She followed him down an empty corridor, the walls as white as the outside of the building had been black. They took a left, then a right, passing by a number of unlabelled doors. The floor squeaked under Heather’s feet. The place was spotless.
Up a flight of steel steps, then through more twisting corridors before Tony stopped. He pulled out a key and then unlocked the door beside him, stepping through and motioning for her to follow. “Take a seat.”
They were in an office that looked much like the ones back in the London office. On the desk was a computer, a pot of pens, nothing else. Tony sat, picking up a pen and then sliding open a drawer, pulling out a form. “I need you to sign this.”
“What is it?”
“Standard nondisclosure. More or less. What we’re about to talk about must go no further than these four walls.”
“I don’t even know what we’re going to talk about.”
“Just sign the form and then I’ll tell you everything.”
She looked down at the dense print in front of her. Page after page of legalese that she soon gave up any hope of understanding. “I’m not signing something I can’t make head nor tail of.”
His smile faltered. “Sign it or you’ve wasted a trip to Scotland. It’s your job to run this project and it’s my job to protect it. Ever heard the phrase loose lips sink ships?”
“Yes but-”
“Think of it like that. Don’t worry, it’s nothing scary. If you’re lucky you might even be there and back in five minutes.”
“There and back from where?”
“Can’t say until you sign. Sorry.”
She looked at the form again, skipping to the final page. “Fine,” she said, signing with a flourish. “I hope you haven’t just got the rights to my immortal soul.”
“Subsection nine,” he said, tapping the form with a long bony finger. “Only kidding. Right, where to begin?” He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “Short version. A long time ago I set up a company here in Scotland. In time it became one of the biggest in the country and a long time later you joined the firm. I’m glad you did because you’re exactly the person we need. We need you to help me achieve my main goal in life. Want to know what that is?”
“To become a Bond villain? All you need is a cat on your lap and you’d be perfect.”
“I need you to change something that needs changing. What would you say if I told you I could change your life, Heather? In just five minutes your whole life could be different. Not just different, better. Much better.”
“Are you going to try and sell me something?”
“I’m not going to sell you anything. I need your help like I said. I can’t do this without you. You’re special.”
“I’m not special.”
“On the contrary. You are very special indeed. You have a blood link to the Frazers.”
“The Frazers? As in the clan?”
“Precisely. I need someone with a link to the Frazers. It’s taken a long time to work out that was what we needed and we’ve had many failures along the way. This time, it’s all going to work. Because of you.”
Heather scratched her forehead. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. You do know that, right?”
“Okay, let me start at the beginning and I must warn you, this is going to sound a bit weird.”
“As opposed to everything you’ve said so far?”
“I have a key in my possession. It is rather a unique key. It will allow you to go through a door back to the year 1300, the year your ancestor was stabbed in the heart by the laird of the MacGregor Clan. You can go back and stop him. You can change history for the better.”
Heather scraped her chair back. “All right, very funny.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?
“Did my landlady put you up to this?”
