Barefoot in the Dark

by Suzanne Enoch

  Even if Rick knew some of this, which she assumed he did, he hadn’t known about the communication going on between his home and the village. If he had, he would have used it. And if he didn’t know just how many of his own employees were involved, then he couldn’t know all the facts. Yule knew Reggie and Eerika were looking for the treasure, which meant the entire village knew. A couple of those villagers might feel more threatened than others. This was all suddenly more serious than tracking down a long-forgotten sack of gold coins.

  Another trio of men rounded a hill beyond her, and she sidestepped deeper into the trees. The good thing about the rapidly-melting slush was that tracks distorted and disappeared almost instantly. The bad thing about this was that the locals knew the area a lot better than she did.

  Scrambling up the muddy, brush-tangled hill, she kept low and angled back east in the direction of Canniebrae. As soon as she cleared the village she found a sheltered, northern-facing slope, rolled down it to cover herself in snow and mud, and then hiked back onto the road.

  She spied a couple of people eyeing her as she trudged past the jeep and up to The Bonny Lass’s door, but she busied herself with shaking off muck and pretended not to notice. With a last breath she pulled open the pub’s door and stomped inside.

  “Oh, good,” she panted, as Rick saw her and practically leaped out of a booth to his feet. “You’re still here. I thought I was going to have to move in to The Bonny Lass, because I am not walking back up that hill.”

  Rick reached her and caught her arm, and she leaned harder against him than she needed to. “What the hell happened?” he asked, the worry on his face making her feel a little guilty. But this was for his benefit, as much as it was for hers.

  “I’ll fetch some hot cider, m’laird,” Jamie MacCafferty called, digging beneath the counter.

  “Cocoa, if you have any,” she countered, letting Rick help unzip her heavy coat. “Yule warned me to stay on the road, but I saw a stag and decided to get closer so I could take some pictures, and then I tripped and rolled halfway down the mountain. The deer took off to go have a laugh with his deer friends, and it took me like half an hour to climb back up to the road.”

  “I’m glad ye found it, lass,” The Bonny Lass’s owner said. “People do get lost out here permanently even on fine days. I’ll get ye yer cocoa.” He vanished into the kitchen, no doubt to announce on his own walkie that the idiot Yank had turned up on her own. That suited her just fine.

  “He’s right, you know.” Rick hung up her coat by the door and then pulled off her wet gloves, taking her cold hands in his warm ones. “What were you thinking?”

  “I had my walkie-talkie,” she returned, no longer having to fake her teeth chattering. “I wasn’t ready to give up and call ‘dumbass’ on myself yet.”

  “Is it bad that I’m kinda happy you aren’t good at everything?” Donner said, pulling off the light jacket he wore and actually draping it over her shoulders.

  “Wow. You do care,” she noted.

  “No, I don’t. I just don’t want my wife hearing that I wasn’t being a gentleman.”

  “I’m telling anyway. You gave me your jacket.”

  “Good,” he retorted. “I’ll get extra credit points for this. And I’m loaning you my jacket.”

  “Children,” Rick broke in, urging her into the booth and then sliding in next to her. “What actually happened?” he murmured, wrapping her into his arms and giving her a kiss on the temple to disguise the question.

  “Exactly what I said,” she returned. “For all our sakes.” Two men and a woman sat at one of the other booths, just within earshot of any normal-voiced conversation. Until she knew differently, every person who lived in the village was part of some sort of treasure conspiracy.

  “Great,” Donner muttered. “If you get me in troub—”

  “Seriously, Tom,” she whispered, knowing that her using his first name would catch his attention. “Shut the fuck up.”

  The attorney blinked. “Okay.”

  “Until I fell down, it was actually a really nice walk,” she said in her normal tone as MacCafferty reappeared, a steaming mug in hand. “Thank you so much, Mr. MacCafferty. I think my bones may be frozen.”

  He chuckled. “It’s Jamie to all, Miss Sam. Take small sips, or ye’ll burn yer mouth. I hope our scenery was worth it.”

  “It is stunning out there. And I thought it was gorgeous even without the snow.”

  “Ye should see it here when we’ve a blanket of the stuff and nae just a wee dusting.”

  Samantha laughed. “That was quite a wee dusting.”

  “Och. Nae for the Highlands.”

  He offered to dish her up a bowl of soup, and she accepted with a grateful nod. “You are a kind man.”

  “Feeling any warmer?” Rick asked, still holding her close.

  “Starting to.” Her left side, pressed against him, felt definitely warmer than the right. Her fingers, wrapped around the warm mug, began to tingle as feeling thawed into them. “Did I interrupt the Japan thing?”

  “No,” Rick answered. “I think we’ve got it straightened out. We’re just waiting for a confirmation email.”

  “Did we win?”

  He shrugged. “We’re happier than they are, I imagine.”

  “That’s a win in my book.”

  “Yes. Which means weather permitting, Tom will be leaving in the morning.” Rick lifted an eyebrow, clearly inviting her to respond in kind.

  Dammit. She needed Stoney right now. Especially if what she’d just figured out was true. There was a big difference between a hidden treasure and a protected treasure. After some of the conversation she’d overheard earlier, the villagers were really concerned with keeping their stash secret. Considering that Rick was being all, “figure things out, if you please, but I won’t help you do it,” an actual ally like Stoney was pretty valuable.

  “Samantha?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know what it means. Stoney hitched a ride in. Are you going to make him hike out?”

  “He’ll fly out.”

  She frowned. “Technically Donner was here a full day before Stoney showed up.”

  “I came on business, you know,” the lawyer protested. “Not to earn you groupie points.”

  “Stoney is not a groupie. And here is here, whatever the reason. I want fair time.”

  Now Rick was frowning, too. “This is supposed to be our holiday. Anything else you may be up to is between you and me.”

  “And Reggie,” she added. “But we can talk about that later.”

  “Mm hm. Tom, refresh your email, if you please. I’d like to get back to Canniebrae.”

  From Rick’s tone he was annoyed, and while she got why, there were also a couple of things he didn’t know yet. “Me, too,” she seconded aloud, taking another sip of the near-scalding cocoa. “I’m deliriously imagining a nice, hot shower.”

  Donner hit a couple of keys on his laptop. “And…confirmed,” he said, then punched a fist into the air. “You got ‘em.”

  “We got ‘em,” Rick countered, his expression easing into a smile.

  Because he’d gone to the trouble of making it for her, Samantha downed half of Jamie’s really tasty chicken and potato soup. She hadn’t felt nearly as cold as she’d looked, but she knew how important it was to play the game well. Finally Donner gathered his things, and Rick helped her back into her damp coat.

  “You should wear mine,” he rumbled. “It’s dry.”

  She put a hand against his chest. “Thanks, tough guy, but I’m not that delicate.”

  Rick tilted her chin up with his fingers and kissed her mouth. “But you are that precious.”

  That warmed her up very nicely. “You’ve already got me, Brit,” she said, zipping up his coat before he could take it off and give it to her. “You don’t need to make me all swoony.”

  “As my youngest would say,” Donner commented, holding the door open for them, “’Ew. Get a room.’”

  That
was probably what Olivia would say, but then she’d just turned ten and hadn’t discovered boys yet. Olivia was a normal kid, as were Mike and Chris, Donner and Katie’s other two kids, and all of them still fascinated Samantha. By the time she’d turned Olivia’s age she’d acquired Rolexes, rings, bracelets, and necklaces right off of people while she smiled at them and asked for directions, or help finding a parent, or cab fare, or anything to get them distracted. “Ew, get a room” was normal kid vocabulary, and she’d never been a normal kid.

  Donner actually climbed into the Jeep’s back seat without her having to challenge him to an arm-wrestling contest for the shotgun position. Maybe the “Tom” thing had freaked him out more than he wanted to let on. But hey, the front seat was the front seat, even if the steering wheel was on the wrong side.

  “Okay, what’s going on?” Rick asked, glancing at her as he backed MacGyver out of its parking spot.

  “That depends on whether you want onner-Day to know about the reasure-tay and the ighwayman-hay,” she answered.

  “Jesus, what are you, twelve?” the attorney grumbled.

  “You implied this was a matter of safety,” Rick cut in, before she could give Donner a few more choice words in pig-Latin. “I’m afraid your safety trumps my sense of honor. Spill.”

  Well, now she was going to feel really crappy if she was wrong about this. “Yeah. Okay. I don’t have any proof, but here goes my theory. If you know I’m on the wrong track, say something.”

  “I—”

  “Not you,” she aimed at the back seat.

  Samantha shook out her hands. She liked figuring things out. She was good at it. Usually, though, the problem was how to get into somewhere unseen, grab a thing that wasn’t hers, and get out again. She might ask Stoney to round up some mirrors or a hand-held EMP device or something, but generally she kept her solutions to herself. Gabbing about them made things more dangerous for her. But she wasn’t a solo act any longer. She had to be a team player.

  “Okay,” she repeated. “Will Dawkin hid his stash somewhere in or under The Bonny Lass, because he was comfortable there. He knew the people, and he knew the area. More importantly, the villagers took in his mom when her dad threw her out for being pregnant. So, when he started getting too famous and too hunted he took what he needed and got out of Dodge before he could get the people he cared about in trouble.”

  No interruptions so far, but she hadn’t gotten to the tricky stuff. “When he left, he told his mom where he’d hidden the rest of his booty. I assume one of them drew a map. Then, because she felt grateful to the villagers and couldn’t risk her own safety by suddenly going from cook to rich lady, she told them where the cache was hidden. All of them.”

  “How much loot are we talking about?” Donner asked.

  “A lot. Will Dawkin really didn’t like the upper classes, and he had a long career as far as highwaymen go. Anyway, at first the villagers had to be really careful, because it was a tough time to be a Highlander. They used just enough to keep the village intact, the rents paid, and everybody fed and housed. After all, cash on the laird’s land belongs to the laird – or he could use the excuse of finding the stolen loot to have everybody arrested and use the village land for sheep like most of his neighbors were forced to do.”

  “But the statute of limitations expired a long time ago,” the lawyer countered.

  “And as long as nobody blabs, it’s still free money. No taxes, no keeping a portion while the rest goes to the government because it’s not just gold but antiquities. It’s been keeping the village going for over two hundred years, and they’ve been smart enough about it to slide into the Second Quaintest Village position instead of going all the way to the top.” She grimaced. “It probably scared the shit out of them when you found their stash,” she said, looking over at Rick. “But you were a kid with a sick mom, and so when you promised never to say a word about any of it, they trusted you.”

  “After they impressed upon me how important it was to keep their secret,” he said, the first time he’d interjected anything during her entire recital.

  She nodded. “They were taking a chance. You were the future laird, after all.”

  “We came to an agreement. I still think it took them years to relax again.” Rick blew out his breath. “I didn’t come back because of…because of my mum, but they wouldn’t know that. Who knows what they expected, and how long they’ve been waiting for disaster.”

  “You didn’t realize that.” Pulling off a glove, she ran her fingers along his cheek. “But now Reggie’s shouting to everyone that he wants to find the treasure. And Eerika wants a reality show where finding the loot would probably be her hook.”

  “He hasn’t gone down to the village since he got here.”

  Oh, boy. “I wasn’t the first one to come up with the walkie-talkie idea.”

  Rick slammed on the brakes, nearly sending them skidding off the road. “Someone in my house is feeding information to the village?” he snapped, the leather covering the steering wheel creaking as he clenched it through his gloves.

  “I only figured that out this morning when I heard Yule on a radio asking if anybody had stumbled across me. I think he was worried I’d gotten lost.”

  “Yule. My own bloody butler. He is so—”

  “Two hundred fifty years, Rick,” she interrupted. “It’s the reason they have nice shops, quaint houses and B and B’s, and a good school. They’ve used that money way more wisely than most people would. Nobody’s driving Aston-Martin’s but you.”

  He snapped his jaw closed again. “That was a little uncalled for.”

  “I know. Just making a point here.”

  Rick slammed his hand on the gear shift, then shoved it into reverse to back onto the road again. “I get it. I’ll ask you to stop digging, then.”

  “Done,” she returned promptly. “But I’m not the problem. They don’t know that I know stuff. Reggie and the blonde leading him around by the dick are the problem.”

  “Then I’ll close the house this afternoon.”

  “If Reggie’s serious about this, which he seems to be, he’ll be up here again as soon as your back’s turned, and you know it.”

  “I know it. I was hoping you’d come to a different conclusion.” The swearing Rick started after that was pretty impressive, even for him. She sat back and waited until he started forming regular words again. “I just finished dealing with another man whose greed outweighed his common sense,” he snapped. “It…irks me to have to buy off my own cousin for the same reason.”

  “Then talk to him. He’s not stupid. Do you really think he’d be willing to risk a relationship with you for some trinkets? I mean, why not just tell him that most of the money is probably gone?”

  “Eighteen years ago, the crates still looked pretty substantial,” Rick rumbled.

  “Reggie doesn’t need to know that.” She scowled. “I mean, come on. These people are just trying to make their lives a little easier. It’s not like they’re Wakanda, hiding the real, ultra-sophisticated village under an invisibility shield. They’re looking out for their families. I wouldn’t take this gig.”

  “Well, that would make me back off,” Donner commented.

  “I can’t pass that on to Reg though, can I?” Rick said, his tone still curt.

  His tone hurt a little. She knew he didn’t like her past, but now she couldn’t decide if he was ashamed of her, or if he disliked having to keep her secret from his family. Neither choice made her feel any better about any of it. “Gee, no. You’ll have to come up with another reason he shouldn’t pilfer your tenants’ nest egg. Pull over. I’m walking.”

  “Your coat’s wet.”

  “My cold, evil heart will protect me. And it’s only a quarter mile. Stop the jeep.”

  “We’re nearly back. Stomp off once we get up the hill.”

  Samantha opened the jeep’s door. With a curse, Rick slammed on MacGyver’s brakes. As soon as she stepped the rest of the way out, Saman
tha slammed the door shut again. The jeep paused for a second, then continued up the road toward the house.

  She let out her breath, fogging the air around her head. If Donner hadn’t been in the car, she had the feeling that wouldn’t have gone quite as smoothly. None of this – the highwayman treasure, Rick’s cousin, the villagers – had anything to do with her. All the same, her past seemed to be jumping into the middle of everything they did or said about any of it.

  Maybe because of who she’d been, who she mostly still was except for the stealing part, she didn’t think Reggie would convince very easily. Like Rick had said, any offer of money to dissuade Reggie would probably just convince him that his take from the loot would be worth more, and that Rick viewed him as nothing but a greedy road bump.

  Looking over the rise in the direction of the vanished jeep she crouched, pulling the map from her jacket pocket and balancing her elbows on her knees. The loot had been at The Bonny Lass. She was certain of that. Rick had found it there eighteen years ago – which also meant that was where the famous missing map had indicated the treasure lay.

  The villagers knew Rick still had the map, and even if they trusted their laird that meant two things outside their control pointed to the pub. If it had been up to her, she would definitely have moved the stash, and she would have done it the minute Rick and the Addisons had left the Highlands eighteen years ago. It still presented some problems, though.

  First of all, the loot needed to be safe, protected, and somewhere strangers wouldn’t just stumble across it. Second, it had to be someplace where everybody could gather to either count the gold or get their share of it or vote on the money’s use without the scores of tourists who visited the Highlands’ Second Quaintest Village during the summer would think something weird and cultish was going on. The villagers couldn’t do all their business with walkie-talkies, after all. Third, it probably needed a secondary way in or out in case of emergency, and because traditionally it had had all that.