Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Tate
I walk along the icy dirt road, my hands shoved in my pockets. I don’t bloody know where I’m going or why, but sometimes when I need to clear my head, nothing works better than a good, brisk walk where the clouds meet the sky, and the mountain air makes everything seem clearer.
Leith wants me to prioritize a job I never expected him to assign me. He wants me to find the writer of the Clan Chronicles, and he wants me to find her now. His words from an earlier conversation still play in a continual loop.
“No doubt she’s a woman, Tate, and she thinks we can be fucking toyed with. But she’s a spy, and a dangerous one at that. Find her.”
Bailey, our resident dog, trots dutifully beside me. He’s my sister-in-law Cairstina’s, but he likes to hang around with the rest of us, and as soon as he sees me putting on my boots, his ears perk up and he gives me puppy dog eyes. I’m grateful for the company just now.
I like that he keeps up with my brisk strides and isn’t deterred when the icy wind picks up. He faces it bravely, and when snow begins to fall, he gives me a friendly look and laps at the falling flakes. Makes me smile, before I sigh and continue my walk.
I’ve got other things on my mind, too.
Today’s the anniversary of when we found our eldest brother, Tavish Cowen, was gone. I don’t like to remember the details, but none of us can forget Mum’s cry, or the way she collapsed against Dad when she heard the news. It’s the worst memory I have, one I wish I could eviscerate forever.
I don’t allow myself to forget it, though. I force myself to dwell on the memory sometimes, when I need to remember who I am and what my purpose is.
I’m second-in-command of the most powerful mob in Scotland. The name Cowen inspires both fear and respect to anyone who hears it. I can’t afford to go soft. I can’t fucking afford it.
Mum gets a bit melancholy around now, but it helps having little ones about. Cairstina and Leith’s wee bairn’s started toddling around, and Mac’s wife Bryn’s expecting their first in a few months.
Mum loves having bairns in her lap, and it seems half the time I find her in the library reading a book, it’s a dog-eared board book and she’s got the wee one nestled in her lap.
She’s preoccupied, though. I know she is. And today I need to find out why. I’d like to give her some space to grieve, for a little while.
I loop around the cave that flanks the side of the mountain, the furthest spot away from the rest of the homes that surround our main lodge.
Deep in the Scottish Highlands, we’re hidden from the view of most people, the large lodge the epicenter of our entire Clan, surrounded by our wee, privately owned chalets that encircle it.
The inner members of our Clan live nearby, dozens nearly within arm’s reach.
Hidden, though. Even from where I’m standing, the only telltale sign of civilization is the chimney smoke rising high in the air.
The moon’s beginning to rise, the sky around us a bluish hue as the sun settles below the mountain peaks. Suddenly, without warning, a woman’s high-pitched scream pierces the night air.
I’m instantly alert. Bailey freezes and meets my eyes, his body tense, nose pointed in the air. Adrenaline surges through me.
“Where the bloody hell is that coming from?” I mutter, whipping my head to the left, then right. Between the mountains and the wind, it’s impossible to tell the location of the scream, when a second scream follows the first.
“Find her, Bailey,” I tell him. “Go, boy.” Fully trained, he’s off at a run before I’ve finished my sentence, heading toward a barren, desolate spot on the side of the mountain.
I watch my footing, as the terrain’s rocky and icy, but Bailey doesn’t wait. He races ahead, intent on finding whoever’s in distress, so I focus on following him.
Who is it? It’s hard to tell from a woman’s scream who she is, but it could be anyone. My two sisters, my brothers’ wives, my mother, and grandmother all live here. Not to mention the occasional visitor from the McCarthy Clan in Ireland.
Bailey takes a sharp turn, and I keep up with difficulty. Suddenly, the trees give way to a clearing, and I can see everything. I freeze, heaving from the effort of sprinting in the frigid air at Bailey's pace, and it takes me a minute to process the scene before me.
Bloody hell.
Looks like every damn one of the girls is bundled in fluffy coats, with hats, gloves, scarves and boots, taking turns sledding down the mountainside into a valley below.
I can’t even identify them all from here, but I can make out my sister-in-law Cairstina, and my sisters Islan and Paisley.
Two more girls are apart from the rest, at the top of the hill, preparing to go sledding down.
The three girls standing at the top of the hill quickly turn to look our way.
“Jaysus,” I mutter as I approach, trying to quelch my rising anger. Did they even bother to think about the impact a scream might have on one of us? I try to keep my voice light but fail. “You shouldn’t scream like that.”
Paisley’s eyes glance up at me, and her mittened hand comes to cover her mouth, her blue eyes a bit worried. The youngest of the lot, she’s a bit timid but quick to smile.
“Sorry, Tate,” she says apologetically. She doesn’t like upsetting any of us and looks genuinely repentant. “We didn’t think anyone else was out here.”
Islan grins. “Fancy a jaunt yourself?”
I grunt in reply, and the lass standing next to her—my brother Leith’s wife, Cairstina—giggles with the lot of them. “You look” —she giggles— “like you’ve just come running to save someone.”
“Ha. Ha.” I shove my hands back in my pockets and roll my eyes. “Just out for a stroll.”
“Oh, Tate,” Paisley says, as it suddenly dawns on her. “You heard us screaming and thought someone was hurt, didn’t you?”
“I bloody well thought—”
The sled with the other two takes off, and the girl in the front shrieks, as Bailey throws his head back and howls. The sled takes flight and careens down the hill with building momentum.
We watch, and it becomes evident within seconds they’ve gone off course.
A patch of ice derailed them, and they’re no longer heading down the trail that leads to a large, open path below, but toward a thick swath of snow-covered pines.
Their screams get louder, and everything seems as if it plays out in slow-motion.
I take off at a run, prepared for the worst, but I won’t get there in time to help them.
The girls scream behind me as the sled collides with a massive, unyielding pine.
The screams from the sled come to an instant, eerie stop.
I’m the first one there. It’s a fucking bloody mess of snow and ice and scarves and hats, as I fall to my knees beside the girls. One I recognize immediately as Mac’s wife Bryn. She looks stricken but otherwise unharmed.
“Fran, Tate. She’s hurt, oh God—”
Bloody hell.
No.
Fran.
Anyone but fucking Fran.
I reach for her. She’s covered in snow and clearly passed out, blood below her hat trickling down her face into her eyes.
“We lost control,” Bryn sobs, scrambling through the snow toward Fran. “Oh, God.”
Paisley and Islan arrive at the same time, breathless and panting. They fall into the snow beside Fran. Paisley’s crying along with Bryn now, but Islan glares, as if her anger could prevent injury. “Bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell,” she mutters.
“Is she alright?” Paisley sobs.
I don’t answer. I’m lifting Fran gently out of the sled, brushing piles of snow off of her.
A chill goes through me at the stark sight of crimson blood against the whiteness of the snow. I kneel, laying her across my lap so I can inspect her.
“She’s out cold,” I mutter, inspecting her carefully. If she injured her neck, I can’t move her too quickly.
The lodge is yards away from us. I can’t risk putting her back in the sled to take her back, not if anything’s broken, or worse.
“She’s hurt her head,” I tell them. At the very fucking least. I jerk my head at Islan. “Call the doctor, have them prepare. I’ll carry her back. It’s the safest way to keep her still.”
In recent years, with Dad’s declining health, we’ve boarded a Clan doctor. It comes in handy in times of emergency. Like now.
It’s a somber affair, all of us walking back to the house. Islan manages to get a signal on her mobile and runs ahead of us. She’s trained hard in the workout room in the main house, running and weightlifting, and she’s got a good lead on the rest of us.
I focus on my job, moving as quickly as I possibly can without jostling or hurting Fran, but when I nearly trip, she comes to with a cry.
“Where am I? Oh, God, what happened?” She hisses in a breath, and I’m sure it’s from pain, poor lass.
“You’ll be alright,” I mutter. “Be still and quiet now, we’re taking you to see a doctor. You’ve injured yourself and can’t risk a sudden movement.”
She doesn’t listen, though, of bloody course, but begins to panic.
“My arm hurts. Is it broken?”
“We’ll find out soon. Stay still, Fran. You don’t want to risk further injury.”
I’m only paces away from the main house when someone flicks a light on, and Fran blinks her eyes from the brightness. She whimpers, then quickly stifles it.
“You’ll be alright,” I tell her, but my tone is gruff. It angers me they were out doing something so fucking dangerous. If she wasn’t fucking injured, I’d shake her. “Shouldn’t have fuckin’ been out there at twilight with the ice over the snow like that, dammit. Do you have a death wish?”
“Save the bloody lecture.” She winces. “Looks like Mother Nature already chastised me.”
I close my mouth but still glare.
“Am I too heavy?” she asks softly.
Until then, I’d made myself focus on my mission, on keeping her still and moving swiftly. I didn’t think about who I held. I didn’t think about how she affects me. I have one job to do: bring her to safety. But at her question, I look down at her in surprise. I don’t answer right away.
Bloody hell.