The Highlander Next Door

by Janet Chapman

  “And Niall,” Nicholas said when he started to turn the horse away. “Once you get her, keep riding. We’ll clean up what’s left of this mess.”

  Niall dropped his head on a heavy breath. “I’m fairly certain Hazel’s—”

  “Alive and well and crowing like a proud hen,” Nicholas said.

  Niall snapped his head up in surprise.

  “According to Micah, she has a few dislocated knuckles and he believes one of her toes is broken,” the warrior drawled, “from punching and kicking her guard when Waters and St. Germaine burst into a room at the sawmill from opposite directions, apparently both so determined to be the hero that Hazel ended up rescuing herself.”

  Even though he wanted to crow like a rooster, Niall simply gave a nod, looked down at his cell phone, and turned the horse toward where the pulsing dot said Birch was. He waited until he was out of sight before running a hand over his sweating face, then finally let go a long, deep, shuddering sigh.

  But his relief was short-lived when a few minutes later he caught movement out of the corner of his left eye and immediately reined to a stop. He slowly drew his gun, at the same time turning the equally alert warhorse to conceal their profile behind a large tree, then stole a quick glance at his phone.

  Seeing Birch was now only about a hundred yards away and still hadn’t moved, Niall turned his attention back to the woods; his patience rewarded not two minutes later when Edward Leopold emerged from behind a dense growth of bushes, his attention focused on the ground as he slowly followed Birch’s foot tracks.

  Niall figured he had two choices; he could end this here and now by shooting the bastard—which from an ancient perspective was the smart thing to do—or he could be a twenty-first-century lawman and arrest the bastard.

  With more regret than he cared to admit, Niall started to dismount, only to freeze when he glanced down at his phone and saw that not only had the blue dot moved—it was racing straight toward them.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Birch didn’t know which emotion was in charge of her right now—heart-numbing sorrow or mind-numbing dread—only that she needed arms of amazing muscle holding her so she could finally have a good cry. And she was done listening to stupid trees that kept telling her what to do, because if she’d stayed curled up in a ball of sweat in those boulders any longer, she would have gone insane from not freaking knowing.

  The shooting had stopped two full minutes ago and she’d heard the helicopter land in the clearing and its engine shut off, and she really, really needed to know that none of those hundred flying bullets had hit Niall.

  If things go to hell in a handbasket, promise me you’ll run as fast and as far as ye can until ye collapse, and I’ll come find you when it’s over, Niall had told her three times before she’d left the house. Yeah, well, he couldn’t come find her if he was dead, now could he?

  Dead just like her mom was. Maybe. Probably.

  No, she was going with maybe, because maybe those four men galloping up the railroad bed had reached the sawmill in time to save her. Or her dad and Sam had rescued her. Or maybe Hazel had escaped all on her own, since she’d been getting really good at being really sneaky.

  Birch stumbled to a halt when a giant galloping horse suddenly crested a knoll on the small tote road she was crossing, and felt her jaw drop when she realized it was carrying Niall, then tried to scramble out of the way when she also realized he wasn’t slowing down. She didn’t even have time to scream before she was swept off her feet, plopped sideways across his lap and plastered up against the two holsters strapped to his chest, and squeezed so tight she could barely breathe.

  Birch wrapped her arms around him and squeezed back, so freaking glad none of the bullets had hit him that she was in danger of bursting into tears. In fact, a tiny sob did escape but turned into a scream when five sharp gunshots suddenly split the air in rapid succession. She screamed again when Niall jerked—twice!—and the full weight of his body fell against her, his groan coming out in a whoosh as they slowly slid off the galloping horse.

  There was a bit of a wrestling match on the way down, but neither of them managed to break the other’s fall and they hit the ground together—making the air whoosh out of Birch as well. Niall immediately started trying to push her to her feet while rasping at her to run, but when she realized he couldn’t follow because he couldn’t breathe, she slapped his hands away and hauled one of his pistols out of its holster. She checked to make sure the safety was on and set the gun pointed up the road on his stomach, then gave him a quick inspection.

  “Oh, thank God you’re wearing a bulletproof vest,” she softly cried when she popped a button on his shirt and saw Kevlar. “You’re not dying, Niall,” she went on as she looked for the source of the blood soaking his entire right shirtsleeve. “It only feels that way because the force of the bullet knocked the wind out of you. You’ll be able to breathe enough to move in a few minutes, but you’re going to have one hell of a bruise for the next week.”

  “Put . . . gun . . . my . . . left hand,” he choked out as his chest rose and fell and twitched with each obviously painful word.

  Birch pulled the gun out of the second holster and placed it in his left hand while continuing to keep an eye on the road. “Is it The Bastard or Trevor or both?” she asked as she quickly glanced around taking stock of their situation. “How many?”

  “Jus . . . bas . . . tard.”

  “I need to get you farther off the road.”

  “Run,” he groaned more than growled.

  “Not going to happen, big man,” she muttered, walking sideways on her knees to get a better look at his arm. But she couldn’t see anything for the blood and tried but couldn’t rip the material.

  “Knife . . . belt.”

  Birch looked down to see a multi-tool on his belt, opened the pouch and took it out by feel as she watched up the road again, then stilled to listen. Niall realized what she was doing and stopped fighting for the breath he desperately needed, and Birch slowly picked up the gun off his stomach, only to have the hand on his wounded right arm grab hers.

  “Could . . . be . . . Nicholas,” he mouthed more than whispered. “Heard . . . shots.”

  “I won’t shoot him,” she whispered back just before pulling away. She rose into a half-kneeling position and aimed the gun at the edge of the road halfway up the knoll.

  “Get in . . . woods.”

  “You roll toward them and I’ll cover you,” she said, sliding off the safety with her thumb and firing five shots in two-second intervals, each one hitting a large pine at head-height and sending chunks of bark and wood in all directions.

  It took two shots for Niall to realize she was serious, and all of the last three to make it as far as the shallow ditch. She knee-walked over to him. “Maybe now that he thinks you’re still alive and kicking he’ll just give up and go.”

  “G-go where?” Niall rasped. “No . . . truck.”

  Birch snorted, keeping her eyes trained up the road. “If I found myself all alone having to face down the men in Spellbound Falls, I’d freaking walk to Canada.”

  “Or you could ride there holding a gun to a hostage’s head,” a familiar, ugly voice said, making Birch look up to see The Bastard standing next to a tree fifty feet away with his gun pointed at Niall’s head. “Toss the gun into the trees across the road, Miss Callahan. And now his,” he added the moment she threw hers across the road.

  She leaned over Niall, but just as she was reaching for the gun she glanced up toward the knoll behind Leopold and widened her eyes in surprise before quickly looking away, which made the idiot immediately jerk around in a crouch to see what she’d spotted. But before Birch could snatch the gun out of Niall’s hand, he sat up and shoved her behind him in a single lightning-fast motion, and lifted his arm. Leopold was just spinning back around to them when a tiny hole suddenly appeared on hi
s forehead half a second before the crack of a high-powered rifle shattered the air.

  He stood motionless, his beady dark eyes wide open and his expression blank, but instead of crumbling to the ground, The Bastard slowly tipped forward like a tree uprooted by a strong wind.

  Niall twisted to look past Birch as she also twisted to look behind them to see a man standing in the middle of the road on the crest of a hill at least a quarter mile away—too far to make out his features. All Birch could see was that his feet were planted in a wide stance and the rifle he was holding at his side had an oversized scope. He appeared to nod—she was pretty sure at Niall—then turned and simply walked away.

  “Um . . . he’s not one of your guys, is he?” Birch whispered as the man’s easy, languid gait made him slowly disappear down the other side of the hill.

  “Nay.”

  “Wh-who do you think he is?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She looked at Niall. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone?”

  “Aye,” he said with a slight nod, sliding his eyes from the hill to her.

  “A . . . another tree talked to me today. When I stopped running away and started running back to the clearing, I tripped and fell,” she softly rushed on. “But before I could get up, a male voice that seemed to come out of nowhere told me I was going the wrong way. And then it said to follow a . . .” She dropped her gaze to one of the holsters on Niall’s chest. “A bird,” she whispered. She looked up. “A Canada jay. The voice said it would lead me to a good hiding place.”

  “And did ye follow the jay?” he quietly asked.

  She nodded. “It led me to the bottom of a short cliff not too far away, where huge boulders had created bunches of caves and crannies. The bird landed on a . . . an oak tree branch hanging out over one of the crannies that looked just large enough for me to hide in.”

  She briefly glanced toward Leopold’s lifeless body, then looked at Niall’s chest again and took a deep breath. “I crawled inside and stayed scrunched up in a ball listening to the helicopter and gunfire, but when I started to crawl out after the shooting stopped and the helicopter landed, the same voice—it was coming from the tree this time—told me to stay put, and that you would be able to find me by the transmitter.”

  “Okay, then,” Niall said softly. “If ye took a tree’s advice to stay in your car that day at the river, can I ask why you didn’t take this tree’s advice to stay put today?”

  “Because trees don’t talk,” she growled, scrambling to her knees to look him level in the eyes. “And even if they could, what makes them think they know what’s best for a person more than the person does? I wasn’t going to stay put because some stupid tree told me to when there was a chance my mother was still alive and we could reach her in time. And I sure as heck wasn’t going to sit there thinking you could have been hit by any one of a hundred flying bullets and were bleeding to death.”

  “Ye mean like I am now?”

  “Oh. Oh, merde!”

  Niall captured her hand reaching for his bloody arm and held it against the side of his face. “Your mom’s fine, Birch.” He grinned. “Or as Micah told Nicholas, ‘She was alive and well and crowing like a proud hen for saving herself.’” His grin lessened but didn’t go completely away. “She’s got a couple of dislocated knuckles and a broken toe, apparently from punching and kicking the man guarding her up at the abandoned sawmill.” He sobered, slid her hand to his lips, and kissed her palm. “I’m sorry, sweetheart; there was no sign of Mimi. But we’re intending to round up as many Leopolds as we can before they leave town, and we’ll send word to Border Patrol to watch for a woman crossing with a small white poodle. We’ll find your pet.”

  “Oh, Niall,” she said on a stifled sob as she leaned over and picked up the multi-tool, then reached up to his bloody sleeve, “I’m so sorry for putting everyone through all this and getting you shot. I was so sure moving to the middle of nowhere would stop the craziness and instead we brought it with us.”

  “I prefer to see it as the craziness brought you to me,” he said gruffly as she cut away his sleeve, “because I’d resigned myself years ago to the fact I’d never know what being in love felt like.”

  Birch stilled with the knife halfway down the sleeve, and looked over to see him grinning at her. Merde, how much blood had he lost? “I . . . ah . . . I . . .”

  He touched a finger to her lips. “I’ll settle for ye admitting I’m your boyfriend,” he whispered, only to wink as he added, “for now.”

  He had to be light-headed or drunk or something from blood loss, because he really couldn’t have just said he loved her . . . could he?

  His grin broadened. “See, we’re already rubbing off on each other like an old married couple.”

  “H-how?”

  “You’ve started going all slow and quiet just like I do when ye feel something important is happening.”

  “You said it was when something was urgent.”

  “And I’ve been finding myself cursing in French as much as in Gaelic now.”

  Birch went back to cutting his sleeve, but stopped again when Niall suddenly perked up, and she also looked up the tote road in the direction the mystery man had been standing to see four men on horses cresting the hill at a lope, followed by her beautiful bright red SUV, followed by the Leopold’s four-door pickup.

  • • •

  Within ten minutes of taking charge, Nicholas had some man named Rowan bandaging Niall’s arm, Duncan collecting guns, Dante and a man named Micah covering The Bastard’s body with fir boughs to keep away the varmints and vultures until the state police arrived, and Sam keeping an eye on the horses—one of them being the horse she and Niall had fallen off of, which Niall’s men must have found wandering the road.

  And while Sam loosened the horses’ belts or whatever they were called, he gave Birch a blow-by-blow account of his version of what had happened at the sawmill. She’d have to wait to hear her dad’s version, though, because Claude had won the coin toss and was driving Hazel to see Dr. Bentley about her swollen knuckles and toe. His harrowing tale told, Sam then asked for his transmitter back.

  “I’ll bring it to the Trading Post tomorrow, okay?” Birch said, giving herself the job of carefully folding Niall’s two shoulder holsters inside his Kevlar vest.

  “Why can’t you just give it to me now?” Sam asked, which for some reason made all the men stop doing their jobs and look at her.

  Merde, what was she supposed to tell them?

  “That’s right,” Niall piped up, saving her from having to answer, only to dig her embarrassing hole deeper. “I meant to ask where ye hid it.”

  “Has anyone seen Shep?” she asked, glancing around at all the still-staring men. “How long would it take a dog to run . . . what, maybe nine or ten miles?”

  Niall reached out and caught her hand picking at the thread on his Kevlar vest, then slowly pulled Birch toward him and tucked her under his good arm so she was leaning against the tree with him. He then moved his gaze—a glaring gaze, actually—to all the men, and they all suddenly went back to work.

  “Tell me where it is, lass,” he said softly, his face only inches from hers.

  Birch began picking at a loose button on his shirt. “You said to make sure I hid it where no one could see it,” she whispered, “and . . . and so I . . .”

  He sighed hard enough to move her hair. “And so ye what?”

  She wiggled free to kneel beside him, clasped his head, and leaned in to press her mouth up to his ear. “Let’s just go with my realizing the transmitter was the size of . . . of a tampon, okay? And since it was your repeated warnings to hide it someplace secure that made me get creative, let’s have you tell Sam he’ll get it back tomorrow.”

  But hey, at least she’d wrapped it in plastic wrap first.

  Niall looked
up at Sam. “The tape came loose because she was sweating, and she thinks it fell in a brook she was crossing. Check and see if they haven’t come out with an improved model, and I’ll replace your old one.”

  “But it’s still pinging,” Sam said, holding up his cell phone for Niall to see. “And it says it’s right here,” he added, gesturing at the group of them.

  Niall shot him a tight grin. “Then I guess it is waterproof. Didn’t ye tell me that its error of accuracy could be off several yards in any direction, and that sometimes mountains,” he added, waving to the one behind Sam, “can throw it off even more?”

  “But that transmitter used WAAS technology, which is the newest and best.”

  Birch saw Niall drop his head on a sigh for several seconds, then finally look over at her. “You said ye needed to . . . use Mother Nature’s powder room, so now would be the time, lass, before we leave.” He pulled her close and kissed her cheek. “Take it out and turn it off and bury it,” he whispered in her ear, continuing to hold her when she tried to nod and pull away. “And if ye can’t find an off switch, smash the damn thing on a rock. Just make it stop transmitting,” he added, his whisper somewhat strangled as though he was holding in a laugh as he kissed her cheek again and released her.

  Birch jumped to her feet and ran past the vehicles, only to skid to a stop beside the black pickup when she spotted the three men tied up and gagged in the cargo bed—two of whom appeared to be napping and the third glaring out of his one unswollen eye at her. “Bet you wish you’d signed up to go whale watching today instead, don’t you?” she told him in French, just before bolting up the road again. Birch made it halfway up the hill before she turned into the woods, dropped to her knees while hugging her belly, and burst into simultaneous sobs and laughter.

  Epilogue

  Niall sat at his desk trying to ignore the pinching and burning stitches in his shoulder muscle as he filled out yet another form documenting the events leading up to yesterday’s . . . event. But it wasn’t until he noticed the sun had set that he realized why he was having a hard time seeing what he was writing. He leaned back in his chair and started to stretch his arms over his head, only to remember too late he couldn’t even lift his right hand high enough to scratch his nose.