Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
It was obvious that Mickey was the best person to give us some immediate answers.
Up in the artifacts room and standing over the coffin, he gently lifted out its contents and set them on the canvas-covered table we’d set up.
It was, as Holly had said, coins and bones.
His wrists were pink where the silky bondage rope had been.
Holly stood farthest away from him as if he had something catching, or like a well-placed accusation, which I thought he was maybe, probably, likely, owed.
While he worked, he yakked. “I’d like a bath, a proper meal”—his eyes slid to Holly—“and to never see the likes of her again.”
Holly glared back, “I wasted so much time playing captor and captive with you.”
“You!? What about me?!”
“You were having a grand ol’ time until you realized I wasn’t going to show you the casket.”
He twisted it back onto Holly. “I thought you said you loved me! Caged animals don’t feel love!”
“Well…ye crapped on the carpet, Mickey Gillian! So, into a human-sized crate ye went until you could promise tae not do it again.”
“I promised.”
“Oh aye, I heard ye. I also heard you when you asked about how heavy that casket was and what did I actually see when I opened it? Or if I had opened it? I wanted to let you out, but I love ye too much tae. A life of crime is not for you—don’t make the old men right about you.”
The plea in her voice left me feeling for Holly. She sounded deeply profound and vulnerable. She wanted Mickey, so desperately, to change.
Mickey was sullen, and his only response was: “I’m no criminal.”
Rowan interjected, “You say that, but then why were ye digging this up? Scientific inquiry at midnight on a battle-wrecked field?”
“It’s not a crime to be curious, is it?”
“Is that what you were, in the middle of the night, with dirt up to yer elbows?” He nodded to Mickey’s half-cleaned appearance. “Being curious?”
“Look—”
Rowan interrupted. “I’d like to know what the coins’ value is, whose name belongs to these bones, and why you thought you could steal them from me.”
“There is that,” I murmured to Mickey.
Mickey sighed and rolled his head as if loosening his neck muscles. “These are Roman coins.”
He made us wait for more by first returning the bones to the coffin and closing it.
He then picked up a coin with his gloved hand.
The coins were grime-encrusted, but it was obvious from an exposed edge here and there that they were either brass or gold.
Mickey dug around in Holly’s toolbox and came out with a container of swabs.
He wet one of them with distilled water and gently rubbed the cotton tip on an edge.
My breath caught as Rowan cursed. The coin was gold—not dull, brassy gold but the kind of gold jewelers beg for, which billionaires decorate with, and which sunlight glints brilliantly off.
“This is a—” Mickey started, coughed, then mumbled under his breath.
“Sorry, what?” I asked. I was right next to him and hadn’t heard.
“It’s a…” he said and uttered the rest.
“Louder.” His hands began to shake, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he had a look of deep, profound regret.
As in, he could’ve been in Glasgow with a casket of undocumented gold right now.
This was not, as I could only assume he’d tried to convince himself of over the last few days playing captive with Holly, useless scrap brass coins dated last year.
“What’d you think it was? Just rocks?” I whispered to him.
“Prayed it was mostly worthless? They’re not, are they? ”
“Aureus Roman coins. I’ll have to research the current estimated value, but this has the Colosseum on it. This minting can be worth close to five hundred thousand pounds each. On a bad day at auction, when the cost of gold is down.”
Rowan began a slow, deep inhale.
I looked at the pile removed from the coffin. “There’re several hundred coins here.”
Mickey swallowed the last of his dream down.
“That’s a fuck load of ancient gold,” I whispered to him, watching his reaction, “and you were just going to pack it up, and what? Start a new life? Pay off all your friends’ credit cards? Pay back your parents for you being a shitty kid?”
His eyes narrowed at mine. “If anything, they owe me—”
“Sorry, I don’t care what you had planned, actually.
What I do care about…” I said, feeling like this lifeline for Rowan was a single, solitary moment away from being dust in the wind.
This one thing that was going to bring the castle, the MacLaoch clan, and the town of Glentree back to a thriving life was almost taken by this pain in my ass.
This second item he’d nearly pilfered. “What I do care about is that you pay penance for attempting robbery on us—the clan—twice.”
“I was imprisoned,” he hissed.
Rowan exhaled, “But not dead.”
“Right,” I said, giving Rowan a quizzical look over my shoulder and glanced at Holly, who had regained her confidence as I grilled Mickey.
Rowan had spoken with the kind of tone that made me question how often he actually killed people.
Back at Mickey: “The town will know what you’ve done by nightfall.
Now, what do I put at the end of that story?
He tried to steal all our gold, but he’s helped us—”
“It’s blood money, Nicole. Why would someone like you, a scientist, be interested in money that a Viking came here to buy out an old chief with? This belongs to a museum. Not in your coffers for only you and some greedy lender to have.”
Rowan lunged at him, knocking me back in the process. The two careened into the desk as Holly shouted obscenities. The coins flew, and the casket threatened to tip over as the chime of coins hitting the stone floor filled the room around the shouts.
I landed in a chair. Rowan had Mickey by the collar and shook him as Holly shouted, pointing her finger at him, “Blood money?! What do ye call that fist-sized ruby ye snuck out of Egypt? A gift from the Lord?”
Rowan held Mickey tight and bent backward over the desk. But Rowan’s gaze was on Holly. “The gem was a fist-sized ruby?”
Only Holly was on a tear and was laser-focused on Mickey. “Decide to enter the family business too? You sold me a sack of lies! You only fancy yourself an archaeologist when it suits you.”
“I am an archaeologist!”
“Fuck you! I trusted you.” Holly wailed.
“Yeah, well, it’s not my fault you’ve poor judgment.”
I groaned for him. Rowan’s patience toward Mickey was being held back by a hair, and he snapped, defending Holly’s honor.
Rowan twisted, slamming his elbow into Mickey’s jaw. Mickey’s head snapped to the side, and he fell to the floor on all fours.
“You piece of shit!” Holly lunged for him, and Rowan caught her and pushed her back.
Out of my chair, I gave Holly a hug from behind and, against her hair, said, “It’s done. Breathe, it’s over.” Then to Rowan: “We need to call the constable. This is out of our hands.”
Both of them were seething. But Holly cleared her head first and took a few steps sideways and out of my embrace, going eerily calm. “Aye, let the police sort him out now.”
Rowan took out his phone. “No signal. Come on, Mickey, let’s go. You can use this time to make up a statement.”
Mickey rested his hand on his jaw as if nursing a wound. “No, I’d rather be done with you lot.”
Holly scoffed. “Done? Just like that? Ye want to run from here and never look back?”
“Don’t talk to me,” he hissed at her.
“Check his pockets,” she bit back.
Rowan shook his head and spoke quietly to Mickey.
“After everything, you still haven’t learned, have ye?
I’ll tell you what—keep the coin we know you swiped, a little something to remember us by?
And if tha’ Viking ever comes back”—he glanced back at me before returning his thundercloud gaze at Mickey—“it’ll be a talisman to take him right to ye.
And we both know what that Viking will do to ye.
Already you’ve escaped from him, what?” His gaze held venom.
“Twice? Good. Take it. Let’s see if the third time really is a charm. ”
Mickey had the decency not to meet his eye. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Only his throat worked at something as if he were swallowing down a vivid memory that made bile rise into his throat.
“Aye, sure.” Rowan grabbed his arm and led him out of the room.
Holly blew out a breath and sat hard. “He’s got that cleaned coin, ye know.”
“I do know. He must be some kind of desperate.”
Holly nodded. “He told me one night when we both were completely blootered that the ‘beauty’ of archaeological digs is that they are discovering undocumented items. That they’re ‘ripe’ with ‘opportunity.’ When I asked what kind of opportunities, he laughed it off, saying he was kidding, just a fantasy he had. ”
“But then, why come here? Why not head down to those more archaeologically interesting and lauded sites?” I shook my head. “How’d he even know this was here?” I gestured to the coffin.
“Some kids at uni said there was MacLaoch gold here at this dig. Like ye said, it was a long shot, and he took it. Lucky is what he is. I won’t make a dig about him being Irish and lucky. But if tha’ leprechaun shoe fits…”
“Good job on not making that dig,” I said sarcastically.
Holly grinned at me. “That fucking sod has debts up to his eyeballs and finds a way, each time, tae pay them off so he doesn’t lose a finger or his kneecaps.”
“Industrious.”
“Lucky,” she corrected.
I remembered him saying something about gold when he pressed me for a job a month before. I had to hand it to him—he was a dangerous mix of handsome determination and desperation.