Timeless

by Teresa Reasor

  Site foreman Fergus Fraser’s voice came over the unit. “There have been several lightning strikes on the site, Quinn. We need a quick look at the cofferdam to make sure ‘tis still sound. And the pumps are down. Could you check them and see what the problem is?”

  The comment he had made to Regan had come back to bite him. He pushed the button down. “All of them?”

  “Aye, all of them. It must have been an interesting storm this morning.”

  “Aye, it was.” He paused. “I’ll be sending Rob and Logan to check the dam while I see to the pumps. One of your archeology students decided to dive to the stones yesterday and had a wee spot of trouble. I had to retrieve her and it hasn’t been twenty-four hours since my dive.”

  “Which one?”

  “Regan Stanhope.”

  “Is she all right?” Quinn heard tension in Fraser’s tone.

  “Aye. She’s fine. Just a bit tired and sore from the way she’s moving this morning.”

  “Perhaps that will be lesson enough, eh?”

  Quinn gave a wry grimace. He doubted it. “We can hope.”

  “I don’t know how wise it was to bring these students here. They’re the cream of the crop and thus extremely competitive. I suppose we may have more than this one incident before the whole thing is over,” Fraser commented.

  “I’ve told her that all dives are approved through me. If they have to slip around to take a dip, maybe ‘twill act as a deterrent,” Quinn said.

  “If you truly believed that, there’d be more conviction in your tone.” Fraser attempted a bit of levity. “Make it ASAP, Quinn. We’ve got a couple of geese trapped in the mud here as well. We’ll attempt to rescue them before we have any local officials breathing down our neck charging us with animal cruelty or defiling the environment.”

  From the stress in the foreman’s tone, Quinn could tell the problems were mounting. “You can hurry things along by calling Logan and the others at the bungalows. They stayed ashore last night. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Aye, I’ll do it,” Fraser said and signed off.

  Thirty minutes later, Quinn and Rob checked the harnesses and regulators of the eight sets of double tanks.

  “No problems here,” Rob said and wandered over to stand with Regan and Henry as they leaned back against the starboard railing side-by-side. Even dressed in her dry suit, the lass looked fragile between the two tall men. Once again, Quinn experienced a protective urge. He had gotten up several times in the night to check on her, each time contending with a deep sense of anxiety and curiosity. He didn’t believe in second sight or premonitions, but the thought of her diving again had worry clenching like a fist beneath his ribs. It was none of his business, but he couldn’t seem to shake it.

  Rob rubbed his beard-stubbled jaw as he listened to something Regan was saying. He laughed and made a reply pointing at the picture of the rock band on the front of his t-shirt. He pulled the upper part of his dry suit up and slid his arms into the sleeves.

  Quinn had never known his brother to be conversational in the mornings. In fact, he had a reputation for being taciturn as hell when first awakened. He seemed content enough to spend time with Regan, though. Irritation worked tension up between Quinn’s shoulder blades. Rob should be doing the pre-dive check of his equipment, not jawing. He approached the three of them.

  “’Twould do no harm to check the rest of your equipment before Logan gets here,” Quinn suggested.

  “Aye, I’ll do it,” Rob said. He glanced downstream as the sound of boat motors cut across the loch.

  Two silver and red skiffs curved parallel to the shoreline. One boat broke off and headed for the dock, the other turned toward Grannos.

  His brother, Logan, flashed them a smile as he cut back power on the motor and guided the boat up against the side of the ship. “You missed out on a boss card game last night, Quinn. I won a start on that motorbike I fancy.”

  Rob caught the line Logan tossed him and tied off the smaller vessel.

  “You’ve lost enough to buy two motorbikes since we’ve been here. ‘Twould seem smarter to put your money in the bank and save it.” Quinn lifted up and swung open a section of the bulkhead and fitted a lightweight aluminum ladder into the slots in the deck.

  “But it wouldn’t be near as much fun,” Logan said.

  Henry, Regan, and Rob brought him the tanks to load. Logan’s attention homed in on Regan and he offered her a smile.

  Quinn quashed the twinge of irritation he felt at the look of interest on his brother’s face. His tone brusque, he introduced Logan to first Regan, then Henry. With the five of them working together, the boat was loaded quickly.

  Quinn turned to find Regan gathering her gear and the empty tanks. “Leave the tanks and I’ll refill them.”

  Ink black brows drew together in a frown over her pale blue eyes. Her heart-shaped face had an exotic look enhanced by high cheekbones and wing like brows. The generous curve of her bottom lip thinned as her expression grew stubborn.

  There was no sense in beating about the brambles. “You can’t use empty tanks, and there’s nowhere else to get them filled within a hundred miles.”

  “I suppose you’ve reported my dive to someone.”

  “Aye, I have.”

  Her jaw tightened. “You know as well as I do that narcosis can happen to anyone, even you. Should you use this as an excuse to keep me from doing what I came here to do, there’s going to be trouble.”

  Quinn raised one thick dark brow and studied the set line of her jaw. Aye, he’d had experience with her kind before. Putting their career before anything else. Resentment flashed through him with the intensity of a welding torch. “You dive without my permission, and I’ll drive you to Inverness m’self and put you on the plane for home.”

  “If you try to penalize me for this accident, I’ll go around, over, or through you.” Regan took a step toward him and shoved the air tanks at him so he had no choice but to grasp them. “I won’t stand by while you screw up this opportunity for me.”

  Anger sent a surge of heat into Quinn’s face. He’d managed to find another one. Another driven woman. She’d slice and dice her way to the top just as—She just didn’t get it. “Should you do anything as sodding irresponsible as dive to the stones again, ’twill be your own stupidity to blame, not me.”

  Rob stepped between them. “Now you both know where the other stands, you can argue about this later. We have a job to do.”

  Quinn bit back the urge to tell his brother to sod off and struggled to rein in his anger. She’d almost died yesterday, and she was still ready to go right back over the side. And for what? Her career. “There’ll not be any more arguing about the matter. ‘Tis settled.”

  Henry dropped his tanks onto the deck, drawing Quinn’s attention. The lanky student threw up one hand in a signal of surrender, the other holding his weight belt, buoyancy vest, flippers, and facemask. “Whatever you say, man. I’ll drive the boat Regan and I used yesterday to shore.” Giving Quinn a wide berth, he went out on the diving platform to draw the tethered aluminum boat close enough to climb in.

  Rob flashed his brother a questioning frown and Quinn shook his head. Hell, he didn’t know what was going on. Every time he looked at the lass, he felt twisted up inside. He wanted to shake her, kiss her, shout at her, shag her—and everything in between. Why was he experiencing this overwhelming sense of familiarity mixed up with the anger she was so quick to trigger? And how the hell had he dreamed about her and never once set eyes on her?

  For the first time in his life, he felt out of control, off balance, and he damn sure didn’t like it. Somehow she had gotten closer than he liked, and they hadn’t even had a complete conversation. It would be a relief to drop her ashore and be about his business.

  As they neared the dock, Fergus Fraser wove through the small group of divers waiting for them. His thin face, with its wide generous mouth and aquiline nose, wore an expression of worry. He shoved his glasse
s up against the bridge of his nose in a nervous gesture. “The generator that runs the flood lights has been hit as well,” he said by way of greeting, as two of the divers tied off the boat. “Every piece of petrol driven machinery save the truck has been struck.”

  Shocked, Quinn stared at him. “All of them?”

  “Aye, all of them.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Regan padded up the path, the boots of her dry suit providing only a thin barrier against the gravel beneath her feet. She stepped off the walkway onto the grass. Glancing down at the site, she paused as Quinn and Fergus Fraser climbed the ladder to the top of the cofferdam. The watertight structure, constructed of two parallel walls of blue steel piles hammered into the ground and filled with concrete, dirt, and sand, towered over the site.

  Quinn had told her he didn’t want to check the structure, but there he was atop it. Anxiety knotted her stomach as the two men walked across the bed of sand that insulated the dam.

  “Have you ever thought about taking a course in winning friends and influencing people, Regan?” Henry asked from beside her.

  “No.” She didn’t need him giving her a hard time about her argument with Quinn. She looked up to find Henry’s eyes narrowed and his lips turned down in a pout. His permanent case of bed-hair made it difficult for her to take anything he said seriously, but something in his expression made her defensive. “I didn’t mess up, Henry.”

  “I believe you. But if you’re not careful, you could screw things up for the rest of us. Sometimes that hard-assed, take no prisoners drive you’ve got can be more a hindrance than a help. If you make too many waves, we may all find ourselves on a plane bound for home.”

  She couldn’t allow that to happen. Not after all her parents had sacrificed to see she got this opportunity. And she certainly didn’t want to ruin anything for the other students. Regan nodded. “I’ll try and tone it down and stay under Quinn Douglas’ radar from now on, all right?”

  “Yeah.” His tone conveyed disbelief.

  A high-pitched whistle sounded. Stephen Berthold, another student, waved to them from in front of the canteen halfway across the compound, his pale blond hair distinctive even from such a distance.

  Henry waved back and cupping his hands around his mouth, shouted, “We’ll be there in a minute.” He motioned for Regan to follow him. “I hope our clothes are still where we left them.”

  They exited a chain link fence that sealed the site from the public and continued up the hill. Avoiding the gravel walk, Regan picked her way across the grass to the back of the Field Director’s office to a storage garage. One of the nine by five foot metal doors stood open. Tools used for both construction and digging were stacked along the walls, hung on pegs, or stored on a long counter at the back of the shed. Drums of oil and gas to feed the generators and pumps, as well as other motor driven machines on site, lined one wall and gave off a distinctive odor. Regan dragged their backpacks and tennis shoes from behind one of the drums and tossed Henry’s size fourteens and his pack to him.

  “You know they really should lock this place up at night. If someone had a truck they could make a good haul,” Regan observed.

  “I don’t think petty crime is much of a problem in so isolated a place. Aside from the campers, I’d be surprised if the total population of the area around Loch Maree was more than a few thousand.” Henry reached deep into his backpack and withdrew a quarter. “I’ll flip you to see who gets to dress first.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll stand outside and guard the door.”

  As she waited for him, Regan noticed she could get a complete view of the site from this location. She scanned the area for Quinn again. He and Fraser still stood on top of the cofferdam, digging in the sand with something. Her breathing hitched. Playing in the sand while the darn thing could possibly crumble from beneath them wasn’t a good idea. They continued on to another spot then stopped again to dig. By the time they had reached the opposite side of the structure and climbed down, her muscles ached with tension. She shook her arms to relieve the cramp and drew a deep breath as she watched the two men walking toward one of the pumps.

  Quinn had some nerve saying she was irresponsible and took unnecessary risks. Why was she getting so upset with him? Concerned for him—She barely knew the man. And he had certainly done nothing to endear himself to her.

  Shaking her head, she shifted her attention to the site. It appeared to her that at one time there might have been a natural barrier of some kind, a hill or rise, which separated the monolithic circle from the loch, as the dam did now.

  The steep slope on which she stood curved down to the shore on either side of the site like the sides of a bowl. The twelve-foot tall chain link fence followed the edge of the narrow main road. Across from it, where the steep slope of the mountain flowed upward, flat tiers had been carved into the hillside to accommodate wood framed buildings that housed offices, labs, storage facilities, and a canteen. Gravel paths undulated over the rolling terrain linking all the structures.

  Familiarity with the tree-covered mountains of Kentucky hadn’t prepared her for the barren, steeply sloped crags of Loch Maree. The size and breadth of mountains was breathtaking. They sprawled against each other like sleeping behemoths just waiting to rise and shake themselves awake.

  She turned back to the loch. Below, scattered groups of people clustered around the pumps. A long section of scaffolding suspended over the mud led out to the stones. Two people stood on the wooden platforms studying something on the face of one monolith.

  Henry appeared at the door dressed in jeans and a tee shirt.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that Nicodemus is willing to part with so much money just to recover these particular stones? I’ve never seen a dig funded as extravagantly as this one. It’s a far cry from tent cities, water tanks, and porta potties.”

  “I hear you.”

  “There are already similar stone circles all over the British Isles.”

  He shrugged. “If you have more money than God, you need a hell of a tax write-off. I imagine all this is being paid for through some kind of grant he funds.”

  “I read somewhere he offered money to start this dig ten years ago and Historic Scotland turned him down. Wonder what happened?”

  “Maybe they weren’t hard up enough for funding and thought they could study the site themselves without his contribution.”

  “Sandra Shumaker, one of the artifacts analysts, took me around yesterday morning before our dive. The analysis and restoration labs are a dream.” Regan untied the sleeves of her dry suit from around her waist. “Sandra said all the buildings are going to be used by Historic Scotland as park facilities when the dig is complete and the stones are opened to the public.”

  “So there you go. A donation of this size to the Scottish government is bound to influence someone. You’re the one who’s always saying that everything is about money, sex, or politics. If you follow the money trail you’re bound to find the end of it.” He frowned down at her. “You’re not planning to stick your nose into that too, are you?”

  She smiled. “Are you saying I’m nosy, Henry?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed. “It isn’t hard to figure out. Nicodemus builds ships. It’s one of his biggest industries. Those ships run on oil and Scotland has a supply.”

  “Sounds as though you’ve done some research.”

  “A little.” A woman had to be cautious traveling to a strange country in the company of strange men to work for an even stranger, more powerful man. “Weren’t you curious about whom we’d be working for when we won this appointment?”

  “Some. But not enough to look too closely. I needed the job too much.”

  “I did too.” Regan slipped inside the garage. She stripped off her dry suit and thermal underwear. Feeling exposed, despite Henry standing guard at the door, or maybe because of it, she hurriedly dressed in jeans, a sweater, and tennis shoes. Folding her dry suit, she shoved
it into her pack with her underwear and stuffed the glutted bag, with her weight belt, buoyancy vest, and flippers, back behind the drum. Scuba diving equipment was expensive and, low crime rate or not, she wasn’t taking any chances with hers.

  As they walked from behind the Field Director’s office to the path, she remembered another snippet of information about Sebastian Nicodemus she had gleaned from the net. “He’s a collector,” she said continuing the conversation they had begun earlier.

  “Nicodemus?”

  “Yes. The last dig he funded was in Nigeria. The Nigerian government gifted him with some kind of artifact as payment.

  Henry glanced down at the stones. “He’ll pay hell getting one of those in his wall safe.”

  *****

  Quinn taped the schematic of the cofferdam up on a free standing white board so all the men could see it. Fergus’ office was little more than a twelve by ten section of the larger structure that housed the surveying team. The group of ten men and one woman was crammed into the small space.

  He marked the four areas where lightning had struck and the stability of the dam might have been compromised. “Check these four areas in particular. Follow the plan and if there seems to be any damage, send up a marker buoy to designate the area and get the hell out of there. This thing is put together like a tongue and groove floor. If one section is weakened, it may remain stable because of the rock, sand, and gravel filling the inner core, as long as the water seeping in can be pumped out. Or it could come apart like the teeth in a zipper and empty into the loch.”

  “That sounds like bloody fun,” Struthers MacIntyre, one of the divers commented. He murmured an apology to Adeline Fraser, the Foreman’s wife, standing next to him.

  She shook her strawberry blond head and threw up a hand in a dismissive gesture. “During the construction of the dam the engineers put in metal supports to stabilize the structure, then filled the entire bottom of the dam with concrete to prevent leakage. The chances of it coming apart are very slim. It was constructed with the steel pilings so it could actually be used as a permanent structure. The interior of the core will eventually be filled with concrete and the sides reinforced by earth. It does have exterior supports set at intervals as well. It would take a direct blow to damage it, or an unusual occurrence.”