“Aye, and ye’re going to kill us if ye dinnae pay attention to the road.”
Blood pounded in Scarlett’s ears all the way to the infirmary. Who? Who? She’d gotten plenty of death threats over the years but never imagined anyone following through on them.
An hour later, Laird’s nick across his bicep had been patched. Just a scratch, in truth. It hadn’t even needed to be stitched. Thank God for small favors.
Unfortunately, when Janice awoke, she told them she hadn’t seen who hit her. So the threat, whoever it was, was still unidentified. Still out there.
Scarlett called Tyrone again, leaving him a terse message to double the private security he’d hired for the hospital. If she could’ve gotten Laird a bodyguard without offending him, she would have.
But at least she had extra ammunition for the handgun now. With only a handful more than five hundred privately owned handguns in the whole of Scotland, buying more bullets would have been difficult. Fortunately her agent-cum-bodyguard, in insisting she carry a weapon, also brought additional ammo and magazines for her among his own arsenal when he’d entered the country with her. All permitted and legal. Since he hadn’t left the country amid the media chaos surrounding her two disappearances, he still had it all with him.
Now, she was armed, dangerous and extremely pissed off. The bastard better pray she didn’t find out who he was.
No one hurt Laird and got away with it. She’d killed for him before and she’d do it again.
Damn, the next few days couldn’t pass quickly enough.
* * *
The car sped away from the theater and was down to the corner before the man jumped through the shattered door. The temptation was strong to fire after them, however the distance was too great for his handgun.
As the width of the theater had been for accuracy. He cursed himself for being so rash as to take the first shot from so far away. Waiting for the infernal movie to end and the lights to come up had tried his patience and he’d gotten sloppy.
Even so he thought he’d winged the burly Scotsman. He hoped so. Hoped he bled out to a painful death. Not that his death would count for anything more than a moment’s satisfaction.
Nevertheless, punishing him for fathering Scarlett Thomas’s children was necessary. The next step would be removing his progeny from the picture.
The time for subtlety was at an end.
Laird
The rush of water falling from the spout of the shower had become a peaceful melody to Laird over the past weeks. The gentle spray soothed, relaxed. In releasing his tensions and worries, it may have also made him lax in recognizing the dangers in this world.
This night had served as an abysmal reminder that his diligence must never falter. Death was never more than a few heartbeats away when one let their guard down.
Closer when one lacked the ability to combat a speeding bullet fired from a distance. Being so ineffectual in the defense of his most cherished love rankled deeply.
Laird looked in on Hermione, asleep in her bed, then returned to the open bathroom door. Through the steam and foggy glass, he watched the shadowy silhouette of his wife in the shower. Scarlett claimed she needed to shower to wash away the stink and grime of the theater floor, but she stood under the water with her face buried in her hands. Her shoulders hunched. The threat at the theater had traumatized her more than she would admit.
Laird freely confessed it had shaken him to the core.
More than once since arriving in this Godforsaken land, he’d felt unsettled by the unknown dangers but they were nothing compared to this. When Scarlett might have been taken from him permanently.
The time to leave this horrendous place couldn’t come quickly enough. Even before all this. Now a new urgency had taken root in his gut.
No doubt there were benefits to this place. Plentiful food. Heating throughout entire buildings without a fire. Ease of tasks that took a dozen men to perform in his time. Entertainment of all sorts just minutes away by car or by pressing a button on a remote. Information and communication available at the touch of a screen that still boggled the mind.
But somewhere in the five hundred years between his time and this one, many here seemed to have forgotten the simple joy of living. Of being alive and savoring every moment allowed to them. Aye, there was work to be done in his time just as there was here, but here even the enjoyment to be found in taking a meal together seemed to be lost. Eyes were attached to all sorts of those bluidy screens day and night, until the value of conversation and human contact had been lost.
Certainly the span of a life could be extended here. The medical advances bordered on the miraculous. But what benefit was there in a long life if one failed to truly grasp the gift of time?
Laird’s life had been in peril many times over the course of his thirty-two years. Not just on the battlefield at Flodden where he’d been destined to die but for Scarlett’s intervention, but during the dozens of border skirmishes and clan wars that had tested his mettle from the time he was a young knight.
He’d spilled his blood to feed Scotland’s soil and shed that of many other men at the same time. Most men he’d met in this time had no idea how such sacrifice for king and clan weighed on a man. Some couldn’t until they’d taken a life themselves.
To an extent, Hugh understood, having fought in a battle called Culloden. Even Connor, as braw and brave as he was, could comprehend some of the value of life having briefly lost that which was most important to him.
He pitied those who failed to fully embrace all they had.
