Chapter 24
Ruby ran through the darkness, clutching the parchment to her chest. Up ahead, the house loomed, quiet and dark, the sort of quiet that only existed in the deep hours of the night when any sensible person had long since gone to bed and the fires had burned low.
She hurried inside and pushed open the door to the main room. Niall and Charlie looked up from where they’d been waiting and Charlie rose so quickly her chair toppled over backwards.
“Well? Did you see Hamish?”
Ruby nodded breathlessly as she pushed back her hood. “Yes. He gave me this.” She held up the folded parchment.
Niall, usually calm and controlled, was tight with tension. “Is Evan safe?”
Ruby forced a steady breath. “Yes. For now. And it looks like MacInnes has taken the bait. He’s asked to meet Evan tomorrow.”
Charlie sagged with relief. “At last. When he gets us MacInnes’ location, we can arrest the bastard.”
Niall nodded once, though his tension didn’t ease much. “What does the parchment say?”
Ruby unrolled it and placed it carefully on the table. It was marked with the same symbols that had been in the ledger. On a quick inspection, it seemed to be giving the same details that they’d already worked out: a shipment due in on the night of the high tide.
Niall gave an approving nod. “Good. That’s good. It means we still have three days in which to find MacInnes. It will be tight, but if Evan is meeting MacInnes tomorrow, he can send us his location in time for us to stop him. I’ll send word to Bryce.”
Niall and Charlie headed for the door but Charlie paused by Ruby’s side, squeezing her shoulder. “It’s late. Try and get some sleep.”
“I will. I promise. I just want to look at this first.”
“All right. Just don’t stay up too late. Half the night is gone already.”
Ruby waited until the door closed then let out a long, heartfelt sigh.
God, she was tired. Her eyelids felt heavy and her eyes grainy.
She had all but sprinted back from her meeting with Hamish and her lungs burned.
Yet she knew there was no point in going to bed.
She wouldn’t sleep. How could she with everything that was going on?
She righted the chair that Charlie had knocked over, pulled it to the table, and sat, examining the parchment that Hamish had given her.
It was full of symbols and small marks arranged in neat columns.
It would mean absolutely nothing to anyone who didn’t know how to read them. But, thanks to Evan, she did. Kind of.
She traced a finger down the page, scanning symbols and marks. Shipment markers. Locations. Times. It looked exactly the same as what she’d deciphered from the ledger. The supply points, courier routes, and transfer dates still the same as what they’d already deduced.
And yet, something bugged her. It all felt a little too...neat.
She went over the symbols again, meticulously checking each one against the ledger, then cross-referencing them against what Bryce and Niall had marked on the map. Nothing had changed. So why was she so uneasy?
Because Seoras MacInnes is careful, she thought. So why would he let Evan know what he’s planning?
She rubbed her eyes and leaned closer, checking the symbols for the third time. Still, she found nothing out of place. Yet her instincts shouted that something was off.
With a huff of exasperation, she laid her head on the table, thoroughly frustrated. Maybe Charlie was right and she should try and get some sleep. Then she could look at it again with a clearer head.
Her eyes swiveled right, looking at the parchment which was now right by her nose.
And she noticed something.
There was an indentation in the parchment, like the marks left in a school exercise book after something had been rubbed out.
She bolted upright, grabbed a candle from the window ledge and knelt by the fire to light it. Then she held it up directly behind the parchment, not close enough that the document would catch fire, but close enough that the light showed through it.
Her breath caught as the light revealed a series of indentations on the parchment beneath the writing. As if something else had been written there originally—but had been altered.
Heart racing, she grabbed a piece of charcoal and a clean parchment from the table, laid it flat, and then held up the document to the candlelight, turning it this way and that to best make out the indentations.
It wasn’t easy and some were completely illegible, but she methodically worked through each column, copying those she could see onto the clean parchment, and giving her best guess for those she couldn’t make out clearly. When she was finished, she checked again. And then a third time.
Finally, she sat back and examined her work. The parchment was filled with another set of symbols. Some of them were the same as what she’d deduced from the ledger.
But some of them were very different.
Her hands shook a little as she began rifling through the ledger, trying to work out what had changed. The location markers and the courier symbols were the same. But the final column of marks, the ones that marked timings—that was where the difference lay.
She shot to her feet. “Charlie!” she bellowed. “Niall! Come quickly!”
It took only moments before she heard the thump of footsteps as they came racing down the stairs.
“What?” Charlie said, bursting into the room a step ahead of her husband. “What is it?”
Ruby waved the parchment at them. “We were wrong! MacInnes hasn’t fallen for it at all! He knew all along!”
Niall went pale. “What do ye mean?”
Ruby spread her new parchment on the table. “I found other marks on the parchment Hamish brought—ones that had been rubbed out and changed.” She swallowed. “The shipment isn’t coming in on the high tide. It’s coming in tomorrow night!”
Realization dawned on Niall’s face. “My God. They passed us false information. They knew it was a trap all along.”
Ruby nodded, swallowing past the sudden lump in her throat. “The shipment is coming tomorrow. MacInnes is meeting Evan tomorrow. Don’t you see what that means?”
Charlie’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh no.”
Ruby forced the words out. “Tomorrow, after the shipment arrives at Evan’s estate, and the rebellion begins, MacInnes won’t need Evan anymore. He will be expendable.”
“And he’ll kill him,” Niall breathed. “We have to get word to Evan and we have to get Bryce’s forces here before Evan meets MacInnes tomorrow.”
Ruby glanced at the window where dawn was beginning to break. She realized with a start that she’d been up all night.
“Oh, my God. We’re too late,” she breathed. “Because it’s not tomorrow. Look. It’s today.”