Dean swore again. He was pushing the boat as hard as he dared—almost full throttle. One bad move on his part and they could easily flip. The inflatable was too light with just the two of them to go this fast in these kinds of waves.
“Keep an eye on it, and let me know if it changes direction or speeds up.”
Adrenaline shot through his veins, but he’d been in fucked-up situations too many times to panic.
But getting caught wasn’t an option. His fake identity was good, but it wouldn’t hold up under the scrutiny of a murder investigation.
Dean didn’t even want to think about what the LC would say. If Lieutenant Commander Scott “always-have-an-ace-up-his-sleeve” Taylor didn’t already regret pulling Dean from the explosion in Russia, he would if Dean blew their cover.
“Go dark. Do what you’ve been trained to do and disappear. Keep your head down and wait for my orders.”
Disciplined and always under control, Taylor would blow a fucking gasket if he knew about Annie. Rightly so. Dean never should have gotten involved with her. But given what had happened, he couldn’t regret it. She would have been forced to go along with Jean Paul’s plan, or the bastard probably would have killed her.
Dean doubted that foiling an ecoterrorist plot and possibly saving a young woman’s life would impress the LC.
But Dean couldn’t just leave her—then or now. He would try to help her before he disappeared again.
Taylor was going to be pissed when he heard what Dean wanted to do. Assuming he got out of this, that is.
Which was a big assumption.
“They’re still heading this way,” Annie said, fighting the wind that had her hair blowing in thousands of different directions. “But I can hardly see them now.”
Dean hoped that was a sign that the coast guard boat was just heading in this direction and hadn’t actually caught sight of them. He didn’t usually like coincidences, but he would sure as hell welcome one now.
The coast of Harris on the left and North Uist on the right appeared ahead of him. In between he could just make out the dark forms of one or two of the islands that dotted the channel. Boating through the sound could be precarious with its small islands, reefs, and rocks—especially at low tides.
But low tides actually worked in their favor with an inflatable. It had a very shallow draft compared to a coast guard boat.
He slowed the boat as they neared the sound, not wanting the blare of the motor to draw attention. Fortunately it was still early enough and no one seemed to be around. Although this probably wasn’t the most populated place even in the middle of the day.
Annie said it at the same time he was thinking it. “Where is everyone?”
He had no idea. The coasts were desolate, and there didn’t appear to be a single boat in the water.
All of a sudden it hit him. Finally some good luck! “It’s Sunday.”
She gave him a look that said,So?
He realized she hadn’t been in Scotland for a Sunday yet. “Everyone is at church. The Sabbath is serious business in these parts.”
Lewis and Harris had been referred to in the paper as the “last bastion of Sabbath observance in the UK.”
Her brows drew together. “You mean like how in some parts of the US you can’t buy alcohol?”
She was referring to remnants of America’s old “blue laws,” prohibiting the sale of booze on Sunday. But the staunch Presbyterians of the “wee free,” as the Free Church of Scotland was known, put those to shame.
He nodded. “That on steroids. Shops, restaurants, golf courses—you name it—pretty much everything but hotels shuts down. Good luck even trying to find gas—or petrol as they call it here. There’s one station in Stornoway open for a few hours, that’s it. For years you couldn’t catch a ferry on a Sunday. That changed a while back, but it caused a lot of controversy. Even hanging out your laundry on Sundays can cause offense in some places.”
“That sounds a little medieval.”
He shrugged. He’d thought that way, too, the first time he visited. It was hard for Americans to wrap their heads around it in today’s always-connected world.
The prohibitions had been even worse twenty years ago. His mother had been a MacLeod, and he’d been sent to stay with a great-aunt one summer when his mother wanted to get rid of him. He’d made the mistake of riding his bike one Sunday and Aunt Meg—who’d been named after some illustrious ancestor—had given him a hellfire-and-brimstone rant that would have made any preacher he’d ever heard on the TV proud.
Religious aspects aside, he’d come to appreciate the day of rest and the practice of keeping one day of the week special. “It’s part of the culture and kind of nice sometimes.” He looked over his shoulder. “See anything?”
She shook her head. “No.” She bit her lip, worry clouding her windblown features. “The water looks really low.”
