A Time & Place for Every Laird (33 page)

“Dude, you know I don’t own a car,” Danny said around another mouthful.  “We’d have to wait for one of the minions
, and by then it would be too late anyway.”

Hugh gnashed
his teeth with tenuously leashed vexation as he paced the room.  Of course, Sorcha had known she was essentially marooning him here when she left.  Indeed, she would have counted on it.  Bugger it, she was a crafty lass, but what did she expect him to do?  Sit on his hands while her life was torn in two?  “Bluidy hell, what was she thinking?” he muttered aloud, more to himself than to Danny.

“I suppose she was thinking to make some kind of noble sacrifice or something,” Danny answered anyway.  “She wanted to clear the path for you to go to Scotland, to do what she promised.  I’m supposed to take you to Canada and get the rest of it done as planned while she distracts the Feds.”

“And I am tae just leave her tae the wolves and walk away wi’out a second thought for her and the consequences of this rash folly she’s undertaking?” Hugh snapped back, longing for a neck to throttle.

Danny lifted his brows and shrugged in a way that told Hugh he agreed with him
, but verbally Sorcha’s brother remained her loyal compatriot.  “That’s about the sum of it. She also said to tell you … let me see if I got it right.  Much can be excused if it’s done for the right reasons.  Sound familiar?”

Hugh loosed an aggrieved grunt, knotting his fingers in his hair to stifle the urge to put his fist through a wall.  Blast the woman!  Had she completely lost her senses?  Sorcha was by far the most infuriating woman h
e had ever met.  Never had there been another who would defy him so.  Who would chance his wrath.  He couldn’t believe that she would make such an ill-considered, perilous play.  That she would risk everything for …

Bracing an arm
against the window frame, Hugh looked up in astonishment at the fields of towering buildings that shrouded them more fully than any towering pine might dare.

She had done it for him.  Sorcha had wagered her future against inconceivable odds
… for him.   And she had done it from the beginning when she had opened the door to her car and to her life for him back in Spokane.  Not for the pity she had claimed she had for him.  Not because it was the right thing to do.

She had done it for the one reason she had
yet to voice.

Because she loved him.

Her sacrifice was born from love.  The same love that burned within him and demanded that he sacrifice the same for her.  That he give up all for the promise of her future.  It was what had driven Hugh all this time.  He loved her.  Hugh rubbed at the poignant ache spreading across his chest.  “Nae, I cannae go wi’out her.”

Danny groaned loudly. “God, I never thought I’d ever meet anyone more stubborn than my sister.  I cannot imagine how you two managed to get along at all.”

For some reason, that summoned a ghost of a smile to Hugh’s lips.  Aye, it was what made things interesting, that constant battle between the swagger and chest beating of the past and the self-reliance and independence of the future.  Still … “Would ye hae her ruin her life, Danny?  For me?”

“Would you stop her from saving what life she has left?” Danny countered.  “I
’m not saying this is the smartest move on her part, but if this is the only possible way to stop them from hounding Claire for the rest of her life, would you take it away from her?”

Hugh’s heart clenched at the lad’s reasoning, turning what Hugh knew with certainty was an act of love into a selfish one, implying that Sorcha had acted in her own self-interest.  That she had done it to save only herself.

No, Sorcha had taken on a role that few women he had ever known would have considered in endeavoring to be the heroine of their particular story, and—though it wounded his male vanity not to act, though his inherent masculinity demanded that he hasten to her rescue—Hugh was unexpectedly proud of her bravado.  “Nae, Danny.  I’m nae so petty as tae ruin her life for the sake of my pride.”

“Then respect her decision.
  Don’t make it a worthless effort.” 

Which Hugh knew translated to
“let her go” and never see her again.

His heart slowed, thudding hard against his ribs
as his blood roared in his ears, and a little of him died inside at the thought of yet another
never
to bear … this never considerably more heartrending than the other.

The city outside the windows was a looming monstrosity of glass and metal draped in a dark haze that seemed to diffuse the rays of the sun.  The whole of it was bleak and cold.  Unwelcoming.

Was this what Edinburgh had become as well?  Glasgow?  Even Inverness?  A metallic nightmare hung with a gray miasma of misery?  Hugh had been anticipating a return to his homeland, picturing the lonely moors and deserted beaches.  Would he not even have that to comfort him in the years to come?  The very thought brought the bitter tang of bile to the back of his throat, and Hugh swallowed it back.  It served no purpose to wish and hope and long for things to be different; that sour lesson had been grudgingly absorbed these past weeks and months.  He might beat his chest and howl at the moon, cursing Fate and God, without expectation for this future to change once more.  Regrets were naught but wasted time, but they stirred in him anyway, compounding the painful ache that lingered in his heart.

And then there was Sorcha.  A balm to his soul
, Hugh had called her and thanked God again for providing that one consolation to banish the gloom.  When he had thought he would have her by his side in the days ahead, he had not dreaded the future so.  Where Sorcha was, there would always be light, but he would dwell in darkness forever for one last kiss.

“
I cannae do that.”

“’Course you can,” Danny said.  “What is it the Brits always say?  Keep calm and carry on?”

“Nae, Danny, I cannae leave her.  Sacrifice or nae, I cannae,” Hugh said, for there suddenly seemed no sacrifice greater than leaving her behind.  “Ye will take me tae her.”

But Danny was already shaking his head.  “No way
. Claire would kill me if I did.”

“And I might if ye dinnae.”

“Sorry, man, I’m more afraid of her than I am of you.”

The response prompted an inward smile
, but Hugh still glowered darkly at Danny.  “Do ye think that’s wise?”

“If you have to ask that
, you must not have sisters,” the lad said in a dire tone that did provoke a silent chuckle from Hugh. Aye, he did have sisters, more than enough of them—all older than he—to appreciate Danny’s reluctance.  “Death would be cleaner than getting on her bad side.  Like when Matt came to pick her up for prom dressed in a tux—I mean, it was like their second date—and I kept asking if he was going to marry my sister.  I ran for my life, man.”

Hugh couldn’t stifle a smile then.  “Yet ye continually provoke her.”

Danny shrugged.  “I have to. She’s my big sister. What a paradox, huh?”

“Aye
, and another paradox would be my refusal tae do the one thing I know I hae tae,” Hugh rejoined.  “I willnae leave until I hae assured myself that she is safe.”

“Crazy, stupid, stubborn people,” Danny muttered under his breath as he
carried his cereal bowl over to his workstation.  “This is exactly why I like computers better than humans.  You’re being completely irrational.”

“Then I believe that is what it must mean tae be in love,” Hugh said softly, his brogue so thick with emotion that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Danny didn’t understand him at all.

But the lad must have, because he swore under his breath with great detail before falling silent, his brow furrowed.  “How about a compromise, then?”

Never i
n all his years as Duke of Ross had Hugh ever forsaken his own will for that of another as often as he had so recently.  There might have been a lesson there that nobility did not necessarily beget governance, and as much as Hugh loathed the insult of bowing to another’s dictate, he was discovering that the legacy of manly dominion passed to him by his ancestors was better suited to another place and time.  He considered Danny’s serious countenance, the wickedly intelligent gleam in his eye, for a moment before answering. “I assume this involves more than ye lowering the volume of that wretched noise.”

“Most assuredly,” Danny nodded.  “If you’re going to try to go in there yourself, we’re going to have to make it hurt them a little.
”

Hugh smiled at that. 
He might have considered himself a man of enlightenment and reason but he was also a Scotsman to his core.  A man who ruled, who dominated, and who fought for what he thought was right in a sometimes brutal and savage manner if necessary.  He could be everything they had accused him of.

It was
past time the peoples of this century discovered what a true Highlander was capable of.

“You let her get away again?” Jameson yelled, the sound echoing through the small room of the mobile NSA surveillance unit that was serving as his temporary office while his team searched Bainbridge Island.  He glowered at the two men who stood, eyes cast to the ground, before him.  Well, they had better fear for their lives, if not their jobs, at this point.  Enough was enough.  “Who saved her this time?  My ninety-year-old granny?” he sneered.  “Did she hit you over the head with her purse?”

“
He took us by surprise, sir,” the more senior of the pair justified the failure.  Simms might have been a lean man in his forties but he was by all reports an excellent fighter. 

“He took
both
of you by surprise?” Jameson asked disbelievingly as he shuffled through the grainy surveillance photos taken from cameras at Pike’s Market and the Bainbridge terminal.  None of them provided a clean shot of Claire Manning or the assailant who had taken out three of his best men that day.  “How is that possible?”

“He was fast, sir,” Simms explained.  “I was out before I even knew what happened.  I barely even saw the guy.”

Jameson snorted rudely at that and leveled a glare at the second agent.  Jackson was built like a defensive lineman and had actually been one.  By all accounts, no one in his class at Quantico had ever been able to take him down.  “What about you, Jackson?  Aren’t you supposed to be a black belt in something or the other?”

“As Simms said, sir, he was pretty
damn fast,” Jackson defended lamely.  “He fought like a pro.  Said he was a SEAL.”

“And y
ou believed him?”

Jackson
shrugged as if his defeat had offered the only answer.

To Jameson, the outcome was inexcusable.  Two armed and trained agents defeated by a single individual equipped with nothing more than a stick.  It was an embarrassment to his departme
nt.  “Do you think it was J42?”

The two agents shared a look
, and Simms responded with a shrug.  “I don’t see how it could have been.  He didn’t look anything like the man on the surveillance tapes and spoke with a local accent.  I was given to understand our mark couldn’t even speak English.”

Jameson only grunted at that.  He wasn’t certain what his target was capable of any longer.  The anomaly had evaded capture for eleven days. Eleven days!  Obviously it was resourceful, perhaps more able than Fielding had thought.  To Jameson’s mind, there was no chance it had managed to elude them for so long without
help, but he couldn’t see it making intelligent conversation.

“Damn it, Jackson,” Jameson cursed and dismissed the pair of agents.  “Go get your fucking nose looked at.  You’re bleeding all over the place.”

So, if Claire Manning hadn’t been saved by their escapee, who had helped her?  Did it even matter?  Maybe she knew the guy, maybe she didn’t.  All that did matter was that the Manning woman’s presence on the island had been confirmed, and if she was there, Jameson was certain that he was close to finding his prisoner.

He didn’t know if she had been leaving or arriving at the island when Simms and Jackson had come across her in the parking lot, but he did know that she hadn’t gotten on the ferry then
, and her car was still under surveillance in the parking lot.  She had to be somewhere nearby.

“
Marshall, what have you got on the search?” Jameson said to his junior agent, who had been lingering silently in the corner of the makeshift office.

“Still waiting on a warrant for a door
-to-door search, sir,” Marshall said, prompting a round of vile cursing from Jameson.

“You’re not going to get one, you know?” Nichols said from his position behind the desk with his feet up.  “I told you, you have no grounds.”

“Marshall, extend the BOLO to Claire Manning’s person,” Jameson said.  “Get her picture out to every police station in the city.  Tell them to use deadly force, if necessary.”

Even
Marshall’s brows rose at that, and his nervous gaze shifted to Nichols, who shook his head at the junior agent.  “Hold on that, Marshall.  Please close the door and give Special Agent Jameson and I a moment.”

Marshall
fled the room and Nichols looked up at Jameson.  “I cannot condone this, Jameson.  Colonel Williams already feels that you’re chasing a red herring here.  What are you going to do with this woman if you find her?  Torture her for information she doesn’t have?  Kill her and call it collateral damage?”

“What agency do you think we work for, Nichols?  The Sunshine and Fucking Roses Agency?” James
on sneered.  “We need to get this thing closed out by whatever means it takes.”

“There is no agency in this country that has the right or power to harm American citizens,” Nichols pointed out.  “It was one thing to threaten violence to your anomaly but I cannot let pass a threat to Mrs. Manning’s person
without cause.”

“
What do I need to do to convince you that I am right here, Nichols?” Jameson wanted to know.  “A another tragedy like so many others this country has seen lately?”

“
No one wants that, but how about showing me some actual proof?”

“She’s somewhere on this damned island.  Let me find her and you’ll have it.”

A knock on the doorjamb cut off any response Nichols might have made.

“What is it?” Jameson barked.

“Sir, Mrs. Manning is here,” Marshall sputtered, and Jameson smiled grimly.  His blood was pumping in triumph.

“Where did they find her?”

“She, uh … well, she came to us, sir.”

His brows shot up at that.  Nichols’s did as well.  “Did she now?  Well, don’t keep her waiting.  Show her in.”

The agent skittered away as Jameson wrung his hands in malicious glee, looking at Nichols with victory in his eyes.  He had her.  Finally he had her.  Hot damn!

“
Jameson, I feel that I should remind you …”

The growl in Jameson’s throat turned to a purr of
triumph when Claire Manning was escorted through the narrow door.  She looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept.  A quick look at the clock showed it to be seven in the morning, which might explain many things or nothing at all.

“Mrs. Manning, come in.  Have a seat.”

Jameson leaned against the desk, blocking Nichols’s view and sipping lukewarm coffee from a paper cup as he savored his moment of triumph.

“Do you have any more of that?”

Jameson looked up to find the woman staring pointedly at his cup.  “Of course.  Where are my manners?”

“That i
s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

Gritting his teeth, he stood and moved to the door.  “Cream?  Sugar?”

“Both.”

Cracking the door, Jameson shouted for
Marshall and put in a request for more coffee for both of them and waited, studying his elusive prey with all the pride of a hunter taking down his first big buck.  For all her visible fatigue, Claire Manning was a lovely woman of slender build and vivid coloring.  She would be eye-catching to any red-blooded man.  Perhaps that was why the anomaly had latched on to her after seeing her in Fielding’s lab.

Marshall
returned with the coffee, and Jameson shooed him away once more before handing one of the cups to Claire.  Leaning his hips against the desk, Jameson sipped from his cup, contemplating the best way to force the truth from her.  He doubted Nichols would be game for anything more forceful than a moderately raised voice.

“
Nice RV, Phil.  Can I call you Phil?” she asked, looking around the small space as she sipped her coffee.  “I have to say I’m surprised to find you here.  I mean, if I had known you were looking for me, I might have come sooner.”

Jameson gnashed his teeth, not believing a word of her innocent prattle. “I did mention in Spokane that I would have more questions for you, didn’t I?”

The woman had the gall to wave her hand dismissively.  “I thought that was something you said to everyone.  When Dr. Crandel called to confirm the lab closure, he didn’t mention anything about staying, so I leapt at the chance to get away.”

“And where did you get away to?” he asked as evenly as possible.  “The lab reopened at the beginning of the week
, and yet you did not report for work.”

“Oh, well
, that’s your fault, really,” she said, surprising him into silence with her words.  His fault?  The only blame he was due would be in hunting her to the point that she didn’t feel safe to return.

“How is that?” 

“What you said before when you were at my house?  Do you remember?  You were right.  You were absolutely right.  What an epiphany!  But I suppose I should thank you.  You made me see what a mistake I was making, so I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with my life.”

Jameson tried to remember what he had said that would have garnered such a reaction.  Something about trading one job for the next?  Was that it?  “You’re going to try to tell me that th
e reason you’ve been missing for the past two weeks was because I said something that made you rethink your life?”

“
That’s exactly what I’m saying.  I’m quitting my job at Mark-Davis because of you.”

Nichols choked with laughter behind him
, and Jameson frowned more deeply.

“If you’ve
got nothing to hide then why have you been evading my agents?” he wanted to know.

“How could I
evade them when I didn’t know you were looking for me?”

“
Still, you didn’t cooperate when they came for you.  Why?”

“Well, a girl can never be too sure
that ID’s like that are real, you know?  I wasn’t going to hang around only to find out they were serial killers or something,” she said.  “Like I said, I wasn’t expecting you.”

That had to be a lie.
There was no other possibility.

“
They didn’t identify themselves to the other man?” Nichols asked, and the woman leaned to the side to see him better.

“Actually
, no, they didn’t,” she answered with a ring of truth.  “That guy thought they were trying to kidnap me.  Nice to know that there are still good people in the world who would stop to help a woman in need, huh?”

That inanity was so trite, Jameson could only snort humorlessly.

“He took out two of my most formidable agents.”

“If you say so.”

My God, Jameson thought.  Did she really think this was funny?  “And the man you were seen with at Pike’s Market?”

“My brother.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” Jameson shoved a hand through his thinning hair with barely contained frustration.  “If you didn’t know that I was looking for you, then what are you doing here?” 

“I came because they won’t let
me have my car back until I do,” the woman said with a serene smile.  “So can I go now?”

“
No,” Jameson ground out.  “I want to know where you’ve been for the last ten days.  You haven’t been to your parents’ house or returned to your own.  Where were you?  On this island?”

“
I came over to walk on the beach and reflect on life,” Claire said, draining the last of her small Styrofoam cup of coffee and tossing it into a waste bin next to the desk.  “As for the rest of it, I’d say it’s none of your business.”

“I say it is.”

‘Then I say show me your warrant, Phil,” Claire said pleasantly, hazarding a guess
, and was rewarded by Jameson’s glower and a chuckle from the man behind him.  “But you can’t, because you don’t have one, do you?  Tell me, does Big Brother even know you’re here?  Whatever you’ve been after, you’ve been barking up the wrong tree.”

“I told you,” the other man said
, and Claire leaned to the side to get a better view of the man at the desk.  He was a pleasant-looking man in his mid-fifties or so who managed to somehow look both amused and completely bored with the entire situation. 

“Who are you?”

“Jim Nichols with INSCOM, Mrs. Manning,” he said pleasantly.  “It’s nice to meet you at last.”

“Nice to meet you
,” she answered slowly, weighing his importance in comparison to Jameson’s with the NSA.  Given his relaxed posture behind the desk, Nichols must not be far down from Jameson, and he looked far more unconcerned with her presence than the NSA agent did.  Was it her imagination or did he seem to be on her side?  “Do you support this madness, Mr. Nichols?”

“Can you assure me that you aren’t hiding a savage beast from us?”

Claire’s brows rose but she nodded.  “I can.  Am I free to go then?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“She knows where it is and she’s not leaving here until she tells us where it is!”  A muscle jumped in Jameson’s cheek as he ground his teeth.  Clearly frustration was eating at him, but she wasn’t about to give him what he wanted when he turned to her.  “I don’t know how you managed all this, but you’re making a big mistake,” he said.