I’m on my way, Finn.
Twenty
Sunset Charters was a rundown little business. It had its own private dock, though the wooden slats sat low in the water, sighing tiredly in the waves. The fleet consisted of four fishing boats, two-speed boats, and a battered pontoon. Most of them looked like they had seen better days. The building itself had once been painted orange and yellow to match its name, but it had faded and peeled away over the years until the wood showed through in patches, the colours turned pale and wan. The sign, proclaiming the business’s name in letters more apt for somewhere in Florida rather than Inverness, hung, lopsided, over the door.
The other members of our team were already there, clustered around one of their cars while they waited for us. They all wore warm, dark clothing, hair tucked under hats, coats flapping in the wind.
I lifted a hand in greeting as Fletcher and I climbed out of her car. “We’ve worked with this place before?” Fletcher asked. “It’s a dump.”
“So the insurance is cheap if we break one of the boats,” I explained. I hadn’t worked with Sunset Charter before, but before we were partners, Reilly was part of an op stopping some whalers, and rather than come up with any kind of reasonable plan, he decided to crash his boat right into the one he was chasing. From the way he told it, Sunset Charter didn’t seem to care very much.
“Wait here,” I said to our team. “Fletcher and I will get the boats sorted out.”
A bell chimed as I pushed the door open and stepped into the cluttered shop. Yellowed maps hung from the walls in between black and white photos of the coast, draped in old bits of netting. Knickknacks lined the shelves and tables placed randomly around the floor: bottle openers and magnets, snowglobes and rather monstrous stuffed animals for the kids, miniatures of the photos on the wall, and a half a dozen different shot glasses. The other half of the room was filled with fishing supplies, the flies sorted by colour, the accessories growing ever more expensive. A man with a bushy, white beard sat behind the desk, watching a football match on a tiny, grainy television. He wore bracers over his checkered shirt and a grey, wide-brimmed hat on his head.
He didn’t look up at the chime of the bell or the tread of our boots across the creaky floor, but he jumped when I placed my hand on the counter and said hello. His blue eyes had faded the colour of the sky after rain, his face marked with liver spots. “Can I help ye?” he asked in the thick accent of the rural Highlands.
“DCI MacBain,” I said, flashing my badge. “Chief Inspector Dunnel called ahead about some boats?”
“Aye.” The man ducked beneath his counter, muttering indistinctly as he hunted around for something. He emerged with a stack of papers two fingers high. “I’ll just need yer signature on these.”
I stared at the stack. We’d be there all night if I had to read every page. “I assume this is just a standard contract?” I asked, lifting the corner of the top paper.
The man’s head bobbed. “Same as I always give yer department.”
“Great.” It took me five minutes to hunt through the document for each place I needed to sign or initial. The old man turned his attention back to the television, pulling a bag of crisps seemingly out of nowhere. Fletcher went to browse the rack of snacks while she waited and came back with an armful of crisps and chocolate bars.
“What? It’s a long boat ride,” she said defensively.
“I didn’t say anything. Get me a Curly-Wurly.”
Fletcher paid for the snacks and then ducked into the washroom. I passed the signed contract over, my hand dipping into my pocket, brushing against the heavy envelope there. There wouldn’t be another time to see read it. By the time Fletcher returned, I had put the message back in my pocket, and the man pulled a large ring of keys off the wall and motioned for us to head outside. It had started to mist while we were in the shop, and I popped the collar of my duster to keep it from running down my neck. The team perked up, pushing off the car and following us towards the dock. The old man shuffled down the short set of stairs, humming to himself, and I shot a look at Fletcher, ready to scream at how slowly he was moving. He walked as if his hips were locked in place by thick wire, his back crooked, his feet barely leaving the ground.
Fletcher widened her eyes in agreement and jerked her hand near her neck like she was tightening a noose. But I knew I couldn’t rush someone of his age. It would just slow him down even more.
He led us to three of the fishing boats at the very end of the dock. They bobbed lightly in the water. The paint was slightly chipped, and there were scratches on each of the engines, but they at least looked seaworthy. The old man sorted through his keys one by one and eventually handed me three of them.
“Bring ‘em back when yer done,” he drawled and then tottered off back down the dock.
“Okay, gather round,” I said. “Reid, Barnes, and Holmes. You’re in the first boat. You’ll approach from the south. Elker, and Falkner, you’ll land on the northern side of the island. Fletcher and I will be in the last boat, and we’ll come in from the east. Keep in contact with the radios. We’ll breach once everyone’s in position. Sound like a plan?”
“Yes, sir!” the team chorused, and I passed out the keys.
“Best of luck. Let’s bring the kid home safe.”
As the others began to prep for the journey, I dialled Collins, wanting to check in with him, Fawkes, and Haruto and let three of them know that we were finishing things tonight. But the phone rang and rang and rang, and nobody picked up. I hung up as it went to voicemail, worry etched into the lines of my face. Someone should have answered. It wasn’t even that late yet. I called Fawkes, too, just to be safe, but it went right to voicemail as well.
“Haruto’s team isn’t picking up,” I said to Fletcher. The other five settled in their boats, waiting for the two of us.
“Maybe they’re in the bathroom?” Fletcher suggested, but she didn’t sound like she believed it.
“All at once?”
“What do you want to do? We can’t be in two places at once.”
I snarled and clenched a fist as I tried to think of a solution. Holden and his people wanted to split us up, confuse us. I didn’t think he knew we’d found his island, but I had to act like he at least suspected it, and that meant he could be preparing to run. This could be our only chance to nab him before he disappeared into the wind, and I couldn’t do that if I went running off across town after Haruto. The best I could do was text Dunnel and have him send someone to check on Haruto and the others. It didn’t feel like enough. It felt like letting the man down, giving him over to Allraise Ventures as if his life were less important than Finn’s. Hopefully, his skill set and manuscript would be enough to protect him.
Our boat was the smallest of the three, and it rocked as I stepped carefully on the bench and then down to the deck. Fletcher passed me the paper bag full of snacks before she followed me down, water sloshing against the boat’s hull. I put the key in and turned it, but it took me a couple of times pulling the starter string before the engine finally coughed, turned over, and then started. It roared loudly in the quiet of the tiny marina as I edged us away from the dock and out into the open water of the Moray Firth.
Fletcher shivered as a cold wind cut right through her coat and put her hood up against the mist as we waited for the others to start their motors and join us. Then I pointed the rudder at the firth’s mouth and twisted the throttle, and soon, we were cruising through the water, flanked by the other two boats. We bounced over each little wave, the rudder shuddering in my hand, and I worried about what that would mean when we left the sheltered cove of the firth. I gritted my teeth and kept going even as my whole arm started to go numb, and my butt began to ache on the hard wooden bench. Fletcher kept lookout at the bow of the boat, hunched over her plastic-wrapped phone to keep an eye on the map she downloaded before we left.
For the first hour, we boated in silence. The sun had started its descent, the light that had managed to fin
d a way through the clouds dimming rapidly as the water turned dark and the land dissolved into shadow. The rudder fought me every step of the way, desperate to list to the left and send us careening towards shore. My hands were cold and stiff even inside my thick gloves, and before long, my cheeks felt chapped and raw, and I desperately wished I’d thought to bring a scarf like Fletcher did. The wind blew relentlessly into my face, and I struggled to squint through it as my eyes watered, and my nose ran. After we threaded the gap between Chanonry Point on the peninsula to the left and Fort George on the right, we stuck close to the landmass on the left as the water began to yawn wider and wider on the other side.
Fletcher and I switched places just past the two small peninsulas. She handed me her unlocked phone and settled into the bench by the motor while I squeezed onto the narrow plank at the bow. Fletcher had already gone through a third of her stash if the little pile of wrappers at my feet was anything to go by.
The sun was fully gone by the time we left the relative shelter of the firth, and the water grew choppier now that we were out in the open, matching the nerves churning inside of me. I tried to focus on our course. The land to the west was one long, shadowy blob. It was hard to tell how far we were from it in the dark, but a little depth gauge by the motor that would hopefully keep us from straying into shallow water. I glanced behind us, but the other boats had been swallowed by the night. I turned on the phone’s torch, gave it a wave, and got two flashes of light in return.
We passed the mouth of the Cromarty Firth and kept going. I ate half of my Curly-Wurly, but that only made my already nervous stomach more upset, especially when combined with the sway and buck of the boat.
At the end of the second hour, Fletcher and I swapped again. Our boat was fully encased in darkness, and I struggled to drive it in a straight line with no landmarks to keep track of. A few lights twinkled onshore, coastal villages or singular houses up on the bluffs, but they were few and far between, and they made it seem as if I was driving up in space, encased in the cold and the dark. I found the night to be oppressive. I felt as if we were going nowhere, stuck in an endless loop of waves and rain and the rumble of the engine. I found myself checking in on Fletcher and the way her face glowed in the light of her phone, just to make sure I was still real.
I shivered within my coat. The rain had picked up from a fine mist to a pelting shower that slashed at my face with each gust of wind. My hat was almost soaked, as was the collar of my jumper, though my duster was still doing a decent job of repelling the water. When Fletcher and I switched again, I cracked a couple of hand warmers and stuck them in my gloves and tucked another couple under my shirt for good measure. My feet, safe in their thick leather boots and a double layer of socks, were doing alright for the moment.
“Okay?” I called back to Fletcher.
“Remind me to go to a spa after this, else I’m never getting this chill out of my bones.”
I was going to stand in the shower until the hot water ran out and then put on every article of clothing I owned and sit in front of the space heater.
The hand warmers did their job well, and soon, I could hold Fletcher’s phone without worrying about my fingers falling off. I let out a grateful sigh. Not long after, I spotted a sweeping beam of light that could only be the Tarbat Ness Lighthouse, which marked the point where we would turn west into the Dormoch Firth. Fletcher kept an eye on it as she steered, though she made sure not to point the boat directly at it, not wanting to crash right into the peninsula on which it sat.
It took us another half an hour to get close enough to see the red and white building in the glow of its great light. It also illuminated the rocky, broken shore all around the structure, waves crashing against black stone which eventually gave way to grass. After so long in darkness, I felt half-blinded and had to look away.
We regrouped right in front of the peninsula’s point. One of the boats had fallen behind, and we had to wait a few minutes for it to catch up, shining our torches around so they would know where to go. We floated as closely as we safely could. Each face was red with cold but determined.
“This is it!” I had to shout to make sure I was heard over the roar of the waves against the shore. “It’s a straight shot to the island from here. We don’t know if they’ll be monitoring the perimeter, but we have to assume they are, so cut your engines as soon as you see lights.” There were oars stashed at the bottom of each boat that we could use to pull ourselves in. It wouldn’t be fun, but it would at least be quiet. “Alright, let’s go.”
I took the rudder back for the last stretch, and we carved a straight line towards the mouth of the Dormoch Firth, ignoring the way the coast curved inwards. My hands shook, and it wasn’t just from the rumbling of the boat. Every case built to a crescendo. They swooped and soared, and sometimes dropped to a whisper, but they always crested one final, great crescendo. We were nearing that phrase, and it was the make it or break it beat of the whole piece.
Some crescendos, an ensemble could wobble through, and it would hardly be noticeable, wouldn’t wreck the entire composition, but this time, we were high and exposed, and our fingers were moving so fast that we didn’t even really have control of them. If we missed even a single note, everyone would notice, and the whole performance would come crashing down around us.
So no pressure.
Twenty-One
It was full dark by the time Alec left Inverness, his headlights cutting through the shadows as he crossed the bridge and began to pick up speed. There were only a few other vehicles on the road, and he wove around them without slowing. His other car, though also stolen, had a police scanner stashed in it, and he sorely wished he had it with him now as he wondered whether they had discovered his escape yet. He had to assume it had, and he could only hope that they wouldn’t find or catch up with him until after he’d rescued his son. He would prefer they never found him, but he wasn’t sure that was going to be possible.
Alec still knew Ainslee’s phone number by heart. He’d stopped just long enough to pickpocket someone and buy a burner phone, and now, he wondered if he should call her. He’d asked MacBain to keep his involvement a secret, but a part of him still wanted to explain, apologize. But he was too afraid. Afraid of how she would react, what she would say, afraid she would regret those years they spent together if she didn’t already. Perhaps that was a box better left shut.
He was driving well above the speed limit as he charged over the next bridge, but luckily, there was no one out and about to see him. It was just him and the twin beams of his headlights ghosting over the ground. The Scottish Highlands were different at night. During the day, they were rugged and beautiful, but once the night fell, they did not seem to belong wholly to the humans. The shadows of the trees and bushes, and even the rocks, took on a life of their own, dancing amid the landscape, and more than once, Alec thought he saw something moving just beyond the periphery of his headlights. If asked, he might have admitted to being a bit superstitious, but how could he not be, living somewhere where the very wind had a voice of its own, and the mountains wept clear water?
The road curved around a lone thorn bush and then continued on. Alec knew he should feel out of control driving at these speeds, but instead, he just felt a sense of eerie calm as if there was something else controlling the car for him. He was very familiar with the Highlands outside of Inverness, having travelled them extensively over the past few years, and he’d marked the route with his eyes while looking at MacBain’s computer, so it wasn’t hard to wind his way towards the Dormach Firth. The A9 would take him all the way there.
The hard part would be reaching the island.
About an hour later, he crossed the long bridge over the Dormach Firth itself and, at the first chance he got, turned west and began to wind his way down towards the water. MacBain had also marked Meikle Ferry on his map, though Alec could only hope he’d decided to go a different way. Might make for an awkward conversation if they ran into each other.<
br />
He felt like he was going well out of his way trying to reach the ferry, the backroads narrow and poorly maintained, prone to turning at odd angles and looping back on themselves. He knew the ferry was to his south, back towards the firth, and eventually, he found a road running alongside a tributary that he was able to follow down to Meikle Ferry and the Dormach Firth.
He took a couple of wrong turns before he finally found the little ferry business right on the water’s edge. A small, dark booth sat between the rickety dock and the empty, dirt parking lot. Clearly, MacBain had gone another way. Alec parked at the back of the lot. The needle on the fuel gauge hovered just above the red zone, but that would be a problem to solve later.
Rain splattered across his head as he stepped from the car, and he shivered against the wind, wishing he had kept the police jacket. He wore only a jumper and a pair of trousers, and the cold ripped right into him.
There was a torch in the glove compartment, and he followed its dim light down the gentle slope to the dingy little booth. Wooden shutters covered the window, but the lock broke with a sharp tug, and he swung them open, climbing inside to search for the keys to the ferry. The structure stank of mildew and animal droppings. He found a ring attached to a worn, red key float hanging beneath the counter and swiped it, glancing around the tiny space for anything else of use before he clambered out again.
The dock just beyond the hut trembled beneath his weight, the wood showing signs of rot and disuse. A single pontoon boat sat at the end, bound to a post by fraying ropes. The gate in its railing creaked as Alec swung it open, and the whole thing rocked as he stepped aboard. He had a brief moment of panic as he wondered if the thing had gas or would even start, but he tamped the rising wave back down because he would just have to hope things worked out.
Buried Secrets (DCI MacBain Scottish Crimes Book 1) Page 17
