“Mrs. MacTavish, I’m sorry to disturb, but ye are quite late for an important meeting.”
There’s no meeting. I canna read his expression, but I’ve had enough safety admonitions drilled into me by Logan that when it’s time to leave, I get moving. “Carol, let’s have lunch when ye get back from the cruise. And pictures! Send so many, aye?”
I’m allowed a quick hug before Hamish takes my arm, moving briskly.
“What’s going on? Are we in trouble?”
He leans down so I can hear him over the student chatter. “There’s unexpected activity around the Square. I’ve been instructed to take ye to the elder MacTavish home.”
“There’s a lot of those, which elder MacTavishes are we talking about?” There’s a pit forming in my stomach. Unauthorized activity? Is someone hurt?
“Logan’s parents, Dougal and Isla.” He’s moving so quickly that I’m breaking into a half-trot to keep up. “Theo is on campus already; we canna go back to our car. He’ll meet us by Professor’s Square.”
Shite. This is serious enough that he dinnae dare take me back to the armored Range Rover that Logan designated as mine.
He touches his security earpiece, I only catch a couple of words. “No guns… they… too many… open fire.”
We race around the corner of the building to see Theo driving up onto the lawn. Two more cars are closing in on him and Hamish rips open the door and throws me in with zero finesse, leaping into the front seat.
“Move!”He punches the roof of the car and Theo accelerates, eating up the distance to the exit.
The roar of the engine drowns out everything they’re saying to each other, and I turn around to see the other cars still on our tail. Black SUVs. Does the entire criminal underworld drive the same car?
“Who are they?” I shout.
“Ye haven’t met Lachlan MacTavish yet.” Hamish remembers to raise his voice for me, even while checking his ammo clip and snapping it back into place, and then pulling a shotgun out from under the seat. “He’s your husband’s uncle and known as a bit of a loose cannon.”
Theo snorts so loud even I can hear it.
There’s a MacTavish more unhinged than Logan? Really?
“It appears,” Hamish continues, “that he might have blown up a competitor’s warehouse over by a port on the River Clyde. The competitor is looking for any random MacTavish within reach for immediate retaliation.”
“And we were within reach. How bad is-”
There’s an enormous, thudding sound behind me, with an impact violent enough to push me forward. Wildly looking back, I see the back window is a mosaic of cracked glass, still held together by another layer on the inside.
Hamish turns in his seat, leaning close to me. “Mrs. MacTavish, ye must put your head down and dinnae move a muscle until I say. Do ye understand?” He’s cocking his gun and I dinnae want to be the thing that distracts him so I bend over, tucking my hands under my thighs.
The SUV jolts sideways as Theo takes a sharp turn, the tires slipping slightly, then grabbing again. There’s a shrill screech loud enough for me to hear, even with the higher pitch and glass shatters outside my window.
“They shot out thewindow of the car next to us,” Hamish roars. “We must get off this street.”
“On it!” Theo shouts back.
The top of my head hits the seat in front of me, my seatbelt snapping me back. I want to yell too, ask if they’d just slammed into the back of our car but I keep quiet.
I’m going to make Logan teach me how to shoot.
The thought is freakishly reassuring and within what must have been just a couple of minutes but felt like hours, maybe days, Hamish gently pats my back,
“Ye can sit up.” He smiles at me, relieved. “Our chase cars just took ‘em out.”
“That’s… wait. That’s it, then?” I look out the cracked window and see one car slammed into a streetlight, and the other… It’s just gone, and another black SUV is following us.
“For now,” Theo says dourly.
Ever the optimist, this one.
