The Legend of the Brotherhood (The Clan MacLaoch Curse #3)

Prologue

Up the black-rock beach the boats bobbed and shook.

Half-cabin wooden fishing skiffs were being filled with five-hundred-pound barrels of untaxed whisky on that moonlit night.

The wet cold bit at the men’s heels as they worked, back and forth between castle and boats.

The rumor of authorities planning to raid MacLaoch castle that night had loaned a frantic rhythm to the otherwise peaceful pace required for aging raw spirit into Glentree’s golden whisky.

Clansmen sporting tight stone-washed denim, cigarettes between equally tight lips, muscled the oak casks from their racks in the castle’s caves, swatches of red tartan tied around their wrists and forearms to protect them, and rolled them onto every available clan fishing vessel.

The rocky shore made loading the boats hard, and harder still when their high-tops slid on the wet stones.

Rowan, a young boy then, remembered the way the tobacco smoke hung in the air like mist, creating a protective blanket cloaking their secret activities.

Then, the two-way radios squawked: Police were racing through Glentree toward the castle.

Men flew down from the castle, throwing their arms out at those loading MacLaoch gold onto the last beached skiff and yelling to: “Go! Go! Go!”

The last one, Chief’s Desire, was Rowan’s uncle’s skiff.

Off in the dark, watery distance, out beyond the break, a motorized ship, something large judging by the low hum, was coming up from the south.

Its searchlight became a ghostly dot on the horizon.

The last barrels were loaded when the yacht-sized diesel-powered vessel with the words HM Coast Guard emblazoned on the side crested into view beside the distant cliffs.

The incoming tide had lifted the rest of the boats, but Chief’s Desire was too heavy for the water lapping under her flat wooden hull.

The white sneakers of Alex Alexander, nicknamed Double-A, flashed as he sprinted toward the skiff. “Oye! Giver!”

Cigarettes were flicked to the ground. The men rushed the bow. Aided by their force and the buoyant lift of the water, the skiff moved out with the next receding wave. The men gave her a final shove before climbing in; their jeans were soaked up to their thighs.

Rowan remembered the starting roar of the outboard motors on his uncle’s boat.

Those unusual shiny white motors, two hundred horsepower in total, had been the talk of the clan, his uncle’s Whisky Boys discussing the massive crates that had arrived from the US, how it was all so American.

How, somehow, Miami Vice had gotten the better of his uncle all the way out there on that northern port of Skye.

Still, as Rowan stood on that beach, the searchlight of the incoming powerboat washing over the waves like an accusatory finger, he felt that his uncle’s boat couldn’t possibly outrun their English overlords.

That even with its Don Johnson overhaul, it was still a blunt-nosed, sleepy wooden vessel whose original design had been for quiet fishing in the late nineteenth century.

His uncle, clan chief, and mentor stood next to him, cigar clenched between his teeth. Around it, he uttered a Gaelic prayer just as the winds changed.

The Coast Guard bellowed: “Cease and desist all activities and return to shore.”

“They’ll make it?” Rowan asked.

“Lady MacLaoch willing.”

Those words hadn’t soothed him; in their legends, Lady MacLaoch was a woman who cursed every chief in her lineage, including him—the chieftain who would eventually take his uncle’s place.

Then his uncle added, “And pray those engines don’t rip tha’ boat apart.”

Rowan was watching the struggle in the loch when his uncle’s words sunk in. “What?” he squeaked.

Just then, the skiff’s motors caught and were thrust to full tilt.

The boat jettisoned forward through the chop.

The nose lifted dangerously at the first low, sloppy wave that struck the bow, making the men shout.

The engine went slack, and two men were ordered to the nose.

Double-A put power back into the motors, and with the nose weighed down, they broke through the waves.

The boat wave-hopped toward the channel and then the wide mouth of the outer loch. There, out of the protected bay, they’d catch the coastal rip current that sped north to the Orkneys.

The Coast Guard boat pierced through the outer chop, its own motor built for high-sea chases. It closed the distance to the skiff like a boot about to bash a roach into the rocks.

“Uncle…”

“Dunnae worry. Even with her load, she’s made for the shallows. Her Majesty’s ship cannae be foolish enough to attempt what they are pretending to do.” His uncle let out a low growl. “I hope.”

Rowan heard his uncle whisper in their mother tongue for Lady MacLaoch to keep the men safe, for the water to guide them, and for the MacLoach marshes to be ready to receive them.

Young Rowan, losing sight of the chase, ran to see them again, his uncle’s last words lost behind him. Across the rocky beach, up the cliff trail. The smell of spilled whisky was heavy in the air. He looked down from the top of the cliffs, again following the boats.

The large British ship looked to be preparing to ram the skiff; Rowan’s heart went into his throat. He shouted for Double-A to stop. Stop this madness or they’d surely die. Of course there was no way that Double-A could hear him, and Rowan knew he would not listen even if he could.

Double-A kept to his course, following the rocky arm of the outer loch. Suddenly, the Coast Guard banked hard away from the shallows, allowing the skiff to fly by.

Rowan shouted and punched his fist in the air. He ran to the next lookout, his feet stumbling over loose rocks on the trail.

In Rowan’s next clear view, the Coast Guard was once more on Double-A and his men. The skiff veered away from the safety of the shallow waters. It wasn’t a move Rowan thought they should have made.

Rowan heard Her Majesty’s commands echo off the basalt rocks of the cliff’s shoulders; they reached him in broken bites, sounding harsh and mechanical through the loudspeakers. There was an “or else” underlying the tone of the command to stop.

Rowan lost them again, and he took a shortcut through the forest following the trail, popping out in time to witness the skiff dodging left again, pushing even farther out.

Rowan bellowed, “Nooo!” It was farther into the bigger ship’s territory and a sure way to drown when the skiff was exploded by the larger vessel’s piercing hull.

The Coast Guard vessel followed and, anticipating a cut-back by Double-A, who would surely want to be closer to the shallows, turned at the last second.

Rowan screamed. The water frothed. From where he stood, Chief’s Desire looked to have been obliterated by the massive Coast Guard hull.

Covering his mouth, as if the authorities could hear him screaming, Rowan felt hot tears sting his eyes.

His uncle’s men, his clansmen who were like fathers to him, were surely killed.

And he’d borne witness to the English authority’s brutality against an already brutalized clan. His stomach went sour.

Then the searchlight went mad on the water below, and as the clouds moved on, letting weak moonlight shine down, Rowan saw Chief’s Desire running like a skater over the water. The English boot had tried to crush them but failed.

Rowan whooped, punching his fist in the air, tears still wet on his cheeks. He sped along the cliffside trail once more. The skiff, lit by searchlights, was headed directly toward the towering basalt cliff face.

Double-A kept the motors blazing. He tore into the shallows and swerved north again. While Rowan was relieved, the water there was riddled with underwater boulders that could crack the skiff in half. The men were literally between a rock and a hard place.

The Coast Guard vessel didn’t attempt to enter the shallows but instead paced them, likely believing that a crash was inevitable, and they would then pluck them from the water. Those who survived.

Double-A and his men began to pull away.

It was as if they had discovered they had another outboard motor and just then remembered to turn it on.

Farther and farther ahead, the skiff led the Coast Guard.

Rowan grinned. He understood what Double-A was doing.

He’d finally found the rip current that traveled north toward the Orkneys.

It was unexpectedly close to shore that night.

The vessel kept on them, its massive searchlight trailing them, their diesel motors competing with the crash of waves below.

But then, in a blink, the skiff was gone.

Rowan knew that Double-A had made a hard right out of the spotlight, and in the few moments it took them to readjust, the skiff was gone.

The Coast Guard worked the rocky cliff face for some time.

They searched the water and the rocks for parts of the boat, and eventually, they discovered what his clan had learned over a millennia ago: There were narrow cracks in the cliffs that weren’t large enough for them to gain entry. Only sleepy old fishing boats fit.

Smiling and feeling righteous, Rowan ran back to the castle in a stream of whoops and hollers.

They’d done it. They’d saved the whisky in the boats; they’d be able to continue to serve their clan’s needs by using the tidy profit to fix the castle roof and help their people when they needed money for school or medical bills, like his uncle said they would.

Rowan’s feet slowed as the castle came into view, and his jovial mood evaporated. Blue and red lights from police vehicles bounced off the upper turrets of Castle Laoch, a reminder that they’d not wholly gotten away with it.

The rest of the night was a blur. He remembered finding his uncle’s hand and slipping his smaller one into it.

That firm grip gave him the reassurance he needed as authoritarian boots moved up and down the basement stairs and then out to the loch beach and lower cave.

The rest of the MacLaoch gold was forfeit.

There was one more pungent moment that Rowan hadn’t recalled in a long time. Only his current circumstance decades later pulled it out of his deep subconscious.

There at the front of the castle, some of the Whisky Boys stood stoic and proud, flanking him and his uncle as officers interrogated them.

They’d not cause a scene if it weren’t necessary.

Still, the current law of the land wasn’t the law of their hearts.

The MacLaochs had centuries of history on that land; they’d fought for it, including castle and country.

Their confidence ran through their blood and into the soil beneath their high-top sneakers.

So, when one of the officers crossed an invisible line, the men responded. And Rowan’s uncle was a particularly colorful one who wasn’t one to shy away from responsibilities, a party, or a fight.

Rowan remembered his uncle’s words to one of the officers that night: “What’d you say, Murdoch?

” His tone was aggressive, and it made young Rowan’s stomach churn.

Then in his memory, more words sneeringly spit out, his uncle’s next answer to the comment Rowan could no longer remember: “Is that right?” Just before the officer had his head knocked back.

His memory of the exchange, and then the mayhem that ensued, wasn’t clear. But Rowan remembered that name, Murdoch.

Now in his library office, he looked at the empty chair across the desk from his, whisky in one hand and foreclosure paperwork in the other. It had been too recently that another vindictive Murdoch sat before him.

“This is long overdue, isn’t it?” the banker had said.

In a blink, his vile grin had come and gone, as if he wasn’t sure he could achieve his lofty, horrible goal but was thrilled he was getting close.

His suit was a beige, boxy thing much too large for his shoulders but buttoned snugly around his rotund middle.

It stretched as he slid loan foreclosure paperwork across the desk to Rowan.

“Ye can’t outrun your bad blood, MacLaoch.

And yer uncle was the worst kind. I’ll finish what my own uncle started and take the castle from you and yours as you justly deserve. ”

Rowan rotated the crystal tumbler and watched the long legs of amber alcohol drip back down to the bottom of the glass.

Soon after the banker had delivered that judgment to Rowan, Charmaine had showed up and fucked things up further for him by playing keep-away with Cole’s ring. A lot had happened in not much time.

That second bit, at least, had been settled.

The gold on his own ring finger winked; its match sat warm and comfortable on Cole’s finger.

But the banker, Richard, aka Dick Murdoch II, wasn’t.

If they had that confiscated whisky now, it’d be worth a fortune, and he could be done with the Murdochs’ iron fist, first powered by the law and now by money, once and for all.