A Time & Place for Every Laird (34 page)

“As Charles Schulz once said, ‘I’ve never made a mistake in my life.  I thought I did once but I was wrong.’”
  Claire tilted her head to the side and smiled.  She could almost hear Jameson’s teeth grinding.  It was an unexpected pleasure.

“
It’s dangerous, you know.”

“Charle
s Schulz?  I doubt Snoopy would agree.”

Nichols bit back a bark of laughter
, which only seemed to string Jameson’s nerves even tighter.

“Mrs. Manning, you are walking on very thin ice here.  Where is it?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My conversation with your friend Darcy Washington tells me that you do,” Jameson countered.  “You felt sorry for it, right?  You wanted to save it.”

It took a lot of effort for Claire not to lash out as Jameson repeated those derisive words. 
It
?  Was that all they thought of Hugh?  Was that all the consideration they had ever given him?  “I told you, I don’t know what …”

The agent slammed a palm down on the desktop, the smack echo
ing through the small office, and Claire jumped in her seat. “Where is my fucking science project?”

“Jameson
…” Nichols cautioned.

With one last frown, Jameson pointed to the door.  “Out
, Nichols, and take your bleeding heart with you.”

“I will not,” Nichols said as he stood. “Someone in this room needs to remember that she does have some rights.”

Fear and rage coiled inside of her, sending her heart racing, but when Claire spoke, her voice was arctic in its chill.  “Why are you pushing this so hard?  Leave me alone.  Leave him alone.”

Jameson smiled coolly in triumph
, and even Nichols’s brows rose.  “So you do know it.” He looked over his shoulder at the other agent.  “Now who’s to say I told you so?”

“
Him
, and I never said I didn’t,” Claire countered as calmly as possible.  The anger roused by his objectification of Hugh had thrown her thoughts into chaos, and she had spoken without thought.  “You don’t need to do this. He’s not dangerous.  Leave him alone.”

“I can’t do that because
it… he
is
dangerous, Mrs. Manning,” he sneered.  “Whether you’d like to admit it or not.  He could bring disease into this world that you know nothing about.”

Claire shook her head.  “The only disease around here is you, Agent Jameson.”

“Mrs. Manning,” Nichols cut in, though there was a smile playing at his lips as if he was pleased with her icy retort.  “Are you saying that you
did
assist in the security breach at Mark-Davis?”

“What?  No!
  Of course not!” Claire said honestly.

“But you lied when you said that you weren’t hiding it from us,” the INSCOM agent pressed.

“No, I wasn’t,” Claire insisted, trying to regain the upper hand.  God, she was a miserable liar.  All this was for naught if she didn’t keep Hugh safe.  “There can be one without the other, you know.”

“Where is he, Mrs. Manning?” Jameson pressed once more.

Claire took a deep breath.  “Honestly, Phil, what makes you think I know?  He forced me to get him off the campus and he hid in my house for a while, but I left him on the highway between here and Spokane more than a week ago.”

“I don’t believe you, Mrs. Manning,” Jameson said after studying her shrewdly for a moment
, and Claire decided she needed to make a concerted effort to hone her skills at fabrication in the future. 

“Mrs. Manning,” Nichols broke in
softly.  A classic case of good cop/bad cop, Claire thought.   “I do believe you were coerced into helping him escape.  I do and Jameson does as well, whether he admits it or not.  No one blames you for being strong-armed by a greater power, but you needn’t protect him any longer.  Just tell us where he is and we’ll take care of the rest.”

“You’d kill him?”

“No, we could send him home,” the agent baited
the hook with an undeniably potent lure and Claire’s heart skipped a beat.  “Do you know what that means?  What it really means?  You do, don’t you?  You want to save him?  Give him up to me then, Mrs. Manning, and I promise to get him back where he belongs.  To his real home,” he offered silkily, proving that he was as dangerous as Jameson, perhaps even more so.

But w
as it possible?  Claire mentally reviewed Fielding’s reports.  There was nothing in them that evenly remotely hinted that Fielding had overcome that setback and could control the destination of the wormhole.  Nichols had to be lying.

But what if he wasn’t?  Hugh should have the choice. 

But if Nichols
was
lying … Hugh would be at Jameson’s mercy, and it was obvious to Claire that there wasn’t much of that in the NSA agent.  “You can’t do that.”

“I can if you tell me where he is.”

Every fiber of her being urged her to negate the possibility that there was any truth to his words. “No, if you could do that, you would have done so before all this.”

“Are you
really going to make that choice for him?”

Indecision held her in its grasp for only a moment.  Clearly
both these agents would go to any length to find Hugh.  Nichols was calm and composed, but Jameson’s eyes were steely with determination, and lying would be only the tip of the iceberg to a man so obsessed.  She could not risk Hugh’s safety on the off chance that Nichols’s benevolence would see him home once more.  Though she might be condemning Hugh to a bleak future when his own life awaited him in the past, Claire shrugged with forced indifference.  “I guess so, since I don’t know where he is now.  If there’s nothing else, I think we’re done here.”

“Mrs. Manning, you have to tell us how to find him!”
Jameson cut in once more.

Ignoring him, Claire stood, hitching her purse over her shoulder
, and turned to the door, but Jameson caught her wrist. “He’s a killer, brutal, violent, and vicious.”

Claire looked pointedly down at his hand.  “I’m sure you would know the type.”

“He is a savage, Mrs. Manning.”

“You truly think that, don’t you
?  And that’s precisely why you’ll never find him.  You couldn’t pick him out of a crowd to save your life.”  They were making the same mistake she once had.  Looking for a primitive savage who grunted and pounded on the table for his food.  She almost laughed because he had done that once … almost.  They would never believe Hugh read Michio Kaku much less understood his work.  Not if she swore it on a stack of Bibles.

“God damn it, woman!”
Jameson ground out.  “We’ll follow you.  We’ll always be a step behind, and eventually you’ll lead us right to him.”

“No, Phil,” Claire said, unable to fully banish the grief from her voice
, knowing that in that one thing there was truth.  “I won’t.”

She wrenched open the door and to her surprise, there was Hugh filling the small space.  He looked from her to Jameson’s hand on her arm and pierced the agent with a fierce scowl, a low growl rumbling from deep within his chest. 

“Who the hell are …” Jameson began before Hugh’s fist shot out and caught him hard across the jaw.  The agent spun, his eyes rolling back in his head as he fell to the ground.

Ten minutes earlier

“Did you find her?”

“Aye,” Hugh answered slipping into the seat of the small sedan, a vehicle considered the
“nicest” available to any of Danny’s minions.  If he had understood the dark-skinned Indian—this time a young man truly native to that country—correctly, it belonged to his mother.  It wasn’t as luxurious as Sorcha’s ‘Goose’, but the nondescript vehicle had served its purpose in delivering them without incident past the Bainbridge terminus.

Sorcha’s
car remained undisturbed where they had left it the previous night, which meant either that she had been apprehended and taken away or that she was still in the area. It was Danny, with his knowledge of the twenty-first century, who had recognized the significance of the large black van parked on the street about a block away, and it had been Hugh who had directed Danny farther up the street as he scouted the area, determining the number and location of the guards assigned with its protection.

Danny’s tense features relaxed into a smile as the nervous tapping of his fingers against the steering wheel subsided.  “Thank God.  I thought you’d been busted for sure
, and I was sitting out here for so long I thought for sure that some cop would think I was the getaway driver for some bank robbery and haul me away.  I don’t think I’m cut out for fieldwork,” he added.  “My place is definitely at a keyboard, but at least it all worked out okay, right?”

Aye, Hugh
had found out what he wanted to know with incredible ease.  No doubt it had been far simpler than convincing an officer at a Vancouver Metropole station that a strung-out junkie hoping to finance his next high could successfully rob a man of Hugh’s height and breadth might have been.  “She’s in a rear compartment of the van wi’ two men,” Hugh said.  “I counted a half dozen more guarding the vehicle.”

Danny swore.  “How are we going to get her out
, then?”

Hugh grinned.  “As I said, there are only six of them.  If their resistance proves to be as laughable as
in every other confrontation I’ve had wi’ them in the past day, there should be no difficulties.” Jameson’s underlings were skilled to an extent but they were not experienced in true combat.  He doubted any of them had ever fought for their lives, for their homes, or for anything greater than their own self-interest.

“
In broad daylight?” Danny asked.  “Well, if you’re sure.”

“Aye,” Hugh nodded.  “I will retrieve yer sister and impress upon them the necessity of ceasing their pursuit in the future.”

Danny laughed at that.  “Well, don’t impress them too much.  It is a federal offense to assault a federal agent in this country.”

“But this isnae my country
, is it?”  Hugh patted the pocket of his sport coat, where the new passport Danny had given them rested to confirm his identity if needed, just in case the agents were somehow able to recognize him as the escapee from Mark-Davis.

“Still, don’t get too close,”
Danny warned.  “I know I won’t.  Call me when you’re done.”

“Yer nae coming?”

“Oh, hell no.  I like to keep my distance from the NSA.”

“I daresay they feel the same
.”

Hugh pushed open the door and strode back down the street
to where the van housing Sorcha was parked.  The plan was a simple one, and he could only hope it worked.  

The first agent standing sentry at the corner went down without a sound as Hugh took him out in a manner similar to the one he had employed near the market a few days past.  Given that the attack was unexpected, the man went down without a struggle before Hugh tucked him safely among the hedgerow lining the street.  The next one was far more aware of his surroundings and turned upon Hugh’s approach.  The fight was brief but served to get Hugh’s blood pumping pleasantly.

Hugh flexed his fingers as he approached the van.  Here things would get thornier
if he were not to simply kill the men, which would have been more expedient but would also certainly offend Sorcha’s sensibilities.  There were two agents remaining outside and pair more within before he would find Sorcha ensconced with the two older agents at the rear of the van.  He needed to defeat the remaining quartet efficiently enough to silence them for a prolonged amount of time without rousing suspicion from within.

There was
a challenge in that at least.

It was good to know that his Highlanders
who lost at Culloden would have found victory in this time if the fight were in hand-to-hand combat.  These men were not raised and bred to battle as his own were, and they did not have a cause worth shedding their blood.

They did have guns
, though.  One of the agents turned, pistol in hand, as Hugh neared and raised it defensively.  Hugh spread his arms wide in supplication before lowering his shoulder and charging into the man’s abdomen, driving him to the ground as he wrenched the weapon away while blocking his blows.  He was just about to slam his fist against the agent’s jaw when he felt the weight of another man on his back, pulling at his arm.

Hugh wrested his arm back, flinging the new opponent to the ground before driving his fist into the first agent’s jaw once and again
quickly until his head listed to the side.  Leaping to his feet, he faced the man he had shaken off.  It was his opponent from the previous night.  The agent’s nose was bloodied, perhaps broken, but he stood warily, awaiting Hugh’s attack with far less cockiness than at their last confrontation.  “You needn’t do this,” Hugh warned softly.  “You know what I am capable of.”

“I do,” Jackson answered.  “Unfortunately, I have a duty.”

“All I want is the woman.  Let me have her and I will leave you unharmed.”

Jackson only shook his head.  “I wish I could, man.  I really do.”  He looked over his shoulder at the rear opening of the van a score of feet away.  “Simms, get out here!  We’ve got company.”

The other agent from the previous night appeared and paused in surprise.  “What the fuck?”  Simms spared a nod for his partner and the pair charged Hugh in unison, determined to take him down by force. But Hugh was prepared for their attack and had even practiced what to do in such a scenario with his cousins.  When they were lads, Keir and one of his brothers would often launch such a surprise offensive, much as Hugh had in turn.  Lads would be lads after all.  It had honed their responses, kept them agile.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a skill lost to years in a more civilized court.

The fight was violent but thankfully brief.  Hugh was able to use one man against the other, making one agent into a shield and the other into a weapon, deflecting blows until the agents were doing more harm to one another than they were to him.  Finally, Hugh trapped Jackson’s head beneath his arm, bracing himself against the struggle, and was fortunate enough to catch Simms across the cheekbone with a raised knee as he turned, rendering the man unconscious.  Jackson followed him into oblivion a moment later.

Hugh cracked his neck to the side as he climbed the stairs into the back of the van, finding the remaining agent standing nervously to the side, wringing his hands.  He was a young fellow, barely a man at all.

“You-you can’t go in there,” the lad boldly announced, stepping forward to impede his progress, but Hugh simply took the young man by the neck and slammed his head into the bank of monitors mounted across the inside wall of the van, and the lad slipped silently to the floor.

All that remained was behind that door.  Two agents, one presumably the tenacious Special Agent Jameson, and Sorcha, his bold, defiant lass who would be in need of a sound scolding when he got her out of there.

The door opened like magic beneath his hand and Sorcha was there, haggard, surprised, and utterly bonny as she stared at him.  Flames of joy licked at Hugh’s but burned to a cinder when he noticed one of the agents had a tight grip on her arm.  His eyes shot up hotly to meet the astonished gaze of her assailant. 

“Who the hell are
…”

The low, protective
growl came from deep within Hugh and served as the man’s only warning before Hugh’s rock hard fist lashed out and took him down with a single blow.

Sorcha sagged with relief almost indiscernibly before she straightened once more.
“What is this?  What are you doing here?”

“
It is my turn to remind you that much can be excused if it’s done for the right reasons,” Hugh said softly.  “I am here tae save ye.”

“From what?”

A grin jerked at the corner of his mouth.  “From yerself.”  Hugh caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers before he opened his hand and dangled the little Tokidoki Thor USB from one finger.  “Ye forgot this.”