Chapter 30 #3
Cameron could understand that. “You couldn’t have done anything differently. I’m on my way home, but I’m leaving one of my lads behind to tail Nathan north. I can only hope he’ll lead us to her.”
“Are you certain he’ll come?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
Patrick sighed heavily. “Aye, I would. Make haste, lad. We’ll be on the road north. Do you need an extra car?”
“Aye, if you can manage it. I’ll have Derrick with me.”
“I’ll have my Range Rover dropped off at the airport, then. Derrick can drive that and follow you up. Bobby’s in your McLaren right now. I’ll call you when I have other tidings.”
“Thank you, Patrick,” Cameron said, with a deep sigh. “If anything has happened—”
“Don’t,” Patrick said sharply. “You can’t do a damn thing about it until you’re here. She’s tough as spring beef, just like her sister. She’ll survive.”
Cameron could only hope so. He thanked Patrick again, rang Ewan and had a brief conversation with him about haste, then hung up and closed his eyes.
He didn’t allow himself to think.
An hour later, he was standing at the door of the Gulfstream cockpit, watching the blue sky and finding it not nearly as soothing as he usually did.
He’d changed into jeans and boots, much more sensible for tracking, but he wished desperately for a sword.
He couldn’t have been so fortunate as to have had Patrick bring an extra one along.
“Cameron, go sit.”
He looked at his captain. “Marcus, fly this bloody thing faster.”
“I can’t go any faster, which you well know. We’ll be on the ground in twenty minutes.” He looked over his shoulder. “Sit your arse down, mate.”
He cursed the man, a tough-as-nails former RAF fighter pilot, but did as he was bid. He looked at Derrick, who sat across from him.
“Anything new?”
Derrick had an earpiece in and was listening to his phone through it. He shook his head, then went back to listening. Cameron tapped his foot as the plane landed, but was up and pacing before they reached the hangar. He bounced on his heels until the first possible moment he could undo the hatch.
“Need any extra help?” Ewan asked.
Cameron looked at him seriously. “Can you keep secrets?”
“Please, Cameron,” he said, rolling his eyes in disgust. “I’ll go grab my gear.”
Cameron leaped down the stairs and ran to his waiting car. The door opened as he approached and he slid in under the wheel.
“Thought ye’d want to drive,” Bobby said solemnly from where he sat in the passenger seat.
“I do.”
He waited until he saw Derrick turn on Patrick’s lights behind him, then put his Mercedes in gear and left the airport. He drove very sedately through Inverness, calmly got as far out of town as he thought polite, then put his foot down.
Bobby only chortled.
“Call Pat,” Cameron said briskly. “Find out where they’ve stopped and tell him I’m going to make a little visit to Tavish Fergusson’s shop first.”
“If ye say so, mate,” Bobby said doubtfully. “Want me to stick ’im for ye?”
“After he’s squawked like a plucked chicken, aye, I wouldn’t mind.”
Bobby seemed to find that to his liking and he wasted no time in telling Patrick what he would do if such an opportunity presented itself.
Cameron found those thoughts of mayhem to be reassuring somehow.
It also gave him something to think about instead of all the things that could be happening to Sunny whilst he was leagues away and unable to protect her.
He drove north as quickly as he dared. He had to slow for the odd cluster of sheep and the recurring little villages where he didn’t want to run over any small children, but other than that, he flew.
“It’ll go faster than this,” Bobby remarked at one point.
Cameron shot him a look. “And you would know?”
“I would, mate.”
Cameron would have answered, but he was too busy slowing down for his own village to do so.
Patrick was waiting for him outside Tavish Fergusson’s sterile-looking shop. Cameron nodded to him, then jerked open Tavish’s door and strode inside.
“I don’t know anything,” Tavish blurted out, flattening himself dramatically against the wall behind his counter.
Cameron stopped and leaned negligently against the opposite side of that counter. “Why would I think you would?” he asked calmly. “Guilty conscience, Tavish?”
Tavish put his shoulders back. “You can’t bully me.”
“I daresay I haven’t begun to try,” Cameron said with a snort. “I’m curious, though, why you wouldn’t think I was simply here for a few herbs. Or a bit of arsenic, if you have any.”
“I don’t sell that sort of thing,” Tavish said haughtily. “I’m strictly here for the tourists.”
“Oh, and we have so many of those,” Patrick said sarcastically from his position at the opposite end of the counter.
“Now, Tavish, my lad, we can do this easily, or you can make it all very difficult for yourself. Lord Robert and I have a few questions that we need answers for and I’m going to assume you’ll be happy to help. ”
“I’ll call my brother,” Tavish squeaked.
“I suppose you could,” Patrick agreed, “but then he’d know all about several things you might want to keep to yourself. Let’s discuss those now, shall we?”
Cameron let Patrick take over and push Tavish as hard as he liked.
He watched, wondering how long it would be before Tavish broke down and wept like a babe.
He didn’t suppose it would take very long.
Tavish was, despite all pretense at manliness, a complete woman when it came to defending himself.
He even dressed like a wench, what with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his ches—
Cameron froze.
Before he thought better of it, he reached out, grabbed hold of the pendant Tavish was wearing, and yanked the thing over Tavish’s head. He stared at the rough-hewn stone set in metal that lay in his hand and thought he might have to find a chair soon.
“Och, but that’s mine,” Tavish protested.
Cameron looked up. “Where did you get this?”
“None of your business.”
Cameron had reached out and snatched Tavish by the shirt before he realized what he was doing.
He refrained from shaking him until his teeth fell out, but he couldn’t stop himself from pulling the man halfway over his very tidy counter.
“If you don’t want me to kill you here,” he growled, “you’ll tell me where you got this. ”
“It was a gift,” Tavish gasped. “To ward off evil.”
Cameron blinked in surprise “From a man?”
Tavish fought him off, pulled himself back over the counter to his feet, and straightened his clothes with a pair of jerks. “Of course not—” He shut his mouth, then looked horrified, as if he had said more than he should have.
Cameron could understand the horror. He looked at Patrick.
“North,” he said. “She’ll be north.”
“How did you—” Tavish spluttered.
Cameron shot him a look. “I know you signed papers that put you together in a trust with Nathan and Penelope Ainsworth, a trust created to buy out my business. You’d better think of a damned good reason to have done that before I come back.”
The blood drained from Tavish’s face, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slid down to the floor in a graceful swoon.
Cameron strode out of the shop and headed for his car. Damn it, damn it, damn it to hell. How could he have been so stupid?
“Planning on telling me anything soon?” Patrick asked pointedly from behind him.
Cameron spun around and looked at him. “We’ll try the Fergusson keep. Trust me.”
“Actually, Ian was planning to head that way. He might even be there by now.”
Cameron cursed. “Tell him to be careful.”
“He almost died in that dungeon, so he’s always a bit ginger when scouting it out—even in the current century. Why do you think Sunny’ll be there?”
“Because it isn’t my cousin Giric we’re looking for,” Cameron said grimly. He spun on his heel. “Just trust me.”
Patrick nodded shortly, then strode to his car. Cameron did the same, drove carefully out of the village and past the last house, then put his foot down.
He hadn’t gone but a single bloody league before he’d blown past Hamish Fergusson’s police car.
He pulled over before Hamish even managed to get himself and his police car out from behind his usual bush.
Patrick continued on, honking. Cameron glowered, then paced until Hamish pulled up behind him, his lights flashing importantly.
He watched Derrick pull in behind Hamish and wait.
Hamish got out of his squad car, hitched up his trousers, then marched over with a swagger.
“Here, now,” Hamish began indignantly. “And where’s that Pat MacLeod going in such a hurry! I say—”
“Shut up, you fool,” Cameron snapped. “Shut up and for once in your life listen to something that might serve you.”
Hamish gaped at him.
“I know where trouble is,” Cameron said bluntly. “I will deliver the miscreants to you, unconscious and ripe for you to put in your pitiful little cells in the village, if you’ll just keep off my tail and not blow this for me.”
Hamish looked at him calculatingly. “Are you on the level?”
Cameron swore. “Stop watching so much telly, Hamish. Stay out of my way and I’ll see that you’re bloody famous and have all the glory for this. Now, what’s your mobile number?”
Hamish wrote it down for him, then handed it over. His eyes were very wide. “There you go, my lord.”
“I’ll call you when I’m ready for you,” Cameron said, slipping the paper into his pocket. “How many pairs of handcuffs do you have?”
“Handcuffs?”
Cameron resisted the urge to shake him. “Why don’t you return quickly to the village,” he began, with exaggerated patience, “collect all the pairs you might have, then hurry back to your bush and wait for my call. Can you possibly do that?”
“But your points—”
“Hamish!”
Hamish ducked his head. “All right.”
“Trust me. ’Twill be worth it.”
Hamish shot him a perplexed look, as if he found the thought of glory and fame to be just too good to be true, then apparently decided it was worth the risk.
He marched back to his car, got in, then turned around to head for the village.
Cameron threw himself into his car, pulled the door down, then gunned his McClaren back onto the road.
“Call Patrick,” he said shortly to Bobby. “Find out where he’s stopped.”
Bobby looked at him, the phone already on his ear. “Up ahead a fair bit.”
Twenty minutes later, Cameron saw Patrick’s Vanquish pulled over on the side of the road.
He pulled up behind him, then jumped out of the car.
He heard other doors slam and knew Derrick and Ewan were running up behind him as well.
He strode to where Patrick was leaning against the passenger side of his car, talking into his phone.
“Well?” he demanded.
Patrick held up his hand. Cameron wished he’d had a sword. He wished he had kept Sunny with him. He wished a great many things that, at the moment, he couldn’t change.
But at least he had lads on his side this time. Derrick and Ewan were standing with Bobby, and all three were watching him silently. Patrick slipped his phone into his pocket, then looked at him.
“Ian’s found her. She’s in the Fergusson keep.” He paused. “You aren’t going to like the next bit.”
“Is she alive?” Cameron asked grimly.
Patrick paused, then reached out and put his hand on Cameron’s shoulder.
“He’s not sure.”
Cameron had never been more grateful for twenty-eight years of living in medieval Scotland than he was in that moment.
It was almost instinctual to take every emotion that didn’t serve him and stuff it into a deep, silent place inside himself where it wouldn’t get in the way of what he needed to do to survive. He threw his keys to Bobby.
“Get my car off the road. Derrick, take the other and follow him. Catch up to us on foot.” He looked at Patrick. “Is it only Ian?”
“He has one of Conal Grant’s lads with him, Andrew Mac-Dougal.
Andrew has a rather interesting set of skills you might appreciate.
” He reached in his car, removed two wicked-looking dirks from the front seat, then handed his keys to Ewan.
“Don’t scratch my car or a dirk in your belly will be your reward.
I think there might be an obliging copse of trees about a mile up. Use it for cover.”
Ewan was, for a change, absolutely silent. He merely nodded, wide-eyed, took the keys, and walked around the car to get in.
Cameron accepted the sheathed dirk, shot his lads a last look of warning, then headed across the countryside with Patrick.
It came as a pleasant surprise to find that Patrick had the same sorts of tracking habits he did, though he realized it shouldn’t have.
After all, Patrick MacLeod had lived a good part of his life in medieval Scotland.
But so had the Highlander keeping Sunny captive.
He closed his eyes briefly, then continued on, praying he wouldn’t come too late.