Chapter 3 #2
Five minutes later, they’re still not back, and I’m growing agitated.
I’d go after them myself if not for the woman held firmly in my grip.
She hasn’t wavered or spoken, staring straight ahead with her jaw clenched tightly.
It looks as if she’s staring intently at something, but when I follow the path of her gaze, there’s nothing but darkness and a moonlit road.
“I’m going to fucking kill them,” Mac mutters, but he’s talking out of the arse side of his mouth, because there’s no way he’d ever harm a hair on the heads of either Clyde or Tate, never mind the two of them. Can’t say I don’t share his sentiment, though. Where the bloody hell are they?
“We’ll have to go find them,” I say with a sigh. Neither of us wants to face the possibility that Aitkens may have had more men with him that we saw, and if our own men were ambushed—
I shake my head and secure the woman in the car. “You’ll stay here if you know what’s good for you.”
Mac scowls at her in the back. “Jaysus, I don’t fucking like this,” he mutters. “The lass will be trouble for the Clan. We haven’t brought—”
“Shut it and find the others,” I interrupt before he can finish his thought. I’ve no more patience. “You have the keys?”
“Aye,” he says. I don’t miss the way a muscle ticks in his jaw at my order. He jerks his head at the trunk. “Should put her in the boot?”
Her eyes grow wide at this, but still, she says nothing.
I don’t bother to respond. “Let’s find the others.”
He slams the door and stalks off ahead of me. My youngest brother’s got a wee hair across his arse. Fucking noted.
I click the locks on the keys, fucking furious we’ve got a hostage in a car where anyone could bloody see, but I can’t very well drag her along with me. We’d better move quickly.
The moonlight offers enough light until we get further into the graveyard.
“Where the bloody hell did they go?” I mutter, when Mac jerks his chin to the left.
“That’s where to go. They’ve got the excavators for digging and we’ve got a place secured for the bodies.” He gives me a sidelong look. “Wouldn’t know that, would you? Haven’t dirtied your hands with such work in fucking ages.”
I don’t bother to reply. I won’t stoop to his level. I’ll deal with him and his insubordination in time. Immediate retaliation and knee-jerk reactions aren’t the way of the Scottish mob, and the Cowen Clan is no exception. We are deliberate and cunning, slow to forgive, and we never forget.
“Quite right, Mac,” I say nonchalantly. “Now shut your bloody mouth and help me find them.”
He may be insolent, but he won’t outright defy me. He shuts his bloody mouth.
We come to a small booth, the type one might find on a main road with a toll, but it’s empty.
Mac shakes his head, his anger forgotten. We’re back on the same fucking team. “No idea where they’ve gone to, brother.”
I grunt in reply, but don’t respond. I’m looking for clues. The door to the booth’s open, so they likely came here. Of course there’s no fucking body.
“Jesus,” I mutter, shaking my head, when Mac’s eyes suddenly light up.
“Ahead,” he hisses. “Look.”
I look up and see two shadowy forms ahead of us. I recognize the slope of Clyde’s shoulders and Tate’s stance from here. We break off at a run and reach them in seconds.
“Where the bloody hell’d you go?” I ask when we reach them, not bothering to hide my anger.
Clyde looks abashed, and Tate shakes his head apologetically.
“Sorry, brother, we tried the normal way we have in the past, but the door was bloody locked, and we didn’t have time to pick it. If we broke it, we’d risk the weekend crew finding the body before our contact did.”
I grumble, but he has a point.
“We found a second option, though, Leith,” Clyde says. “Found another place to leave him but it took longer than expected.”
“We’re sorted then?”
“Aye,” Tate says. “Where’s the girl?”
I hear voices at the back of the cemetery. Jesus, all we need is another fucking witness. “Back in the car. Fucking move.”
My brothers may be big and bulky, but we’ve trained hard and thoroughly, having learned stealth at a young age. We move like ghosts in the night. Not so much as a twig snaps as we make our way to our car.
Feels surreal taking a prisoner back home with us, especially someone as pretty and intriguing as this one.
I scowl as we push past the low-hanging tree branches.
I can’t fucking let myself get weak. I’ve seen more than one of my men fall for a pretty woman who was more dangerous than she first appeared.
She’s there, though, still sitting with her back ramrod straight and her eyes fixed ahead. She doesn’t even turn when we open the door.
Clyde and Tate go to get in the back, but I shake my head.
“Clyde, you’ll drive. I want to interrogate our prisoner on the way back.” It’s partly a lie. Interrogation is only one of my reasons. I don’t want Clyde sitting beside her, but my brother’s another story. He’d never touch a woman that belonged to me.
Jesus.
Why the bloody hell am I even thinking along these terms? She doesn’t belong to me. She isn’t mine.
But when she looks to me, and her eyes meet mine, I can’t help the instant reaction.
Mine, my instinct says. They say the call of the bagpipes is our call to arms, deeply woven into our very DNA.
My attraction to this woman is every bit as innate and instinctive, like the lonesome wail of the pipes, and there’s no point bloody fighting it.
For now, I’ll make her my prisoner, no need to explain to anyone beyond that.
My men obey, Clyde taking the driver’s seat and Mac sliding in beside him. Tate gets into the back to her left and I get in to her right.
“Fucking go,” I tell Clyde, when suddenly the woman starts shaking her head and rocking beside me. She smacks at my leg. At first, I’m too surprised to react, but when she does it a second time, I grab her wrist and restrain her.
“Stop that,” I mutter. “Jesus. What the hell is it?”
She looks out the window to her right, and my eyes follow hers. I blink in surprise when I see a dog running to us. What the fuck is this? He paws at the door and begins to bark, the bloody bastard.
“Go,” Mac says. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
Clyde gives him a sidelong look, half surprise, half anger.
“For my Captain’s fucking orders,” he growls. Good man. He’ll be rewarded for his loyalty.
I’d leave the mutt if not for our prisoner’s agitation. Even now, I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. I open the door, and the dog leaps straight into the crowded back seat, goes to the woman and licks her face. She grins at him. Bloody grins.
“What the hell, Leith?” Tate asks.
“No fucking names,” I snap.
“Doesn’t matter, brother. We’re taking her prisoner, aren’t we?”
He’s right.
I shake my head and shut the door.
“Leith?” Clyde asks, looking at me in the rearview mirror. He’s as bewildered as I am.
I shake my head. “I said on the way down we needed a bloody fucking watchdog,” I mutter. “Take us home.”