Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Rowan looked at the man in the portrait.
What would he, his great-great-great-etc.
-uncle, think? Being the subject of this strange tug-of-war.
The man was in full formal wear, his red tartan expertly wrapped around his hips and tossed over the shoulder of his kilt jacket.
He stood with his foot on a low grassy knoll looking out to the loch behind the viewer, with the forest and castle behind him.
Mickey’s brow pinched in confusion. “You’re not going to believe this…”
“It’s wired, isn’t it?” Rowan asked, feeling the time slipping away; they needed to go.
“No. It’s recessed.”
“Aye, so?”
Mickey ran his fingers around the pocket that held the painting. “There’re grooves in this. I think there’s a sliding door here.”
“Like a secret compartment?” Rowan shook his head, understanding. “A laird’s lug,” he said. “If you’re a man about court in Robert the Bruce’s time and you needed insider information, ye could get it there. It’s a faux vent shaft.”
Mickey knocked. “Yes, sounds hollow behind.”
“Och, knock off the history lesson—we need to be out!” The last word was a punch-to-the-gut oot in Simon’s thick Scots.
“Get the things ready in the boot, Simon. Josh, ye go with.”
As they left, Mickey lifted the four-foot-tall portrait off the wall, and the heavy weight of the gilded frame tilted back.
“Careful!” The room erupted with calls for caution from the Whisky Boys.
Mickey glowered at the remaining old men who seemed to have little faith in him, and sent the painting down.
Rowan stepped in to receive it, and despite Charmaine’s request for him to wear gloves, he was glad to feel the warmth of the wood against his naked palms and have the sight of his ancestor back in his hands directly.
“I’ll make sure they’re ready for ye.” Double-A ran out. Mickey was off the ladder, lifting his bag as Rowan repositioned his grip on the painting. Mickey murmured, “I suppose we don’t need these things—” Rupert grabbed the ladder, tucking it under his arm.
The room began to ring.
The three men paused.
“What is that…?” Rowan looked around for the source of the phone call, which seemed to be coming in at full surround sound.
The ringing device was answered, and Dick Murdoch’s voice filled the room, “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” There was shuffling and panting as if Murdoch had rushed to arrive on speaker.
“Get the f—”
“You appear to be breaking into my home, MacLaoch, and you’re not alone. Who else do we have here? Let’s see. Ah, yes, Mickey Gillian, son of well-known felon Lou Gillian. And who else…”
Rowan went for the door. Double-A and four of the Whisky Boys were running back, ready to take the Rembrandt from Rowan.
Rowan, feeling like the painting was a child who needed rescuing, tossed it, “Catch!” The painting sailed through the air at the startled men.
All of them lunged for it as Rowan grabbed the thick wood door, slammed it shut, and threw the bolt.
There was a scuffle, swearing, then, “Oye!” from the other side.
Rowan returned to the sitting room where Mickey and Rupert were paralyzed, wondering where the disembodied voice was coming from.
“What is it, MacLaoch? Did you just run for your life?” Rowan couldn’t see the man, but it sounded like he couldn’t see them either, at least not all the time.
“Are you trying to run away? It is incredible how naive you MacLaochs are. This day, I have to say, is going swimmingly. You do realize that video evidence is irrefutable,” he called out.
“Your uncle might have gotten away with his drug activities, but it’ll be his nephew who pays the price. ”
Rowan was about to respond when the crunch on the gravel outside the open window caught his attention. Edging to the far wall, he worked his way to the open window where the Whisky Boys were coming around. Their chatter was peevish and wanting answers that no one had.
“What’d ye say?” Rowan answered the voice in the room.
“Ah, there you are, MacLaoch; I thought you’d run for your life.”
Staying by the window, he motioned for Rupert to put the ladder down and for Mickey to join him.
Double-A arrived at the window. “Have ye lost yer bleeding mind?! I nearly dropped it! We’re packing it up now. Come on, git out—” He heard the disembodied voice. The cigarette stub fell out of the corner of his mouth to the gravel. “He’s in there? What the bloody hell is happening?”
“Nae. He’s talking through some device,” Rowan whispered back.
At the window, Rowan could hear the wail of a distant siren.
“Get going with the Rembrandt. I’ll buy you some time.” Charmaine would likely arrange for his dismissal as chief for treating the clan artifact like they were, but they didn’t have a choice. “You two, out,” he said to Rupert and Mickey.
Mickey and Double-A helped Rupert get his leg over the windowsill; then Double-A pulled him out as Mickey followed with a hop over the sill.
Double-A held his hand out to Rowan. “Out you come, son.”
“No, go. Murdoch went too far. I have a mind to find out where he is and share my thoughts with him. I cannae bring ye or the men into this; I’ve got this.”
“Fine, I’ll send the boys off. I’ll tuck intae the boat out back and wait for ye there.”
He held his hand up, and Double-A grasped it. Rowan pulled him into an embrace and, with his temple next to his, said, “I appreciate you, Uncle. Ye’ll not wait for me. Take the rear operations road and go.”
“No—”
He leaned back. “Leaving is an order, from yer chief.”
Double-A’s lip curled back, hating the directive. “Son—”
Hearing the sirens in the distance, Rowan punctuated his order with “Now.” Then closed the window on his old friend.
The disembodied voice of the banker hollered, thinking he’d completely lost his audience.
Double-A walked backward a few steps, waiting for Rowan to change his mind.
When he didn’t, he pivoted and ran toward the van.
Before his bottom could hit the passenger seat, Charlie, behind the wheel, hit the gas.
Gravel spewed out from under the front wheels as they tore out of the drive toward the maintenance access road.
Rowan stepped farther into the room, and the tirade stopped.
“Aw, MacLaoch, are you there all alone now?”
Rowan stopped where he was in the center of the room. So, Murdoch could see him, but only middle of the expansive foyer was in his frame of vision.
“Do you think you can save them from jail time? Some of them seemed old—it would be a pity if your actions caused them to spend the rest of their lives in prison. But let’s be real: They should have been in prison in ’89.”
Rowan reminded himself that the Rembrandt was back in MacLoach hands. And that was what mattered.
“Where are ye, Murdoch?”
Laughter filled the room.
“If I remember correctly, Dick, my uncle gave yers a black eye the day he came to Castle Laoch to take what wasn’t his tae take. Come on out, and we can have a second go-round. What do ye say?”
“You look so mad, MacLaoch.”
Looking around, Rowan said, “I’m well beyond mad, ye fuck. Well into cursing ye and everything you hold dear.”
“Cursing me? Ooh, what a threat.”
Rowan whispered as he searched the shadows, “That’s what a man who’s not heard of a woman named Lady Orabilia MacLaoch would say.
” A shiver went down his spine as if he’d accidentally run his finger over an electric wire that was trained on a dragon’s tail.
Then, louder: “Come, Murdoch, let’s do this face-to-face, aye? ”
“Why? This is so much more fun.”
“I take it ye like to torture caged animals, do ye? How’d you get to work for the bank for as long as you have without a psych eval?”
“Haha, MacLaoch. You’re the only animal in a cage I want to watch.”
Rowan kept him talking, hoping to catch a clue about where he was. “Why’d ye take it, Dick? Why’d ye steal MacLaoch property? Why break the law and ruin your career?”
There was a long pause, and when Murdoch spoke again, he was seething.
“My career isn’t over! Your overreaching solicitor thinks she has me, but she’s the one who did the stealing; she’s headed to prison right alongside you.
You think you have bettered me, but you haven’t.
I have you and your clansmen on record for trespass.
You’ll go to prison, and while you’re in there, I’ll take Laoch.
The Oteys didn’t stand a chance; inheritance tax is mighty formidable.
” He sounded as if he were the tax collector himself and it was 1805.
“Do you like the remodel?” he goaded. “And once I have Laoch, I’ll be able to unite all the ancestral Murdoch lands—”
Rowan hissed, “Murdochs never owned—”
“Ye ignorant bastard!” The speakers crackled as his volume exceeded their capacity.
“You have too much land—so much you don’t know how every inch was gotten.
You’re a disgrace. Your eastern forest was Clan Murdoch land.
We were hung in the cattle raid, and you got our lands for the cost of the missing cattle.
Our men took a few cattle the wealthy MacLaochs would never have missed. ”
Rowan felt the blackness in him shift into deep worry; Murdoch was unhinged. What broken narcissistic mind held a grudge so penetrating that he’d let it darken his heart and play tricks on his mind so that he’d see to it Rowan went to prison for what his ancestors did three hundred years ago?
Movement at the window caught his eye; Mickey silently pushed it back open and was coming back through.
Rowan heard the banker laugh. “Are you worried, MacLaoch? You look as if you’ve realized the sirens are for you…”