Читать книгу The Presence - Heather Graham, Heather Graham - Страница 10

“What are we going to do about tonight?” Gina asked Toni.

They were alone in the kitchen. Gina had been the first up. Ever the consummate businesswoman, she had apparently been worrying about the tour they had planned for Saturday night since waking up. In fact, she might not even have slept.

Toni was still feeling fairly haggard herself. When she woke, she had found the chair empty and the dividing doors shut. She’d tapped lightly at the bathroom door, but there had been no answer. She had entered, locked the other side, gotten ready and unlocked it. She hadn’t heard a sound and assumed that he was at last sleeping. The night seemed a blur to her now.

Even the absolute terror that had awakened her seemed to have faded. And yet … something lingered. A very deep unease.

“Toni, what on earth are we going to do?” Gina repeated.

“Maybe he’ll just let us have our group in,” she said.

Gina folded her hands in front of her on the kitchen table, looking at Toni. “We could have had our butts out on the street last night. You have to quit aggravating the guy.”

“Wait just a minute! I was actually in the right last night. How did we know—until the constable came—that he really was who he said he was.”

“You have to quit being so hostile to him,” Gina insisted.

“I talked to him again last night. And I wasn’t hostile,” Toni told Gina.

Gina instantly froze. “You … talked to him again?” She sounded wary and very worried.

“I told you, I wasn’t hostile!”

David, looking admirably suave in a silk robe, walked into the kitchen. “Did I hear that Toni was talking to our host again?” He, too, sounded very worried.

“Hey, you guys! This isn’t fair. When he came bursting in like Thor on a cloud of thunder, I assumed we were perfectly in the right,” Toni said, exasperated. “And we were. We did everything right.”

“Well,” David said, opening the refrigerator, “for being right, we’re looking awfully wrong. We have tourists coming in tonight. What are we going to do?”

“What else? I’m going to get on the phone and cancel,” Gina said. She laid her head on the table and groaned. “Where am I going to get the money for refunds?”

David smoothed back his freshly washed dark hair and shut the refrigerator. “Wow, we sure have made this home. Do you think it’s still all right if I delve into the refrigerator?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Toni said. “It is our food in there. There wasn’t a thing in the place when we arrived, except for a few tea bags!”

“Hey, I know. I’m going to whip up a really good breakfast. Think Laird MacNiall will like that? You know, Toni, you’re going to have to be careful when making things up from now on. This guy turned out to be real, and you have his ancestor being a murderer! From now on, invent characters that are noble and good.”

“Hey, Othello was noble, and he killed his wife,” Toni said.

“That breakfast doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Gina said.

“We should make Toni cook,” David said.

“No!” Kevin protested, standing in the kitchen doorway. “We’ll definitely get kicked out if we do that.” He grinned, taking the sting out of his words, and surveyed the kitchen. “Imagine this place if we had a few more funds! I’d love to see baker’s rows of copper pots and pans and utensils.”

“It’s not our place anymore,” Gina reminded him.

“Soft yellow paint would bring in the sunlight,” David mused.

“How the hell can you be so cheerful this morning?” Gina asked him.

“I’m eternally and annoyingly cheerful, you all know that,” Kevin said. “Things will work out. Hey, whoever made the coffee did a full pot, right?” he asked, moving to the counter.

David closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it, looking at Kevin. “Think that Scottish lairds like eggs Benedict?”

“Shouldn’t we do something with salmon?” Kevin countered.

“Good point,” David agreed.

“I’m glad you two can worry about breakfast,” Gina murmured. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to sit down like the good friends we are and figure a way out of this,” David said flatly. “Where’s your husband, Gina?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t in the room. He’s out somewhere … walking, playing in the stables, Lord knows.”

Thayer came walking into the kitchen, bearing the newspaper from Stirling, the nearest major city. He set it on the table, offering them all a grimace. “Good morning, we can at least hope.”

“Maybe, but only if we start over with the coffee. Gina, did you make this?” Kevin asked, tasting the brew. “What did you use, local mud?”

“It’s strong, that’s all,” Gina protested.

“So, what do we do?” Thayer asked.

“We’ll wait for Ryan and then figure out what we can do. Of course, we have until Monday before we need to worry about where we’ll sleep!” Gina sighed. “I should call the travel agency in Stirling and start canceling the arrangements for tonight.”

“Sixty people at twenty-five a pop—pounds sterling,” Thayer said woefully. “My place in Glasgow is small, but if we buy a few pillows we’ll be fine.”

“We all quit our jobs,” Kevin reminded him.

“And we can get new ones,” David said.

“There has to be some recourse here,” Toni said.

“Toni has been talking to Laird MacNiall again,” Gina warned, trying to keep emotion from her voice.

“I wasn’t fighting with him!” Toni protested.

“Well, you didn’t exactly offer him warm and cuddly Southern hospitality,” David reminded her.

“I’m not Southern!”

“You could have faked it,” Kevin said.

“Actually, you are from the south—the south side of D.C.,” David offered.

She glared at him. “Look, I had a conversation with him, and he wasn’t miserable at all,” Toni said.

David gasped suddenly and walked around to her, looking down into her eyes. He squeezed her shoulders. “You didn’t … I mean, Toni, we’re in trouble here, but you don’t have to … you don’t have to offer that kind of hospitality, no matter how dire things are looking!”

“David!” she snapped, feeling a flush rise over her cheeks. “I didn’t, and I wouldn’t! How the hell long have you known me?”

Gina giggled suddenly. “Hey, I don’t know. In the looks department, he’s really all right.”

“What she really means is,” Kevin teased, “if it weren’t for Ryan, she’d do him in a flash.”

Gina leveled a searing gaze at him. “The breakfast better be damned good.”

“Look!” Toni said. “I talked to him but I didn’t sleep with him. He was in my room, but …”

“What?” David demanded, drawing out the chair at her side and looking at her, his dark eyes very serious.

“It seems that I was in his room, so I moved into the next one,” she told him. “We had to talk and we were both cordial, okay?” she said.

“You just talked to him … without …”

“Being bitchy?” Kevin asked bluntly.

“Dammit! I was polite.”

“Okay, okay!” David said.

That was it. She was offering no further explanations of how she might have gotten into a cordial conversation

with the laird. “And now I’m thinking that if we ask really politely, maybe he’d let us do tonight’s performance so that we can recoup some of our losses.”

“She’s got a good idea there,” Thayer said.

“Omelettes!” Kevin said suddenly. “Salmon and bacon on the side. So who gets to ask Laird MacNiall if we can do the tour tonight?”

“Toni,” David said, suddenly determined. “She has to ask him. She’s the one who’s talked to him.”

“Toni? Oh, I don’t know about that,” Thayer protested. He looked across the table as she glared at him. “Sorry! But you seem to have a hair-trigger temper with the guy. It’s kind of like sending in a tigress to ask largesse of a lion!”

Toni groaned. “I don’t have a hair-trigger temper. Ever. He was very aggravating last night, and I thought that I was defending us.”

“You were,” David assured her.

“All right,” Gina said. “Toni, you ask him.”

“Ask him what?”

They all jolted around. Bruce MacNiall was standing in the kitchen doorway with Ryan. This morning, he was in jeans and a denim shirt. Apparently, he hadn’t been sleeping. His ebony hair was slightly windblown and damp.

“I’ve got to get dressed,” David said. “Excuse me.”

“I might have left the water running,” Thayer murmured. “I’ll be right back.”

“Got to plan the menu!” Kevin said, hurrying for the door. “Mr. MacNiall … Laird MacNiall, we’re going to cook a great … uh … brunch. In thanks for your hospitality, whether intended or not.”

Ryan, staring at all of them as if they’d lost their senses, came striding in, heading for Gina and Toni. “The countryside! My God, I thought I’d taken a few good rides, but you should see the sweeping hills! There is nothing like seeing this place through Bruce’s eyes!” Ryan loved both horses and free spaces. His work the last several years as a medieval knight at the Magician’s Court right outside Baltimore had seldom allowed him a chance to spend time with his beloved animals that wasn’t part of training in closed-in spaces. He must have been happy.

“Why don’t you tell me about it upstairs, sweetheart?” Gina said, rising.

“Why upstairs?” Ryan demanded.

“Toni wants to talk to Laird MacNiall,” Gina said. She rose, caught hold of his shirtsleeve and dragged him along with her, smiling awkwardly as she passed Bruce MacNiall.

Toni was left alone at the table. Bruce was aware that his arrival had caused an exodus, and he was evidently somewhat amused. Especially since it had been so very far from subtle.

“They’re afraid of me?” he queried.

Toni inhaled. “Well, it seems that we’re all realizing that you do actually own this place and that we have been taken.”

“Good,” he said, striding toward the counter.

Toni winced. “The coffee is a bit …”

He’d already poured a cup and sipped it.

“Like mud. It will do for the moment,” MacNiall said. He turned and leaned against the counter, looking at her. “What are you supposed to ask me?”

“Well …”

“Well?”

He might be in jeans and tailored denim, leaning against a counter with a coffee cup, but she could well imagine him in something like a throne room, taking petitions from his vassals.

She stared at him a minute, determined that she wasn’t going to be so intimidated. They weren’t living in the feudal ages, after all.

“We had booked a large tour group for tonight. We don’t want to have to cancel.”

“What?” His question was beyond sharp. It was a growl.

Maybe she shouldn’t have been quite so blunt. He had slept in a chair in her room last night, but that hadn’t made them bosom buddies.

“Look,” she said impatiently, wondering what it was about him that goaded her own temper so severely. “You know that we’re really in a mess here. And if you take a good look around, you’ll have to admit that you owe us.”

“I owe you?” The words were polite, but it was quite evident that he found the mere idea totally ludicrous.

So they were right! she thought with a wince. She was quick to become defensive and then offensive with the laird. But she had gone this far with a brash determination. There was little to do other than play it out.

“Yes,” she said with conviction. “We’ve worked on walls, done masonry, fixed electric wiring … scrubbed on our hands and knees! Quite frankly, we’re more deserving of such a place—at least we’ve put love and spit and polish into it. How you could own such an exquisite piece of history and … let it go like this, I can’t begin to imagine.”

She could see the outrage and incredulity slipping into his eyes. Though he didn’t move, every muscle in his body seemed to tense, making his shoulders even broader.

Inwardly she winced. Great, she thought. So much for playing it out!

She was supposed to be talking him into allowing them to operate their tour, not offending and angering him.

“So now you’re an expert on maintaining a Scottish castle,” he said.

She stared into her cup. A sudden and vivid recollection of falling into his lap came to mind. Her fingers against his flesh, pressing into his … lap. The easy way he rose and simply deposited her down …

Last night his behavior had been courteous—and kind. She realized then that she was attracted to him, and somewhat afraid of him, as well. And her hostility toward him had everything to do with her inner defense mechanism.

Ryan suddenly burst back into the kitchen. Toni was certain that he hadn’t been far away, that he’d been listening in.

“Toni isn’t explaining this very well,” Ryan said, turning toward her with a fierce frown. “We really did do a lot, and not just cosmetic work. We did some structural work, as well. Honestly—”

“Yes,” Bruce said, staring at Toni.

Her heart quickened.

“Pardon?” Ryan said.

“Miss Fraser wasn’t particularly eloquent in her plea, but I do see that you’ve done a lot of labor here. And I quite understand that you’re in a bad position. Your group can come. Apparently you’re going to need the money.” He poured his coffee down the drain and exited the kitchen.

Ryan stared at Toni in amazement. Then he bounded toward her, drawing her from the chair, grinning like a madman. “Yes! Yes!”

Gina came in behind her husband. They hugged one another, dancing around the kitchen.

In a moment Thayer was back in, and then David and Kevin. They were so pleased, Toni wondered if they realized that they hadn’t gained anything but a single night. And though it would keep them from sleeping on Thayer’s Glasgow apartment floor for the next week, it would far from recoup their investment.

“We’re going to cook up the best breakfast in the world,” David said.

“We might want to start by brewing a new pot of coffee,” Toni told them, and she couldn’t help a grimace toward Gina. “Laird MacNiall just dumped yours down the sink.”

“Really!” Gina said.

“So your coffee sucks!” Ryan said cheerfully, kissing her cheek. “You’re still as cute as a button.”

“Get out of here, the lot of you,” Kevin said. “Shoo! We have to cook.”

Toni rose to leave, and as she did so, she glanced at the paper Thayer had left on the table when he’d first come in. The headlines blazed at her: Edinburgh Woman Still Missing. Police Fear Foul Play.

“Wait! Not you, Toni,” David said.

She looked over at him. “What do you mean, not me? You all insult my cooking!”

“But you’re the best washer, chopper and assistant we’ve ever had,” Kevin told her sweetly. “And then there’s the table. We should set it really nicely.”

“Wait, I get to wash, chop and be chef’s grunt?”

David set his arm around her shoulders, flashing her a smile, his dark eyes alive and merry. “Think of it as historical role-playing. Everyone wants to be the queen, but you have to have a few serfs running around.”

“Serf you!” she muttered.

“The others will have to clean up,” he reminded her.

“All right, there’s a deal,” Toni agreed. She walked over to the table and picked up the newspaper, sliding it under the counter so that she could go back for it later.

“Laird MacNiall?”

Bruce had been at his desk—where, he had to admit, the lack of dust was a welcome situation—when the tap sounded at his door. Bidding the arrival enter, he looked up to see that David Fulton was at his door.

“Aye, come in,” Bruce told him.

Fulton was a striking fellow, dark and lean. His affection for Kevin was evident in his warmth, but he also seemed to carry a deep sense of concern for the rest of his friends, as did they all.

Bruce was surprised to discover he somewhat envied the repartee in the group. The gay couple, the married couple, Toni Fraser—and even her Scots cousin. They were a diverse group, but the closeness between them was admirable. Riding with Ryan that morning, he had gotten most of the scoop on the group, how they had met, and how they had first begun the enterprise as a wild scheme, then determined that they could make it real.

“We’re really grateful to you,” David said. “Anyway, we like to think that we’ve prepared a feast fit for a king—or a lord, at the very least. Would you be so good as to join us?”

Bruce set down his pencil, surveyed the fellow and realized his stomach was growling. He inclined his head. “Great. I’ll be right down.”

He waited for David to leave, then opened his top drawer and set the sheets he’d been working on within it, along with the daily news.

He didn’t close the drawer, but studied the headline and the article again, deeply disturbed. The phrase all leads exhausted seemed to jump out at him.

Jonathan Tavish was fine enough as a local constable, but he hated giving up any of his local power, and he just didn’t have the expertise to deal with the situation that seemed to grow more dire on a daily basis.

Down in Stirling, Glasgow and, now, Edinburgh, they believed that the girls were seized off the streets of the main cities, then killed in other locations and finally—with the first two, at least—left in the forest of Tillingham because it was so lush and dense that discovery could take years.

Bruce’s question was this: Were there others, sad lives lost and unreported, decaying in the woods, their disappearance unnoted? And now another.

Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The killer was striking all over, yet in Scotland, the distances were certainly not major. The first three abductions had taken place in large cities. But if he had found it easy enough to seize women off busy streets, would he grow bolder and seek out quieter locations?

He drummed his fingers on the desk. Thus far, the local populace had not felt the first whiff of panic. But thus far, the girls reported as “missing” had not been what the locals would consider “good” girls. Not that the people here were cold or uncaring; it was quite the opposite. But since the victims had been known to work the streets and to have fallen into the world of drugs, the average man and woman here did not worry.

It was sad, indeed, tragic. Hearts bled. But women who fell into the ways of sin and addiction left themselves open to such tragedy.

But MacNiall didn’t feel that way. There was a killer on the loose. And no matter what the state of his victim’s lives, he had to be stopped.

And he had the power to stop him? MacNiall mocked himself.

He had come home—as far as Edinburgh, at least—when Robert called and told him that there had been no leads on the case and he was just about at wits’ end. Then, just two days after arriving in Edinburgh, Robert had told him of a new missing persons report.

The strange thing was, he’d felt an urge to return even before he’d gotten the phone call. Actually, he’d wanted to ignore the haunting sense that he’d needed to be here. But after speaking to Robert, he’d taken the first flight out of New York.

So here he was. Yet, really, why? There were fine men on the case, and he wasn’t an official anymore.

But they needed … something. Hell, they needed to realize what they were up against.

Bruce was afraid that all available manpower would not be put on the case until the killer upped his anger or his psychosis, or until the “wrong” victim was killed.

By then, God alone knew what the body count could be.

He pressed his fingers against his temples, remembering the other reason he was actually anxious to have the group gone—his dream. How could he explain having such a strange dream?

Then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange. After all, he had found the first body. That vision would never leave his mind.

And now maybe it was natural to meet a woman, find her irritating beyond measure and then sexy as all hell…. And then fear for her.

Annoyed with himself, he snapped the drawer shut and rose to join his uninvited guests in the kitchen.

The setting was a wonder to behold. Toni was certain that Bruce MacNiall thought as much, because he paused in the doorway. And for once, he certainly wasn’t angry. He gave that slight arch to his brow and curl to his lip that demonstrated amusement, then he wandered in and took the seat left for him at the head of the table.

Everyone was there, seated and looking at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I’d kept the rest of you waiting,” he said pleasantly, taking the napkin that had been arranged into an elegant bird shape from his plate.

“Almost hate to use this,” Bruce said, looking around the table.

“Please, they’re nothing to fold,” Kevin said. “I’ve worked in a number of restaurants. That’s the fate of most theater majors. Actually, though, I’m a set designer.”

“So Ryan told me,” Bruce said.

“We each have special and unique talents,” Gina said.

“I’ve heard a few,” Bruce said.

“That’s right, you were out riding with our Ryan,” Thayer said, clapping his hand on Ryan’s back. “He’s our master of horse and arms! There’s not an animal out there our boy can’t ride.”

“Yes, Ryan is quite skilled,” Bruce agreed.

David lifted a hand. “Costumes,” he said.

“Yes, and he juggles,” Kevin said. “He’s really a fantastic actor, as well, but we are the technical whizzes.”

“And they’re both so humble and modest,” Toni said sweetly.

“Sorry, modesty never gets us the job,” Kevin reminded her.

“Touché,” she agreed.

“And you? What were you doing in Glasgow?” Bruce asked Thayer.

“Piano bar,” Thayer said ruefully.

“I’m marketing and promotions, and whatever else is needed,” Gina said. “The jill-of-all-theatrical-trades, but my major was actually on the business side.”

“Ah.” Bruce stared at Toni then, waiting.

“Writer,” Toni said, certain that he thought her one hell of a storyteller all right.

“Now you see,” Kevin said. “Her imagination is legendary.”

“So it seems,” Bruce mused, staring at her.

“Our Toni is far too modest. She wrote a one-woman show on Varina Davis—she was the one and only first lady of the Confederacy—and spent six months performing it for sold-out audiences in Washington, D.C.,

and then Richmond. She writes, acts, directs, sews and is a regular vixen with a paintbrush. Naturally, we do whatever is needed.”

“Like scrubbing floors,” David said.

“And cleaning latrines,” Thayer added.

“Sewing, wiring, flats, paints … we’ve done it all,” Toni told him.

“And what part of the States are you from?” MacNiall asked them, looking around at the group again.

“I’m from Iowa, originally,” Gina said. “Toni’s from the D.C. area, David’s a native New Yorker, Ryan is from Kentucky and Kevin’s from Philadelphia.”

“We went to college together,” Toni murmured.

“NYU,” David offered.

“Most of us went to college together. Toni, Ryan, David and I went to college together,” Gina corrected softly. “Then, when Ryan got his job with the Magician’s Castle, I moved to Baltimore. Toni moved nearer to D.C., but we stayed close. When she wanted to mount her Queen Varina show, I spent time down there to help her, David did her costume and set. We met Kevin about that time, almost two years ago, and then we finally met Thayer and dragged him in on the scheme the last time we were in Scotland.”

“And that was …?”

“Just about six months ago, right?” Ryan said, looking for agreement from the others. “We were at a castle owned by the Menzies family. Clan members had bought it, done some renovations and then opened it for tours.”

“Ah,” MacNiall murmured, still watching them. Toni wondered what he was thinking. He looked at Thayer. “You were in Glasgow and you just got roped in?”

“I had tried to meet Thayer when we were here just before that. We’ve vacationed in Scotland at least four times since college,” Toni informed him. “But every time I was in the country, Thayer had a job somewhere else. When we finally met …”

“It was as if you’d known one another all your lives?” Bruce MacNiall suggested dryly.

“Actually, yes,” Thayer said.

“I see.”

“I wasn’t roped into anything,” Thayer said, offering Toni a small smile. “Their idea was a good one.”

“Aye, it might have been,” Bruce MacNiall conceded, surprising Toni. “What I saw was wonderfully dramatic.”

“You know, we’ve got a problem tonight,” Ryan said.

Toni realized that he was looking at her. “Yes?”

“I really had trouble going from costume to costume, and then doing the whole horse in the great hall thing last night. Of course, it worked, because—” he stared at Bruce and smiled weakly “—because Bruce showed up, but otherwise you’ll have to stall more.”

“She can’t stall. The timing was great. Suspenseful. We’ll lose them if she has to pad what is a perfect speech!” Gina protested.

“You want Bruce MacNiall to ride into the great hall as he did last night?” Bruce asked. “I can do that for you again. Is that it?”

They were staring at him incredulously.

“You would do that?” Gina said.

“Hey, you’re here, and I already think I’m insane myself. Why the hell not?” he returned.

“There’s a little more to it, as written,” Gina said.

“Oh?” Bruce queried.

David grinned. “You’re supposed to dismount, walk up the stairs and strangle Toni.”

“Ah.” Bruce stared at Toni again, a smile teasing at his lips. “I think I can handle that.”

“You only pretend to strangle her, you know,” Thayer interjected.

“And that might be a lot harder!” Kevin said, winking at Toni.

She wasn’t particularly amused. “I don’t really see how we can ask Laird MacNiall to join in with us. He’s already doing us such a tremendous favor,” she said very sweetly.

“I don’t mind at all,” Bruce MacNiall said, rising. “This was a feast, ladies and gentlemen. If you’ll excuse me, though, I’d like to get into the village before your evening events.”

They watched as he left.

“Well, there you go. The chap isn’t really half bad after all,” Thayer said. “We’ll have to keep an eye on him, though, when he’s up there strangling Toni, eh?”

To Toni, his accent seemed to accentuate a real danger for some reason. But the others were laughing, so it was probably just in her mind.

“Ryan, you’ve just been shoved out of your big moment,” David said.

“Hey, that’s okay. It’s worth it just to watch that horse of his come racing in and stop on a dime,” Ryan said. He grinned, glancing across the table. “I will miss getting to strangle Toni, though.”

“Ha, ha,” she said and rose, stretching. “Well, let’s see … under the artistic direction of Mr. David Fulton and Mr. Kevin Hart, I did the washing, chopping and table adornment. Ryan, you can rue your lost opportunity to strangle me while you wash the dishes with your lovely wife and Thayer.”

“Me? But I got to shovel out major horse shite already today!”

“Hey, horses are your thing, and you’re the expert. As for KP, we’re all in on it. So! Ta-ta, cheerio and all that! I’m off!” And with a smile, she made her exit.

Bruce entered Jonathan Tavish’s office after a brief tap against the doorframe. Jonathan looked up and arched a brow. “Bruce, I thought you’d be guarding the family jewels, what with that houseful in the old estate.”

“Hardly an estate, and totally a crumbling castle,” Bruce said, taking a seat. “Actually, the more I walk around the place, the more amazed I am. They’ve taken care of a ton of minor things that I’ve put off for years.”

“It’s tough when you’re keeping up with too much,” Jonathan agreed. He grinned. “Now, if you were just among the local peasant law-keepers, you’d be here year-round, pluggin’ up holes at any given time. So … it seems you’re not quite as angry as you were when you first learned about your guests?”

Bruce angled his head slightly as he surveyed his friend. They were close in age, had known each other since childhood. They shared a passion for this little neck of the world, though they didn’t always agree about how it should be run. Bruce was the local gentry, as it were, and Jonathan was the local law. But because Jonathan was local, and had always been local, he seemed to maintain a chip on his shoulder where Bruce was concerned.

One day, maybe, Jonathan would run for the position of provost. As such, he could implement more of his own ideas. Thus far, though, he seemed to like being constable.

“I’ve cooled down some, yes,” Bruce said. “Since no one threw them out in my absence, I thought another few days couldn’t hurt too much.”

“Ah,” Jonathan teased. “It was the blonde, eh? What a beauty—and what absolute hell on wheels!”

“She does have a way about her,” Bruce agreed. “But this isn’t the first time I’ve heard about this happening.”

“Your castle being taken over?” Jonathan said, puzzled.

Bruce shook his head. “This sort of thing in general. People going through what they think are private enterprises or legitimate rental agencies and winding up in a similar circumstance. I really want to find out what happened in this situation.”

“Like you said, it happens too often.”

“Yes, but this time it happened to be my castle that was taken over.”

“Come Monday, you can let those folks see all your records. They can bring their documents down, and we’ll get someone on it right away. Unfortunately, sometimes—especially in this age of the Internet—people can clean up their trails.” He lifted his hands. “I might have gotten started on it already, but they didn’t want to hand over the documents.”

“It’s all they’ve got to prove anything.”

“Great. They don’t trust the law.”

“Well,” Bruce said, offering a certain sympathy. “They don’t trust me, either.”

“Ah, there we are! In the same boat, as they say.”

“Right. But actually, that’s not why I’m here,” Bruce said.

“Oh?”

Bruce tossed the newspaper on Jonathan’s desk. “Oh, that.” “Aye, oh, that!”

Jonathan shook his head. “Bruce, they’re not local girls disappearing.”

“But in the last year, two bodies have been found in the forest.”

“If you haven’t noticed, it’s a big forest,” Jonathan re minded him.

“Have you had men out searching?” Bruce demanded.

“This girl just disappeared,” Jonathan reminded him. “But yes, I’ve had men out searching.”

“Right. The last two girls who disappeared wound up in our forest. We should be looking for this latest lass. I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar that’s where she’s going to be.”

“Careful with that kind of prophecy, Bruce,” Jonathan warned, sitting back. “People will begin to think you know more about these disappearances and murders than you should. They do keep occurring when you’re actually in residence.” He raised a hand instantly. “And that doesn’t mean a damned thing. I’m your friend and I know you. I’m just telling you what someone else might think.”

“Bloody hell!” Bruce cursed, his tone hard. Jonathan’s

suggestion was an outrage, and he was both startled and angry.

“Sorry, Bruce, I didn’t mean anything by that. It’s just that you’re getting obsessive. I understand, of course. But you’re not what you were, Bruce. Time has gone on. Just because you struck it lucky once in Edinburgh doesn’t make you an expert.”

Bruce prayed for patience. “I’m not claiming to be an expert. But murdered women being discovered in Tillingham Forest does bother, seriously. And it should bother the hell out of you.”

“I know my business, Bruce.”

“I’m not suggesting that you don’t.”

“How can I stop a madman from kidnapping women in other cities? If you haven’t noticed, we’ve miles of dark roads around here, not to mention that whole companies of fightin’ men used to use that forest as a refuge! And again, this girl has just been reported as missing. She’s an Irish lass, might have just taken the ferry home.”

Bruce rose. “If she isn’t found in a few days’ time, I’ll arrange for a party myself to search the forest.”

“Bruce, mind that MacNiall temper of yours, please, for the love of God!” Jonathan said. “I told you, we’ve taken a look in the forest. We’ll go back and search with greater effort if she isn’t found in the next few days.”

“Good.” Bruce rose and started for the door.

“Hey!” Jonathan called after him.

“Aye?” Bruce said, pausing.

“Did you close down your haunted castle tour for this evening?” Jonathan asked.

“Actually, no. I’m joining it,” Bruce said.

“You’re joining it?” Jonathan said, astonished. “You’ve never acted in your life!”

“Well, that’s not really true, is it? We all act every day of our lives, don’t we?” Bruce asked him lightly.

“Ach! Go figure!” Jonathan said, shaking his head. “It’s the blonde.”

“It’s the fact that they are in a rather sorry predicament,” Bruce said. “And they did do a damn good job repairing a few of the walls. See you on Monday.”

He exited the office, leaving the newspaper on Jonathan’s desk. He knew what the front page carried—a picture.

She was young, with wide eyes and long, soft brown hair. She had originally hailed from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Apparently, she’d intended to head for London. But she’d never made it that far, discovering drugs and prostitution somewhere along the way instead. She’d gotten as far as Edinburgh, and been officially reported as missing when a haphazard group of “friends” realized that they hadn’t seen her in several days.

News could die quickly, unless it was really sensational. The missing persons report on the first girl had run in the local papers and then been forgotten. Until Bruce had discovered her body in the forest while out riding, facedown, decomposed to a macabre degree.

He’d missed the notice about the second disappearance. But there had been no missing the fact of where the body had been found—Tillingham Forest. Eban had found the second victim there, months later.

Prostitutes. Drug addicts. The lost and the lonely. They’d needed help, not strangulation.

He sat in his car for a minute, staring out the windshield.

He was parked right in the center of town, where a fountain sat in the middle of a roundabout. Atop the fountain was the proud statue of a Cavalier. There was no plaque stating his name, or the dates of his birth or death, or extolling his deeds. But the locals all knew who the statue portrayed—the original Bruce MacNiall. And tonight, he’d play his ancestor.

A sudden irritation seared through him. “You’d think they’d give you the benefit of the doubt, old boy. But let time go by and now you’re a hero—suspected of killing the love of his life!”

There really was no proof that Bruce MacNiall had killed Annalise, but it made for a good story. And just as some historians saw the Stuart champion as a great hero, others saw him as a fool willing to risk the lives of far too many in his own pursuit for glory.

The idea of Bruce MacNiall having killed his wife didn’t sit well with him. And still, he had said that he’d play the part. Life sure had it ironies.

“Well, old fellow!” he muttered, “I’ve never heard it proved that you did any such thing, but it’s entertainment these days, eh?”

He threw the car into gear and started toward the castle on its tor.

Entertainment! Was someone killing prostitutes for fun?

He drove by the forest and slowed the car to a crawl. He knew that to find anything within it, they’d have to delve deep into the woods and the streams.

His heart ached for the girl. He knew she was already there, decaying in the woods. And he had known it as a certainty last night, when he had dreamed about seeing a body floating facedown.

Except … in his dream, it had been the body of Toni Fraser.