He smiles unpleasantly. “I hope you’ll keep that attitude over the next few hours. I’ll enjoy breaking you that much more.”
Everyone knows the MacTavish’s are swine. But they have a strong rule against hurting and killing women.
Right?
Spinning me, Dougal has handcuffs slapped on my wrists behind my back and a bag over my head before I can catch a breath, then lifts me up to strap me into the helicopter seat. Headphones go over my ears, blocking out the noise of the blades and I’m jolted forward as it lifts off, taking us away from the MacTavish estate and likely, somewhere much worse.
Dougal…
“Ya’ really think ya’ can pull this off?”
The most secure of the MacTavish compounds is a hunting lodge on the Ben Narnian Munro outside of Glasgow. One of our corporation’s corporations bought this lodge over twenty years ago, and it’s untraceable. There’s a road that leads from here to civilization, but it’s poorly maintained for a reason. We want to make sure getting here is extremely difficult. The sharp peaks of the mountain tower over us, the pines madly waving back and forth in the wind from the helicopter blades.
“Father Barclay is a lifelong friend of this family,” I shrug as Lachlan and I head toward the lodge. It’s a huge thing; eight bedrooms, a two-story entry and it’s built from heavy timber and stone. “This will go as planned.”
“Are you remembering how much it cost Cameron?” he chortles, and I’m seconds away from slapping him on the back of the head.
Isla’s still wearing the bag over her head and the noise-canceling headphones, and she’s tried to yank her arm from my grip twice. I’m not sure where she thinks she’s going to run off with her hands cuffed behind her back, but I’m enjoying her resistance.
Getting her inside, I send the men off in different directions to make sure the lodge is clear while I guide her into the great room. One of the guards already started a blaze in a fireplace large enough to roast an ox. After I take the cuffs off, she sighs and holds her hands up to the flames.
“You’re a terrible host,” she snaps, “and I’m taking this fecking bag off.”
“Aye, feel free.”
Her cheeks are red and her long black hair’s hanging in her face and tumbling down her back in snarls. Taking her chin in my hand, I get a closer look at her eyes. They’re that same pale green I saw that night at the dock, beautiful and translucent, like sea glass.
Yanking her head out of my grip, she hisses at me like a scalded cat. “You do not touch me, arsehole!”
I hear Lachlan’s attempt to stifle a chuckle behind and my hand itches with the need to smack him.
“This is gonna go well,” he mumbles, then yelps when I slap the back of his head.
“What the ever-loving feck?” Lachlan complains. “Was Da’ plannin’ for the End Times when he put this in?”
We’re walking down a freezing stone corridor under the lodge, heavy granite blocks fitted together like a perfectly assembled puzzle. There’s no power, and I chuckle when Lachlan irritably flails at a stubborn spiderweb trying to attach to his hair. At the end of the hall, there’s a sturdy oak and iron door and I shine my flashlight on it. “No, it’s a wine cellar.”
Lachlan laughs hard enough to make the sound echo up and down the hall. “Are you sure? Because this feels a lot more like we’re about to find the hidden Crypt of Robert the Bruce.”
Unlocking the door, I scan the room with my light until I find the right series of shelves. There are dozens of dusty bottles lined up neatly and I shake my head. When was the last time anyone was here to enjoy one of them?
He must be reading my mind. “A damn shame,” Lachlan says disapprovingly. We may be whisky men, but no one turns down as fine a vintage as some of these.
Swiping the cobwebs off the third shelf from the last, I pull on it as it swings open silently. “This is what we’re down here for,” I say, nodding at another stone alcove with a suspiciously modern-looking safe.
“This box is sturdy enough, but if there’s ever a cave-in here, this priceless thing is never going to survive,” he says doubtfully.
“This room and the safe are designed to withstand fifty metric tons of weight,” I say, assembling the pressure stand and recalibrating it. “Ready?”
“Aye,” he nodded, handing the box to me. “It’s unsettling, holding the thing that could destroy our entire clan.”
“Which is why we’re here.” Placing the wooden box on top of the pressure stand inside the safe, I resist the temptation to open it again, to see the thing that, had it gotten into enemy hands, would be the end of us. Slamming the safe door shut, I chuckle as we both breathe a sigh of relief. “C’mon. Pick a bottle. We’ll take it up with us to celebrate.”
“Well, two of us will be,” he says, grinning at me in a way that makes me want to punch him in the throat.
Isla and her guard Angus are glaring at each other and I have to stifle a laugh. Most people would be begging for mercy by now, but not this girl. She moves her furious gaze to me, which either means she’s visualizing my severed head in her freezer, or me naked with a raging erection. With her, it’s hard to tell, I suspect it could go either way in a hurry.
“You probably want to change out of that borrowed waiter’s outfit,” I say pleasantly, “have something to eat.”
