Three Degrees of Death

by Allen Kent

  After tossing for half the night playing through every possible conversation I thought Grace might be anxious to have and finding little to encourage a sound sleep, I finally crashed in the early morning hours and woke up groggy and irritable at 7:00. Not the best way to start a day that would require a clear head.

  I downed a bowl of oatmeal in the breakfast area, then did what I always do when I know I’d better spend time thinking before I find myself in a spot where I have to act without much time for thought. I walked.

  Back home, I have a favorite path along the creek that rarely has anyone on it. The path surrounds me with just enough nature to be calming without being distracting. But that was there, and this is here.

  The girl at the desk who had steered me to the kilt shops suggested McDonald Park, five minutes away. She led me into the back parking area of the hotel and pointed through a gate onto Lachardil Road.

  “Turn left,” she instructed, “and keep an eye to your right. In just a bit, you will see a walk-through to the park.”

  The quiet street had some of the same calming effect as my path through the woods: neat white- and gray-stone bungalows behind low brick walls, surrounded by mossy-green lawns and blooming rose gardens. The cut-through took me into an open park with a small lake at one end and soccer fields covering most of the expanse of grass. A paved path skirted the outer edge, lined by enough trees to give a sense of solitude. I struck off around the park, trying to anticipate what my night with Gleidhidh Doras had in store.

  The videos I had seen on the web all appeared to have been taken in remote places where the group could dance and have their sexual romps without being disturbed. Some were in the woods. Others in what looked like someone’s spacious fenced yard. Since we were all transferring to vans, my guess was that we would head off into the moors somewhere to a secluded spot where the torches that had been part of each ceremony couldn’t be seen.

  Leaving at 10:00. Back after 1:00. The sessions I had watched online, assuming the whole thing had been recorded, had lasted about an hour and a half. So we might be driving for thirty or forty minutes. Could the drone stay with us that long?

  The way this played out in my head, we would leave the vans, light up the torches and have our little processional to the ceremonial site, pass around the spiked kool-aid, and sway until the dance devolved into the sex bender. But tonight may not follow the same script. Jamie promised something that would amaze and mystify, hinting at a passage through a portal to another age. And that’s where I guessed Danny and Miriam were likely to turn up.

  Would they be with us in the vans? Be brought in from somewhere else? Be held at some place near where we were going? Or not show up at all?

  If they did show, either climbing from the vans or being escorted to the ceremony, that’s when Grace and Detective Inspector MacKay and his stormtroopers would sweep in. At least, that was the way it was supposed to happen. If Danny and Miriam didn’t show up—if they had allowed some wild hair to tickle them into taking a side trip down below Hadrian’s Wall—well then, in both a figurative and literal sense, I was screwed.

  If my hunch was right and the kids had been snatched to be part of this ceremony, what did they plan to do with them? Jamie billed himself as a real Jamie Fraser, transported from some bygone age with knowledge of secret Druid rites. According to the Romans, some Druid ceremonies involved human sacrifice, one of them the old Wicker Man burning ritual I remembered from B-rated horror movies I’d seen. Was that what he had planned? Some kind of human sacrifice with a claim that as the victims burned, they were being transported to another realm? Or were they going to be part of his sex ritual? One way or another, I was going to be there wearing no more than a short wool skirt with no place to hide my Sig, which I didn’t have with me anyway. There wasn’t much about the night that left me feeling very secure.

  And if the kids didn’t show up at all? Well, I didn’t even want to think about what I would say to Grace and her inspector, especially after their high-definition view of my fling on the fell.

  As I completed a second circuit of the park, the cell buzzed in my pocket. The screen showed it was Grace.

  “Enjoying your walk?” she said with a light laugh.

  I glanced about instinctively. “Where are you?”

  “Overhead. Can you hear us?”

  I looked skyward and didn’t see or hear anything. “No. I gather your drone’s up there.” It occurred to me that I was saying “your drone.”

  “Yes. We just wanted you to see that it can see you without you seeing it. We will have it over the park when you get there tonight.”

  “I think this might be happening out on the moors somewhere. Can you follow that far out?”

  “It can be guided from a vehicle that follows far enough back not to be seen.”

  “Well, that’s comforting. How long can it stay in the air?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Then I suggest you have someone parked where they can see us gather, then launch the drone when we leave. The drive time might be thirty or forty minutes. I don’t want you running out of juice before you know where we end up.”

  “Good thought,” she said.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Your cell phone.”

  “Will you be with the team tonight?”

  “Of course. My brother’s out there. And Tate, thank you for finding this bunch. The department here contacted the FBI and talked to Julia Blair. You were right. We couldn’t have tried to access their site this late. You’re the best lead we’ve had.”

  I resisted the temptation to say “I told you as much.”

  She paused for a moment, then added, “And I talked to Marti. She was just as clear about why you couldn’t let me know you were here.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” I said awkwardly. “For our town—and for you.”

  “And I love you for it,” she said.

  32

  Walking out of the hotel in a kilt felt a bit like the guy in the ad on TV who walks out onto his patio in his briefs and finds himself in a meeting he thought was being held on ZOOM. And true to my instructions, I was without the briefs—what my friends in college called “going commando.” Somehow that seemed fitting.

  The woman at Hector Russell had tried to sell me one of those short jackets that normally goes with the outfit. I had resisted, but did buy what she called a ghillie, a long-sleeved white shirt with loose lacing in the upper front rather than buttons. I was wearing it under a light suede jacket I’d tucked into my bag for cool evenings. The girl at the desk said I looked “smashing.”

  My one concern was the bandage. The burn stung like the dickens, but I had decided against pain pills. If I was going to be quaffing some brew spiked with who knows what, I didn’t want to be mixing booze and medications. And if I were the cult’s security people, I’d be suspicious of the footlong gauze covering on my shin. To be safe, I had clean bandages, tape, and antibiotic salve tucked into a jacket pocket.

  My outfit didn’t faze the taxi driver. His quick glance told me he regularly hauled men in kilts about town at 9:30 in the evening. A request to be dropped at the Inshes Park entrance on Stevenson Road seemed just as natural. I had the feeling these drivers must be trained like good butlers. Don’t ask questions. Never show a bit of emotion or curiosity. And don’t stare in the mirror, no matter what’s going on in the back seat.

  Before leaving the hotel, I had texted Julia Blair, telling her what I knew about the night’s activity and suggesting she see if she could link into the drone feed. If Miriam and Danny showed up or if any other children were dragged into this ceremony, she would want to have the full thing on video. And I felt a little more comfortable knowing the FBI had me in their sights when Scottish police swept in to make arrests.

  The vans were parked side-by-side under a dim light, tucked away in a corner of the lot where they couldn’t be seen from houses across Stevenson Road. As my taxi skirted the edge of
the park, I watched for a surveillance car but nothing seemed obvious. Good on their part.

  Another cab pulled into the lot as mine rolled to a stop. A woman in a knee-length overcoat covering all but a foot of diaphanous lace climbed out as I paid my driver. She was a gaunt, fifty-ish woman I had seen in several of the videos.

  As we approached the vans, two kilted brutes who could have stepped out of a battle scene from Braveheart emerged from the nearest van. The taller, a hulk with a beard the color of iron rust, leaned casually against the van side until the cabs left the lot. The second, clean-shaven but thick as an oak stump, waved us forward. As I stepped toward the vans, I strained to hear the low hum of an overhead drone, but heard nothing—waiting, I hoped, until the vans rolled.

  “Coats off,” Rust Beard ordered, pushing away from the vehicle. As we removed them, he handed our wraps to Oak Stump who began to work his way through them inch-by-inch for hidden contraband. I was still three paces from the closest van and realized there would have been no chance to stash a magnetic beacon. Thank God for the drone.

  “Arms up,” the bearded one ordered and began to pat me down in a way that would have embarrassed even the most aggressive TSA officer. His warrior buddy began on the woman who seemed unfazed by hands that explored every tuck and crease of her light, transparent gown. My inspector flipped open the sporran and ran his fingers around the inside, lifted it to be certain nothing was attached to the underside, then hoisted my kilt and walked his hands from waist to toes, leaving nothing unexamined. The temptation to ask if he was enjoying himself was squashed only by the calm acceptance of the woman. If this was the standard exam, I’d better act like I had expected it.

  “What is the bandage for?” Rust Beard demanded.

  “A burn,” I said.

  “Uncover it.”

  Just as I had feared. “You mean, take off the bandage?”

  “Yes. I want to see what’s underneath.”

  I gingerly removed the tape that held the non-stick gauze and peeled it back, wincing as the “non-stick” didn’t live up to its name. Rust Beard bent and looked at the angry red lesion.

  “Crikey,” he muttered, grimacing at the wound. “What did you do to cause that?”

  “Knocked a pan of boiling water off the stove,” I lied, figuring he really didn’t care.

  He shivered. “Cover it back up.”

  Oak Stump handed back the jacket with the tape, gauze, and ointment. I hurriedly salved and rebandaged the burn.

  Rust Beard pointed at one of the vans and waved me toward it. “You in there—and you in this one beside me,” he told the woman.

  I climbed into an interior that was just light enough to see the dim outlines of six other clansmen. None was one of the teenagers.

  “Murtagh,” a man said, holding out a shadowy hand. I shook my way toward the back, meeting Jocasta, Jenny, Ian, and Geillis.

  “Josiah,” I said, dropping onto the back seat beside the only woman who hadn’t introduced herself.

  “Well, now isn’t that just perfect,” she gushed with a polished English accent, laying a hand on my partially exposed knee. “I’m Lizzie. Jamie said he expected you to be with us tonight.”

  My mind raced back over my crash course on Outlander characters, sending a signal to my throat and lips that drained them of moisture. Lizzie, I remembered, was the woman given to Keziah by Jamie after they reached the colonies—the one who wasn’t sure whether her children came from Josiah or his deaf twin.

  “There’s no Keziah with us?” I joked hoarsely, glancing at the coat-draped figure beside me.

  She laughed suggestively and squeezed at my knee. “Oh, I certainly hope there is. That would be so exciting.”

  The woman I recognized as Claire climbed into the front passenger seat and turned toward us.

  “Good evening, clansmen,” she said, her face showing as a white smile in the darkened van. “I believe everyone is with us. Tonight is going to be truly life-changing for you all. If all goes as planned, we will see a couple pass through the portal to an earlier time.”

  An excited murmur passed through the van.

  “And, as always,” she continued, “we will have every opportunity to dance and enjoy each other. We have two new clansmen with us tonight, Ian and Josiah, who you will want to spend some time with. I know I am looking forward to it.”

  Lizzie’s grip tightened on my knee.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see that Claire was looking directly at me. “We will be driving for about thirty minutes,” she said, smiling seductively. “Just enjoy yourselves until we get there.”

  The van backed from its parking place and fell in behind a lead I suspected carried our noble clan leader. Lizzie fumbled at the buttons on her coat. “You can enjoy yourself with me as we drive out,” she whispered into my ear, reaching across to draw my hand over into the open front and onto a full breast that pulsed with the quickened beat of an aroused heart. Beneath the soft handful, I could feel the fleshy roll of an ample stomach. The dryness in my mouth became downright parched, and I struggled to swallow.

  “Hmm,” I murmured as convincingly as a bone-dry throat allowed, giving the doughy orb an appreciative squeeze. My mind raced through its files of what my friends like to call my collection of completely useless trivia.

  “As tempting as that is,” I murmured, “I make it a personal practice to spend the time traveling to a ceremony like this meditating on what’s going to happen tonight. Are you familiar with Tantric Buddhism? With the Kama Sutra?”

  She shook her head uncertainly.

  I leaned secretively into her “Some of its teaching are the perfect way to heighten anticipation. We’ll have plenty of time later,” I whispered, then pulled my hand away and tucked it beside the other against my chest. Letting my chin droop onto my joined fingers, I breathed a very dry “Ohmmm.”

  “Oh, that is so intelligent,” she murmured.

  33

  As we passed through a silent cluster of whitewashed cottages with dark slate roofs, Claire announced that we were in the village of Leanach and, off to our right, very near the site of the Battle of Culloden. I had seen the battleground listed on a map of the Inverness area and knew we were headed west under the watchful eye, I prayed, of Lieutenant Inspector Mackay’s all-seeing drone.

  Culloden had been the final major skirmish in the actual Jacobite Rebellion of the Scots against the English. But Season 3, Episode 1 of my Outlander marathon had seared into my memory that it was more important to this vanload of groupies as the place where Jamie killed Captain Jack Randall, the cruel ancestor of Claire’s twentieth century husband.

  All heads craned to the right, peering into a night that, with the city lights behind us, glowed a soft amber under a rising full moon. Ahead, in its pale luster, I could see the shadowy swell of the Scottish moors.

  We wound behind the taillights of the lead van up into a ragged countryside of coarse, gray-brown heather and rocky outcroppings. The vans turned left off the paved surface onto a deeply furrowed track, bucking and swaying for another ten minutes until they crested a low rise and dropped into a shallow basin. We stopped on its far side beside a shepherd’s hut of native stone, its roof a heavy thatch. The rough-hewn timber door in the side facing us was sealed with a sturdy, modern padlock.

  As we clambered from the vans and stretched cramps from unfolded knees, I could smell the wild of the Scottish highlands—a loaminess tinged with sage, damp grass with traces of animal scat and rotting wood. I stood as still as the restless huddle around me allowed, gazed up into the star-studded sky, listened for a distant whir and hoped to see some point of light disappear as a passing object blotted it out. Nothing above me seemed to change. It flashed through my mind that Grace hadn’t been able to convince her new comrades that this was more than some highland rave and not worth putting their expensive hardware in the air.

  In the open area beside the stone hut, Jamie and Claire milled among their u
nlikely assortment of hedonists, greeting them by their Outlander monikers. With the two leaders and their enforcers, there were twelve women and eight men. Just as in the clan videos, they were of every size, shape, and age. As they stripped off their jackets, shirts, and overcoats, the view didn’t improve. Even in the pale glow of moonlight, the women may as well have been naked. Some round. Some square. Others thin as fence posts, and one stooped with age. Only Claire had what might pass as a Victoria’s Secret figure.

  I was the youngest of the men and, aside from Jamie and his enforcers, the only one in decent condition. Some of the men were as full-chested as the women, their soft bellies sagging over their sporrans like floury lumps of dough. They were a stark reminder of how men’s legs wither and pale with age. If the drone truly did have high definition vision, the surveillance team had to be wondering if this bunch of carousing misfits could pose a threat to anyone.

  The group shuffled excitedly into two uneven lines with Lizzie, who was now looking like more of a prize, pressed unnervingly close against my side. But there were no children—and no sign of Danny or Miriam.

  Rust Beard directed the line-up. “Coats, shirts, shoes and socks in the vans if you haven’t left them already,” he instructed. “The path up the hill is grassy and so is the clearing. Group up over here. Colum will bring your torches.”

  Colum, aka Oak Stump, had unlocked the stone shed and emerged with an armload of yard-long poles wrapped at one end with thick rolls of brown cloth. The earthiness of the night air took on the distinct flavor of kerosene. The bearded man herded us into straighter lines behind Jamie and Claire while his partner made two more trips to the shed for torches.

  All but three appeared to have been through this ritual before, moving without instruction so that the lines were far enough apart to allow all to hold the torches inward. Starting with Jamie and Claire, Colum walked between the rows, touching the fuel-soaked fabric to flame with a grill lighter. With flares ablaze, we fell in behind our leaders and started up a wide path that climbed gradually to the edge of the basin.