The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (52 page)

“Well, that was quite an interesting experience,” Ximena said, also shrugging out of her jacket before doing up her seat belt. “It’s a pretty little town, too. I think I
would
like to come back here sometime to see it properly.”

As Adam started the engine and pulled the Toyota carefully onto the road, heading back toward the Masonic Hall, he failed to notice the black Mercedes creeping along the square behind him.

“Spring’s the best time,” he said. “We’ll have to pack a picnic one day when the weather’s fine—whenever
that
is, in Scotland and motor down here in your Morgan. Or we
could
take one of
my
bangers.”

“All right, Adam Sinclair!” she said. “I’m tired of all this auto-innuendo! How many cars have you got, and what are they, that you refer to that gorgeous Bentley as a banger?
”

“Well, you know about the Range Rover that I
used
to have,” he said, giving her a sidelong glance and a droll smile. “And my farm manager drives the Land Rover that belongs to the estate—but it’s rather industrial-strength. There are also assorted tractors and the like. Then there’s the venerable old Humber Estate that Humphrey uses to do the marketing—”

“You’re holding out on me,” she said. “You’ve got something else, special, that you’ve deliberately avoided mentioning. It has to be an open car of some sort. What is it?”

“Well—”

Suddenly a low, warning rumble of thunder intruded on his awareness, along with a sense of imminence that struck a chord of dread, harking back to mortal danger. A light snowfall was still coming down, lightly dusting the windscreen, and he squinted ahead and turned on the wipers as thunder growled again. Overhead, he was suddenly aware of dark clouds thickening where none had been a few minutes before. Far ahead of them, to the north, the sky came briefly alight with a febrile flicker of blue lightning.

In that instant he saw the flash of silver moving under the snow still piled on the hood of the car, as the windscreen wiper moved it but did not displace it. He tried a quick swerve to left and right to try to dislodge it, but it was stuck fast, the chain obviously hooked around something—and the sense of evil was growing.

“Ximena, bail out!” Adam shouted, jabbing at the seat-belt releases but not hitting the brakes. “Get out and as far as you can! There’s a bomb!”

The word
bomb
galvanized her into action as no other word could have done. As he reached across her to wrench back her door handle, frantically watching the clouds boil above them, she was already hurling herself against it, catapulting out in a martial arts roll that carried her into the snow on the other side of the road. Adam was yanking his own door open, launching himself from the still-rolling car, as thunder cracked again and a searing bolt of lightning shot down out of the sky to encompass the vehicle in an annihilating blast of blue-white energy.

Chapter Thirty-Six

AN EXPLOSION SPLIT
the winter silence and rocked the ground, and the Toyota burst apart in a howl of ruptured steel. Tumbling into a ditch several yards beyond the shoulder of the road, Adam buried his head in his arms as sparks and glass rained down on the snow all around him. There was another secondary blast as the petrol tank went up. Then he could hear only the gusty roar of chemical flames and a ringing in his ears.

Shakily, Adam raised his head. Black smoke boiled up into the sky from the still-rolling carcass of the Toyota, illuminated from below by the garish light of burning petrol.

“Ximena!” he called hoarsely. “Ximena, are you all right?”

Instead of answering, a dark-haired figure in a now disreputable-looking Arran sweater heaved itself up out of the underbrush on the far side of the road and darted back across, as the car plowed into a snow bank up ahead and stopped rolling, still blazing.

“I’m okay,” she said breathlessly, ducking down beside him.

“What about you? God, was that really a bomb? Who’d want to put a bomb in your car?”

“Somebody who wants me dead,” he said, wincing at a twinge of pain in one ankle as he pulled them both behind an ivy-covered tree trunk for cover. “And I think I’ll let them think I am.”

Off in the direction of the town, already there were sirens wailing. Urgently squinting against the glare of the burning car, he glanced up and down the road, trying to get his bearings. There had been no traffic ahead or behind them when the lightning struck, but cars were converging from both directions now. He guessed that they must be somewhere near the grounds of the Waverley Castle Hotel. With luck, they might be able to get a taxi there and get away before someone came to finish him off.

Up ahead, the Toyota was still burning savagely, the first few cars already stopping, their drivers leaping out to gather round, making tentative attempts to get closer, to see if anyone was inside. Grabbing Ximena’s hand, crouching down, he began urging them into the darkness paralleling the road, heading them toward the gleam of lights back in the trees.

They made it to the hotel in about ten minutes time and managed to engage a taxi. The Toyota was still burning as their driver eased around it, heading for the alternative way out of Melrose, but emergency vehicles had arrived and were knocking down the flames with chemicals. Adam watched through the taxi’s rear window until it had disappeared from sight, and as they came to the turn that would have put them on the A68, headed north back to Edinburgh, Adam had the driver turn south instead.

“There’s an airport at Newcastle, isn’t there?” he asked.

“Aye, sir.” The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “That’ll be a pretty steep fare, though. Must be—hmmm, 60, 70 miles.”

“Will £100 cover it?” Adam said.

“With or without a receipt?” the man replied.

“Without.”

“That’ll cover it, then.”

“Then drive.”

Beginning to shiver, then, from the cold and aftershock, he settled back with his arm around Ximena, both for comfort and for warmth, and tried to think as their driver sped them south along the snowy A68. Fortunately, she sensed enough of his mood—and the need not to say anything that the driver might overhear—to keep silent, though he knew she must be bursting with questions.

The opposition had tried again to kill him—not with premeditation this time, for they could not have known he planned to be in Melrose tonight, but they had made the attempt nonetheless. The scale of the attack suggested that it had, indeed, been intended originally as another strike against the Masons known to be gathering all in one place for their annual celebration of the Eve of Saint John, just as McLeod had postulated. Except that someone had changed plans at the last moment and tried to kill Adam instead.

Which meant that they were afraid of him. And if Adam could draw allies from among the others the opposition were trying to destroy—yes, perhaps that was the answer.

By the time their driver pulled up in front of the airport at Newcastle-upon-Tyne it was after midnight, but Adam had formulated a plan of action. Leaving Ximena waiting in the taxi, he went inside to find the last flights departed for the day—Newcastle was not exactly Heathrow or even Edinburgh-Turnhouse—but he got a schedule for the next morning. When he came back to the taxi, after pulling money from an airport cash dispenser, he had the driver take them to the airport hotel and gave him an extra £20. The clerk at the counter at least pretended to believe his story of a car crash and all their luggage being lost and gave them the keys to a double room on the third floor. When they were safely in the room with the door locked, Ximena finally broke her silence, all dark eyes and taut question.

“I’ve heard of some intricate schemes to get a woman in bed, Adam Sinclair, but you really didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” she said, sinking down wearily in one of the chairs beside the little round table at the foot of the bed.

Opening the mini-bar in the passage to the bathroom, Adam pulled out a can of Coke. “Drink?” he asked.

“Anything soft and non-diet,” she said. “Adam, what’s going on?”

Pulling out a second Coke, he slammed the door and limped over to sit opposite her, not speaking until he had popped the top of his and taken a long pull.

“This has to do with my police work,” he said truthfully, though he did not specify what
kind
of police. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to go into details.” Which was also true. “I had no idea it would escalate the way it did tonight, or I wouldn’t have let you come along. I’m sorry.”

“Well, you couldn’t have known,” she said. “It isn’t your fault. And no harm’s done.” She paused a beat. “Was it the I.R.A.?

“No,” he said flatly. “A different kind of terrorist. Listen, I have to make a couple of phone calls. Why don’t you take a shower and get cleaned up, and I’ll tell you more after I know more?”

“All right.”

When the bathroom door had closed behind her and he heard the water running, he picked up the phone and dialed McLeod’s number, on the off chance that Jane had not been scrupulous about unplugging the phone. It rang and rang with no answer, as expected. He called home next. Philippa had been asleep, but roused immediately at his news.

“So I want you to pretend to be the bereaved mother tomorrow,” he said, when he had told her his plan. “I can’t reach Noel at home to tell him what’s happened, so in the morning, as soon as you decently can, I want you to go to him at his office, take him aside, and let him know I’m safe. You can’t telephone him there because of the police mole; the line may not be secure.

“If you
don’t
manage to get through to him, he’s going to find out about the car the hard way—either from the rental company, since the car was rented in his name, or from a routine police report coming across his desk with a report of a car bombing in Melrose—and he’ll assume the obvious. It would be easier on
him
if he knew the truth before that happens. I don’t know whether Peregrine was planning to return home tonight, but you ought to try to get word to him as well.”

“I understand, dear,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything. What are you going to be doing in the meantime?”

“Making my way back to Edinburgh as quietly as I can, by means the opposition won’t be likely to expect,” he said. “I haven’t worked out exact details yet, but I
can
tell you that I’ll try to come into Waverley Station sometime tomorrow evening. I’ll call someone with a line that’s secure and tell him to call Noel with a message about what time his brother’s Hogmanay party is going to start. Subtract two hours from that time, and that’s when I’ll be at Waverly. Have you got that?”

“Of course, dear. Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of, right now.” He glanced at the bathroom door, where the sound of running water had stopped. “I’ve got to go now. I have a beautiful, intelligent, and thus far, very understanding woman about to come out of the bath who’s going to want a lot of explanations.”

“Oh, well don’t kill the mood by explaining too much, dear,” Philippa said archly.

“Yes, Mother. Talk to you later, Mother. And I do love you,” he added, as he hung up.

Ximena came out a few minutes later, wrapped up in one of the hotel’s monogrammed terry robes and with her hair twisted up in a towel. Adam thought he had never met a woman who appealed to him more, on all levels; and never had he felt so utterly disinclined to even get out of his chair.

“You look like you could use the shower next,” she said, sitting opposite him again as she pulled the towel from her hair and began drying it. “Anything more you can tell me, now that you’ve had your phone call?”

“I’ll have that shower first,” he said, seizing the chance to avoid the inevitable yet a while longer and getting to his feet.

He stood under the hot water until his stiffening muscles began to unknot, letting the flow of the water clear his mind as well, and emerged a quarter hour later feeling almost human. He would have new bruises to show for the night’s adventure, but other than a persistent twinge in his left ankle and a renewed soreness in his shoulder, he had come off remarkably well. Ximena was sitting up against the pillows on the bed, watching TV, but she hit the off button as the bathroom door opened, patting the bed beside her with a gesture that brooked no refusal.

“Okay, I’ve been thinking,” she said, her forthright gaze disarming him as he sat down tentatively beside her. “You obviously don’t want to talk about what happened tonight, and I probably don’t want to hear about it, either. We both very nearly got killed tonight, though—and
that
was very scary.

“So I’d just like you to hold me while I get all the shakes out of my system and convince myself that this is something I can learn to live with, if I intend to spend much time with you. And then I want to make love with you—because the way you live, I’m afraid I may never get another chance.”

Her composure slipped at that, and he found himself kissing away the tears she fought to keep back-bemused, flattered, and just a little incredulous that she should have come to care so much. Later, as he lay drifting on the contented tide between full consciousness and sleep, he found himself wondering where this all might lead—and determined, no matter what else might happen, that she should suffer no harm from the relationship.

He slept dreamlessly, when he finally did sleep, and awoke the next morning to the sound of Ximena in the shower again and the aroma of a cup of tea beside the bed. It was with great reluctance that he saw her off an hour later on the morning flight to Edinburgh.

“I’ll call you, as soon as this is all resolved,” he promised her, as they parted at the gate. “Meanwhile, you know nothing about any of this.”

She obviously did not understand, but she apparently trusted him enough not to make a scene. When he had watched her plane take off, he went to a pay phone and dialed McLeod’s office number. Since talking to Philippa the night before, he had figured out a way to give his second-in-command an advance warning—if McLeod picked up on the obscure hint Adam dared give over the police line.

“Inspector McLeod, please,” he said, when the police operator picked up.

“McLeod here,” the familiar voice said, a few seconds later.

“Don’t react,” Adam said, with as much weight as he could put into the order. “You’re still Second.”

With that he quietly hung up the receiver. Unless the line was being monitored continuously, no one else could have heard that—and if they had, they would not know what it meant. He hoped McLeod did. Relegating
that
problem to the back of his mind then, for worrying would serve no useful purpose, he set himself to scouring the morning papers while he waited for his flight to Glasgow, looking for any mention of the incident at Melrose the night before.

* * *

Meanwhile, McLeod had hung up his own phone in some confusion. The voice definitely had been Adam’s, but the cryptic message—

“Morning, Inspector,” Cochrane said, poking his head tentatively through the open office door. “Did you see anything of this car bomb and fire action last night, down on the road out of Melrose?”

McLeod looked up blankly. “What’s that, Donald?”

“It’s in the incident reports from overnight,” Cochrane said, coming farther in to hand McLeod a sheaf of faxes. “Must’ve happened after I left. Melrose Police are saying it was quite a blaze. They don’t know who the driver was, but it doesn’t look like he got out. The anti-terrorist squad are bringing the carcass in for forensics.”

Chilled, McLeod skimmed over the report, adjusting his aviator spectacles to stare in blank shock as he read the description of the white Toyota Land Cruiser.

“Jesus Christ, that’s the car I rented for Adam!” he whispered. Even as he said it, though, he knew what the cryptic phone call had meant. Adam had not perished in the bombed-out Toyota, but he wanted it to be thought that he had. Pulling off his glasses, McLeod buried his face in one hand to cover his relief, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving that Cochrane interpreted as the sudden shock of bereavement.