Chapter 19
Heather—Present Day
T he museum’s service stairwell spilled them into the main gallery level again, the air cooler here, touched with marble and polish.
Kerr moved ahead of her, measured and silent, his ID badge glinting as they neared the lobby.
Heather stayed a pace behind, phone in hand, pretending to scroll while each nerve ending in her body tracked the man’s every move.
They stepped out into the atrium’s light; sun fractured through the high panes, the noise of school groups rising like the tide. Kerr angled toward the corridor leading to the archives.
That was when she heard it.
A low, familiar whistle threading through the noise.
Flynn.
He moved through the crowd in work boots and rolled sleeves, all warm muscle and sawdust and easy confidence amidst glass and linen. He saw her first. Then his gaze slid to Kerr.
The change was small but unmistakable. The smile that started didn’t finish. Something in his eyes went very still.
“There you are, lass,” he said, all surface ease as he reached them. His arm slid around her waist, his mouth brushed her temple—but his gaze stayed on Kerr. “Sorry I’m late. Auld beam at the site gave us more attitude than sense.”
His tone was friendly. The message underneath was not: she wasn’t alone.
Kerr’s expression didn’t flicker. “No trouble at all,” he said politely.
Flynn held out a hand. “Flynn Duncan. Duncan Restorations.”
“David Kerr. Archaeology.” The grip was firm, brief. Measuring.
Heather watched the exchange like flint striking steel: no spark yet, but the threat of it. Flynn’s hand on her hip felt relaxed to anyone watching. But she could feel the coil of muscle beneath it.
“Mr. Kerr was just taking me down to the archives,” she said, her voice steady.
Flynn’s brow ticked up, a playful curve that didn’t reach his eyes. “Ah, the fun part. Thought I’d have to suffer through gift shop duty first.”
“The archives aren’t open to the public,” Kerr said evenly. “Dr. Henderson has authorized access.”
“That she did,” Heather added. “For my… family research.”
“In that case,” Flynn said mildly, “I’ll tag along—if that’s all right. I promise not to lay a finger on your priceless trinkets.”
Kerr hesitated a half-second too long. “Of course.”
They fell into step, with Kerr leading, Heather and Flynn side by side. As the hum of the atrium dimmed behind them, Flynn’s fingers brushed hers; not for show now, but to ground her. She squeezed back, a silent, I’m okay.
Kerr swiped his badge at a coded door. The lock clicked.
“After you,” he said, gesturing forward.
Flynn motioned Heather through first, though his gaze never quite left Kerr’s face. “Much obliged.”
The air changed on the other side—cooler, drier, scented with metal and dust and the faint tang of old paper. Rows of steel shelving stretched into the distance. Somewhere deeper in, a lift beeped and doors sighed shut.
The lift carried them further down, away from marble and skylight into a level that hummed and thrummed with machines. The filtered air felt thinner here, calibrated for ink and fiber instead of comfort.
Kerr led them through a corridor lined with reinforced glass and motion sensors, his badge kissing a reader every few doors. Fluorescents cast the space in flat, pale light. Heather’s skin prickled.
“The eighteenth-century collections are this way,” Kerr said, voice echoing. “Our Jacobite holdings are among the most extensive in Scotland.”
He keyed open another door.
Inside was a cavernous room of rolling shelves and labeled drawers. Artifacts slept in acid-free boxes. Framed textiles lay half-wrapped in linen. A tartan hung beneath glass like a pinned butterfly.
Heather’s breath hitched. “It’s enormous,” she said in awe.
Kerr turned, offering her a pair of white cotton gloves. “One of a kind, most of it. You’ll wear these.”
She slipped them on, the fabric whispering against her skin.
Flynn took his with a faint grin. “I handle eighteenth-century beams for a living. I’ll do my best not to maul yer wee heirlooms.”
The closest thing to a scowl brushed Kerr’s mouth and was gone just as quick. “If you’ll excuse me,” he gritted out. “I have a meeting this morning. A pleasure to meet you both.”
He crossed back to the lift. His rapping footsteps faded down the corridor before the doors hissed shut.
Silence settled, broken only by the hum of the air system and distant cart wheels.
Heather let out a deep breath. “That’s him,” she said quietly.
Flynn’s attention snapped to her. “Aye,” he said at once. “From the loch.”
She blinked. “You recognized him too?”
“Soon as I saw his face.” His jaw flexed, eyes gone flint-hard. “Took me a moment to place it, but… aye. Sluice box, dead stare. Same man.”
Her throat tightened. “He was at Glenoran last night.”
Flynn went very still.
“What?!”
“He parked down by the gate. Killed the engine. Walked the garden with a flashlight—slow, like he was… studying the place.” The memory crawled back, cold and precise. “He didn’t try any doors. Didn’t test the windows. He just… watched. The study. My window. When I turned the lights on, he bolted.”
Flynn’s gaze turned weary. “And you were alone,” he surmised.
She swallowed. “Byrdie was there,” she said weakly—then shook her head at her own deflection. “Yes. I was alone,” she croaked.
“Why didn’t you call me?” His voice stayed low, but the disbelief in it felt heavier than shouting would have.
“I almost did. But then I thought maybe I was overreacting. I didn’t want you driving all night for someone who might’ve just been lost. And it wasn’t until I saw him in Henderson’s office that everything… clicked. He’s hers, Flynn. Her man in the field.”
Flynn raked a hand through his hair, then braced both palms on the metal shelving, breathing once, slow and controlled.
“All right,” he said finally. “So Henderson’s pet archaeologist is the same bastard watchin’ you at Arkaig and prowlin’ round Glenoran.” He looked back at her. “What did you tell her?”
“That I’m researching Harris Mackenzie. Focused on genealogy. I never mentioned the loch. Or Eleanor. Or Mom’s missive.” Heather crossed her arms, holding in her own tremor. “She offered access to the restricted records. Said, ‘Out of loyalty to your mother.’”
Flynn’s mouth twisted unpleasantly. “Aye. How generous.”
“She told me to keep her updated if I find anything tying Harris to the Prince or the gold.” Heather met his gaze. “I smiled. I nodded.” She emphasized. “I won’t. ”
His shoulders eased a fraction. Approval, quiet and fierce. “Good lass.”
Heather inhaled. “I don’t want to run, Flynn. I’m not handing this over. Not to them.”
“I know you’re not.” He stepped closer, his presence filling the cold archive space with something warm and solid.
“And I’m not askin’ you to. But from now on, you don’t do any of this alone.
Not the museum. Not the loch. Not Glenoran after dark.
If they’re sniffin’ around, they either think you’ve already found somethin’, or they mean to make sure you don’t. ”
Her chin tipped up. “I’ve spent my whole life being told to sit down and let other people decide what’s good for me.”
He held her gaze, unflinching. “I’m not tellin’ you to sit,” he said quietly. “I’m tellin’ you I’m walkin’ beside you.”
The fight in her loosened, just enough. “Okay,” she said. “ Beside , not in front.”
His mouth curved. “Beside,” he promised. His thumb brushed her wrist—one firm, grounding stroke. “Now, let’s see what your Mackenzies have left us, aye? Make all this sneakin’ worth their while.”
He tugged one of the rolling shelves outward, the mechanism groaning softly. Box spines slid past: Prestonpans. Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Culloden Moor. Highland Clearances.
“Pick your poison,” he murmured.
Heather managed a thin smile. “Let’s start with the ones that nearly tore Scotland in two.”
They carried a stack of boxes to the central table. The air here was cool and bone-dry; the filtration system’s hum filled the silence.
She lifted the lid on the first box— Prestonpans —and froze.
Her mother’s handwriting stared back at her from the corner of a field report.
E. Campbell — 2 May 1990. Provenance verified.
Notes crowded the margins—the small, restless loops Heather had once tried to imitate on homework pages.
Check cross-ref. with McRae.
See if Mackenzie inventory exists off-site.
“She was cataloguing these,” Heather whispered.
Flynn leaned in, shoulder brushing hers. “Looks like half the eighteenth century passed through her hands.”
Heather swallowed, pulling another file. “I used to sit under her desk while she typed,” she murmured. “I remember the sound of the keys. She’d tell me stories about princes and rebels and lost causes. I never realized they were… this. Actual boxes in a basement.”
“Seems she meant you to find your way back to them,” Flynn said softly.
They worked through Culloden next, then Highland Clearances, skimming dates and names, following the faint thread of anything Mackenzie. At last, Flynn dragged the Prince Charles Edward Stuart box closer.
“Let’s see what the Bonnie Prince was up to,” he quipped.
Inside, letters lay in neat bundles, each wrapped and tagged. Heather scanned the labels. “Alias Edward Louis… alias Sylvester Stewart…” Her finger stilled on one marked only:
E.L. → H.M.
“This one,” she breathed.
Flynn moved the other packets aside while she lifted it free. The parchment inside was fragile, nearly translucent. The wax seal had long since been broken, but the impression remained: thistle and rose over crossed swords.
The script was bold, sweeping—and wrong.
Heather frowned. “It’s not English.”
Flynn squinted. “Runes?”
She shook her head slowly. “What in the world… The shapes look like something between runes and Latin script.” Her brain tugged at half-forgotten university nights, library tables buried in sagas and long-dead languages. “Norse, maybe. Or a later dialect? I’d have to cross-check, but…”
Her voice trailed off as a ghost of a tune threaded through her memory.
My mother told me… someday I would buy…
Flynn watched her face change. “Heather?”
She dug back into the folder and found a second sheet tucked behind the letter with modern paper, edges yellowed, and familiar looped handwriting.
Translation: “My Mother Told Me” — Old Norse verse: Egil’s Saga (Egill Skallagrímsson). From encoded letter E.L. → H.M. — PCE.
Her chest went tight.
“She translated it,” Heather whispered.
She unfolded the page and read aloud, the words humble and strange all at once:
My mother told me, someday I would buy,
Galleys with good oars, sail to distant shores,
Stand upon the prow, noble barque I steer,
Steady course to haven, hew many a foe…
The words hung there, ancient and unnervingly familiar.
Flynn blinked. “That’s your song.”
Heather let out a breathless laugh. “That’s my lullaby,” she corrected softly. “She must’ve found this letter and realized it was coded. So she translated the verse… and then sang it to me for years.”
Flynn’s gaze flicked between the pages. “So the Prince writes in Old Norse to an ‘H.M.,’ and your mam picks it apart in the archives. Nobody else would look twice—it’s just an old verse. But she knew it meant more.”
“She knew it meant something, ” Heather said. “She might not have known what. Not yet.” She pointed to a line in Eilidh’s neat script: Possible navigation metaphor? ‘Haven’ = specific geography?
“Skye,” Flynn said quietly. “Has to be. ‘Distant shores,’ ‘haven’—and Flora MacDonald’s letter is in this same file.”
Heather fished out another envelope marked Flora MacDonald — June 1746 and checked the date. “First of June,” she murmured. “And he flees with her at the end of the month.”
“So he sends warning first,” Flynn said, following the trail aloud. “Letting Harris know where he’s headed. The gold, the rebellion, all of it.”
Heather stared down at the Norse and its translation, her mother’s pencil strokes looping between centuries. “Three hundred years,” she said quietly, “and they’re still talking to each other.”
Flynn’s hand settled warmly on her shoulder. “And now they’re talkin’ to you.”
She snapped a few photos on her phone, careful with the angles, then eased the pages back into their sleeves.
“We go to Skye,” she said.
“Aye,” Flynn agreed. “We follow your mother’s song.”
He squeezed her shoulder once more. “But this time, we do it with our eyes open. No more ghosts sneakin’ round your windows without us knowin’ their names.”
Heather’s gaze drifted up to the corner of the room, where a small red security light blinked above a camera. Steady. Watching.
“Good,” she said. “Let them watch.”