doubt. Before we sailed to the dive site. Then cliffs. Cold
and tired.
“Relax, cariad.
We’re a team – survivors.”
“If you can see, I’ll swim behind. I can hear – sense you ahead. Swimming will keep me warm – alert. Please, thozhi.“
Kama fastens a tether strap around my wrist. “I’ll
attach the other end to my ankle. Safety 101.”
Tremble and smile. Warmth. Her ankle with a rose tattoo that
matches mine. Our eternal love.
We swim together. Trust.
A sound. Waves slapping on a clinker-hull. A voice – robust.
Welsh.
“There. Alive and swimming.” Guto Thomas, and he shouts at us. “Genethod, we heard the explosion – muffled but definite. What happened?”
“Rescue us and we’ll tell,” Kama says. “But
officially we are dead. In reality, wounded. Sparkle was blinded – still
is.”
Arms pull us aboard. A second voice says, “Back to Port
Meudwy then.”
“Padrig. We must vanish,” I say. Smiling in the total
darkness.
“Your new secret is safe with me,” he says.
“Just as your earlier ones were – cousin. Us Pughs are a smart
family.”
Even if I feared his kinship, he’s true. Not every Pugh is
as prejudiced as my thaid, my
grandfather Hywel Pugh.
Plan. Move ahead of the Swedish smugglers – and the traitor
in NWP. Lure them out.
In front of the fire in Guto and Padrig’s cottage, we eat
bowls of Cawl – lamb and vegetable stew. Warmth, and with my eyesight
returning, we devise tactics.
“First, messages to our DI, Ffion Baines and to
Inspector Uthyr Varley to activate tracking of our concealed transponders.”
Kama writes the coded message. “Officially, we have to be missing or
dead.”
“We can retrieve some of the wrecked boat,” says
Guto. “Evidence – your people will know what sort of bomb.”
“Forensics will come.” Kama anticipates what I
suspect. “Then some detectives – perhaps even the one that betrayed
us.”
“Kama and I can’t stay here. We have to get to
Tyn-y-llyn.”
“Ivor Pugh’s farm,” Padrig says. “I’ve been
there a few years ago. I’ll take you. Covert?”
We all laugh.
“My family are used to my weird ways. So, if we turn up
at the Pugh farm hidden in some trailer – no surprise.”
N for Nightmare and Nemesis. K for Killed and Kinship. P for Pugh and Protection. U for Unseen and Uncle. I for Ivor and Intent. C for Covert and Code.
UNPICK. Unscramble the tangled threads hiding our traitor.
When we make sense of Pia’s parting words.
[image error]
For
further details on this theme visit my Blogging from A to Z Theme Reveal, and on
the evolution of Sparkle Anwyl visit Snowdon Shadows.
Other A
to Z Bloggers can be found via the Blogging from A to Z website’s Master List –
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/2019/03/link-to-view-master-list-and.html
^*^
And now
for something completely different.
“Music hath
charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”
William Congreve –
The Mourning Bride
