We stood in the brush just off the road, consulting the map together. In the phone’s glow, I could see the worry sketched into her face. I knew Fletcher had never done anything like this before. She was doing her best to hide her fear, but it was still there in the tightness around her eyes and the white corners of her lips.
“Got your gun in easy reach?” I asked.
Fletcher patted the shoulder holster beneath her leather jacket and nodded.
“Stick together, no matter what happens. We’ll need to move fast when we get there. If we can grab Finn and get out without engaging, that would be best, but I doubt that’ll happen. Dunnel says backup is on its way, but it's thirty minutes out, so we’re on our own for now.” I gripped her shoulder and turned her towards me, so she had to look at me. “I know you’re nervous, but I need you with me for this to work. Are you with me?”
Fletcher steeled her face, tugging the hem of her jacket straight as if it were armour, and then she nodded. “I’m with you.”
Fourteen
I led the way into the damp brush, forging a path at an angle until we were a few metres away from the road, which would hopefully help us hide from any lookouts at the entrance to the castle. It took a few minutes for my bruised muscles to warm up, but after that, it was almost as if I hadn’t just been in a car crash and a fight for my life. Fletcher and I walked in silence but for the rustle of our steps through the undergrowth, though I could feel her at my back, breathing quietly. She was a comforting presence even as the night closed in around us.
Ten minutes later, I spotted a small light in the distance, and I motioned for Fletcher to stop. We crouched down, and I squinted at the light, though there wasn’t much to see. It looked like a simple torch in a window, hanging a couple of metres in the air. There was no roof on the castle, so the torchlight poured out a small, square window and then puffed up into the air like the glow of a halo.
I could barely see Fletcher when I glanced over my shoulder at her, but she nodded and flashed me a thumbs up. We crept forward, bent double to lower our profile, though it wasn’t long before my back and knees began to ache.
The Castle of Old Wick stood at the very top of a hill, overlooking the ocean as it crashed against the base of the sharp cliff. The castle itself was small. A single tower with its top knocked off was all that remained, the rest of the structure tumbled away and lost long ago. I spotted one person moving in the yellow light of the torch, but I had no idea if they were alone. A part of me didn’t like the uncertainty of what we were about to walk into, but another part of me revelled in it. The danger awaiting us set my chest alight, and I picked up the pace, threading my way through the brush as silently as I could.
The road to our left curved almost all the way up to the castle entrance, ending at a gravel parking lot filled with two cars. A matching walkway replaced the road, leading right up to the castle. We stayed well away from the path though, preferring to circle around to the back of the structure. Fletcher tapped my shoulder as we got close and held up three fingers. I nodded in acknowledgement. I’d looked right at the lantern for a moment and wrecked my night vision, and it was coming back far too slowly for my liking.
We stopped behind a particularly robust bush, and now that we were closer, I could see the entire castle in the gleam of the torch. Most of the back wall was missing, fallen rocks leading up to the mostly intact floor. Four shadows sat around in a circle around the torch, seemingly at ease, and I frowned. Unless there was a basement door hidden somewhere, I couldn’t think where they might be keeping Finn.
I wanted to get as close as I could before they noticed us, so I lay down on the ground and began to army crawl towards the castle. It was hard and painful, and though my duster protected my elbows from getting damp, the moisture on the brush still soaked through the front of my shirt and pants as I wriggled my way along like some kind of gigantic worm. If I craned my neck back, I could just barely see the crew around the fire.
Halfway there, and they hadn’t noticed us yet. I struggled to keep my breath quiet. It wanted to rasp out of my lungs, but I fought it down and kept moving. I could hear the quiet torch-side conversation now, but the voices were merely a burble wafting through the air, and I couldn’t make out any of the words. I strained my ears anyway, hoping to pick up a clue for Finn’s whereabouts.
The light of their torch gently touched the brush around the castle in a small circle where it wasn’t broken up by the stone walls. I paused just outside the glow, hoping we were still far enough outside to remain unnoticed as I tipped my head towards the ground to hide the white of my face. I caught just a few bits of their conversation with my ear tilted towards the castle.
“... should be here by now.”
“Be patient. It’s not that late.”
“Late enough. It’s cold and damp out here. I want to go home.”
“We’ll go home when the job is done,” a man snapped.
I slowly turned my head to look back at Fletcher. She lay just to my right, watching for my signal. I slowly, quietly drew my gun and motioned for her to do the same. If we could do this without violence, we should try, though I wasn’t optimistic about our odds. She reached under her arm to find her own weapon, and then she nodded to me that she was ready.
I took a deep breath. Then another. And a third, trying to find a centre within myself. I had no idea if we were doing the right thing. I didn’t know if we should just attack or announce ourselves if one or the other option was going to put Finn in more danger.
But there was no time for doubt.
I shot to my feet, gun raised and pointed at the light. “Inverness Police! Don’t move!” I yelled.
So, of course, they moved.
All four leapt to their feet and scattered, jumping off the castle and into the shadows beyond the torchlight so that their forms became blurry and distinct, hard to aim at.
“Go!” I shouted at Fletcher and ran towards a shadow in the night. These punks would not get away again.
I heard a muffled yelp instead of a response, and I twisted, skidding to an awkward halt on the wet ground, to see Fletcher struggling against the burly arm of a fifth, unseen assailant. She’d dropped her gun in the attack, hands scrabbling against the forearm wrapped tightly around her neck.
I ran towards her, gathering as much speed as I could in just a few short steps, and tackled the man at the waist, tearing his grip free and dropping us both to the ground. His thick fingers searched for my eyes, and I stretched my head as far back as I could while I fought to keep him on the ground with one hand while the other brought my gun into position.
I shot him in the leg. The shot was loud in the heavy, otherwise silent night, echoing across the hill. The man screamed a second later, and his hands dropped from my face to clutch his leg as I rolled off him, breathing heavily. The acrid stench of gunpowder and the tang of fresh blood hung in the air.
I climbed to my feet and then searched the man, ignoring his pained curses and insults. He had a serrated hunting knife on him, but nothing else. I grabbed him by the coat and heaved him up so that we were face to face as I crouched over him.
“Who the hell are you? Who do you work for?”
The man glowered up at me. His face was white with pain beneath his grey-speckled beard, mostly concealing the crescent-shaped scar on his jaw. His dark eyes glinted like polished stone in the faint light, and every line of his face was weathered as if it had been carved from the mountainside long ago.
I gave him a shake. “Answer me.”
“No,” the man ground out through gritted teeth.
I heard rustling footsteps approaching through the brush behind me, and I glanced sharply over my shoulder, heart racing until I realized it was just Fletcher come to join the conversation, gun held at the ready by her leg. She nodded to me that she was okay.
“Where’s the boy?” I demanded.
The man tried to spit in my face but couldn’t gather enough moisture in his mo
uth. I pried his hands away from his bleeding leg and ground my thumb into his bullet wound. I was furious, rage sweeping through me like the tide crashing against the shore. What kind of sick bastard played games with a kid’s life?
The man couldn’t hold back the scream building behind his lips.
“Where’s the kid?” I yelled in his face, twisting my thumb down harder.
Fletcher grabbed my shoulder and pulled. “Callum, stop. What are you doing?”
I threw her off, but her tone was enough to make me pause.
“The castle!” the man bellowed. “There’s a hatch in the floor! Stop, please!”
I released my hold on his leg so I could unhook the cuffs from my belt, then I dragged him over to a stout bush that sat nearby, securing his wrist to the base of the trunk.
“Wait here,” I said and jabbed a finger in his face.
My hands shook as I stood, but I covered it by retrieving my gun from where I’d dropped it, brushing dew from the barrel. I straightened and searched the shadows around the castle, but the other four kidnappers seemed to have disappeared as the hillside was silent and still.
“Callum, what was that?” Fletcher asked, concerned. She took a step towards me but seemed hesitant to come any closer.
“We’ve got a kid to save,” I replied, ignoring her question.
But I frowned as I began to pick my way towards the Castle of Old Wick. Something felt off to me. Obviously, they knew we were coming because they hid a man in ambush, but they also ran off and abandoned him, knowing full well that they had us outnumbered? They had no trouble trying to kill us this afternoon, so what was different tonight?
My eyes constantly moved as I crept towards the small tour, Fletcher right beside me. I tried to keep my gaze away from the torchlight, not wanting to ruin my night vision, but it was hard, seeing as it sat directly in front of us. If the other kidnappers were still there, they were well hidden.
I did not like it.
I reached the spilt rocks that led up to the castle’s floor. A single torch lay on the stone, its beam splashed across one wall. I climbed up the makeshift stairway, pistol gripped tightly as my heart pounded within my chest. I snapped the weapon up as I stepped off the last rock onto the flat floor, spinning to search the entire room, though there wasn’t much to search. The space was barely larger than my outstretched arms. It was also decidedly empty.
“Shit.”
I picked up the torch in my left hand and swept its light across the ground, searching for the aforementioned hatch. Tucked in the corner, I spotted a wooden trapdoor.
“There,” I said to Fletcher. I kept my voice low, though I wasn’t sure why, since I was also waving a light around.
I motioned for her to open it, holding the torch below my gun as I pointed both at the hatch to cover her. Fletcher tucked her pistol away to free up her hands as she reached down to grab the metal loop. She heaved the hatch open, and I darted forward, aiming the light into the dark chasm. A new rope dangled off the edge, its knotted edge brushing the stone floor below. From up above, I couldn’t tell how large the chamber was or if there was anyone inside.
“Hello?” I called, crouching beside the open hatch.
But the response came from behind me, not in words but in the quiet scuff of a foot across stone. I spun, still crouched, to find the man with the squashed nose, Goon, and his braided crown partner rushing towards us. They cleared the two metres between us in a matter of seconds. Before I could even stand or think to raise my gun, Goon crashed into me so that I tipped backwards, right into the hatch.
I smacked my head on the way down, stars bursting across my vision, but I still lashed out as I fell, my fingers catching briefly on cloth before they slipped free, then I was plunging through the darkness.
The fall didn’t last long. Within a few seconds, I slammed into the stone ground, losing every bit of breath in my lungs as pain raged through my body. Dimly, I heard someone shout, and then a weight landed on top of me, an elbow driving into my stomach, a boot cracking against my knee. I yelped and flailed my fist, though I caught only air as the person groaned and rolled off me.
The light above disappeared as the hatch slammed shut, and I heard something slither through the air and hit the ground with a light thud. For a long moment, I just lay there, trying to catalogue every ache in my body. Amazingly, nothing was broken. The darkness felt oppressive, as if the walls were closing in, and the very air had weight, pressing down from up above.
“Callum?” Fletcher asked tentatively.
I groaned in response. “I think you broke my spleen.”
Her hand patted my face, nearly poking my eye out, and I grabbed her wrist as I sat up, freeing my phone from my tangled duster and turning its torch on. The screen was cracked in several places, the largest shot right across the notification from fifteen minutes ago. I began to laugh as I read the message and turned the phone around to show Fletcher.
“I’d love to, as soon as you're free,” the text from Lena read.
Fifteen
I swept my phone’s torch around the room. We were alone. I couldn’t tell if Finn had ever been there. The room was completely stone, matched to the weathered grey blocks up above, though oddly, it seemed larger than its counterpart upstairs. One corner had been recently excavated, dug out with no consideration to the preservation of the ancient stone.
“I think it’s safe to say they were expecting us,” Fletcher said.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. My gun was no longer in my hand, and I hunted around for it, amazed that it hadn’t gone off in the fall. I found it near the severed rope coiled beneath the hatch, glinting in the white light, and I holstered it with a sigh.
Fletcher patted herself a couple of times. “I’m okay. Did I hurt you when I landed on you?”
I shook my head, though my head throbbed, and I could feel a smidge of blood on the back of my skull where I whacked it on the edge of the hatch’s opening. I’d be surprised if I didn’t have a concussion when all was said and done.
I no longer had service, though I had a few bars down the road where we parked the car. That was the Highlands for you. We had backup coming, but no way to contact them when they arrived or to tell them to hurry their asses up.
“They set us up,” Fletcher said. There was a bruise blooming on her cheek, just beneath her eye.
“I don’t think they were ever keeping Finn here.” Looking around, it seemed far too hard to get an unwilling captive down here without just dropping them like the kidnappers did us, and I couldn’t imagine anyone throwing a kid down a hole, even someone who’d already threatened his life.
“What were they doing?” Fletcher clambered painfully to her feet and went to examine the small excavation site.
I wasn’t quite ready to stand yet, but I spun around on my butt to watch as she poked through the rubble.
“There’s nothing here. Have you ever heard of something being hidden underneath this castle?”
“No.” I crawled forward so I could shine my light further into the hole. It was about the size of a small suitcase, and a broken wooden handle lay inside like a lonely little sentinel. “Do you have service?”
Fletcher checked her phone but shook her head. “How far out do you think Dunnel is?”
“Hard to say. Hopefully, no more than twenty minutes.”
I was going to go crazy if we had to sit around in this small room for much longer than that.
My head swam as I stood, and I braced my hand against the cold wall until my vision cleared again. Then I went to stand under the hatch and stare up at it, struggling to maintain my balance as I tipped my aching head back. The basement had a high ceiling, but if Fletcher stood on my shoulders, she could probably reach it.
“Get on my shoulders,” I said, waving her over from her continued examination of the hole in the wall.
Fletcher looked at me doubtfully. “You’re going to drop me.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “
Come on. We have to get out of here.”
“How many times did you get hit in the head today? I’m not climbing on your shoulders.”
“Every second we sit down here, the perps are getting further away. We’re alone out here. We’ve got to get ourselves out.”
“Yeah, and who’s idea was that?” Fletcher snapped. “I said we should wait for backup. Finn isn’t even here!”
“We didn’t know that!” My raised voice echoed around the small room. “If we’d waited, and he was dead when we got here, how would you feel then?”
Anger flashed across Fletcher’s face, a match to my own. “And what if he gets killed somewhere else because we messed up and got ourselves stuck in a hole?” She seized a fist-sized stone and flung it at the wall. It hit with a loud crack and tumbled to the ground, spitting tiny shards of shrapnel. Fletcher’s chest heaved, but the sudden action seemed to have bled most of the fury out of her, leaving only fear behind.
I reined in my own emotions. “Which is why you should get on my shoulders and try to open that hatch. I won’t drop you, okay?”
Fletcher took a deep breath and nodded, steeling herself as she walked over to me. I crouched down so she could put one foot and then the other on my shoulders, hands braced against my head. Immediately, my right side began to pulse and throb, but I ignored it, gritting my teeth.
“Ready?” I hissed.
“Ready.”
I pushed off the ground and forced myself to my feet, my thighs screaming in protest as I wobbled slowly upright. I almost fell backwards, and Fletcher’s breath caught, but I steadied myself, spreading my feet wide for balance.
“Go,” I said through gritted teeth.
Fletcher’s hands left my head, and then her full weight bore down on my shoulders as she slowly stood. Her weight shifted, and I struggled to compensate for it against the drum that had taken hold in my head, sending waves of pain through my body with each beat.
Buried Secrets (DCI MacBain Scottish Crimes Book 1) Page 11