Storm Warning

by Toni Anderson

  Breath knotted in his lungs as Ben waited. His hands trembled. “And?” he demanded.

  “It left port shortly afterwards.”

  “What?” Fucking what?

  “Get this. After she went onboard, Robbie Logan was seen carrying a roll of carpet onboard, like he was getting rid of the proverbial dead body.”

  Ben’s insides twisted like eels. Sergeant Logan was listening in to the conversation.

  “Did you plant the transponders?” he asked Ewan.

  The silence on the other end of the line wasn’t what he needed to hear.

  “Well, did you?”

  “We don’t know if they’re working yet.” Ewan spoke over Ben’s curses. “The receiver wasn’t picking up anything, but that might be a glitch. Look, we’ve got two Coastguard vessels standing by at sea and officers in place on the May Isle.”

  “This feels bad.” Ben raised his eyes to meet Davy Logan’s suspicious gaze. Alarm eased through his blood. Where would they go? And why would Sorcha go with them? Was he wrong about her? Had he made a mistake? “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you back.”

  The ambulance crew was still hanging around.

  “Thanks for your help, guys.” He stood, a bit woozy, but holding it together as he showed them the door.

  “You can take acetaminophen for the pain, but don’t go to sleep unless you have someone to check up on you,” the paramedic warned as she left.

  “Yeah.” He closed the door on her scowling face. “Sleep isn’t going to be a problem tonight.”

  Was he wrong? Was Sorcha a drug runner who’d played him for a fool? No. He didn’t believe it. She was in danger. He felt it in his gut. He bit back panic. Sorcha was at sea and the only way to rescue her was to do his job. First, he needed to know exactly how involved her Uncle Davy was with trafficking.

  “Sorcha found her father’s journals in her attic, hidden behind the drywall.”

  Davy’s eyebrows rose. “Aye, she said something about it on the phone. You stole them.”

  “Borrowed them,” Ben corrected.

  The older man reached out as if to touch the covers of the two books Ben had left on the table but changed his mind and drew back. “I’d forgotten about Iain’s journals until she mentioned them.”

  “Did you hide them?”

  “Me?” The policeman took off his cap and set it on the table, the skin on his brow wrinkling. “No.”

  “Who then?”

  “I’ve no clue.” Davy dragged his hand through what was left of his hair. “Angus?”

  Ben fisted his hands impatiently. “I think Angus or Robbie broke into Sorcha’s cottage searching for those journals and got sidetracked by trying to rape Carolyn Jamieson.”

  “Now wait a minute, my brother would never have hurt a lassie.”

  “What about Robbie?”

  Davy looked uneasy, shifted his eyes back to the table. “Who are you? Police?”

  “Drug Enforcement Agency.” Ben nodded. “On loan to Scottish DEA.”

  “Drugs!” Davy’s chin snapped up. “This is about drugs?” His tone was indignant. “My family has never been involved with drugs.”

  “Is that why you warned them last summer?”

  Davy’s eyes swung away. “My family wouldn’t tolerate drugs.” He fastened his arms over his stout chest.

  He didn’t deny tipping off his brother, and that was as close to an admission as Ben was going to get. Logans were loyal, if nothing else. Except Angus hadn’t been loyal to Iain the night Ben suspected he’d murdered him, and right now he wasn’t being loyal to Sorcha either.

  She could already be dead.

  Palpitations squeezed his heart with short sharp jabs. “I think Angus murdered his brother that night on the lifeboat. I think he cut the safety line.”

  “But why?” Shock widened his eyes as Davy lowered himself to a chair. “Why would Angus kill Iain?”

  “Because Iain had the sight.” Ben picked up one of the journals he’d just found in Sorcha’s attic, the one only half full. “I think Iain found out Angus was running drugs, and he didn’t like it.”

  Davy’s expression turned mutinous again at the mention of drugs, but Ben found what he was looking for in the last entry of Iain’s tight script. He laid the book flat in front of the other man.

  I know what Angus is up to, but I’ll not have it. Not on my boat, not that evil brew. We’re not so poor as to resort to drug running.

  Davy’s hands shook as he read the words and he seemed to shrink in his chair as the implications sank in. “Iain would never have allowed it,” Davy agreed. “He was a good man.”

  Ben didn’t have time to gloat. Being wrong was a bitch, but that wasn’t his problem. “Sorcha is on their boat right now.” He stabbed a finger toward the blackened sea. “Where would they go?”

  “They’d never hurt Sorcha.”

  “Come on, man! What’s it gonna take? Sorcha’s dead body rolling in the surf?” His voice broke. “Would they take her fishing with them?”

  “No.” Davy rested his bald head in his palms. “Angus is too superstitious. A woman onboard would sink the boat at the very least.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.” He tried not to panic, tried not to get consumed by the apprehension that tightened in his chest. “She’s on that boat, and I think they’re going to kill her.” If they haven’t already.

  “I can’t believe they’d hurt her.” Davy’s jowls sagged.

  “They’ve smuggled drugs under your nose for more than a decade. They killed your brother and kidnapped your niece. You’re a cop. What’s it gonna take for you to believe it?”

  Anger flashed in the other man’s eyes. “We never talk of it, but my mother, Sorcha’s grandmother, had gifts.”

  “She saw ghosts. I know. What else?” Ben urged.

  “She had the sight. She could see things you didn’t want her to see.” Davy frowned.

  “Maybe she hid the journals? And if she thought Angus killed Iain…Well, maybe that’s why she sent Sorcha away to live with her mother. She’d lost one son, she’d no’ lose another—nor have Sorcha hurt. She loved that bairn.”

  The policeman placed his cap on his head, pulled it firmly across his brow. “She always said Sorcha didn’t have any psychic gifts, but I was never so sure, especially after the lass found Iain’s body.” Davy’s stance was determined. “And neither was Angus. My mother was protecting her.”

  And hiding the knowledge that one son had murdered another.

  “I’m not saying I believe you, but let’s go talk to Eileen. She’ll know where he is. Angus doesn’t do anything that Eileen doesn’t know about.” Davy headed into the night, Ben on his heels, measuring Sorcha’s fate with each impotent beat of his heart.

  ***

  Eileen Logan didn’t answer her door. There was a light on at the back of the house, but Ben couldn’t see a damn thing through the thick drapes at the front.

  “Where is she?” Davy stood with his finger pressed hard against the bell, pushing the handle at the same time. It was locked.

  “Do you have a key?”

  “Back home, yes, but not with me,” Davy said.

  Ben threw his shoulder against the door, but it was rock solid. A bad feeling clawed at his insides and wouldn’t let go. He glanced up and down the street. The house was part of a three-storey terrace—tall, elegant, impenetrable.

  “How do we get around the back?” Ben started walking to the nearest end of the street. Davy jogged to catch up with him, his footsteps and heavy breath the only noise in the quiet night.

  “Follow me,” Davy said.

  Past a bakery and a couple more houses, then down somebody’s driveway. A dog yapped as Davy climbed on top of a rabbit hutch next to a low wall.

  “Come on.” Davy threw himself over the wall and landed heavily on the other side.

  Ben tucked the gun in the waistband of his jeans while Davy was out of sight. He climbed over the wall, not trusting th
e other cop, yet convinced something was going down inside that house.

  They climbed another wall and popped into a back garden with a security light that lit up a long, narrow, neatly trimmed lawn. A row of net lofts formed a second terrace behind the houses. A cat meowed and scratched at the back door.

  “This it?” Ben asked.

  “Yep, this is it.” Davy stepped ahead, but Ben put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  “This is still a police investigation. Don’t give anything away.” He held Davy’s gaze.

  “I know how to do my job.” The policeman jerked out of his grasp, opened a door into a covered passageway, through to a concrete yard. The cat wound through his legs as he walked. Davy knocked on the back door, but no one answered. Carefully, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, he tried the doorknob. The door swung open into a light-filled kitchen and the cat dashed in.

  Davy fell back, hand over his mouth as he stumbled away.

  Ben stood on the threshold. Watched the cat track bloody paw prints around her owner’s white kitchen.

  Holy Mother.

  Eileen Logan lay on the floor, rigor-stiff, a gash across her throat that damn near severed her head from her body. Blood pooled over the floor in a thick wash of crimson syrup.

  He took two steps into the crime scene, grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and hauled it away. He shut the animal in the outhouse and joined Davy Logan in the garden, watching the man’s reaction, unsure even now of his involvement. Ben pulled out his cell phone.

  “Eileen Logan’s dead,” he told Ewan when the call went through. “This is a farewell tour. They’re not coming back.”

  Ewan swore. “We don’t have a great signal, but we’re going after them.” The connection crackled. “Call Nick to oversee the crime scene. I’ll call you as soon as we have anything.”

  Like what? Sorcha’s corpse? Incredulous, Ben stared at the disconnected line. Saving Sorcha wasn’t Ewan’s priority. Arresting the drug runners was.

  Davy Logan put a call through to the local station, requesting backup and forensics. Ben dialed D.I. Nick Archer, which caused a raised eyebrow but no comment from the local man.

  After Ben hung up, he leaned over the fence, gripped the top railing as though it was all that stood between him and eternal damnation. His heart raced and his mouth went dry. It was pitch black and Sorcha was out on the ocean—the one place he couldn’t follow. All his grandfather’s jibes echoed through his mind like prescience.

  Hell.

  The thought of the water made his nerves freeze and his stomach grind—even now his hands were shaking. But he couldn’t sit on his ass while the woman he loved ended up sliced and diced like Eileen Logan.

  Loved?

  How could he have fallen in love? But what else explained the terrifying certainty that if he lost Sorcha there’d be nothing left to live for?

  No way could he sit here like some useless prick while others raced into action. He wasn’t physically handicapped. There was nothing stopping him except his own crippling phobia.

  “Where would they go?” Ben asked.

  Davy’s shoulders slumped, his face haggard. “They’ve a boat, they could go anywhere.” His voice shook.

  Ben grabbed Davy by the shoulders. “You must have some idea!”

  Sirens pierced the night, lights flashing through the town like an alien invasion. There was only one place Ben needed to go, the one place he’d vowed never to revisit. He fought his instinctive revulsion as the sirens screamed closer.

  “I’m going after them.”

  Davy straightened from against the fence. “Right. I’m coming with you.”

  “We need a fast boat.” Ben smiled without any pretense of humor. “And I know just where to find one.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Sorcha knelt beside Carolyn and checked her pulse. It thrummed fragilely beneath paper-thin skin. She was alive. Just.

  Her left eye was swollen shut, her cheek bleeding and angry. Sorcha untied Carolyn’s hands and feet and eased her onto her back. Gently she pushed the hair from her friend’s face. The girl groaned but didn’t wake up.

  What was Angus doing? Carolyn could die here.

  Sorcha’s skin prickled like insects crawling over her body and she cringed away from the invisible threat. Danger pressed in on her and even the voices went silent.

  The malignant energy that had shadowed her since she’d returned to Scotland seemed to have taken root in her psyche, probing inside with short, sharp, angry spikes. She shook her head, shook off the notion that someone was prying inside her mind, and wondered what the hell she’d gotten herself involved in.

  Why had Angus locked her up? Dammit, what was wrong with him? And where was Robbie? Did Ben have anything to do with this? The voices suddenly screeched inside her head. She pressed her palms flat against her ears in the hopes of driving them out, but it only made things worse.

  The hatch banged open. Sorcha spun around and Robbie climbed down the ladder, whistling.

  “Robbie? What’s going on? Angus has gone mad.”

  The sweet boy she knew had disappeared. In his place was a cocky male who sneered as she knelt on the rough timbers. She recoiled and found herself pressed up tight to Carolyn. The light in his eyes was sharp and condescending, contempt filling their depths, turning them into pitiless obsidian. The color of his eyes reminded her of another man, only his sparked passion, not evil.

  “What have you done to Carolyn?” she whispered. “What are we doing here?”

  “Payback.” The word stopped her heart. She didn’t understand, but the threat was implicit.

  “Why did you hurt her? I thought you liked her.” Sorcha’s whole world had capsized in one short hour. “What have we ever done to you?”

  He took a step forward and she cowered. “You selfish little twat. You had the gall to give me the deed to this boat? The boat I’ve slaved on half my life?”

  Spittle flew from his mouth. He slapped her across the face. The blow stung, but she didn’t have time to think about the pain. Grabbing her hair, he twisted it until his fingers tore it out of her skull and she screamed. She clawed at his hand, but he flung her away, and she barely saved herself from smashing into the hull.

  The voices rose, higher and higher until she was scarcely able to drag in a breath.

  Robbie snickered—a sound that agitated her more than the violence of his actions or the strange light in his eyes.

  “You just have to tell them to leave you alone.” His voice had a flat edge to it, remote, as though nothing actually touched him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your guides. The voices in your head.” Robbie tapped his skull. “Tell ’em to piss off.”

  Sorcha gaped at him. Robbie knew she heard voices? It wasn’t just her. She wasn’t crazy, or if she was, it definitely ran in the family. “You hear them too? Why did you never tell me?”

  He jammed his hands tight against his head, the tension in his face screaming internal pressure as though his skull was about to explode.

  “Robbie?” She started to climb to her feet.

  “What?” he screamed and advanced a step. “What, Sorcha? What the fuck do you want?”

  “I want to know what happened!” Her eyes filled with tears. “I loved you. You were my hero. How did that turn into hate?”

  He lifted his shirt to reveal layers of ugly puckered scars running across his torso. “You know when I started to get these?”

  Her jaw dropped. She shook her head.

  “The first day the lifeboat was called out after your bitch of a mother left.”

  Ice encased her skin, sinking into the flesh within. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did I. Not at first. I was what, eight? Nine? And I’d started to have these graphic dreams about people dying. It wasn’t so bad at first because Gran was there when I woke up screaming.”

  She shivered. Robbie’s face contorted, and the edge of madness was vis
ible on every feature.

  “Then your mom ran off. So whenever the lifeboat was called out I was alone because Gran had to go look after poor pitiful little Sorcha whose own mother didn’t want her.”

  She flinched as if struck. She didn’t understand. Robbie was the one with the normal family. Why did he hate her?

  His eyes bored into her like a drill-bit. “You don’t know how hard I prayed my own mother would just die.”

  Her chest rose as she held her breath. She didn’t know what to say. What did you say to a man who was disintegrating before your eyes? Who radiated evil, but seemed so horribly…broken? Fear gave way to pity, and for a moment she wanted to reach out to him. Then she realized he was the source of the blackness that ate at her. His was the canker who’d tormented her whole life.

  “But she didn’t—not then anyway. If she heard me crying at night she’d use Dad’s old belt to whip me senseless until I stopped screaming about visions and death.” He raised his face to the ceiling. “Are you in hell yet, you old hag?”

  Sorcha froze. Eileen Logan was dead?

  His laughter rang out and Sorcha shriveled inside. He leaned so close she could smell beer on his breath. “You took away my only protection. And that’s what I used to think about every time she drove the leather into my flesh—that it was your fault.”

  “I didn’t know…” Sorcha’s throat constricted as fear slid along her veins. What was he going to do?

  “I avoided the pain by planning how to get rid of you.” His eyes glittered. “And I got the perfect idea about how to do it the night I watched my dad kill yours.”

  Angus? Sorcha reeled. Angus killed her father? His own brother? And then pretended to love her?

  There was no emotion in Robbie’s voice now. “I was just a kid asleep in bed and suddenly I see Angus pulling out his knife and cutting the line. Uncle Iain yelling into the wind and staring at his brother as though he knew what he was going to do, but Angus cut the line anyway.”

  Sweat glistened on his brow, the knife shook as he wiped it away. “The next day Gran said she was going to live with you in the cottage—leaving me at the mercy of my mother.” Robbie’s face paled at whatever memory that evoked. “So I came up with a plan.”