Free Border Angels by Anthony Quinn

she was moving through was someone else’s. She forced herself to return his lustful stare and watched the tremor of foreboding that briefly clouded his features as she drew closer. She placed the credit card bearing Jack Fowler’s name on the counter, and he glanced down at it with a strained look.
    Without a trace of emotion, she asked for one hundred boxes of cigarettes. King-size.
    He scratched his neck and glanced briefly at the manager’s office. Then he looked at the card, shrugged, and put it in the chip reader. When the machine verified the PIN, he began packing the cartons in several large bags. She was relieved to see that the card still worked. When he had finished, he looked at her and frowned. He appeared reluctant to hand over the bags.
    “Is there a problem?” she asked.
    His frown deepened. “Don’t you know smoking is bad for your health?”
    She relaxed. “Everyone needs a vice.”
    He breathed out a sigh. “Now, that’s the truth.”
    Afterward, she took the cigarettes to a house in the town. A woman with an anxious face opened the door.
    “Lena!” she said, in surprise. “You can’t come here.”
    “I wasn’t expecting an invite.”
    “If you want to get yourself killed, do it on someone else’s doorstep.”
    “This is business, Martha,” she replied. “I need cash.”
    She pushed the bags of cigarettes at her. The woman looked inside and nodded.
    “You’ve left a big mess behind,” she warned. “It doesn’t look good for you, but I’ll give you the money for these. That’s all I can do.”
    Afterward, Lena walked to the bus station. For the first time in a couple of days, she felt good. Untouchable. In charge of her own destiny. Stuffed into an empty cigarette box in her purse were more than five hundred euros in notes, all flying the flag of the European Union.
    A bus was due to leave at 6:00 p.m. for Dublin. She bought a ticket and boarded it. The city would be less oppressive than this lonely border country, she told herself. In a few hours, she would step off the bus and disappear into Dublin’s noisy streets, leaving behind her cramped fears forever.
    However, as the bus began to pull out of the station, she was seized by a feeling of uneasiness. She stared blankly at her reflection in the window, her shorn head hanging over the darkening countryside like a fading image from an unfinished dream. The bus trundled down the road. It was not the memory of all that had happened to her that preoccupied her, but the thought of all she had left undone. She realized she was not yet ready to leave this border country; it had become part of her. She carried a secret knowledge of the men who had visited her. Their inner lives were etched into her consciousness. Her mind churned through their stories, their fears and complaints, the miserable little crosses they carried on their backs. The sense of revulsion inside her grew strong. The border country had turned her into its prey, and she could not bear the thought that in some way she had been its victim. Her eyes clouded over. Her fantasies of escape dissolved, and in their place, a darker and more desperate plan returned to preoccupy her mind. She had to put things right before she departed.
    Grabbing her bag, she ran to the front of the moving bus and told the driver she was feeling sick. He pulled in at the next lay-by and opened the door.
    She jumped out before the vehicle had fully stopped. Life was a parachute jump, she told herself; you just had to hold your nerve.

10
    On his way to his ex-wife’s house in the city, Daly stopped at a florist’s and bought two dozen freshly cut daffodils. He hoped they would remind Anna of the spring they had met, when the flowers bloomed in wild profusion along the banks of the river Lagan.
    A young man opened the front door with a fixed smile and blank blue eyes.
    “Hello,” said Daly. “I’m Anna’s ex-husband.”
    “Oh, yes. She’s expecting you.”
    “Brian is it?”
    “No,