Storm Warning

by Toni Anderson

  “Duncan Mackenzie,” she whispered. It began to make sense.

  “Aye, Duncan.” His smile was cruel. “But the thick bastard couldn’t even get that right. You were sent away, but Gran always suspected I had something to do with what happened on the beach.” His expression slid into lines of hatred. “She never trusted me. Never looked at me the same way again.”

  Memories of the boy he’d been made her reach out. “Why didn’t you ask for help, Robbie?”

  Laughter doubled him over but it was a hysterical reaction, not mirth. When he looked up his eyes were dark craters of pain. “My mother said if I told anyone about the visions I’d wish I’d never been born. Ever been there, Sorcha? Ever wished you’d never been born?” The words echoed around the wooden hull of the boat.

  Every day. Every day since I was ten years old and woke to find my father’s body at my feet.

  Fear made her shake as she looked at the knife gripped so tight in his hands. The way he looked at her with loathing in his eyes. But she wasn’t some whipped dog. Duncan Mackenzie had taught her a thing or two about dealing with bullies—fear just fed their rabid natures.

  “I thought you could read minds, Robbie. Don’t you know?” She let bitterness fill her voice.

  Robbie looked pissed. “Sometimes, but not always.”

  The only chance she and Carolyn had was to keep him talking, delay him from whatever he planned to do, and hope someone saved them.

  Or they saved themselves.

  He ran a hand through his hair. Looked at her as if reluctant to get closer. “You’re good at blocking, though I know you don’t know you’re doing it.” His brows furrowed. “I can read most people a wee bit. Others, I can hear every thought in their head, know every desire in their body, before they even know it.” He shook his head, narrowed his gaze. “Others are like brick walls. Like that Yank you started shagging. Took me ages to figure out he was a cop.”

  A cop?

  The truth harpooned her in the chest. Ben had lied to her. He wasn’t a writer. He was an undercover cop. Investigating…her?

  Some of the questions he’d asked came back to her. You ever done anything illegal, Sorcha? Everything started to make a grim sort of sense. No wonder he’d been so angry when they’d slept together that first time. He’d wanted information, and she’d been falling in love. After that he’d used a shortcut through her knickers to get closer to the secrets he thought she was hiding.

  Hah. He must be bloody disappointed to be rifling through attics and hearing confessions about ghosts!

  Hurt built like steam, burnt and blistered as it burst free. Ben had pursued her because of his job. The photos were surveillance photos. The connection she felt for him was based on nothing but lies.

  Even so, the ache in her heart was sharp and real. The boat lurched and she fell against Carolyn, who groaned. Robbie rode the swell, one hand on the ladder, as much a part of the vessel as his father had been. His gaze settled on Carolyn.

  “Awake now, is she?” Hatred moved in waves through the dense atmosphere, choking her with its force. “Too good for me, wasn’t she? I fixed that boyfriend of hers as well.” His grin was pure spite and Sorcha recoiled.

  “It was you.” She gagged as she made the connection. “You broke into the cottage the other night. You hit me, tried to rape Carolyn!”

  “She’s a slut. Spread her legs fast enough for that other fucker.” Robbie bared his teeth, his face ugly and cruel. “I was looking for your daddy’s journals and that whore turned up.” He stabbed his finger at Carolyn.

  Sorcha didn’t know where her cousin was, but she didn’t recognize him in this man.

  “And tonight I went looking for you.” He ran his finger along the edge of the knife, and Sorcha lost all sensation in her body as rational thought was overwhelmed by sheer terror. “I was going to finish you off in Iain’s cottage, but you weren’t there, and she was. I brought her along for a little entertainment on the trip.” He cupped his groin, his grin mocking. “But I think maybe once was enough.”

  Tears pooled in her eyes as she glanced at her friend. What had he done to her?

  “Why couldn’t you just die like you were supposed to?”

  Sorcha’s eyebrows snapped up. “What do you mean?”

  “You. Getting the freaking van stolen when we’d set up a sweet little surprise for you.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “A bomb,” he stuffed his hands in his pockets and his eyes glittered. “I set up a car bomb to get rid of you that day you borrowed the van. I don’t know what happened…paid a fortune to those English wankers. To blow up my own bloody van.” He laughed.

  “But why?” Open-mouthed astonishment hit her, made her glad she was already on her knees.

  Why would anyone want to kill her? Let alone her own family.

  “Angus thought you’d figure out the truth about Iain’s death. Find your daddy’s journals or start using your gifts and tell the police about our…activities.” His eyes focused on her like a hungry snake, fingers stroking his knife. “I told him you were too dumb. I’d given up on you. Decided killing you wasn’t meant to be, and then there you were, standing talking to Angus at the perfect moment.” His eyes gleamed, but he didn’t come any closer.

  Why doesn’t he come near me? Scared she’d fight back? Damn right. Hiding her hands behind her back, she scrabbled for a weapon. Anything.

  Should she tell him they’d found the journals, that they’d contained nothing but personal details about her daddy’s life. Why give him the satisfaction?

  “Why did Angus kill his own brother?” The engine hummed and the sea lashed, but she yelled through the hatch anyway. “Why did you kill my daddy, you bastard?”

  Robbie laughed, and for a brief moment he looked like the beautiful child who’d once saved her life. “He’ll not come down. Too much of a coward to face you again. Look inside and concentrate. Can you not see him?”

  Sorcha resisted the urge to look for Angus, though she pretended. Why waste time honing psychic abilities if she was going to be dead soon anyway? She had a better plan. Never show your teeth unless you can bite. Her hands closed over a piece of loose timber.

  “Aye. Fate said you were born a witch and you’d burn.” Robbie placed the knife back in its sheath. “But I’ll not burn with you.”

  Her jaw dropped. He knew her dreams?

  “We’ve been trafficking drugs, dear cousin. Using your boat.” He giggled, his eyes flickering around her, not settling.

  “Drugs? This was about money?”

  “Fishing’s been dead for years. A mug’s game.” He shrugged one lanky shoulder, sneered. “God, I don’t know how you can stand having all those sniveling spirits near you.” His eyes widened. “Or are you so blind you don’t even know they’re there?”

  Sorcha jerked around, saw the hollow nimbus of her granny staring at her two grandchildren with misery in her eyes. Sorcha’s mother’s spirit stood nearby, riddled with cancer, but more alive than she’d seen her in years. And her father. He stood his ground as if to physically defend her.

  She was protected by phantoms of the people she’d loved and who loved her. Her throat muscles constricted with emotion. When she turned back, Robbie was halfway up the ladder, running from the shades of his dead relatives. She leaped up, ran across the hold and smashed the wooden post into his calf.

  “You bitch!” He lashed out, caught her chin with his boot, and she dropped like a stone.

  “You’re gonna burn. Just like you should have all those years ago.”

  The hatch crashed shut.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sea spray scraped Ben’s cheeks. The hard metal of the Walther rubbed the skin off his spine.

  With the help of Davy and Sheila Morgan, Ben had commandeered the 12-meter Mersey class, all-weather lifeboat with a skeleton crew made up of part-time lifeboat volunteers.

  The crew worked with Angus and Robbie Logan, but Ben was taking a chanc
e on their honor and integrity, plus the fact none of them wanted to aid and abet murderous drug runners. They were good honest men who’d been betrayed by their own.

  Ben searched the night and ignored the headache and fears that wanted to paralyze him. Sorcha was out there somewhere. At the mercy of killers. Panic desiccated his mouth and slicked his skin with sweat, but nothing mattered except finding Sorcha before the ocean stole her forever. He focused on the reflections on the water. Gripped his hands over the safety rail, and prayed to a God he’d given up on years ago.

  “We’re following the coast to Fife Ness.” Davy appeared beside him on the deck. “We’ve got a bunch of boats on radar, but we don’t know who’s who and we keep losing the signal in the rough waves.”

  “Goddammit.” Fear for Sorcha squeezed Ben’s heart into a bloodless mass.

  “Aye, just what I was thinking,” Davy said slowly, “but don’t you think…”

  Ben raised an eyebrow, waiting. He felt as though he was being gutted with a blunt pencil.

  “Well. There’s no way they can get far in the trawler with all these high-powered boats after them.”

  Ben was betting on it. Then he understood what Davy was getting at. “They’re going to switch boats?” He rested his forehead against the back of his hands and counted to ten. How could they follow a boat when they didn’t know which boat to follow, especially at night?

  Davy had a strange half smile on his face. “And there is this one signal that looks like it might be two boats tied together.”

  Despite the sickness that hammered at his brain, he forced his head up. Hope slammed through Ben’s heart and he wanted to kiss the other man.

  “So that’s where we’re headed.” Davy huddled his shoulders against an arctic blast of wind. Shot him a glance from beneath beetled brows. “I don’t want to see her hurt.”

  “I don’t want to see her hurt either.” Ben closed his eyes against the feeling that he’d be too late. That he’d watch her die the way he’d watched Jacob die. Or worse, that he’d never know what happened to her. She’d just disappear forever and he’d be left with that niggling doubt that would eat him alive.

  “Sorcha’s a wonderful lass.”

  “I know.” An endorsement from Sergeant Davy Logan should have sent him running in the opposite direction faster than a bullet from a Glock nine-millimeter.

  It didn’t.

  Because Sorcha was a wonderful lass. A fantastic woman who’d probably never speak to him again—if she lived through this experience. Please God, just live through this. He’d deal with the rest later. He’d make it right.

  His cell phone rang.

  It was Ewan. “The transmitter on Peter Hughes’s boat on the May Isle is up and running. So is the boat.”

  “He’s on the move?” Ben latched onto the only good news he’d gotten that day.

  “Packed up the coke and raced off like a ruddy rocket.” Ewan had to shout over the drone of boat engines and Ben hunkered down against the wind and held his phone tight to his ear, pulling his jacket over his head. “We’re running an interception course with the other Coastguard vessel. Then we’ll take him down.”

  What about Sorcha? Ben ground his teeth on frustration.

  “Where are you?” Ewan asked.

  He had no freaking clue. “On the lifeboat somewhere, headed toward Fife Ness.” Staring at impenetrable blackness.

  “Look, I know you have a thing for this girl, Foley, but if you’re wrong…” Ewan was shouting into the phone, even so Ben could barely hear him. The sentence hung. He knew the consequences. If he was wrong, his career was finished. And he didn’t care.

  “I’m not wrong.” Ben lost the connection and with a curse slipped the phone back into his pocket. He sank to a bench seat and held on as they pounded over the crest of the waves.

  Two crew members moved to the other side of the craft, pointing into the distance. He heard enough snippets above the roar of the engines to turn his blood to pack-ice.

  Fire.

  He grabbed his binoculars and scanned the night. A tiny fleck on the horizon began to glow. Ben knew who was burning.

  ***

  Sorcha rolled onto her side and hauled herself to a sitting position. The stench of fuel filled her nostrils, cloying, choking. Her head felt barely attached to her body. She held her skull with both hands, scared she was going to pass out again. Vision wobbled, split in two and realigned as the boat bobbed on the swell. Her jaw rang with pain from where Robbie’s boot had caught her.

  She manipulated her jaw, found it tender, although she didn’t think it was broken. She was down but not out.

  Something was different.

  It was quiet, she realized abruptly. Except for the whoosh of the sea, it was quiet. The engine had stopped.

  Where were Robbie and Angus? She squeezed her eyes shut. This didn’t make sense. Her brain wasn’t working, too many residual aches and that god-awful smell clogging her nose, coating her tongue.

  The acrid taint of smoke crept through the gaps of the deck above her, deadly and insidious. The crack and hiss of fire taunted her before she saw the yellow glow. Fear stole her breath.

  God Almighty.

  She crawled to Carolyn, who still lay unconscious against the boat’s concave hull. Sorcha’s hand hovered over the girl’s shoulder, knowing she shouldn’t move an injured person, but not having any other choice.

  “Hurry. Hurry!” The voices screamed as if they’d been released from a cage.

  Urgently she shook Carolyn’s arm. “Wake up, Carolyn, wake up.” The girl moaned, but didn’t move.

  Sorcha ran back to the ladder and climbed the rungs. She pushed against the hatch with one hand as the boat rolled and pitched uncontrollably. The hatch rattled in its frame, but didn’t open.

  “Help. Please help me.”

  There was no one to help.

  Dizziness and frustration made her want to scream, but already the smoke was making it difficult to breathe.

  The wooden strut she’d pulled away from the side of the hull earlier lay on the floor. Jumping down the ladder, she grabbed it and jammed it into the narrow gap. Yanking and swearing, ignoring the pain as the wood splintered in her palms, she focused the full force of her body into prying open that hatch.

  Sweat made her fingers slippery.

  She didn’t want to die.

  It was working. Each time she prized the hatch open a little wider, she shoved the strut further into the gap. Flames flashed and danced overhead, illuminating the hold with a vivid glow that ignited terror in her chest.

  Burned alive.

  Her nightmare for the last year.

  Nightmare or premonition?

  The strut snapped and she fell to the floor, letting out a scream of frustration. It was no good, she couldn’t open the hatch. Sweat bloomed as heat pressed down from above. Tears prickled against the smoke, making her vision blur.

  She ran to Carolyn, shook her forcibly, but she still didn’t wake up. Dammit, even if she saved herself, how could she save Carolyn? She wiped the moisture from her eyes and tried to think.

  She was so stupid.

  “I’m sorry for running away from you, Ben.” She sent the thoughts out into the air. Hoped somehow he’d sense her remorse for not trusting him. Maybe pick up on a little of the love that hummed through her core. “I am sorry.”

  If she had a second chance she’d do things different. “But I’m not giving up!” she yelled, sitting back on her heels. Turning her head, she saw her daddy’s ghost hovering in space a few yards away. Jeez. She might join him sooner than she’d wished. Was that what he wanted?

  “Escape. Escape!” The voices cried.

  “I’m thinking!” she shot back at them. She stretched the neck of her sweater up over her nose and scooted around the perimeter of the hold. Trailed throbbing fingers over smooth wood, barely able to see through the thickening haze.

  But there was no escape. Her hands shook, she walked the circ
uit again. At the front of the boat, she stood before a wall that separated the engine-room from the cargo-hold.

  The voices in her head jabbered, nonsensical, but excited. Coughing, she rapped against the wood. Realized it wasn’t solid timber, but plywood.

  “Smash it. Break it. Get out.”

  She lay on her back and kicked at the wall. At first it didn’t budge, then after five solid kicks, she heard the wood begin to split. Heart pounding a thousand times a minute, she used the torrent of adrenaline flowing through her veins and put more force into it. Smoke clogged her lungs as she blasted the wall with her feet and didn’t stop kicking until half the wall was gone.

  Blinking away the tears, she worked her way back to Carolyn. Tried to lift the other girl, but she was too heavy, and lack of oxygen made Sorcha weak.

  She grabbed Carolyn’s legs and dragged her to the opening of the wooden partition. Winced as the girl’s head bobbled along the floor and then cursed, frustrated because there was no way she could maneuver Carolyn through the splintered divide and get her up the steps on the other side.

  Bloody hell.

  Sorcha swallowed convulsively, her throat tight and sore. Looking up, she wondered if Angus and Robbie were still onboard.

  It didn’t matter. She didn’t have any choice. She had to get out, but she couldn’t leave Carolyn to die. The boat lurched heavily in the water. Sparks flew and fire hissed as a vague plan formed in her mind. Praying, she dove for the hole in the wall.

  ***

  The boat punched the waves as it sped over the rough sea. Skin strained over his knuckles, energy struggling to burst into action, only there was nothing Ben could do except hang on.

  The inferno grew. Flames stretched upward at one end of the fishing boat, streaking the rolling sea with melted orange and gold. He shook, knowing Sorcha was probably inside that hellhole. He willed the rescue boat to move faster even though they were speeding flat-out, racing time itself.

  They’d never make it.

  They were close enough to see the blaze spread along the sides of the boat and engulf the rigging. Close enough to hear the crack and hiss of flames that touched the sea with each dramatic roll of the trawler. Close enough to see a powerboat riding beside it, sleek and sinister.