by L. L. Muir
She looked over at the hitter. Yeah, it hadn’t been just Gabby who’d taught her what a cold-blooded man was like.
The guy frowned. "Well, perhaps the Scottish version is no' so bad as the American."
She snorted. "Bullshit. A killer is a killer, even if he wears a badge."
If she could have mustered up some saliva, she’d have spit at him. She really needed some water.
His eyes narrowed. He hadn’t liked being called a killer.
Well, too bad.
"I'd been warned ye’d be a difficult handful. I believe they might have underestimated ye, lassie. Ye’ve a hard heart, to be sure."
"Hah! What do you know about hearts?"
She was on a roll. At least she’d be going out in a blaze of pithy glory.
“Ach, now, yer teeth are showin'. Why don't ye tuck in your claws and we'll have a nice wee stroll back to Castle Ross. Were ye aware how you'd gone in circles? Or did ye mean to do it? Did ye think ye could hie home to your witch’s tomb and leave me back here, in the past? Ye forget, I'm a local lad. It's a bit easier for me to swallow what's happened to us than it has been for ye. And I speak Scots too, only without the American accent, o' course. Ye never had a chance. Those lads reported yer every footstep.
“I must admit, I'm a mite impressed by you scarin' off the wolf as ye did. But now that we've had a chance to get to know each other a bit, I'm no' surprised in the least. No doubt you could scare the whole pack away with but the venom in your sweet voice.”
She was tempted to let him have it with her stick.
“If I didna have a job to do,” he added, “I'd leave ye be, here in the woods. But I wouldna be so cruel to animals, aye?”
She ignored his joke, too busy asking herself, Why didn't she let him have it with her stick?
He might not have considered it a weapon because she’d been using it as a walking stick. Or maybe it looked a little too brittle to cause any harm. If he hadn't been the one to see her chase the wolf away, maybe he didn't know she'd done so with her glorified toothpick.
She started thinking like a physicist again. Okay, so she’d only had one class, but still. It had worked with the wolf.
Weak stick. Big man. Weak spots.
They’d left the other men behind. Either McKiller was too cocky to think he needed help with her, or he couldn’t find anything in his pockets that might bribe them. So she only had to get away from one little man.
Okay, one big man.
The morning sun was up, lighting their wide, well-worn road. In the distance, a ridge had been stripped of trees. Stumps left behind looked like stubble on a giant jaw. It had to be the ridge that ran up behind Castle Ross. She was almost there! But then again, so was Gabby's man. A footrace to the hole would only continue what they'd started. Once they were back outside, she'd be racing up the hill to her car. He’d beat her to it since his car was probably still parked at the castle, or behind it.
As much as she wanted to go back, it would be futile. She’d be handed over to Gabby for the ultimate betrayal. And that wasn’t going to happen.
She dragged her foot over a rock and tripped, then stopped to adjust her shoe. McKiller let go of her arm, but stood with his hands ready to grab her. She rolled her eyes and walked on, but as she did, she began to limp.
“Ye're hurt?" He looked at her sideways, suspicious.
"Rock in my boot," she said. Then she stopped in the middle of the road and pretended to remove said rock. While she pulled the boot back on, he looked behind them for the hundredth time. "Better be careful,” she teased. “Some FBI agent might have followed us through time. Might be hiding in the bushes."
He snorted. "And that would frighten me, why?"
Her skinny piece of wood might not have had much mass, so thumping him on the head would have done nothing but break the stick. But if she added a bit of momentum and velocity to it...
She spun in a circle, holding her innocent stick away from her body, then pulling it in a little just before it smacked the cocky Scot across the nose. He’d ducked right into it. The stick broke, of course, but before it did, it gave the big man’s nose one hell of a whack. She was pretty sure it wasn’t just the stick that broke.
He cried out and stumbled back. His eyes were pinched tight. His hand reached for his gun at his back. It was too late to try to push him to the ground and wrestle him for it. She just had to run and hope there were some trees between them by the time he could see straight.
“Get back here, Bell! Ye’re a lot safer with me than ye are out there!”
Safe? With a killer? Hah!
Deep and deeper into birch trees she flew, her feet barely touching the ground. When the grasses gave way to rocks, she had no choice but to slow. She struck out east, hoping to avoid those men that had supposedly been tracking her every move before. McKiller kept hollering at her, but it didn’t sound like he’d even left the road yet. The first time she’d dared look back, he’d still been holding his nose and groping the air with his free hand.
"Juliet! I'll not go back without ye. Do ye hear? And ye're going to stick out like a sore thumb. I'll know exactly where to find ye. And this time, I'm going to truss ye up like a pig and hang ye from a pole! Do ye hear?"
"Thanks for the pointers," she said softly as she ran. First thing on the wish list would be a change of clothes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After about an hour, Jules rested in a clearing full of tall grass and wildflowers. It was so tempting to lie down and sleep, but sleep wasn’t even close to the top of that list. Clothing had slipped to number three, after water and food. It was when she lifted her eyes from the tempting flower bed that she first saw the smoke. A nice, focused trail of it lifting into the sky.
"Civilization. Hallelujah." She headed straight for it.
Sounds of industry reached her ears just as she noticed her feet were following a path through the trees. A lovely little stream came next, where she bent down and drank her fill. Soon, both water and path led her to a thatched house with a water wheel on its side. The wheel had little scoops on it, just a bit deeper than a paddle, more shallow than a bucket—about the size of frying pans. It might not be used for harnessing any energy at the moment, but it was doing a fine job lifting water from the stream and dumping it into a trough at the roofline of the house.
Somebody was thinkin'.
She wondered if the woman who lived in the little house might be a laundress considering the long lines of clothes at the other end of the house. Either that, or a few dozen people lived there among the little cluster of buildings. The yard was still in deep morning shadows, thanks to the giant oak trees that surrounded the place, so Jules felt brave enough to scurry to the clothes on the line, to see if they were dry, hoping her dark coat and jeans wouldn’t draw any attention.
She was grasping the hem of a plaid wool skirt when she realized she was being watched.
Shit!
A woman stood at the corner of the house, shaking her head. She wore a solid blue dress with a plaid pinafore over the top and an apron on the front. Catching someone about to steal from her clothesline didn’t seem to alarm her, but she was suggesting, rather strongly, that Jules not do it.
Jules put her hands behind her back.
The woman motioned for the would-be thief to follow her.
Why on earth would Jules follow her? Was this one of those centuries where thieves had their hands cut off?
But then again, why on earth shouldn’t she? The woman looked harmless enough. And it wasn’t as if she or her hands might end up as the meat in someone’s giant pot of stew.
Jules shook off the Hansel and Gretel images and followed the woman around the corner of the house where she stood with a door open, pointing inside while she scanned the yard. The fairy-tale-gone-bad images came roaring back until the woman gave her a wink. Evil, child-eating witches didn’t wink, right?
The air inside was heavy with steam. Small fires burned around the room
, their smoke floating up into a funnel-like ceiling. That had to be the source of the smoke that had led Jules there. On top of the fires sat large copper cauldrons with clothing slopping around inside them. Long paddles sat propped on the edge. They looked like giant bowls of dark porridge with flat spoons at the ready.
A hand descended on her shoulder and Jules jumped. She still had that Hansel and Gretel scenario running through her head and if there were ever caldrons made to accommodate a human being, these were it. The woman was oblivious to the fact that Jules was freaking out. She just kept reaching for her until she finally got her fingers on the lightweight sweater Jules wore under her leather jacket. A pale blue t-shirt made up for the loose and see-through weave of the sweater, but the woman tisked and shook her head. She spoke, but Jules didn’t understand and asked her to repeat herself.
The woman did. She even spoke slowly, but it didn’t help at all. Whatever her dialect, Jules couldn’t understand it. She grimaced and shrugged, hoping the other woman would understand her dilemma. The latter smiled and nodded, then made a gesture that clearly meant Jules was supposed to take off her coat. The same gesture got her to take off the sweater, but the third time, the woman was looking at her jeans.
Jules shook her head.
The woman pointed at the wall behind her. Jules turned and saw a plaid pinafore hanging against the wall. Just a skirt, a square bib, and shoulder straps. It certainly looked like something the locals, in the local time zone, would wear. But before she dropped her drawers, she had to make sure the woman knew she couldn't pay for it. Jules didn't need to speak the language to know this chick couldn't take a Visa.
She hoped the gesture of turning out one's pockets was universal. Apparently it was. The woman waved an impatient hand and then picked up the sweater again. It so happened the gesture for 'trade' was also universal.
The laundress looked pretty pleased when Jules handed over her jeans, but it creeped her out just a little when the woman peeked over the folded denim to see what Jules was wearing underneath. Her blue lace-fringed panties made the woman laugh. Hard. Jules tried not to be offended and slipped the pinafore over her t-shirt.
The woman tisked again and gave her a simple yellow blouse to wear besides, and once Jillian was completely dressed, she realized she looked just like the laundress except for an apron and the pointed tips of her cowboy boots peeking out from under the ankle length skirt.
Sore thumb, eh?
The woman pushed her back outside, then took her over to another little house that shared the same yard. A square table took up most of the space in the center of a modest kitchen. No fridge. No sink. No dishwasher. No countertops. Just a stone fireplace, pots, and the table. Onions and turnips hung in baskets from the ceiling, along with things she couldn’t identify. And they still had a thick layer of dirt on them. Jules wondered if maybe that preserved them better, since the rest of the little room looked neat and tidy. She couldn’t imagine someone who liked things to be that clean would allow half a garden’s worth of dirt to come in with the crop.
She was pushed toward a chair, so she sat. If she was going to be used for stew meat, surely the woman would have conked her on the head before she had a chance to get dressed again.
She chuckled, but it was probably more from relief than from thinking anything was funny. Nine days. She still had nine days to stay alive and make it back to New York to testify. She’d already outrun McKiller, frightened off a wolf, slept in a tree without giving a thought to bears, and escaped McKiller again. And it hadn’t even been twenty four hours!
Now she had a disguise and was about to be fed, and both miracles due to the kindness of a stranger’s heart.
She re-evaluated the whole kindness part when she was served a bowl of mushy, tasteless...well, mush. She was pretty sure it would have the texture of throw up.
She couldn't do it.
As grateful as she was, she just couldn't sit there and pretend it was edible. Not for her anyway. Her gag reflex wasn't something she could control. If she forced herself to swallow it, it would come right back up. But how did she explain?
The woman poured her a tankard of milk, then another for herself. Then she sat down opposite Jules as if she hadn't noticed her dilemma.
"Um," Jules said. She looked down into her bowl for courage. “Um,” she tried again.
The woman laughed. Then she laughed harder. Then, when she could speak again, she said something incoherent and laughed again.
In Gaelic, as clearly as she could, Jules said, “I've never been able to eat this...stuff. And believe me, I do want to eat it. I just can't."
The woman shook her head. "Life is hardly fair, is it?” She’d changed her dialect to match the one Jules used. “Me sisters all could eat it fine, but it took pride to get me through. God forgive me, I'm a proud woman. Try this."
She sucked some milk into her mouth, then leaned her head back and dropped a spoonful of mush into the back of her throat. She swallowed it down without chewing.
"Sticks to yer ribs half the day. Ye'll see."
And so went their meal. Mush washed down with a swallow of milk and a lot of giggling. Jules had needed a second mug to get through it all. As their laughter died, the woman jumped to her feet in horror.
"Och, I'll be boilin' the colors clean out of their kilts. Their enemies willna recognize them." She hurried to the door, then looked back with a smile that reminded Jules of the Muirs.
A couple hours and some pulled muscles later, the laundry was hung. Jules' hands looked just like the hands of Debra, her mush instructor. They were red and raw and needed much more than just Corn Huskers Whatever-It-Is Lotion.
The woman might stir the clothes with large wooden paddles, but it seemed the only thing to wring the hot water from them, in those days, was a couple pair of hands. With one of them twisting each end of a length of plaid, Deb claimed her work went much quicker that day and together, they were able to sit on the edge of the stream and dangle their red arms in the cool water. Deb said it was a rare treat, that she was able to do it at night sometimes, but when she had to choose between dangling and sleep, sleep usually won.
Since the conversation had turned to Jules' next concern, she asked— and was given—a safe place to sleep and a promise she would be awakened for supper.
How simple it would be, Jules thought as she nestled down in Debra’s soft clean bed, to just stay there. Live a simple life. Pretend she was a nature freak and leave civilization behind. But then she needed to pee and that put an end to that idea. It was no use, really. She was a city girl. She would always be a city girl. She just needed to get back to the city.
Returning to the bed after a trip to the necessary, she blocked out all thought of what had brought her to this place and what would take her away. Instead, she concentrated on the sound of her own breathing, on the scent of heather coming from the purple bundles hanging and drying next to the wall. She didn’t remember falling asleep.
And maybe she hadn’t.
He was there again—the big Highlander, the spirit that had finally tipped the scales and made her do anything necessary to come to Scotland. She’d used the excuse of finally confronting her sister and getting her hands on her share of their grandmother’s fortune, but it was him she’d come to find. How sad, really, that he’d turned out to be her sister’s husband. Jules had stayed in the hills above their home for days after that little shocker. But now she realized it wasn’t because she was afraid to face her sister, but afraid to face reality. As long as she didn’t verify who he was, she could still fantasize about him, without being a sicko, right?
And now he was back.
And if this was truly a dream, she didn’t want to wake up.
It was dark. It was always dark. The air around them seemed thick with more than just her anticipation. They were already standing close—toes to toes—and yet, she could not get close enough. His head fell forward, his hair made it difficult to see his face. But she could hea
r him breathing and feel his arms as they came around her. So warm. So soft. So hard.
"Stay with me," he begged. His voice was edged with worry, ragged. Didn’t he know she’d stay?
In some dreams, he’d say it simply, like an invitation to lunch. This time it was different. He was feeling as desperate as she was.
"I will. I’ll stay,” she whispered. “I promise."
How could she comfort him? It was driving her crazy.
"My own lass. Stay with me, just until the end,” he said, then whispered, “then ye may go." He’d said it so softly she wondered if he hadn’t meant for her to hear, didn’t want her to worry too.
"I’m not going anywhere. And I won’t let go. I swear.” She was almost too afraid to ask, but she did. “'Til the end of what?"
His hands gave a little squeeze. It was so real, she was sure she felt it, that he was really there with her, and she refused to open her eyes, to prove he wasn’t.
"Just ‘till the end, lass. You'll know when it's over."
Sometimes the dream ended there, but she wouldn’t let it. This time, it was important that she figure it out. And she needed to hurry.
"I'm not who you think I am," he said, when she was the one who should be saying those words.
"Neither am I,” she confessed, half hoping he hadn’t heard her. Of course he thought she was Jillian. If he knew she was only Jules, he wouldn't be holding her like this, wouldn't be cherishing her like this. It was going to kill her to tell him she'd been Jules all along, through all the months they’d been meeting like this, in her dreams.
He pulled her nearer and bent his head to kiss her. She could feel his hair brush her cheeks, felt his lips press ever so slightly against hers. She willed him to kiss her harder, give her a solid memory to hold onto in the light of day, but there was something between them, always between them. It was so frustrating. She wanted to get closer, to feel his hard chest against her cheek, to know, just for a minute, that she was safe. To pretend she was loved.
Whatever it was separating them was cold. Ice cold. Like bars. Like...a knife.
