Chapter 9
A ngus and Darro entered the back door of the barn and turned into the barn office only to find Corey and Delilah sitting on Angus’s desk with his biccie stash bag lying between them. The surprise in their big blue eyes told them that the kids were up to no good and knew they were caught. Darro’s eyes narrowed at his niece and nephew.
“And just what are ye two doing out here alone?” he asked with a stern frown, folding his broad arms across his chest.
“Aye, and what are ye doing in my biccie stash?” Angus growled.
Guilt swept across their little faces in a red wash. “W-We are playing hide and seek, Uncle Darro,” Corey piped up, the biccie crumbs falling off his lips as he spit out the answer. He was ready to crumble under his uncle’s stern look.
Delilah rushed to his aid like any good sister and co-conspirator. “Aye, and it’s taking so long for Dal and Luca to find us that we got hungry,” she complained with a soulful look of her big eyes at Angus. “We knew Angus wouldn’t mind if we had a biccie,” she added. “We would have asked if ye had been anywhere around, honest and hope to die.” She crossed her heart with two swipes that indicated a vow that could never be broken.
The clattering of feet coming down the middle of the barn floor, and the two young men appearing in the office doorway had Angus and Darro turning around.
“Have ye seen Corey and Delilah?” Dal asked. “We were playing hide and seek in the hayloft because Lucerne asked us to watch them for a couple of hours while she went to town, and they aren’t there anymore. We searched every inch of that loft!”
Luca shuffled uneasily from side to side. “Aye, we figured they must have left there,” he added unnecessarily.
“Ye think?” Darro growled.
Angus snickered as their faces flushed.
The giggles erupting behind Darro and Angus had the young men’s eyes widening. Darro moved his big body aside so the lads could see their quarry sitting on the edge of the desk with biccies in their hands.
“Ye little rascals,” Dal scolded, the relief evident in his face. “Ye weren’t supposed to leave the hayloft.”
“Ye never said we couldn’t,” Corey replied with all the serious honesty a justified child could muster.
Luca scowled at them. “We told ye we were staying in the loft to play.”
“Well...ye might have stayed, but like Corey said, ye didn’t say we had to,” Delilah pointed out.
Angus snickered again. “From the mouths of babes.”
Darro held out his hand. “Give me the biccies ye are crunching on.”
The children looked at each other and then laid their prizes reluctantly in his outstretched hand. They groaned when he immediately dumped them in the trashcan beside the desk. Then he picked them up one at a time and set them on the floor.
Pointing towards the young men he said, “Go with Dal and Luca. They will make sure ye get yer faces washed and put ye in yer bedrooms where ye will stay until yer Auntie Lucerne gets home. And if that’s after lunch, then ye will just have to go hungry until then because ye are grounded.”
Two more glum faces you couldn’t find in all of Scotland. “Aye, sir,” they chorused. They walked over to Dal and Luca who looked totally relieved to be free of the children until Darro spoke again.
“Dal and Luca, ye will stand guard, one at each of their bedroom doors, until Lucerne gets home. Is that clear? Mayhap ye can keep better track of them this way.”
Add two more glum but resigned faces. “Aye, sir,” they chorused together.
Then Darro hunkered down on his haunches in front of his recalcitrant children and held them in a stern gaze. “We will talk after supper in my study about the dangers of running around alone with no supervision, taking things that don’t belong to ye, and deliberately misunderstanding instructions from yer sitters. Make sure ye don’t give Dal and Luca the slip again, or ye won’t enjoy our discussion at all. Do ye ken me?”
Corey’s blue eyes watered and Delilah’s were suspiciously cloudy. “Aye, Uncle Darro,” they repeated dutifully.
Darro stepped outside the door to watch the four retreating figures and listen to their conversation. Angus joined him. “What are ye doing?” he asked.
“Just listen and watch,” Darro whispered.
“I’m sorry, Dal,” Corey said earnestly, staring up at the young man holding his hand.
“And I’m sorry too, Luca,” Delilah added. “We didn’t mean to get ye in trouble.”
“I have a sister, so I’m used to it,” Luca replied kindly, ruffling Delilah’s hair with affection.
Dal picked up Corey and gave him a hug. “Ye are a rascal for sure, but I hope I have a lad just like ye someday.” He tickled Corey’s stomach and he giggled. Their voices faded off as they went out the wide-open front door and headed towards the house.
“Something ye taught me, Angus,” Darro said simply as he turned back into the office.
“How so?” Angus replied, a twinkle in his eye as he picked up his biccie stash and returned it to the drawer.
“Remember when ye asked that new wrangler dad hired to ride me around the corral when I was around Corey’s age years ago?”
“Ah, ye remember that, eh?”
“I remember what ye said when he let me fall off, and then laughed at me and yanked me back up, almost pulling my arm out of its socket.”
Angus nodded. “The lad was angry because he didn’t hire on to babysit, as he said when he tried to justify his actions.”
“It was what ye said to him that stuck with me,” Darro explained. “Ye said that any man worth his salt would always be gentle with the old, the young, and women, no matter how angry they were. And then ye fired him on the spot.”
Angus gulped back his Adam’s apple and Darro could tell he was moved. “Yer dad was a hard man, Darro, but he lived by those words, as did his father before him. It showed in the way they conducted business. Ye could never mistake Whipcord for a gentle man, though. When punishment was due, he dished it out with a firm hand, but he never mistreated anyone or anything unfairly. Not even an animal. It was a refining process by which he weeded out employees of low character.”
“Aye, it would seem so,” Darro mused, propping his feet up on his desk. “This opportunity was too good to pass up. Not when Dal seems bent on setting his sights on Ainsley,” he added with a chuckle.
Angus snorted. “She’ll be home for the holidays, let’s see how much success he has in gaining her interest then. That girl is a handful.”
“My sister has always been a handful. But if by chance he should succeed in gaining her affections, it’s nice to know that Dal likes kids,” he added, his eyes twinkling. “And Luca seems a good lad as well. Neither young man appeared to begrudge their time to stand guard in front of the bedroom doors for a while.”
Angus roared with laughter. “Ye are a sneaky lad, Darro, I have ta admit.”
“I had good teachers,” he drawled, then joined in the laughter until the phone rang in his pocket. It was Whitey, Neamh’s beekeeper. “Hiya, Whitey.”
“Boss, there’s some man on a black motorcycle off-roading along the trees in the back pasture where my honey hives are. I stepped behind a tree so he didn’t see me, but it looks like he’s headed towards the house.”
“Red alert status, Whitey,” Darro announced and hung up the phone as his feet hit the floor. “We have an intruder on a black motorcycle, Angus.”
Angus hit the floor running, bellowing for Henry. “Red alert, Henry! Gather the lads, we got company on a black motorcycle!”
Darro grabbed his vest with his weapon and headed for the homestead to alert Dal and Luca and to put the kids in the saferoom. Lucerne was driving around the circle drive when he waved her urgently forward. She met him at the flagstone walkway.
“Red alert, honey. Let’s get you and the kids into the safe room.” He pulled on her arm a bit to hurry her forward.
Lucerne grabbed his arm. “Wait, honey. Ye know I can’t move that fast right now, I’m as big as a cow with this pregnancy,” she complained, panting.
Darro simply swept her up in his strong arms and strode briskly forward. “I’ll get ye there faster.”
“I’m too heavy,” she protested.
“Oh, aye. Ye weigh a whole 158 kilograms, baby included,” he scolded. “I have sheep that weigh more than that. Now hush and save yer breath.”
“What’s going on?”
“We have an intruder on a black motorcycle. Could be after Luca, I’m guessing.”
As Lucerne opened the front door Darro yelled, “Dal! Red alert. Go to Angus for an assignment, I have the house.”
Dal and Luca rushed out of the hallway. “What’s a red alert?” asked Luca with a frown.
“Luca, ye get the kids and bring them to my study, please,” Darro ordered, ignoring his question while Dal took off running.
Darro pushed open the study door, set Lucerne down, then took a key out of the drawer to hand to her. “Open the saferoom, honey, while I help Luca with the kids.
Luca was coming through the study door, holding hands with both children, who were looking scared. “Here are the kids, Darro.”
Darro nodded and smiled at Corey and Delilah. “Go with Auntie Lucerne into the safe room, little ones. Remember the drills we do? This is just a precaution at this time, but Luca and Lucerne will look after ye.” He stared at Luca.
Luca paled. “He’s here, isn’t he?” he whispered as the kids ran towards Lucerne. “Ye want me in a safe room, so he must be.”
“Who’s here, lad?” Darro asked. “Who’s after ye?”
“Ruskag’s partner, Arthur,” Luca replied uneasily as if he shouldn’t be saying anything.
Darro’s eyes narrowed. “Arthur Blackburn?”
“Aye.”
“Arthur Blackburn is dead, lad. He was found shot in an alley early this morning in Inverness, according to yer mother and her partner.”
“Then it’s true, they are cleaning up loose ends,” Luca blurted out, running his fingers through his unruly locks. I really could be next.”
“Get in the safe room and stay there until I come for ye,” Darro instructed, taking Luca’s arm and hustling him towards the open door. He didn’t have to convince him, Luca fairly sprinted into the safe room, visibly shaken.
Lucerne closed the door and Darro slid the bookshelves back in front of it. They glided easily. Now, to see how Angus was fairing.
***
B RODIE CURSED WHEN the horses and the ATVs suddenly appeared as if from nowhere, surrounding the copse he was in. He’d chosen this little stand of trees because on an aerial map of Heaven’s Gate, it looked closest to the homestead, and he figured he could use his binoculars to find out where Luca was. How had he been spotted?
He hadn’t seen a single person coming up the route he’d chosen. This area was literally unfarmed and unpopulated with sheep, cattle, or horses. Quickly, his mind searched for solutions to his predicament. Obviously, there were too many of these sheepherders to fight his way out, and it was inevitable that he would be taken before Lord MacCandish himself to explain his presence on his land.
Then again, he did have the fastest motorcycle on the road. Neither the horses nor the ATVs could touch him if he could find an opening. With an expert eye in field training, he looked for the weak spot and found it. A young lad who was having trouble controlling his horse in the presence of the machines rumbling around it.
“Out of my way,” he yelled, gunning the engine. He nearly put his bike on its back wheel as he shot towards the horse with its eyes rolling back in its head in fear. It reared up on its hind legs and dropped its rider, then whirled and took off as Brodie gunned through the opening with practiced ease and was off.
Wending around in a full circle, Brodie headed back the way he came in, quickly pulling ahead of his pursuers. There were plenty of ways to get out of the highlands. Even the police couldn’t be in all of them at once.
Uneasily, he wondered if anyone had taken his license plate? If so, the police would most likely be looking for him under his alias. He’d have to go back to Aberdeen and hide the Ducati in his garage, and then stay away from his alias residence in the Dunlaven Market area.
Tiresome. His lips thinned in disgust.
The hours he’d spent working on this case and gathering information would be worth it though, when he finally achieved a Chief Inspector position in one of the Highland Councils. He’d really like to take over Inverness. Tannock was getting old after all.
He swore impatiently under his breath. Samhain, or All Hallow’s Eve, was in two more days. The festival in Inverness would go on all day Saturday. He knew from sources that a drug pickup was going down at one of the docks in the early hours of Sunday morning. The drugs coming into Aberdeen were coming from Inverness, they just didn’t know where they were being manufactured. He intended to find out where and stamp them out like the vermin they were. Blackburn had admitted, under extreme stress, that the new head was extending his take-over to include the protection rackets in the Dunlaven Market, and that this new head was going to be there in person to receive the drug shipment this time.
Luca’s job had been to keep his ears open for anything suspicious happening around Hope Barks. Brodie knew drug money was being laundered through Hope Barks, and suspected drugs were being stored in the basement there until they were ready to be shipped. He and the Aberdeen team could get Interpol to authorize a raid on the shelter, but then they still wouldn’t know where the meth was being manufactured. The kid had sent him a message that they needed to talk, and that he might have something for him, but before he could get to him in person, he’d been arrested for killing Tommie Ruskag.
Blast Tannock for getting the kid spirited away before he’d made contact. He frowned. The kid was a novice, but still pretty good at ferreting out information. Had someone at Hope Barks fingered him as a CI?
He’d spent the better part of the last few years trying to infiltrate the gang Ruskag and Blackburn were a part of, but they never told him anything except that he could get his drug of choice satisfied with Belton at Hope Barks. Gaining trust was a slow and arduous process. He’d bought from the kid a few times in hopes of finding out something, but the kid was extremely tight-lipped, which was why he’d recruited Luca.
Blackburn just said the “boss” wanted Luca gone, and he wouldn’t say anything else. Luca’s friend Belton was terrified, but how deeply the kid was involved, he wasn’t sure. His visit this morning with Belton hadn’t produced any results either, but Brodie was sure he knew something about what happened to Luca, and might need some “private persuasion” to talk. He sincerely didn’t want Belton to end up like Blackburn, but sometimes accidents happened in the pursuit of justice.
Brodie frowned. With Interpol authorizing the take-over of the investigation into the deaths of the two thugs, it had given him access to anything Tannock’s constables had gleaned so far, as well as protecting his alias. He wasn’t ready for Pauley to know about his alias, or that Luca was his CI.
At least not yet .
He could simply make the trip to Heaven’s Gate and interview Luca as part of the case if he wanted to, but it would most likely tip Pauley off that Luca was his CI. Turning her son as his CI was just one more glass of wine from the bottle of victory, and taking over the investigation from her partner was another. They both had the same title, but if they ended up at a crime scene together, he would be her senior, which gave him great satisfaction. The look of shock and surprise on her face would be worth waiting to reveal it in his own good time.