Читать книгу Whispers In The Dark - Bj James - Страница 8

One

A telephone rang in the spartan mountain retreat. A telephone seldom used. Turning from a fire that did nothing to warm him in the unseasonable chill of late August, Simon McKinzie crossed with a heavy step to the jangling instrument. On the third ring, his square, strong hand raised the receiver slowly.

His massive shoulders were bowed, his face bleak. This was the call for which he’d been waiting. The call he’d feared.

“Yes?” No other greeting or identification was necessary, any informed of this line would not need it. Especially the man who called now.

“I heard. I’ve been waiting.” With his back to spacious windows and Blue Ridge vistas heralding an early autumn, he listened.

“Is there no other way?” His bleak expression grew bleaker. “I see.” The words were raw, bitter. Blunt fingers raked through silver hair, and, after a silent minute, he nodded. “I understand, and I agree.”

Again there was a hush in the softly lit study. A hush broken only by the crackle of the fire, the tick of a clock, and the voice that recounted horror in his ear. And into a hollow stillness he pledged, “The one you need will be on the way within the hour.”

There was more. More Simon didn’t need to hear, but out of concern and respect, he listened. “Within the hour,” he repeated when the somber soliloquy was done. “You have my word.

“And Jordana?” Hesitating, girding himself, he asked, “How is she?”

This time, as he listened, even the fire seemed mute, the clock still. A weighted sigh shredded his throat, and his voice roughened in shared pain. “I’m here, should you need me. If you need me.”

Returning the receiver to its cradle, he sat at the edge of his desk. As his hands curled around its beveled edge, his mind filled with memories of a young wife and mother, her fragile daughter, and the compelling man who loved them. And with it came the desolation that only the powerful can know in the face of utter helplessness.

Jordana, of whom Simon asked so earnestly and spoke so lovingly, was Jordana Daniel McCallum. A beautiful woman, a gentle woman. An American born to the power of wealth and influence, wed to more of the same in McCallum, her wild and wily auburn-haired Scot.

McCallum, chieftain of his clan, laird of her heart. Her true beloved, tamed by none but his own beloved, and only because he wished it

McCallum, who fought as he lived, and loved as she—with all his might, with all his heart.

Now, in this worst hour, even as one who built corporate empires as a way of life, moved mountains as easily as others moved lulls of sand, and commanded the respectful friendship of those as powerful, this man, this mighty Scot could do nothing. As the woman he loved above all else lay injured, perhaps dying, and with his family under siege, he had turned in his hopelessness to those he trusted.

But there was still hope. There was a way.

And in the hush of his study, oblivious to towering vistas and autumn chill, as he lifted the receiver again, a silvering bear of a man became much more than sorrowing friend. Much more than an ally. Within the beat of an aching heart, in quiet wrath, Simon McKinzie was the revered and sovereign commander of the most unique organization in the world. The most proficient. The most dangerous. The most covert—The Black Watch.

“Hope, Clan McCallum,” he murmured gravely as the connection was complete. “In the one I send you.”

Somewhere in Virginia, on the shore of the Chesapeake, another telephone rang. A voice answered softly, commenting on the beautiful day, thanking the caller for patronizing a business that did not exist, and inviting the statement of his need.

Interrupting the pleasantries, drawing a ragged breath, with steel in his words Simon McKinzie began.