Chapter 31
Sunny wondered if she were dead.
Actually, that wasn’t exactly true. She’d only wondered that as she’d struggled to come out of whatever drug-induced stupor she’d been plunged into.
She now knew she was most definitely alive and quite uncomfortably chained to a wall in a ruined castle.
She’d had terror flash through her briefly as she’d wondered if she’d perhaps driven Cameron’s car into a time gate, been clunked over the head, and carried off to a medieval castle to rot forever.
Then she’d realized that the castle she was standing in wasn’t an intact keep, it was the ruined Fergusson one, the bands around her wrists were actually handcuffs, and the souls watching her were dressed in modern clothes, not plaids.
It wasn’t much of an improvement over what it could have been, actually.
She had to admit that when she’d realized where she was, she’d wondered if Hamish or Tavish—or both—had suddenly snapped and decided she should pay for all the perceived sins of the clan MacLeod over the years.
She’d soon discovered that while it was indeed a Fergusson who had taken her prisoner, it was not a Fergusson brother.
It was a Fergusson of a more medieval vintage.
Gilly Fergusson Cameron, actually.
Sunny had been very surprised, though looking back on it all now, she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before.
It wasn’t that she knew Cameron’s clan very well, but Giric had never seemed to her to have the smarts to pull off the kind of scheme that Cameron was trying to fight.
She wasn’t completely convinced that Gilly had that sort of cleverness, either, but it was hard to ignore the evidence standing in front of her.
It was also hard to ignore the very unhinged look in Gilly’s eye or the increasingly shrill tone of her voice.
The woman was stark-raving mad.
She was also, Sunny had realized once the stars had cleared enough for her to be able to see clearly, the black-haired witch who had been waiting outside the yoga studio that night Tavish had fired her.
That realization had made her shiver so hard, she was still fighting the chills that went down her spine.
That was the kind of spooky happening she could most definitely do without.
Gilly was pacing on the opposite side of a yawning dungeon mouth in the floor of the great hall, speaking to her thugs in impressively coherent English sentences, and dressed in very unremarkable black trousers and white shirt with her dyed jet-black hair actually combed for a change.
She presented a very reasonable picture.
Well, except for the very sharp medieval dirk in one hand, the long syringe in the other, and the completely deranged look in her eye.
Sunny took a deep breath. She should have known she would come to a bad end with a Fergusson.
She closed her eyes briefly and wondered just where she’d gone wrong.
Probably when she’d suggested she go with Cameron to the airport.
Her second mistake had been to take Cameron’s car home.
She’d been nervous because it was touchy and jumpy and seemed able to do the speed limit in first gear alone.
It had helped some to see Peter’s lights behind her, but not much.
She’d relaxed just a bit after she’d put Inverness behind her and gotten on a road with less traffic.
There had actually come a point where she’d thought she would make it without trouble.
Then a big, black SUV had cut between her and Peter and tried to run her off the road.
She’d thought it was just an aggressive jerk who’d had one too many instead of breakfast, so she’d spent a futile five minutes trying to outrun him.
In the end, she’d pulled over because she’d just wanted to let him by.
She’d heard the horrible sound of a car crunching and watched in her rearview mirror as Peter had been rammed into a ditch.
She’d started to try to figure out how to get the door open so she could go help, but changed her mind once she saw the rough-looking characters piling out of the SUV.
In the ensuing panic, she’d managed to kill the car.
Between trying to restart it and trying to find the locks for the doors, she’d managed neither.
The last thing she remembered was a hand going over her face and darkness descending immediately.
She supposed now that it had been a handkerchief soaked in chloroform to knock her out and some sort of narcotic to keep her out.
She didn’t feel well at all and desperately wanted to sit down, but her hands were above her head and the sconce that her chain was attached to was bolted into the rock more securely than she would have imagined possible.
Even putting her full weight on it did nothing but make the handcuffs cut into her wrists.
Unfortunately, she was getting to the point where she couldn’t breathe very well.
And there was no sword-wielding almost-fiancé or brother-in-law in sight to help her.
Gilly suddenly barked at her men to go sit at the back of the hall. Sunny was faintly impressed to find that they did. She jumped when she saw that Gilly had come around the opening in the floor to stand immediately in front of her.
“I imagine Cameron will be here soon,” Gilly said with a cold smile.
Sunny had a little shiver go down her spine at the sound of very medieval Gaelic coming out of Gilly’s mouth. “How do you know?”
“Because Tavish called me half an hour ago to tell me that Cameron had been in his shop.” She smiled easily. “He tells me everything, of course. I think I frighten him.”
Sunny could see how she would, but thought it might be unwise to say as much.
“’Tis just a matter of time before Cameron puts the pieces together, of course. Whatever else he is, he is no fool. And he certainly wouldn’t leave you in danger now, would he?”
“But he wouldn’t have left you that way, either—”
Gilly backhanded her with the hand that held the knife.
Sunny’s head snapped around so hard, she dashed her cheek against the rock.
She had never been struck in her life and the shock of it was so great, she could only stand there and gasp.
It was the same sort of shock, she supposed, that one might have felt after having a very large bucket of cold water dumped over one’s head while standing out in the snow. Only this hurt a lot worse.
“He ruined my chance to be mistress of Cameron Hall. I have quite a bit to repay him for.”
“But weren’t you that after Cameron left?” Sunny ventured.
Gilly shot her a look that had her wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.
“Giric wouldn’t wed me,” she said flatly. “He wanted me as his whore, nothing else.”
“What an ass,” Sunny said, before she thought better of it.
Gilly scowled at her for a moment, then relaxed just the slightest bit. “Aye, he was.” She considered. “I suppose you’re curious as to how I managed all this, aren’t you?”
Sunny nodded gingerly. Maybe if she was very careful, she might actually convince Gilly that killing her was a bad idea. If she could just get her hands free, she might be able to get out of Gilly’s way before Gilly pumped her full of whatever nasty thing she had in that syringe.
Gilly walked away, skirting the edge of the open pit.
Sunny looked up, then cursed. The chain was not just hooked over the sconce, it was somehow hooked to it as well.
There was no way to get herself free unless she was able to get out of the handcuffs and she could tell already that wouldn’t happen without a key.
“Are you listening?”
Sunny nodded immediately.
“Giric found your little gate that led through the centuries,” Gilly said, coming to a stop with her toes hanging over the edge of the dungeon mouth. “He came back home after a pair of months with a newspaper from your time, just to prove where he’d been.”
“How clever of him,” Sunny managed.
Gilly shrugged. “He wasn’t, particularly, but he was thorough. He wanted to learn your tongue, then return to your time and simply slay Cameron. I thought there might be a better plan.”
Sunny imagined that was true.
“So I waited,” Gilly continued, beginning to pace, “until my firstborn son could hold the clan, then I killed Giric and used the gate myself. The MacLeod witch wasn’t at home that night, which allowed me to help myself to a knife and clothing.
I needed a place to live, though, and not on MacLeod soil, so I took shelter with an old woman who had no children.
I repaid her for that shelter by finding herbs for her. ”
“The woman with the shop up north?”
Gilly pursed her lips. “Aye, and you almost found me, didn’t you?”
“It was dumb luck,” Sunny admitted. “And I didn’t see you. But you were in the gray car, weren’t you?”
“Nay, that was a lad working for me. I didn’t want him to follow you, but he disobeyed me. He paid for that mistake with his life, of course.”
Sunny had to force herself to breathe normally. Had she hoped Gilly might have some sense left in her? That had been a vain hope, apparently.
Gilly shrugged suddenly. “Since you’ll be dead soon as well, I suppose there’s no point in not giving you the rest of the tale, is there?”
Sunny had absolutely nothing to say to that.
It took all her self-control to not beg Gilly to have mercy.
But she was almost a Cameron and she suspected that even almost-Camerons didn’t beg for mercy—not even when they were looking death in its demented eye.
Besides, if she were really lucky, she might talk Gilly out of her plan.
Maybe Peter would stop lying in a crumpled heap near her, wake up perky and clever, and they would both manage to escape before Gilly killed them.
Thinking about that was better than dwelling on whatever alternative she was sure Gilly had planned for them.