Page 4 of Desire of a Highlander

“Yer choice will soon be upon ye, lass. When it comes, choose wisely.”

Elodie gaped at her. “I...I don’t understand.”

Irene patted her on the knee again. “Ye will, lass. Ye will.”

Suddenly, a clanking noise sounded from somewhere above, and the elevator jerked to life. With a whirring noise, it began descending again.

“Ah! Ye see!” Irene cried, heaving herself to her feet. “I told ye it would work out in the end.”

Elodie pulled herself up just as the elevator reached the bottom and the doors slid open.

Irene turned and gave her a wink. “It was a delight to meet ye, my dear. Perhaps we’ll meet again someday, eh?”

Then, before Elodie could say a word, she exited the elevator. Elodie jerked into motion and followed her into the lobby.

“Irene, wait!”

But the lobby was empty, with only a security guard standing by the revolving door looking at her quizzically.

“Are you all right, miss?”

“Did you see an old woman come through here?”

He looked puzzled. “No. You’re the only person come down in the last fifteen minutes.”

What? That couldn’t be right. Irene could not have simply disappeared. Could she?

Choose wisely.

A shiver went down Elodie’s back. None of the last few minutes had made sense. She took a deep breath and glanced at her watch. It was almost one in the afternoon. If she didn’t hurry, she was going to be late. Doing her best to put the unsettling encounter with Irene MacAskill from her mind, as well as the disastrous meeting with Cross Construction, she gave the security guard a weak smile, then pushed through the revolving door and out onto the street.

Once outside, she took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and began walking in the direction of the community center. She might have lost the fight with Cross Construction this morning, but that didn’t mean she was finished.

No. It meant she was only just getting started.

Chapter 2

Ronan Campbell glanced up at the sky. It was gray from end to end with that ominous look he knew all too well. It was a look that said a storm would hit soon and it would be a bad one. He growled in annoyance. Curse it. Just what he didn’t need.

Perhaps he should have heeded Faye’s warning and not gone out this morning. The healer always seemed to know when bad weather was on the way. But if he’d stayed behind, who would have checked the waymeet?

Hunching his shoulders against the wind that began howling through the narrow ravine, he whistled to his dogs and carried on walking. Bran and Skye trotted ahead of him, noses to the ground, roving this way and that as they followed scents that only their sensitive noses could detect. Ronan let them wander. If they picked up anything interesting, they would let him know.

As if on cue, Skye suddenly raised her head and gave a low ‘uff’ of warning. Ronan slowed, one hand automatically going to one of the matched pair of flintlock pistols strapped to his hip. He drew one silently, holding it with the barrel pointing down, and looked around. The ravine was filled only with scrubby brush and the occasional bird, nothing that posed any threat. That didn’t reassure him any. These days, if you dropped your guard for even an instant, you were in trouble.

Ronan gave a low whistle, and the dogs came running back to him, tails wagging, big ears flapping. They were sleuthhounds, trained to track and find, and their keen noses had saved Ronan and his people more times than he could count.

The dogs fanned out to either side of him. Up ahead, the ravine bent around to the left, blocking his view in that direction. He edged slowly forward, his boots making not a sound on the damp earth. He reached the bend and pressed his back to the rough rock of the wall and cautiously peeked around the corner. The waymeet lay ahead. Marked only by a single wind-blasted tree that stuck out of the ravine wall like a grasping arm, it was one of many such places in this area, secret places where those fleeing the troubles could come to find help.

But today, the waymeet was empty. No gaggle of frightened folk waited under the tree. No displaced family or destitute farmer made homeless by the unrest caused by the Articles of Union. The tree swayed and creaked in the wind, but there was no sign of any other living thing. So what had alerted Skye?

He went still, listening, but detected nothing beyond the moan of the wind. Finally satisfied, he put away his flintlock and stepped out, calling the dogs to heel. The tree was a juniper, tough and wiry, and just about the only thing that could cling to life on these inhospitable slopes. Ronan stepped into its shade and looked around, searching for signs that anyone had been here. There was nothing.

Suddenly, Skye began barking. Ronan spun, hand going to his pistol again. Skye was dancing around excitedly, eyes fixed on something above Ronan’s head. He glanced up only to find a tabby cat sitting in the branches of the juniper above his head, tail curled around its feet, calmly watching him with big green eyes.

He barked a laugh. “Is that what’s got ye so worked up?” he asked the dogs. “A cat?”

Skye whimpered, going up on her hind legs to get a better look at the cat, whilst Bran slumped to the ground with a huff. The cat seemed not in the least impressed by Skye’s antics and just stared down with a look of bored disdain.