Page 14 of Edge of Yesterday

Chapter Four

Cailean knew better than to let his eagerness to commence the evening’s festivities interfere with the phone call he’d promised his sister. She didn’t ask much, but once he agreed to any request, to Ginny, that became a solemn promise. His heart warmed. She lost her mother—his stepmother—ten years ago in a plane accident, and thereafter appointed herself mother hen to him and their father. When their father died of a heart attack two years ago, Ginny had directed all of her mothering toward Cailean. He suffered her attentions in silence—mostly—but knew her worries had more to do with the fear she would lose him than the need to take care of him.

Cailean pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his leather motorcycle jacket then tossed the jacket onto the bed and stretched out on the mattress. He tapped contacts, then hit Ginny’s number. Her picture filled the screen as the phone rang. At five-eight, with auburn hair, Ginny was a knockout. She had her pick of men, but preferred the computers she ruled. That, he thought for the thousandth time, was a shame. A man—and maybe a baby or two—would give her someone to fuss over. Though, her version of fussing over someone was setting up his computer with security tighter than the Bank of Scotland.

She picked up on the second ring and her husky voice proclaimed, “You’re calling early.” She spoke with the hint of a Boston accent. She’d completed her graduate degree and PhD at Harvard University and had yet to find that dropped R she’d left behind in Los Angeles.

“I’m about to head out and it’s a bit of a walk into the village. I’ll be back too late to call.”

“And you won’t take your phone with you.”

“We’ve talked about this, Ginny.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t talk again,” she said. “If it was me up there in the wilds of Scotland you would insist I carry my phone with me—with the tracker on at all times.”

“Big brother’s prerogative,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about. I promise that when I leave Heatheredge I’ll carry my phone. Speaking of which, they’re trying to talk me into staying another three weeks.”

“Three weeks? I’ll lose you to medieval life.”

He laughed. “That’s what I said.”

“Are you considering it?” she asked.

“Honestly, yes. I’ve already contacted Tom to see if he can handle my classes.”

“You’re damned lucky you have tenure.”

“And I’m not afraid to take advantage of my position.”

“Why not? They abused you long enough before giving you tenure,” she said.

Count on Ginny to jump to the heart of a matter. She was right. The university hired him on a three-year tenure track that pushed nearly six years. Since tenure, the last four years had been a vacation compared to those years as assistant professor of engineering.

“How did you do on the big jousting match?” she asked.

“I won.”

“Of course. So you got into that play?”

Leave it to his sister to call a major reenactment a ‘play.’ “A major role, in fact,” he said.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Because I’m your brother. How are things with the new project?”

“Strange,” she replied.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that whoever hacked the system is damned good.”

“You haven’t found the culprit?” Cailean asked.

“I probably won’t,” she said. “These hackers can be anywhere in the world. And wherever they were, they’re long gone by now.”

“If anyone can find them, ye can.” At seventeen, his sister hacked into the IRS SQL server. She hadn’t gone to prison—but only because they hadn’t caught her. She was that good.

“Raylon should count themselves lucky that the thieves only managed to move a hundred thousand pounds from one investment account before the system detected them,” she said.