Chapter 27
Heather—Present Day
T he morning broke silver and restless. Clouds dragged low across the Cuillins, bruised at the edges, as if the sky were remembering something it couldn’t quite speak aloud.
Heather leaned her forehead against the passenger window while Flynn steered them along the single-track road, the tires whispering over damp tarmac.
The sea was a wide pewter sheet beside them.
“Can’t believe people live with this view every day,” she murmured reverently.
Flynn smirked without looking away, dropping into his theatrically ridiculous accent, “Aye. Makes a man consider takin’ up poetry. Or whisky. Mebbe both.”
She huffed, but her gaze drifted upward as the Old Man of Storr appeared through the mist—dark, ancient, a spine of stone rising like the world’s first monument.
“He looks older than the world,” she whispered.
“They say he is,” Flynn continued his fireside brogue. “A braw giant, turned tae stone so he could keep watch o’er the island.”
Heather smiled faintly. “A man who doesn’t leave. Sounds familiar.”
He only squeezed the wheel once, quiet.
Flynn pulled into a gravel lay-by and killed the engine. Wind rocked the truck slightly.
Heather unbuckled, then paused.
Her coat shifted, revealing the slim leather-bound notebook she had slipped into her pocket intentionally before they left Portree.
Eilidh’s notebook.
The one Flynn had found behind her mom’s vanity during renovations, its spine warped, its pages crinkled from heat and time. She opened it now, her fingers already knowing the page she wanted.
A sketch of a thistle, her thistle, faded but unmistakable.
Under it, written in her mother’s handwriting, looping and slanted:
Storr ridge — unusual stonework reported.
Possible Mackenzie connection?
Variant thistle carving.
Check on next trip.
Heather sucked in a quiet breath.
“She meant to come here,” she whispered. “She wrote about it months before she died. But… she never came back to follow up.”
Flynn leaned over her shoulder. “She left it unverified?”
Heather nodded. “Which means either she never made it… or something stopped her.”
The words felt heavy in the air.
Heather closed the notebook gently, as though it might bruise. “She wanted this clue to matter. She wanted someone to see what she suspected.”
“Then let’s have a look,” Flynn said softly.
And together, they stepped into the wind.
The trail wasn’t a stroll. It was a trek—the kind that made locals shrug and tourists reconsider their life choices. Rain-slick stone, patches of mud, a slope that felt steeper with every step. Heather adjusted her scarf for the thirtieth time and blew a stray curl out of her face, already winded.
“How,” she gasped, “is this considered a popular hike?”
Flynn snorted the thermos tucked effortlessly under one arm as if he were on a brisk walk to the postbox. “This is the easy path, lass.”
Heather stopped dead. “The what?”
He grinned over his shoulder. “Easy. Beginner-friendly. Perfect for folks who’ve never climbed a meaningful hill in their life.”
“I climbed a meaningful hill last week,” she protested. “The one at Glenoran. Big. Steep. Traumatic.”
“That was a driveway,” he reminded her.
“It was sloped.”
Flynn laughed, the sound stolen quickly by the wind. Heather couldn’t help smiling despite the mud she was pretty sure had taken permanent residence in her right boot.
The mist swirled around them like soft smoke, revealing and hiding the towering spires in shifting fragments.
“Okay,” Heather panted, “new tactic. Distract me. Tell me something Scottish. A legend.”
He considered. “Long ago, a giant lived on Skye—”
“Ugh, I already know where this is going—”
“—and when he died, he turned tae stone, standin’ tall over the island so he could keep watch forever.”
Heather paused to catch her breath dramatically. “Do all Scottish legends involve giants, water horses, faeries, betrayal, or turning into rocks?”
A pause. Then, slowly, “Yes…”
“Excellent. Very comforting.” She rolled her eyes.
The wind shoved against them, playful at first, then stronger, forcing Heather to brace her hands on her thighs.
Flynn stopped climbing long enough to touch a hand to her lower back. “You doin’ all right, Campbell?”
“I’m thriving,” she wheezed. “This is my villain origin story.”
His laugh rumbled warm and low. “Come on. We’re nearly there.”
To her credit, she didn’t argue. Much.
By the time they reached the base of the rock spires, the mist had thickened into wandering veils, drifting between the stone pillars as if the world was exhaling.
Heather stopped, breath cut short—not from exertion this time.
“It’s… otherworldly,” she murmured.
“Aye.” Flynn’s voice dropped, reverent. “Feels like walkin’ through a myth.”
They stood in the hush for a beat, both catching their breath from opposite reasons. Then Heather’s eyes snagged on something—something wrong in a place already filled with strangeness.
Along the low stone wall curving beneath the ridge, a patch of lichen darkened in a suspicious pattern. Not natural. Not accidental.
Deliberate.
Her pulse tightened.
“Flynn,” she whispered.
He stepped beside her instantly. “What’ve ye got?”
Heather crouched, fingers brushing away the lichen, exposing angled lines—
A thistle.
Stylized. Intentional.
Almost identical to the carving in Glenoran’s kitchen stone.
Her heart stumbled.
“It’s the same… it’s the same mark,” she breathed.
Flynn lowered onto his haunches. “It certainly looks similar.”
Heather scraped gently at the stonework, and a hollow revealed itself behind a shifted block. Something inside glinted faintly.
She slid her hand into the dark gap and closed her fingers around something cold, metallic.
A thin, corroded clasp. Curved at one end. Edges green with age.
She turned it over.
Letters scratched in fading strokes:
H.M., 1747.
Her throat closed.
“Harris,” she whispered. “It has to be.”
Flynn’s expression shifted from curiosity to something heavier. “Your ancestor?”
Heather nodded, swallowing hard. “Mom wrote about variant thistle sigils she couldn’t place… but she never mentioned this buckle type. She must’ve meant to check Storr herself.”
Wind ripped across the ridge, whistling through the stones as if demanding quiet.
“Maybe she dropped it,” Flynn said gently.
Heather shook her head. “No. She didn’t drop things like this. And if someone was following her—”
Flynn took the clasp, thumb brushing the curve thoughtfully. “Then whoever followed her didn’t see this. Or didn’t understand its importance.”
Heather tucked the relic carefully into her pocket beside Eilidh’s notebook. Wind howled through the spires, a low, keening sound that felt like an exhale from the bones of the earth.
Flynn touched her sleeve, grounding her again. “Easy. Ye’re shakin’.”
“I’m not,” she lied, badly.
When they finally turned back toward the trail, Flynn slid his hand to the small of her back. The lightest touch. Solid and warm.
“You all right?” he asked quietly.
Heather nodded, but something inside her cracked open, raw and real.
Her voice came softer. “I just… this is big, Flynn. It’s a lot.”
“Aye,” he said. “And now you’re here. That means something.”
It did.
Too much.
Halfway down, Heather muttered under her breath, “Why is this trail suddenly so much longer?”
Flynn huffed. “Gravity, lass. Works different on the way up for wee Americans.”
She elbowed him. “If I fall, I’m taking you with me.”
“That’d make a grand obituary,” he said with a grin. “‘Local contractor tragically yeeted off cliff by historian girlfriend.’ I’ll haud ye responsible.”
Despite the wind snapping at them, she laughed—really laughed—releasing some of the weight that had settled in her chest.
But as they rounded a bend, Heather glanced back one more time.
A silhouette stood high on the ridge again.
Still.
Watching.
Waiting.
Her breath hitched. “Flynn…”
He turned, but the mist swallowed the shape whole.
Just emptiness. Nothingness.
Heather forced a smile she didn’t feel. “Just the light maybe”
But her hand clamped more tightly around the clasp in her pocket, Eilidh’s notebook pressing against it like a heartbeat.
Flynn squeezed her fingers. “Come on, lass. Let’s get somewhere warm.”
Heather let him guide her, but her eyes lingered on the ridge until the clouds finally hid it from sight.
The room was warm, windows fogged by the storm. Heather spread Eilidh’s notebook across the bed, flipping to the Skye pages again.
Her heart hammered as she reread the entry:
Storr ridge — stonework.
Variant thistle pattern.
Check on next trip
And below it, written smaller:
Don’t return alone.
Heather’s breath snagged.
She’d thought it meant weather. Safety. A hiker’s caution.
Now it felt like warning.
Another line—barely visible unless she tilted the page toward the lamp:
If the thistle endures, follow it home.
Her pulse stuttered.
She didn’t know what it meant yet, but she felt its weight.
Flynn knocked softly and entered with damp hair, takeaway cup steaming in his hand.
“Crew’s complainin’, roof’s holdin’, weather’s still shite,” he said cheerfully. “How’s the scholarin’?”
She showed him the entries. “She knew Storr mattered. She just… couldn’t finish.”
Flynn rested a hand on her knee. “Then we’ll finish it. Carefully.”
She swallowed. “I think Henderson was tracking her even then. Maybe she was getting too close.”
Flynn’s jaw flexed. “That’s why every man on my crew now thinks we’re stayin’ all weekend to oversee gutters. No suspicions, no questions.”
Relief loosened her shoulders.
Flynn unwound the napkin around the clasp. “We’ll take this to Kilmuir tomorrow. Old parish archives might give us a trail that’s no’ haunted by angry giants.”
Heather rolled her eyes. “You’re so dramatic.”
“Aye.” He smirked. “But effective.”
He moved toward the en-suite door, then paused when her fingers wrapped around his wrist.
“Flynn… don’t tell the crew. Any of it.”
He softened. “Lass, the only thing they know is that you like your tea scaldin’ and your ceilings straight.”
Flynn sat beside her, warm and solid, and cupped her jaw gently. The kiss they shared was brief, but sweet.
Her fingers curled into his damp shirt. “Stay,” she whispered.
“Where else would I go?” he murmured against her mouth.
She kissed him again, deeper this time, until the room blurred to warmth and rain and the soft scrape of breath against breath. Flynn’s hands trembled when he cupped her face. Her name left his lips like a prayer.
Heather stopped thinking about Eilidh, or Harris, or Henderson, or the shadow on the ridge.
She just breathed.
Just felt.
Just lived.