Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Leith
We’ve come into town to seek revenge, but our plans are thwarted. We can’t fucking go after Dougal now that Paisley’s in danger, though I want to so badly it’s killing me.
“What do you mean?” Mac asks, his typically boyish expression gone.
“That was Mum. Islan got in touch with Fran, Fran admitted she went home last night and hasn’t seen Paisley since. Paisley isn’t answering her mobile, and Mum’s worried.”
“Son of a bitch,” Tate says, then looks abashed. His gaze swings to MacGowen. “Sorry, there, Father.”
“No worries, son, go on.”
“We need to find her,” I tell the others. I shake my head. “It’ll mean forgetting our original plan.”
I hate that we’ll have to do this, but we can’t waste a bloody minute if Paisley’s in danger. I’ll have her fucking head, I will.
“Are you kidding me?” Mac says, enraged. “We came here to —”
I growl at him, stopping him mid-sentence. There’s no fucking need for MacGowen to know why we came here.
He blows out a breath and shakes his head.
“What did you find, Tate?” I gesture to the bunched up fabric in his hand.
He frowns. “Was on the front stoop. Looks like a woman’s scarf?”
He holds it up to the light, and Cairstina’s hand flies to her mouth.
“What is it?” I ask her. She pulls out her mobile, and my phone buzzes with a text.
That’s my mum’s. Did she hear anything? Was she here?
“She says it’s her mum’s.” God, her fucking family. “Has she been by here, Father?”
His eyes grow worried, a crease forming across his brow. He looks as if he’s aged since last we saw him. “A few times, aye. I didn’t expect her tonight, but she shows up from time to time. Has since the other night.”
Another text comes in.
Do you think she heard him say my name?
I shake my head. “Not sure what she heard or what she can do about it if she did, but we’ll have to investigate. First, though, we find Paisley.”
Cairstina nods and reaches for my hand. She gives it a gentle squeeze. A quiet, silent reassurance that all will be well. I squeeze her back. When you’ve seen what I have and witnessed what I have, you’re not so sure things will be well, but I’m grateful for her.
“Father, you let us know if you hear anything at all from Cairstina’s family, the Aitkens, or Paisley, will you?”
“Aye, you have my word.”
“Let’s go.” I gesture for the others to follow me. I pause before we leave, turning back to MacGowen. “And if you need a detail here, you tell me—”
He smiles and waves his hand at me. “I’m fine, Leith, but thanks very much.”
I nod, and we go to leave, Dougal’s keys weighing in my hand. I want to throw them through a bloody window. Came all this way and I didn’t get to break his fucking neck.
Before we leave, Cairstina jerks her hand out of mine and runs over to Father. We don’t have time for this.
“Let’s go, Cairstina.”
She gives him another brief hug, then returns to me. We leave the way we came.
I call Paisley, not surprised to find that she doesn’t answer.
“Any lead on where we can find her?” Mac asks, scowling in the back of our car. “And what do we do with his fucking keys?”
“I’ll tell you what we do with them.” I slow by the graveyard, roll down the window, then whip the keys as far as I can. I hear them clink against a gravestone and imagine them falling deep in the tall grass between the stones. “Let him fucking find them.”
Tate snorts, and Mac claps me on the back.
“Bloody hell, I’d have liked to thrash the prick,” he mutters.
“Same.” I nod. “But the time will come.” Cairstina reaches for my arm and holds me, tipping her head so it rests on my shoulder. I run my thumb along the top of her hand, hoping it gives her some measure of reassurance.
“Can one of you call Fran, see what she can tell us directly?”
“I will,” Mac and Tate say in unison. I look at them in the rearview mirror, surprised by the response. They’re glaring at each other, but Tate’s already got his phone out.
“How do you have her bloody number?” Mac mutters, scowling.
“I made Paisley give it to me when the two of them went to the concert in Glasgow.”
“Concert in Glasgow?” I ask from the front. “When the hell did she do that?”
Mac winces, and Tate looks out the window, ignoring me. His mobile’s up to his ear. Have they been hiding things from me?
“Fran, y’alright? Paisley’s brother Tate.”
He’s quiet as he talks on the phone, and I can hear the faraway sound of a woman’s voice.
Fran’s a bit older than Paisley, a college student, and my family loves her.
She spends so much time at our home it sometimes feels like she lives there.
In recent months I haven’t seen her as often, but I spend more time on my own than I do at the house.
She’s a spritely, witty redhead with a smart mouth and ready laugh. And she’s good to my sister.
“Right,” Tate says, his voice hardening. “And then what happened?”
He nods.
“Fucking put it on speaker,” I mutter, but he ignores me.
“Alright, then,” he says. “Thanks for that, lass. I’ll be in touch.” He hangs up the phone.
“Fran says she and Paisley met up last night, and the plan was for Paisley to pretend to be staying the night.”
I feel Cairstina’s hand on my arm, a soothing gesture, and realize I’m grumbling under my breath, my anger rising when I know where this story is going.
“Fran says Paisley will kill her, but she’s worried so she called Islan.”
“And?”
“Paisley didn’t spend the night with Fran but went off with her boyfriend instead, only she didn’t show up to meet up with Fran today like she said she would. Hasn’t returned a text or phone call since.”
“Boyfriend?”
Mac shakes his head.
“Jesus, Leith. Seriously, they don’t tell you everything because this is how you react.”
“Did you two know she had a fucking boyfriend?”
Does anyone know how goddamn dangerous this is?
“Aye,” Mac says, staring at me in the rearview mirror. “I did.”
“And me,” Tate says. Cairstina watches us with wide, fearful eyes.
I shake my head and drive on into town, bloody pissed that no one told me.
“How the hell am I supposed to be Clan Captain when no one fucking tells me what’s going on? Hmm?”
No response.
“How the fuck am I supposed to make sure everyone’s safe, if people run off and do things without taking the necessary precautions?”
They don’t respond at first, but after a moment of tense silence, Tate finally says quietly, “And how are we supposed to live our lives when you’re so bloody afraid of everyone meeting Tavish’s end?”
I grip the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles whiten, as we reach the Victorian Market, the heart of Inverness with its many shops housing fresh produce, souvenirs, restaurants, and vendors.
Old Town Inverness harkens back to a simpler time, with lords and ladies roaming the cobblestoned streets, and there’s an iconic clock in the centre that hasn’t stopped ticking since 1890.
“Will we find her here, you think?” Mac asks. “Do you think she’s gone off shopping with her man?”
Her man. Christ, my belly tightens at the thought of who could hurt her, what they could do.
I try to listen to my mum’s admonition. I try to remember what it’s like to be a teenager, so eager to break away from my parent’s ideals and show myself to be a real man, to be my own person.
How I reckoned I knew bloody well as much as my parents did and how very wrong I was.
But no matter how I try to frame things, I always come back to the same place.
Safety. Protection. The care of the people I love.
I’d lay down my bloody life for them, from my sisters to brothers and the other Clan members. My parents. It’s who I am, and how I was raised.
Cairstina keeps her hand on my arm, trying to keep me calm, I suppose. And for that, I’m grateful.
“Who’s her man?” I ask Tate, trying to remind myself that finding him and literally killing him is probably not very diplomatic.
“Not sure,” Tate mutters. “Jack something.”
“Jack something? Did Fran tell you nothing?”
“She said she’d meet as at the shops, help us look.”
I shake my head. “Fine, then.” I park our car, and we get out, but I hardly believe we’re going to see Paisley casually wandering the streets. Though the snow’s stopped, it’s freezing cold, and I suspect if she’s alright—and Christ, I hope she is—that she knows we might come looking for her.
We stroll through the shops, keeping apart from one another so we don’t draw suspicion. I take Cairstina with me.
She points to a chocolate shop at the corner, and I wonder if she’s asking me to take her or suggesting we look for Paisley.
“You want sweets?” I ask.
She smiles and shakes her head, then sends me a text.
I will literally never say no to chocolate, but no, that’s not why I think we should go in. Paisley likes chocolate, too, and Islan said she liked this store. Maybe someone’s seen her?
I shrug and follow her in. Ten minutes later, I’ve got a paper sack filled with chocolate-covered jellies and buttery fudge, and Cairstina’s gleefully licking a chocolate sucker, but we’ve no news on Paisley.
Cairstina stops short and sends me another text, keeping the chocolate between her lips as she fumbles with her phone.
The bookstore! She said one of her favorite places to go to relax was the bookstore. Remember? That’s where she picked up the Scottish mafia books.
I give her a teasing look. “Is it coincidence that our search involves all of your favorite things?”
She gives me that almost-shy, teasing look I’ve come to crave from her. I’d say I have a heart of ice, but I swear this girl melts it when she looks like that.
On impulse, I take her by the hand as we enter the bookstore. I hear a familiar voice when the door closes behind us.
“There y’are, Fran. Have you anything to tell us?”
Tate stands with his arms crossed in the military section, and Fran stands across from him. Her eyes are alight with excitement. She clasps her hands together. “Aye, I looked back through my texts from Paisley last night, and I know for a fact she was with Jack.”
“Right,” Tate says, as we come around the corner. “But can you narrow it down?”