Trove (The Katie Walsh Mysteries) (33 page)

“So what do you suggest? We drive all over waiting for a blip? That’s a hell of a plan.”

“Alec,” Robert snapped, “cut it out. Willie’s background makes him the expert, so let him finish.”

“Yeah, let’s all take a couple of deep breaths and calm down. These… these extra issues are keeping us away from our goal,” Laura offered.

“Alec, ya mentioned that Eric was sendin’ some GPS coordinates to your phone. As soon as ya get them, forward them to me.”

“When we’re done with the call, I’ll have Eric send them to you. He’s in London so I’m sure he has a much faster broadband connection. You’ll probably have them in just a few minutes,” Alec said.

“Great,” Willie replied. “I’m guessin’ that once we get them and compare them to Josh’s last known work area, I’m thinkin’ we can cut the area down to less than five miles, based on the maps of Skye I’ve seen. Based on what ya told me, Josh was headed back to his site when his car went off the cliff. There’s not a lot of roads, so I think we can narrow the starting
point down fairly quick and then work outwards from there. I don’t think her abduction was a random act. So, in all likelihood, this Anderson guy knew who she was. My guess is that this guy may in fact be Josh’s partner.”

“Why do you think that?” Robert asked.

“He clearly seems to have been fundin’ Josh to find somethin’. From what you all told me, he wasn’t successful. This guy’s still looking and ya also said that he’d been emailin’ Katie. He knew where she was and that she and Alec were looking for the missing runes.”

“Great, just freakin’ great,” Laura said.

“Yeah, but he clearly needs her alive, so as long as she cooperates…”

Katie slumped against the back of the chair, thankful she hadn’t been standing. She carefully compared the runes with her translation for a third time and exhaled slowly,
very
slowly. Furtively she closed her hand into a fist, digging her nails into her palm.
Ouch!
Yep, she definitely wasn’t dreaming.

The throbbing in her head was almost gone. She leaned forward, staring at her netbook’s glowing, taunting screen. It teased her with the translation. Now that she’d completed it, the harder work would begin. She needed to interpret it. The runes had been created long ago, when words had different meanings. If only she could date the runes, she’d stand a better chance of deciphering the message.

She glanced around, taking care to note that Drew was reading something. He’d backed off when he realized his hovering was delaying her work. She quickly password protected the file and saved it with the innocuous name of “MonthlyCalendar.” She wrapped her arms tightly around her torso, wishing someone was here to share her discovery with. She wished Alec were here. She absorbed each word, trying to guess at the hidden meaning. She memorized it, burning it into her mind.

Power to the marked ones born

They unlock the Trove

A wealth of knowledge be in their blood

When one ignites the light of North

By blood and light one frees us all

Stone of blood, stone of grass

Both be needed to trespass

In the land of we who sleep

Those will bring the key they keep

Blood be spilt by one who sees

This be one who sets the Power free

She hastily copied and pasted the valid translation and made a few changes. Since the original was still vague in its true meaning, she felt confident she could pass off this equally vague prose in its place. When she was done, she read the translation that she would hand to him and to the robo-caller when she could contact him. She printed out the translation and handed it to Drew.

He read the following:

Luck to the finder of the stones

They unlock the past

A wealth of riches be in their hands

When one ignites the light within

By blood and light one frees the soul

Stone of blood, stone of grass

Both be needed to trespass

In the land of the ancestors

They will bring the key to see

The key unlocks the history

He tossed the paper at her. “It makes no sense, Katie. So help me if you’re keeping information from me…” He stood beside her, his hand on the back of her head.

She pulled her head clear of his hand. “Don’t touch me,” she seethed quietly. “It is accurate. If you don’t like it, go abduct someone else.” She stood and walked to the cottage door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked as he strode over to the door.

“I need to go for a walk, get some fresh air.” She spun and faced him. “It’s not like I can escape.” She huffed. “Unless I fall off the cliff walk.”

“Stay away from the walk.”

Katie sneered. “Worried I’ll get hurt?”

He crossed his arms. “Hardly. I don’t care what you do after you complete the translation.”

She whirled and faced him, her hands planted on her hips in defiance. She was fighting back tears, tears born of stress and fear and hatred for this murderer. For once in her life she wished she was a man. As a man, she’d fight him, whether she was freed or not. His sheer size stopped her cold in her tracks. It was one thing to take down a hundred-and-fifty-pound punk with Willie nearby, but this guy was just way too big. She swallowed a sob. “I’ve completed it. There’s not a damn thing I can do if you don’t like it,” she snapped as she stomped outside into the warm late afternoon sun. She noted its position in the sky. Assuming they were still on Skye, the light and the pounding surf would place them on the west side… near Duntulm? She allowed herself a moment’s hope that Alec would look for her. Her hope faded as she remembered that she’d left without any word. He had no idea where she was, no idea how to find her since she smashed her cell phone to smithereens in a fit, and no idea that she’d been abducted. “I’m sorry, Alec, so sorry.” she whispered into the wind. There was still hope though. Eric was supposed to send the GPS coordinates to Alec. Surely he’d start looking there. Eric had said the coordinates were near Duntulm. If she could get to the top of cliff…

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head and watched as Drew approached. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her midriff, pulling them tighter as he neared. She had a suspicion he wasn’t going to let her go just yet and if he took her glasses as he promised, she couldn’t go.

“Can’t you leave me alone for more than a few minutes? I told you I don’t like helicoptering. I obviously can’t leave so why can’t you give me some breathing room?”

He held out a jacket. “I thought you might need this. The wind starts to pick up this time of day.”

He was right. It was getting colder as the sun slipped lower. She reached for it and slipped her arms through it. He turned and headed back to the cottage. When she saw him close the door, she walked toward the path. She bit her lip and tried to figure him out. He’d abducted her and kept her prisoner yet he was worried about her getting cold.

She studied the landscape. “I wish Eric were here or I could reach him. There must have been violent upheavals of the earth’s crust. It almost looks like this may have been an active volcanic area at some time in the past. Could this place be riddled with ancient lava tubes? That might explain the rock-strewn hillside where we’re hidden. Or maybe an opening large enough to conceal myself in.” She glanced around hoping to find some sharp rocks or ones she could fashion into a point without much noise.

An idea popped into her head as she walked. Could Drew have carried her down the narrow pathway without injury to both her and him? It didn’t seem possible as she surveyed the trail. There had to be another path he used, but where was it? She recalled how, when they were in Portree, he’d thrown her duffel bag into a car. Where was the car? Was it on top of the cliff? Would a deserted car raise questions to the locals? Or was it hidden somewhere nearby? She raised her hand to her throbbing temple. Her lack of sleep, coupled with the chloroform still polluting her system, was beginning to wear on her mentally and physically. She leaned over and sat on a boulder to rest.

Katie thought about the last few days and how she’d ended up here in this god-awful situation. Alec lied to her and she reacted in her usual fashion when it came to him. She ran. Instead of facing him and talking it out, she pushed back, pushed him away and locked herself down. Again justifying her actions as a righteous reaction to his betrayal. She’d just tossed him out, written him off as another person that disappointed her in her sorry excuse for a life. Sure she was relatively successful in her career, but when it came to personal relationships she’d failed miserably. She cringed as she remembered her conversation with Dr. Austin. He’d told her she didn’t have any relationship issues because she didn’t have any relationships. “If I were to die now my tombstone would read ‘Katie Walsh, investigative mythologist’. No ‘beloved wife’ or ‘mother’ or ‘lover’.” She choked back a sob. “That’s not what I want.”

It had always been so easy to kick people to the proverbial curb when they inevitably disappointed or hurt her. She’d never once looked back when she’d made the decision to jettison them because she never emotionally engaged with them, but that wasn’t true with him. She had connected with him. She needed to run to the curb and reclaim her treasure. She wanted Alec. She needed Alec. She loved Alec. And this was something new for her. That’s really why she ran. He scared her. She was ready to cede control to him, let him be the leader she knew he was, at least with respect to her heart. The man she wanted. She choked down another sob as she finally realized that she’d never ever thought she’d find someone she wanted in her life, someone to love and to love her.

She was beginning to dislike the shallow person she’d become. Not noble, not intelligent, but self-focused and to her detriment. Had it really been less than a week since he came roaring back into her life and turned it upside down, inside out? She’d never felt so challenged, so alive. She even opened up and told him about her nightmare, something she’d never done before, not even with Laura. And then it all went wrong. She had to find a way to make it right. She’d turn her dogged determination into an all-out effort to change, from the bottom up, from the inside out.

Katie turned to catch the fading warmth of the sun. It was that night, Thursday night when they’d been out watching the
sunset and the stars rise. She’d told him who her parents were, Anna and Lincoln Walsh, and what had happened to them. He admitted he’d met them, but he said he never made the connection with her, not until that night.

She wiped the tears with the back of her hand, tears that were streaming down her cheeks, dripping in her lap, washing over her like the rolling surf on the shore below. Alec had distanced himself from her that night and for the next few days. But it was she who wouldn’t leave him alone when he asked her to. She had cajoled him into making love to her even after he said he needed space to sort things out. He was trying to keep his distance. While he knew Josh’s relation to her, he needed her to finish the translation so that he could draw out the murderer. His motives weren’t selfish. Yet she’d acted like the hurt, petulant child that she was and she left. Without a word. She who demanded people be direct, speak their minds. That had to work both ways or it didn’t work.

Katie inhaled sharply. Dr. Austin was right. She was damaged. “I will change. I don’t know how, but I will,” she whispered into the rising wind as she drew her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, laid her head on top of her knees, and let the tension flow out of her body.

****

Katie heard him calling her name. Slowly she raised her head, massaging the pain in her neck. When had she turned into such an emotional mess? She hadn’t cried this much in all the years since her parents’ deaths. Who they hell was Katie Walsh? She glanced over her shoulder and saw Drew approaching cautiously, a flashlight beam preceding him in the twilight.

“Hey, time to come in. It’s getting colder and you haven’t had anything to eat today. I can’t let you to get sick.”

“That wasn’t my fault.” She started to rise, suddenly aware of her hunger and the fact that she hadn’t developed an
escape plan. He offered his arm and she took it, the stiffness having shifted from her neck to her torso. She shivered slightly, trying to loosen her muscles. “You’re a terrible warden. You didn’t even deliver the coffee you promised this morning.” She had to convince him that she wasn’t a threat. She had to play the part of helpless little female while she formulated a way out of this quickly as it was apparent he wasn’t going to let her go even though she’d handed him the translation.

She cringed as she remembered she’d promised the translation to another. She’d promised her robo-caller she’d send him the translation as soon as she completed it, but there was no way she could do it now. There wasn’t even an internet connection. How long did she have before word got out that Drew had the translation? Could she contact him and explain? Would he hold off on releasing the video until she could speak with Dr. Austin to resign and save the reputation of the Institute?