Eilidh stepped closer to the loch, gripping the worn edges of Harris’s copied map in her pocket. Her eyes dropped to the water. The moon reflected a jagged, shifting silver across the surface. Beneath the glimmer, the depths churned in a way that made her skin crawl.
This was never the place.
Harris hadn’t drowned the gold here.
He had to have hidden it somewhere far safer—yet far more dangerous.
She repeated the phrase:
“If the thistle endures, follow it home.”
Then she turned toward the forest.
“Who’s there?” Her voice broke on the wind.
Silence.
Then—movement. Fast.
Panic flared hot in her chest. She stumbled backward, boots skidding on wet stone. The loch lapped hungrily at her heels. Her fingers fumbled for her field phone—dead signal, of course. The Highlands swallowed reception like secrets.
Don’t run,she told herself.
But she was already stepping back, pulse galloping, breath sharp.
Heather’s face flashed in her mind: wide-eyed, curious, trusting.
If anything happened to her, if these men found her research, Heather would inherit danger she could never outrun.
She is why I’m here, Eilidh prayed.
She is why I have to finish this.
A dark figure broke from the tree line.
Eilidh gasped and spun toward the path, sprinting into the night, clutching the map against her chest.
Branches whipped at her coat. Gravel scattered under her boots. Her lungs burned. She didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare breathe too loudly, didn’t dare think—
Another pair of footsteps crashed behind her.
Faster.Closer.
She stumbled once, caught herself, and kept running, the roar of the loch fading behind her as the forest swallowed her whole.
The last thing she heard before the world narrowed into darkness was a voice she recognized—low, commanding, too close:
“Stop her.”
Eilidh didn’t stop.
She ran for Heather.
For the truth.
For the legacy someone had died to protect.
The night closed in…
