Tasgall (Immortal Highlander Clan McKeran #1)
Chapter 1
Chapter One
“ M ore coffee, Miss?” the friendly, middle-aged server asked as she stopped by Ava Travars’s booth and held up a full pot.
“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” She moved her mug to the edge of the table.
Since Ava had arrived in Monterey after dark, this was her first chance to get a look at the northern California town. Through the streaky condensation on the booth’s window, she saw a dense fog shrouding most of the buildings and streets, and filtering the sunlight to a pale glow. Accustomed as she was to Dallas’s humid climate, the dampness here seemed much heavier, thanks to the Pacific Ocean. Even from inside the diner, she could smell the salt of the sea beyond the hills and cliffs, iced with last night’s hard frost.
It seemed almost magical, Ava thought, as if another world lay hidden on the other side of that thick, white mist.
Her background research indicated Monterey as a place where many interesting things had debuted; California’s first newspaper had been printed here, the first public library had opened, and what was thought to be the first two-story home built in the state still stood. The town remained famous for its Old Fisherman’s Wharf, which predated its more famous counterpart in San Francisco by four decades, and Cannery Row, immortalized in classic fiction by Steinbeck. The clerk at her hotel told her she could try whale watching, or a tasting at one of the seventy-one local wineries.
Any time someone invited her to recreationally indulge in alcohol, Ava simply refused. That was more courteous than punching them in the mouth.
Glancing from one side of the diner to the other allowed her to again check the two entrances. Renard Beaumont, the banker who owned the property she and her team had been assigned to search, had asked to meet her at the diner this morning. He might have overslept, or he thought keeping her waiting demonstrated his social superiority. As the current owner of a twelfth-century Scottish castle that had been deconstructed, shipped to Monterey, and rebuilt on a remote cliffside property now worth millions, he probably had the personality of a self-important jackass.
Easy now, Legs, the ghost of her first love chided from the back of her mind. Not all guys need to parade their tail feathers in front of the ladies. He’s probably caught in traffic.
“You waiting on a man, hon?” the server asked as she finished filling her mug.
“Aren’t we all?” After they both laughed, Ava eyed her name tag, and let her east Texas accent become a little more pronounced as she asked, “Miz Jean, do you know anything about that old castle out by the water?”
“I know it’s cursed.” The other woman’s thin lips crimped and drew in as if she’d bitten into a green lemon. “They should ship every brick of that gawd-awful place back to where it came from in Scotland, too. Let me tell you, it was a happy day when they finally closed it for good. That was two years ago, after it ate a nice young doctor taking the tour.”
Her gruesome description of Benedict Miller’s disappearance made Ava sit back. “Do you really think that place eats folks?”
“How else could all those people vanish into thin air like that?” Jean glanced at the counter before she quickly slid into the opposite bench seat and lowered her voice to add, “That castle is a death trap. More than a hundred have gone missing inside that place since it was brought over and rebuilt here. Every time someone does, the police search it from top to bottom, and never find any bodies, or even a single drop of blood. What could do that?”
“I don’t know.” That was a lie; she could name the various chemicals that could be used to dissolve human remains. If she did, she’d have to flash her badge, and by nightfall everyone would know an FBI agent was in town, which was what she didn’t want. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Jeanie, order up,” the short order cook barked from the kitchen.
“You should visit the aquarium,” the server said as she slid out of the booth. “They’ve got that fishy light show thing going on now that everyone says is really pretty.”
Ava added a single cream to her coffee and stirred it as she thought about what she knew of McKeran’s Castle and its history. The massive medieval structure had originally been built in the Scottish Highlands, where it had been disassembled stone by stone before being shipped to the United States and reassembled in 1912 by billionaire A.B. Munroe. After moving into the castle, the eccentric tycoon turned reclusive, eventually firing all of his servants so he could live alone.
Why bring a castle over from the UK? Had it belonged to one of his ancestors?
Jean’s claim about the number of disappearances was fairly accurate, too. Ninety-eight people had allegedly vanished inside the castle dating back to 1914, the last time Munroe himself had been seen alive. His nephew and every subsequent owner of the castle had likewise gone missing, as well as dozens of staff, tourists and supposedly even a few intruders. Each time someone vanished, police conducted a thorough search of the premises, even bringing in cadaver dogs to hunt for remains.
No trace of any crime or victim had ever been found on the property or inside the castle.
Billionaire hermit falls victim to ancient Scottish curse! one lurid newspaper headline from the era had trumpeted. The article that accompanied it blamed the curse on a folk legend about the highland clan that had built the castle. It seemed they had also mysteriously disappeared in the twelfth century after being cursed for murdering someone important.
It’s complete baloney, Ava’s boss had said during their last meeting. Those idiots probably got caught in a room with a door that locks tight as soon as it closes. Someday they’ll pry it open and find a hundred skeletons trapped inside.
Although his grisly prediction seemed logical, Ava had her doubts. Just like the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the most popular suicide spots in the world, McKeran’s Castle attracted people who wanted to disappear—or make someone else vanish. Ava suspected that was the reason Marianne and Ian James had traveled there just before they’d gone missing.
I know that horrible woman murdered my brother, Sherrie Portman had claimed over the phone during Ava’s call to her about the woman’s former sister-in-law.
At first she’d been skeptical, as relatives left out of a will tended to despise whoever had inherited, especially when it was someone outside the family. Why do you say that, ma’am?
A month after the funeral, she cleaned out his bank accounts, sold all his property, and took off for Texas. I hired a private detective to search his office, which the new owner hadn’t moved into yet. Hidden behind a painting was that bunch of photos I gave the Feds down here, showing Marianne in the same wedding gown but with four different grooms. Turns out she really married all of them, and they were wealthy and childless, just like Billy. They all died within a year of marrying her, too. My brother was investigating her, and that’s why she murdered him, because he found proof.
The Miami office agent in charge of the Portman case later told Ava that the photographs weren’t enough evidence to bring charges against Marianne. An autopsy had showed that he’d died of a massive heart attack while his wife had been out of town on a shopping trip. Portman had been diagnosed with a coronary artery disease some years before his marriage, and hadn’t always taken his meds as directed. Because of that medical history, the attending coroner hadn’t suspected the death to be anything but natural. By the time suspicions had been raised, Marianne had already cremated her husband’s body.
“Agent Travars?” a mellow male voice asked. “I’m Renard Beaumont.”
Ava looked up at the well-dressed man hovering beside her. He had kind eyes, an easy smile, manicured fingernails, and a gold Rolex on his left wrist.
He also made every hair on the back of her neck stand up.
She suspected that was triggered by the faint, acrid odor his expensive cologne couldn’t quite mask, as if he’d over-indulged in self-medication last night and every other night before it. Addicts could tidy up, but usually forgot about the stink that seemed to ooze out of their pores. He wasn’t a drinker, however. Thanks to the boozers who had been her parents, Ava recognized the reek of alcoholism at first whiff.
Meth, cocaine, or opioids. Whatever drug he was using, it had altered his body chemistry.
“Good morning, sir.” Ava stood. Although she avoided touching strangers whenever she could, she shook the hand he offered, which seemed soft and slightly clammy. The big, flashy diamond and gold rings he wore made it harder to hide her distaste. “Please, have a seat.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting. No matter when I leave, I can never seem to avoid rush hour traffic.” He sat down across from her and grinned at Jean as she came to take his order. “Morning, Beautiful. Just black coffee, please.” After she left, he glanced at her. “I’m not much of a breakfast person, are you?”
“I rarely have time for it, Mr. Beaumont.” Ava kept a tight leash on her growing dislike of the man. People who tried to cozy up to her too fast always had a reason for doing so. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
“No problem. I hope I can help.” He thanked the server as she placed his coffee on the table and took a sip before he asked. “You mentioned that this couple may have broken into my property before they disappeared. Why would they do that? There’s nothing valuable inside.”
Beaumont’s bafflement seemed genuine and convincing. Despite that, Ava suspected he was making a show for her benefit. He kept direct and unwavering eye contact with her, which most liars in trouble did in hopes of appearing convincing.
“They travelled here from Dallas by car, which the police found abandoned a quarter mile from your property. A search of the surrounding area turned up no trace of them. The castle is the only place in the immediate vicinity. Did you know Marianne and Ian James, Mr. Beaumont?” After he shook his head she asked, “Why don’t you have any security cameras at the property?”
“As I said, there’s nothing for anyone to steal there. I fenced off the grounds to keep the local wildlife from causing damage to the property. It doesn’t make sense why anyone would break in.” He frowned. “Has McKeran’s become some sort of spooky vacation destination, like that Winchester place?”
That question seemed revealing, she thought, and also sounded almost hopeful. Had he already done something to add to the castle’s grim allure? The rapid shifts in mood also didn’t help her assess him beyond that initial impression of addiction.
Ava usually had no problem evaluating people. Why couldn’t she get a proper read on this guy?
“I can’t say, sir.” She saw annoyance flash over his face. “A forensics team will be arriving tomorrow to help with the search. I’d like to have a look around the castle today.”
“Of course.” Beaumont reached into his pocket, extracting a ring of keys and a folded pamphlet, which he placed on the table between them. “I have no staff on site, and I’ll be in Sacramento for the next few days, so you’ll have to show yourself around the place.” He leaned forward. “When I return I’ll take you out to dinner, and you can tell me what you found.”
His eyes said something entirely different as he glanced at her breasts.
Although Ava wanted to leave right then, she picked up the keys.
“We’ll keep you advised, sir.” She opened the pamphlet, which turned out to be a floor plan for the castle. “Is this current?”
“It was drawn up back when we held tours,” he said. “The layout for the first floor is fairly accurate, although the rest of the interior constantly changes.”
This guy just kept getting more and more squirrelly. Had he used his drug of choice right before coming to meet her? “I don’t know what you mean by that, Mr. Beaumont.”
“The castle alters itself on its own.” Before she could respond he held up his hands. “I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s true. Every time I’ve gone inside, doors and rooms and passages I’ve never seen are suddenly just there.”
Whatever he used had been making him hallucinate—or he’d watched some haunted house shows too many times. “That must be very disturbing for you, sir.”
“Please don’t patronize me.” Beaumont’s voice took on a sulky tone. “I know what I’ve seen. Some people claim the castle is cursed, but others say it’s a doorway to a different dimension. Whatever it is, I suggest you be careful while you’re there.”
Ava felt startled as the banker rose, tossed a twenty on the table and stalked out of the diner. Like everything else he’d said and done, his dramatic exit seemed calculated. She suspected he knew more about the castle and the missing couple than he’d admitted, and meant to steer her in the wrong direction.
After she paid the check at the register, Ava thanked the server and handed her the twenty as a generous cash tip. “Hope you have an easy day, Miz Jean.”
“I usually do.” The older woman glanced at the door Beaumont had used to leave and then pushed his twenty into a charity tin can by the register. “You be careful with that man, sweetie. He smells funny to me.”
Back at her hotel Ava switched on her laptop before she slipped off her pumps and shed her jacket. Her room looked like all the others she stayed in while traveling on the job; clean, just large enough for one person to work, make calls, and sleep. She eyed the courtesy coffee packets by the mini drip machine, also single person sized. She’d spend the rest of her career in places like this, or in the tiny studio apartment she rented in Dallas. In her place she had no plants, no pets, or anything that required daily care or companionship. She spent her nights doing research on cases, catching up on typing her notes for cases, or cleaning while she thought about cases. Her life had always been bleak and colorless, but at least now she had the security of her job. Only her job had always been dreary, too, just like her personal life since–
“Don’t even,” Ava told herself as she logged into SecureMail, and at the same time placed a call to the FBI’s Monterey Bay office.
Checking in with her local counterparts, a professional courtesy, also gave her the opportunity to let them know about her plans. Reception transferred her to Patrick Grayson, the assistant special agent in charge, who had already been notified of her arrival by the Dallas office. They had a quick chat about her intention to pay a visit to Beaumont’s castle.
“We’ve been through the place six times while investigating the James case,” Grayson admitted. “Never found anything but cobwebs and dust. I’ve heard you’re something of a legendary case closer over in Dallas, but why did they send you here by yourself?”
If she were a man, he wouldn’t ask that, but Ava didn’t take offense. “My old partner retired last week, sir. I’m working solo until my new partner finishes his move from DC.”
“You should have some backup,” he said. “If you can wait a couple hours, I can free up one of my guys.”
“My team will be here tomorrow, so that’s really not necessary,” Ava assured him as she scrolled through the short list of messages to be read. “I’ll just do a quick walk-through today.”
“Call if you change your mind.” He hesitated before he added, “If I were you, I’d leave the place before sunset, too.”
She frowned. “Why sunset, sir?”
Grayson uttered a humorless chuckle. “Most of the people who vanished inside the castle did that after dark.”
A va didn’t waste any time further speculating on what had happened to all the people who had gone missing. After responding to her e-mails and texting her office to let them know she was on the move, she drove her rental car to the spot where Marianne and Ian James’s BMW had been found. That also gave her some time to think about what Beaumont had said, and compile her observations of him with what facts she knew:
Marianne James had been married to Ian for nine months, and all of her other husbands had died within a year of the wedding.
McKeran’s Castle had a long-established reputation as a spot where people disappeared; no bodies of the missing had ever been recovered.
Renard Beaumont, the owner of the castle, stank of addiction and showed all the characteristics of a practiced deceiver.
Ava began to speculate by running different scenarios in her mind. Marianne may have made Beaumont her accomplice while murdering Ian and concealing his body at the castle. Yet that didn’t ring true for several reasons. If she was a black widow killer, Marianne had always worked alone. Beaumont, who was quite wealthy, had no obvious motive to help her. There had been no disappearances at the castle for years, and the tour had been discontinued. Why bring Ian there to murder him and hide his body when Marianne had always reported the deaths of her former husbands to the police, and stayed around to make statements and hold funerals? Had something gone wrong this time?
She’d always had a knack for thinking like a killer; what wasn’t she seeing?
You think you’re so frigging smart, a querulous voice sniped inside Ava’s head. Go on to your fancy-ass college and forget about us. All folks need do is take one look to see you’re trash. You can’t never run from that.
“I’ve never tried to, Mama,” she said as she reached the destination spot on her GPS screen. After she pulled onto the shoulder and parked, she sat back and closed her eyes. “I only wanted to live decent.”
The words came out laced with her heavy, childhood drawl, which returned to haunt her whenever she was tired or stressed. Despite her efforts to forget The Happy Trails-er Park, and the wretched childhood she’d spent there, something always dragged her back. Usually, she had nightmares about her parents, who had died together in a fire after Ava had left for college. The cops had told her they had been partying all night and had probably been too drunk to escape their decrepit single-wide before the flames—started from a dropped cigarette—engulfed it.
Don’t you never come round here again, you selfish bitch, was the last thing her furious father had said to her over the phone—and because she had obeyed that last command, she hadn’t burned to death with her parents.
A tapping sound made Ava open her eyes. An enormous raven had perched right in front of the windshield on the hood. Its licorice-drop eyes peered at her as if she were an interesting bug.
“I know, ain’t no time to wool-gather,” she muttered, and reached for her gear bag. “I’m fixin’ to get a move on now.”
The raven pecked at the glass again and cocked its black head, as if deciding whether or not she’d been truthful. It then made a startling raucous sound and flew away.
Ava unfastened her seatbelt, shouldered the bag strap, and took out her flashlight to check its batteries before she got out of the car. Evening had crept up to surround Monterey’s cliffs and hills with a violet banner of creeping, cold darkness. The quiet seemed to press in on her but gently, as if unseen hands wanted to console her. The temperature had already dropped twenty degrees and promised to drape everything in frost before morning. The dank scent in the air made her think of brown-needled Christmas trees rotting in a burn pile.
“Oh, stop now,” Ava told her morbid imagination. Even if she’d never celebrated one, she liked Christmas well enough. It made most folks happy. As for the past, her parents were gone, and so was the only person who had ever really mattered to her. There was nothing left for her to mourn or brood over, especially on the job.
Although it was still light enough to see, she switched on her flashlight as she walked to the curve of the road as it turned toward Beaumont’s property. Through the trees she could see a silhouette of a tower made of dark stone blocks; it appeared to be more distant than a quarter mile away.
Had Marianne and her husband stopped here because they’d spotted the place? Why had they chosen to walk to the front gates? According to the case file nothing had gone wrong with their BMW; it had been found with a nearly full tank of gas. If the woman had brought her husband here to kill him, then why would she suggest they park this far from their destination? That didn’t make sense; a killer would want their getaway car close. Maybe it was moved here after the murder, to make it look like they never reached the castle. That seemed like something Beaumont would do to protect his property.
Could he have found the couple trespassing? Had he killed them?
She knew the local PD had scoured the entire area looking for evidence immediately after the BMW had been found. As she walked toward the property, she checked the ground along the way. The soil looked hard-packed and damp, with only a few withered weed clusters here and there. Both sides of the road appeared litter-free and had no tracks, as if no one drove down this road anymore. Given McKeran’s lurid history that seemed unlikely; teenagers loved to haunt places with bad reputations. Older folks often made up spooky stories about such places. Maybe like Jean at the diner, everyone in town believed the castle ate people.
Ava saw the ten-foot-tall black iron gates to Beaumont’s property a few minutes later, and smiled a little as she saw the enormous, stylized letter B that had been welded to the older rungs. If nothing else the banker had a healthy ego. Taking in her first full view of the medieval structure behind all that black iron made her heart somersault in her chest.
Hey, there, you big old gorgeous thing.
Anyone would be impressed first by the sprawling size of the castle, which appeared much larger than it had in the photos. Although she could clearly see the outer perimeter of the main structure, the outbuildings and towers surrounding it created a rambling illusion, as if all that stone were alive and growing. Ava appreciated fine architecture from any era, but everything about this place riveted her, as if it triggered some kind of primordial memory deep inside her. She wanted to go in and see the whole place, top to bottom, and revel in having it all to herself.
Whatever power this place had, it was certainly working on her.
With a slightly trembling hand she took out her phone and snapped a shot of the gates, getting in as much of the front property as she could. The image seemed to crowd the phone display, as if it wanted to push out the screen so it could expand.
Every time I’ve gone inside, doors and rooms and passages I’ve never seen are suddenly just there, Beaumont had claimed with a straight face.
Ava took out the banker’s keys to open the rusting gate lock. The subsequent screeching of seldom-used hinges made her step back as the two large iron panels parted and swung inward, clanging as they collided with two metal stops in the ground. Stepping through them gave her a sense of passing through to another place and time, as if she were on the verge of finding that hidden world on the other side of the mist. She ignored that thrill as she closed and locked the gates. All at once the gravity of the situation settled over her.
If anything happens to me here, no one will look for me until tomorrow.
Facing the spiral gravel drive, which winter had littered with dead leaves and twigs, she reached up to wipe some icy beads of sweat from her brow. A sense of being watched added to her suddenly jumpy nerves, so she slipped her hand into her jacket to pop the quick release strap on her shoulder holster. That might only buy her a half a second if she needed her service weapon, but sometimes even that could make all the difference.
Why am I fretting now? The place is empty. Beaumont is on his way to Sacramento. Walking toward the front of the castle gave Ava some time to collect herself. That’s right. Get to business.
She stopped in front of the octagonal tier of steps, all carved from gray-blue slate with a peculiar copper marbling streaking the stones like spilled coffee. She knew from reading up on the castle’s background that the slate had come from a quarry near the original building site and was found nowhere else in the world. The walls of the castle resembled scorched brick but had been hewn from black and gray-speckled red granite mined exclusively in the highlands as well. For a moment she tried to imagine what living in a castle would be like, but it was so far beyond her personal experience she couldn’t even picture the people who had built the place.
This is the hidden world, this castle. It doesn’t belong in our time.
She reached out to touch a casing block beside the dark oak doors at the front entry and frowned. The warmth of the granite seemed odd, especially as it was the middle of winter. It also glided against her palm like smooth glass instead of rough stone. When she took her hand away her skin tingled. She didn’t know why, as she had never experienced anything quite like it. One moment she was excited, the next she grew uneasy. Since she never let her emotions get the better of her, that seemed peculiar. When had she ever been so wrapped up in herself while on the job?
Quit chewing your bit and get a move on.
Ava unlocked the doors and braced herself for the inevitable creaking and groaning from the old wood. Instead, the doors swung out slowly and silently at her first tug, as if welcoming her. The air that came rushing out of the place whispered against her, as soft and gentle as a sigh of relief. A curious sense of homecoming calmed her panicky nerves.
Nothing to scare me here.
She stayed where she stood and swept her flashlight beam from one side of the front hall to the other, looking for any signs that someone had gone inside before her. Despite the reassurance of the emptiness, she didn’t trust it or how she was reacting to it. Still, all she saw were some dead leaves on the stone floor and walls, and ghostly, dusty cobwebs adorning the old iron wall brackets. The motionless air seemed stale, as if the castle hadn’t been aired out in some time, but no other odor accompanied that. The silence of the place seemed absolute.
It’s just a very old building that shouldn’t be on this side of the world.
“Federal agent.” Ava stepped inside, closing and locking the doors as the sound of her voice echoed back to her. For that to happen the castle had to be cavernous, which also seemed unusual. From what she’d read about medieval structures they’d been designed more for fortification and defenses than to provide lots of space. “Anyone on the premises?”
A faint white mist from her breath hung in the air, but no one answered her.
She unfolded the pamphlet Beaumont had given her to take another look at the first-floor layout. Passages branched off in five different directions from the main foyer, leading to different rooms and other hallways. Whoever had designed the castle when it had been built hadn’t resorted to any sort of symmetrical design, but instead perhaps had drawn on nature, for the map resembled the trunk, branches and leaves from a massive tree.
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, Kahlil Gibran had written nearly a hundred years ago. Ava suspected the author would have loved this place.
She knew from the case file that Dr. Benedict Miller, the last person to disappear inside the castle, had last been seen on the east side of the first floor. Heading in that direction, she stopped now and then to look inside the empty rooms along the way. Beaumont had removed every stick of furniture, and all of the art that had adorned the walls. He had left the carved stone mantels around the fireplaces, of which there seemed to be one every ten feet or so.
Scotland must be colder than Amarillo.
To reach the place where Miller had vanished, Ava had to walk through the cavernous chamber marked on the guide map as the Great Hall. She stopped for a few moments to admire the long, wide room with its fourteen fireplaces. As large as it was, they had probably burned a truckload of wood every day trying to keep it warm. At one end the stone floor rose to an elevated platform that the guide indicated was where the laird had met and dined with his senior men. A small bio box indicated that the McKeran had later been described by historians as “a fierce giant that no sane man ever crossed.”
McKeran the giant. Ava smiled a little. He’d have been quite a character.
As she left the great hall she glanced back at the platform and tried to imagine the laird holding court from some rough-hewn throne. The internet had offered almost no information about the McKeran Clan aside from building the castle in the highlands a year before everyone who lived there had abruptly left, never to return. She recalled the pattern of the clan’s distinctive brown, gray and gold tartan, and envisioned it wrapped around the heavy-muscled torso of a big brute with long, dark shaggy hair and a thick beard. She had never been attracted to gym rats, but the laird had likely earned all of his muscles in the daily fight to survive in a harsh, primitive world.
Why am I daydreaming about a guy who died nine centuries before I was born ?
Ava suspected her own loneliness was to blame. It had been nearly two years since her last date, which had ended with a proposal she hadn’t even hesitated to refuse. While she didn’t get romantically involved, she certainly enjoyed having sex with someone who didn’t expect anything more than that.
That’s because you think you’ll never meet someone like me again, another, mellower voice murmured from her memories .
Was she going to brood about Chris again, in this empty, haunted place? Hadn’t she tortured herself enough over her first and only love?
I vote hell yes on the last one, Legs, his ghost said, as if laughing at her.
Ava’s shoe hit a small rock, sending it skittering across the passage’s stone floor and dragging her attention back into the present moment. The temperature here seemed much colder than inside the front hall, and yet her breath didn’t show when she exhaled. Checking the floor plan told her that one more turn would take her into the hall where Dr. Miller had vanished. As she took a look around the corner, she saw that the next passage seemed a little different than the one she stood in. The stones appeared newer, and the floor and walls had no dust on them. Wooden torches had been left in the iron brackets as well. She hadn’t smelled fire, and yet someone—Beaumont?—had lit them.
A gray butterfly flitted past her cheek, making her jump and drop her gear bag. As it skittered ahead of her, its wings flashed with metallic glints, as if they’d been made of hammered silver. Before she could get a closer look, the insect flew around the corner at the other end of the passage and disappeared from sight.
Seeing the flames lapping at the shadows brought Ava’s attention back to the situation at hand. Why would the banker do this? Screwing with an FBI agent was beyond foolish. Did he have some staffer hiding around the corner, ready to jump out at her? Or was it Marianne James waiting to ambush her? In the event it was the latter, she switched her flashlight to her other hand. She never drew the Glock from her holster unless she intended to fire it. She hoped she wouldn’t have to but, if attacked, she would.
A transparent ripple appeared in the air as she stepped into the passage, and the flames of the torches took on a glimmering echo, as if doubling.
Ava’s nerves went from wary to jumpy. She had twenty-ten vision, so either she was hallucinating, or something was happening to distort what she was seeing. Heat, gas or something else might be filling the passage, although she couldn’t detect anything changing. She stopped and considered retreating a safe distance, but when she glanced behind her she saw the same visual distortion between her and the gear bag she’d dropped. Whatever was happening had surrounded her in silence, as if cutting off her only avenue of escape. She smelled frost, woodsmoke and something like sweet wine. When she faced the other end, a huge shadow loomed against one stone wall.
“Federal agent.” Her voice sounded hollow as she drew her nine-millimeter, tucking her finger around the trigger safety as she advanced further into the passage. “Show yourself.”