The Curse of Clan Ross

by L. L. Muir

  Using her voice had felt good. She couldn’t remember the last person she’d had an actual conversation with that wasn’t a waitress or something. But that was about to change. As soon as the gray Hummer returned to the castle grounds, she was going to suck it up, march down there, and say what she’d come to say. It wasn’t her fault that woman was always taking off with her husband every time Jules was ready to confront her. Even getting up early that morning hadn’t helped, either. The Hummer was already gone.

  What were they doing? Shopping their brains out? Trying to spend all the money?

  The thought of all that money disappearing made her nauseous.

  No way, she told herself. No way could they spend even half of it in the year since that woman had inherited it, even if they bought a real life Scottish castle—which she knew they hadn’t—it belonged to the husband’s family. And a whole fleet of Hummers wouldn’t make a dent.

  “It’s okay,” she told the squirrel. “Half is all I want.” She looked back at the castle. “And I’m not leaving here without it.”

  She rolled her shoulders and worked out the kinks from sleeping, folded up, in the front seat of a car for two miserable nights in a row. She’d have stretched out a little in the back seat, but if someone caught up with her, she needed to be behind the wheel.

  Sticking earbuds in her ears was a luxury she couldn’t risk, no matter how frightening it was to sleep alone in the woods at night. And thanks to her wild imagination, she’d imagined all kinds of animals breathing on the car windows every time she closed her eyes.

  The only thing she should really worry about was the FBI catching up with her or one of Gabby Skedros’ men. But even that concern was second on her list. Her biggest fear was what kept her on that hillside—the probability that that woman and her big Highlander would decide that they weren’t going to give her what was hers.

  She’d dreamt of him again last night. Exactly the same dream she’d been having for the last six months. Only this time she knew who he was...

  It was dark, just like always.

  His head fell forward, his black hair made it hard to see his face. When he moved, she would see just a little curve of his cheek, a little reflection of light from his eyes. She wanted to reach out and push that hair behind his ears, but she didn’t. Why didn’t she?

  At least she could hear him breathing and feel his arms as they came around her. So warm. So soft. So hard.

  “Stay with me,” he begged.

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Stay with me, just until the end. Then you may go.”

  “‘Til the end of what?”

  “‘Til the end, lass. You’ll know when it’s over.”

  Frantic desperation hung in the air all around them.

  “I’m not who you think I am,” he said.

  That was what she was supposed to say.

  “Neither am I,” she confessed.

  He pulled her closer, but there was something between them, again. She needed to get closer, to feel his hard chest against her cheek, to know, just for a minute, that she was safe.

  But something was stopping her.

  Finally knowing he was a living breathing man, and not some guy her subconscious had conjured up?

  Good news.

  Realizing he was married, and to whom he was married?

  Bad news. Bad, bad news.

  Wondering how the hell her mind knew about a man across the ocean, six months before she’d ever seen him?

  Freaking insane.

  Water dripped on her head again. At least she hoped it was water. She didn’t look up because she really didn’t want to know. If the little thing had peed on her, she had no place to wash her hair anyway. Not until she got her money.

  She wished she had her gun...if only to kill her a friggin’ squirrel.

  “I hear you taste like chicken,” she said, still not looking up.

  It was time to resume the position.

  She felt the ground. Thankfully, it was no more damp than before. Not much of the last little rainstorm had made it through the thick branches. She was on a little plateau, so she stretched out on her belly, propped her elbows up, and looked through the old field glasses she’d bought in a second-hand store, in a little town just outside Glasgow. She wasn’t about to go shopping in East Burnshire, the village down the road. Running into that woman in a public place was not the plan. And if the FBI figured out where she was headed, they’d be watching East Burnshire for any sign of one Juliet Bell.

  She’d tried not to get her hopes up about the Rosses helping her, considering what she planned to say to the new lady of the manor. The big Scot seemed so...courteous...from afar, she tried to keep worst case scenarios out of her head. She only wished she could say the same about her fantasies. The guy was just too gorgeous.

  Just one more reason to dislike his wife.

  Below her, Castle Ross protruded out of an ancient hill, a massive wreck resisting its lush green grave. The main body of the castle was about three stories tall. The towers, on the corners, looked more like arms reaching for the sky. Just a few fingers left on each hand.

  As she studied the place for the thousandth time, a stone tumbled away from the west wall that was painted liberally with the orange light of the setting sun. She raised her field glasses to see what might have shaken loose a building block placed hundreds of years ago.

  A couple of blue-grey figures stood on the battlements. Of course she didn’t believe in ghosts, but there was something about Scotland that made you believe you weren’t in the real world anyway.

  She rolled the focus.

  Two old ladies—identical in every way—were fighting over a pair of binoculars. Jules would lay odds on the one on the right since the strap was around her neck. Every time the one on the left pulled at the prize, her twin was pulled forward.

  Jules couldn’t help laughing.

  Nothing to worry about. Even if they’d been a couple of ghosts, they couldn’t scare her off. The only thing capable of raising her heart rate now was a sexy Highlander or someone with the power to stop her—like the people she’d just escaped. The FBI was staffed by a bunch of mean sons-o-bitches who didn’t take too kindly to sole eye-witnesses squirming out from under their thumb. And if she could get away from them, a couple of Scottish ghosts shouldn’t even raise her heart rate.

  She moved back into a thick cluster of pines, hoping against hope that the fighting sisters had poor eyesight too. She steadied the boughs bouncing around her and hoped her black leather jacket and new dye job would blend into the shadows. Then she looked through the binoculars again.

  The old women weren’t fighting anymore, and the one on the left was gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb, toward the North. Jules was just relieved the old girl wasn’t pointing her way. The other one took the strap from around her neck and handed over the binoculars, then she looked over her sister’s shoulder while that one turned and aimed the lenses up at the road running along the ridge behind Castle Ross.

  Whatever it was, the sisters found it fascinating. But when the sisters suddenly ducked down behind the wall, Jules swung her own binoculars to the North to see what had scared her would-be ghosts.

  The trees were in the way. She had to inch out a bit, but kept well below the boughs that would give away her progress. A prickly branch reached out and snagged her coat, as if it would hold her back. She unhooked a sticky pinecone from her precious coat, rubbed her thumb over the scratch it had made in the smooth leather, then crawled forward, grateful for the lengthening and deepening of the evening shadows around her.

  At first, all she could see was a car tire with a shiny hubcap. She kept losing track of it between branches heavy with pine cones and dense green needles. When she pulled the glasses aside to get a natural perspective, she realized the car was well off the road, intentionally hidden.

  Like hers.

  Through the binoculars, once again, Juliet followed the hill as it s
loped away from the car. Spindly black legs stood on a visible patch of grass. A tripod. Then, a man’s knees as he squatted behind it.

  “Shit!” Her voice sounded like a gunshot in her ears. She clamped her lips between her teeth and held her breath until she realized she was too far away for him to have heard her.

  A Skedros. It had to be. If he were FBI, agents would have been skulking around the castle, hiding on the roof and taking over the big manor house where human beings actually lived. They wouldn’t care about disrupting lives while they waited for her to show up.

  She tried to calm the panic ringing in her ears, telling her to run, reminding her that every second she waited lessened her chances of getting away. But she didn’t want to run. It had taken her days to get psyched up to confront that woman. If she ran, she’d never get that chance again. And no one could be expected to run away from all that money, let alone the chance to look into that man’s face just once.

  She tried to think rationally, to keep her heart from jumping through her ribs.

  Maybe the guy was a photographer. Castle Ross probably smiled for a couple dozen cameras a day. Maybe the North side was its good side. Maybe the FBI had decided to give her what she’d asked for—just a little time to take care of some personal business. Maybe the Skedros family had no clue she’d left the country. Maybe she was just being paranoid.

  Yeah, and maybe Gabby Skedros hadn’t murdered Nikkos right before her eyes. “You’re like a son to me,” he’d told the kid, just before he shot him. And how many times had he told Jules she was like a daughter? Yeah, she could live without that kind of family affection. She was better off as she’d always been. On her own.

  Paranoid? Yeah, right. Paranoid was a way to stay alive. And she wasn’t the only one freaking out. Those old sisters had disappeared fast, as if their footing had given way.

  No. They were hiding. And Jules wasn’t hiding well enough. Even though she was well hidden beneath branches and shadows, she wanted to inch back into the trees, but she couldn’t move. Her arm and legs were frozen with fear, as they had that night when Nikkos fell to the floor. She hadn’t moved then either. She’d blended in. Gabby hadn’t even looked around to see if any of his restaurant employees might have been working late. Freezing in place had saved her then. Apparently her body thought it was a good enough plan to try again.

  Great.

  She took a deep breath, then another. She just had to relax. It was just like the bears she imagined outside her car windows. They weren’t real. Maybe the danger she felt wasn’t real either. She just had to be brave enough to look.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw movement to her right. There were now two blue forms at the entrance of the castle grounds, jumping up and down. Weren’t they a little too old for that?

  Thankfully, she found her arms willing to move once more, and she raised her glasses for a better look at the pair of lunatics.

  At the bottom of her hill was a road and beyond that, a wide parking lot. Between it and the crumbling outer wall of the castle was a bridge of land the width of a car. Once upon a time, there would have been a moat and drawbridge, she figured. Where the wall began, there was also a large gate that opened inward. Next to this gate bounced the blue sisters.

  Juliet realized three things. First, the sisters were looking right at her. Second, they weren’t doing jumping jacks; they were flapping around trying to get her attention. And third, the man on the North hill couldn’t see them.

  Or so she hoped. She swung the glasses in his direction to be sure.

  The tripod hadn’t moved. The knees were gone, but as she scanned the area, she found a man’s torso. When he ducked to take a bite of something in his hand, she saw him.

  Sunglasses. It was already too dark for those. The sun was nearly down. Dark shadows had already started creeping up the side of Castle Ross. It was too late for a good shot—at least with a camera.

  The man straightened and moved. She watched patiently for a better glimpse of him.

  “Don’t be Greek. Don’t be Greek,” she chanted.

  Finally, she saw his head. It was covered with long orange curls. For a minute, she thought it was just the trick of the sunset, until she realized the bright hair was all natural. Not a Skedros, then.

  Not a photographer. Not a Skedros. Either a hired hitter, or the FBI. FBI agents tried to blend in. This guy, with his lion’s mane of bright hair, wouldn’t blend in anywhere—maybe not even Scotland.

  A hitman then.

  She was dead. Her chances for survival just rolled away, down the hill, out of reach. The smart thing to do would be to get in her car and drive away. Act as casually as possible as the road would either take her down the hill and past the castle, right where he was watching, or up and back the way she’d come, about twenty feet from where his car was parked. Maybe he wouldn’t consider she’d blackened her hair and wouldn’t give her a second look. Once she was out of sight, she would have to high-tail it to Edinburg, turn herself in to the police and hope the FBI could come and save her. It was her only choice.

  Fire or frying pan?

  She was out of money. Nearly out of gas. And if she didn’t think of something quick, she’d be out of hope.

  She looked back to the sisters. They’d seen the man. They’d seen her, and yet they were still waving. She had absolutely no idea what they could have deduced from that, but they seemed to be beckoning her inside the grounds. Did they sense her danger, or were they out of their minds? Why would they want to help her when they had no clue who she was?

  Maybe they’d seen the man’s gun and freaked out. But she couldn’t just run down there and let them help her. She’d be putting them in danger. A hitter wouldn’t think twice about collateral damage.

  But with no gas money, what choice did she have?

  For just a second, Jules allowed herself to imagine the large dark Highlander, coming up the hill to rescue her, kilt and sword swinging as they had the previous day for his crowd of tourists. But the “see us tomorrow” sign had already been hung, the parking lot chained off for the night. And his Hummer was still gone.

  The sisters waved limply, their arms at their sides now, no longer over their heads, but it didn’t look like they planned to give up. If they didn’t get out of there, there was a good chance they’d get shot. Maybe it was her Christian duty to make them go hide.

  Jules waved her hand, then gave them a thumbs-up.

  They stopped their antics and one grabbed the field glasses from the other to take a good look.

  Again, Jules gave a thumbs-up.

  She received two very broad grins in return—smiles that in other circumstances would have made her think twice about taking shelter at Castle Ross. They looked a little too pleased. Like they might have a pot of stew on the fire and were waiting for a bit of meat.

  A chill went through her. She figured it was just adrenaline overload.

  The jagged tips of the ramparts let go of the sunset and the famous Scottish gloaming settled over the glen with an almost audible sigh.

  The car hadn’t moved. The tripod hadn’t moved.

  Jules took a deep breath, appreciating for the moment that she was still breathing at all. She turned to look north again, to check the hitter’s location one last time and found herself staring into the guy’s small binoculars, aimed right at her.

  Air locked in her chest and expanded, like whipped cream from a thoroughly shaken can. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t drop her glasses and hope not to be seen. It was too important to know what he would do! Did he already have a gun in hand? Had he already seen her and was looking to see if she was alone?

  Time froze.

  He only stared.

  She didn’t dare hope he mistook her for anything or anyone else. They conversed silently.

  Ah, there you are.

  I can’t believe you found me.

  Believe it, baby.

  Now what?

  You make the first move. Then
I kill you.

  It seemed like whole minutes ticked by without him twitching a muscle. That mean square jaw never softened, those lips never curved in satisfaction. A long orange curl swayed in a breeze that never reached her side of the crescent hill.

  Calmly, in a less-than-dramatic act of defiance, she raised her left hand next to her binoculars...and flipped him off.

  His head snapped back as he laughed—and she heard it, faintly. But the break in eye contact, such as it was, was all it took to shake her into action. She jumped to her feet and looked down at the gate. Blue. Still there.

  She judged the distance to her car. He was much closer to his. He could drive over to her car before she could make her way up to it. If she ran flat out for the gate, she’d be an open target, but a moving one. If he tried to come after her, she’d reach the castle before he could drive to it, considering how the road twisted and turned down the mountain. He could drive like James Friggin’ Bond and never reach her in time.

  But whom would she endanger?

  She faltered. Would he take out everyone here? There were children in the manor, or at least there had been yesterday. The more modern home was a good football field away from the castle, but could she honestly expect to take shelter in the old structure and not endanger the people in the new one?

  She recalled photos on the website depicting ancient weapons in the great hall. Maybe she could defend herself without any Highlanders needing to come to her rescue.

  The start of the man’s car startled her like a shot fired. Her legs took all decision from her and propelled her down the hill. She made a bee-line for the parking lot since he couldn’t be trying to draw a bead on her and drive at the same time. He was coming after her, then. Maybe Gabby Skedros was in the area and wanted to do the deed himself.

  And maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t get the chance.

  Her cowboy boots slid on the moist grass like skis on snow, so she braced herself and let them slide. One heel hit a stone and she rolled. How she got down the hill didn’t matter—down was down. On her feet again, she cleared a gauntlet of shrubbery she never could have named then jumped a hedge of purple heather before touching down on the solidly packed road.