Mac winces, and Tate looks out the window, ignoring me. His mobile’s up to his ear. Have they been hiding things from me?
“Fran, y’alright? Paisley’s brother Tate.”
He’s quiet as he talks on the phone, and I can hear the faraway sound of a woman’s voice. Fran’s a bit older than Paisley, a college student, and my family loves her. She spends so much time at our home it sometimes feels like she lives there. In recent months I haven’t seen her as often, but I spend more time on my own than I do at the house. She’s a spritely, witty redhead with a smart mouth and ready laugh. And she’s good to my sister.
“Right,” Tate says, his voice hardening. “And then what happened?”
He nods.
“Fucking put it on speaker,” I mutter, but he ignores me.
“Alright, then,” he says. “Thanks for that, lass. I’ll be in touch.” He hangs up the phone.
“Fran says she and Paisley met up last night, and the plan was for Paisley to pretend to be staying the night.”
I feel Cairstina’s hand on my arm, a soothing gesture, and realize I’m grumbling under my breath, my anger rising when I know where this story is going.
“Fran says Paisley will kill her, but she’s worried so she called Islan.”
“And?”
“Paisley didn’t spend the night with Fran but went off with her boyfriend instead, only she didn’t show up to meet up with Fran today like she said she would. Hasn’t returned a text or phone call since.”
“Boyfriend?”
Mac shakes his head.
“Jesus, Leith. Seriously, they don’t tell you everything because this is how you react.”
“Did you two know she had a fucking boyfriend?”
Does anyone know how goddamn dangerous this is?
“Aye,” Mac says, staring at me in the rearview mirror. “I did.”
“And me,” Tate says. Cairstina watches us with wide, fearful eyes.
I shake my head and drive on into town, bloody pissed that no one told me.
“How the hell am I supposed to be Clan Captain when no one fucking tells me what’s going on? Hmm?”
No response.
“How the fuck am I supposed to make sure everyone’s safe, if people run off and do things without taking the necessary precautions?”
They don’t respond at first, but after a moment of tense silence, Tate finally says quietly, “And how are we supposed to live our lives when you’re so bloody afraid of everyone meeting Tavish’s end?”
I grip the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles whiten, as we reach the Victorian Market, the heart of Inverness with its many shops housing fresh produce, souvenirs, restaurants, and vendors. Old Town Inverness harkens back to a simpler time, with lords and ladies roaming the cobblestoned streets, and there’s an iconic clock in the centre that hasn’t stopped ticking since 1890.
“Will we find her here, you think?” Mac asks. “Do you think she’s gone off shopping with her man?”
Her man.Christ, my belly tightens at the thought of who could hurt her, what they could do. I try to listen to my mum’s admonition. I try to remember what it’s like to be a teenager, so eager to break away from my parent’s ideals and show myself to be a real man, to be my own person. How I reckoned I knewbloody well as much as my parents did and how very wrong I was.
But no matter how I try to frame things, I always come back to the same place.
Safety. Protection. The care of the people I love.
I’d lay down my bloody life for them, from my sisters to brothers and the other Clan members. My parents. It’s who I am, and how I was raised.
