She would have accepted that explanation, except for one thing. Rory had said the diverted springs had all been shunted toward the eastern side of the mountain, which was bayside. The problem was, she was in one of the lowest, westernmost parts of the castle.
She looked at her watch. “Damn.” She’d spent more time here than she’d thought. As it was, even if she ran all the way back and skipped her assigned room checks, she’d be lucky to make it back in time.
She flickered her beam of light over the stairs one last time, then took the map out and drew in a rough sketch of the passageway, making a few quick notes about the stairwell. Duncan and Rory could probably explain it all.
She stood, dusting off her jeans, then froze. Cocking her head, she listened. Nothing. She knelt down and leaned out over the stairs. Still nothing. The sound of rushing water, or whatever it was, had stopped.
Okay, now was definitely the time to get out of here. She backed away from the edge and moved as quickly as she could back down the passageway. She rounded one bend, and then another. It hadn’t seemed this long on the way in, she thought. She was the one who had lectured the group on the safety precaution of staying close to within shouting distance. She was beginning to wish she’d heeded her own advice a bit more closely.
She rounded another bend and sighed in frustration as her flashlight beam flickered over another long passageway. She could have sworn she’d only rounded three bends.
“Stay calm.” She was trained to handle all types of high voltage scenarios, she could certainly handle one walk down a creepy castle hallway. There was no doubt that the gang had all reconvened by now and was worrying about her. Worst case, she reassured herself, was that Duncan and Rory would backtrack along her route looking for her and realize they’d left off this passageway and come looking for her. She’d have to suffer an annoying lecture from both of them, but at the moment, it seemed a small price to pay.
She rounded what absolutely had to be the last bend in the passageway and came to a dead halt.
“No. This can’t be.” Her heart pounded harder. She backed up a step and played her light over the solid stone wall in front of her.
A dead end? Impossible.
But that was exactly what she was facing.
She purposely took several seconds to breathe deeply. There had been no other passage, of that she was certain.
Maybe this wasn’t a dead end, but a closed door. Maybe this was one of those moving stones. It would explain the sudden lack of sound. Perhaps what she’d heard had been wind, and not water, and the closing of the passageway had stopped the flow through of air.
Duncan and Rory had opened and closed several Druid doors during their initial descent into the castle, but her enthusiastic pleas for instructions had fallen on grudging ears. So, she’d watched closely, and she knew there had to be a hidden switch of some kind that triggered the door.
She slipped her backpack to the floor and trained her flashlight along the edges of the wall, ceiling, and floor. It was impossible to tell, however, if the stone was a separate thing. But she knew the triggers weren’t obvious. She moved closer and began a slow methodical search for a sliver in the stone, an opening of any kind that she could fit her hand into.
After three painstakingly slow circuits of exploring every cranny in the stone wall as high as she could reach, and as low as the ground, she had come up empty.
She gave in to the obvious, even though she felt foolish, and just pushed on it. Nothing. She moved her way methodically across the stone wall, pushing every several inches. Still nothing. Scowling, she braced her hands on her hips. “Open sesame.” Nothing.
She sat down and dragged her pack over, then leaned back against the stone wall. She pulled out her map and went over it again, and again, but there was simply no way she’d gotten turned around or that the passage she’d entered, and was presently trapped in, was on that map.
Which left a moving stone wall as the answer.
But who had closed it?
Could Rory and Duncan have conspired to trap her in here? Could they have purposely left the passageway from her map, knowing she’d attempt at least a cursory exploration? And if they had nefarious plans in mind for her, what about the safety of Cailean and Maggie?
No. Her instincts shouted that loud and clear. She’d seen the four together. Duncan and Maggie weren’t in the least reserved about their feelings for one another. The big Scot could barely be parted from her for any length of time. And Rory and Cailean, while far more circumspect, only had to be within shouting distance of each other to scorch anyone else in the vicinity with the tension that smoldered between them. No, she could not imagine the MacKinnon brothers harming either one of them.
Whereas Delaney held no such fond place in their hearts. In fact, as heiress of Stonelachen, she basically only presented an obstacle to them. Rory had made it bluntly clear that money, or the lack of it, was not the motivating factor behind his tough stand in negotiating a sale with her. It was all about pride with that one.
But was his pride so immense that he’d remove her from the equation entirely rather than come to an agreement on the purchase of the property?
A moment of guilt came over her. She should have just signed the deed over to the man. It was his heritage, and Duncan’s, absolutely. She wasn’t looking to profit from an inheritance she hadn’t even known about or wanted. But pride was a strong motivating factor with her as well.
And maybe Clarens and MacKinnons were just destined to clash over this mountain of rock for all eternity.
She swore under her breath. She decided to wait where she was for at least another hour. She checked her watch. This would give the group enough time to know for certain that she was missing and to come looking for her. If she’d somehow accidentally opened or closed this passage on her own, maybe Duncan and Rory would remember its existence once they began retracing her route and open it back up. This was the high percentage plan.
Three hours later, Delaney was forced to reconsider. She’d already tried shouting, but she doubted her voice would penetrate the stone wall.
She scooped up her backpack. She’d already made a message out of several pieces of notepaper and placed them strategically in the center of the passageway with small stones on them in case of a draft when the wall finally moved.
That done, she took a deep breath and switched her flashlight back on. She blinked at the beam of light, then slowly moved forward. This time she carefully played the beam up one side wall, across the ceiling and down the other side, taking slow, careful steps and examining every inch of stone along the way for any kind of sign, either for the trigger, or for another possible passageway that had opened and closed without her knowing about it.
Another hour passed before she made her way to the top of the stairs. There had been no surprises along the way. There was still no sound of rushing wind or water. Delaney played her light along the walls of the descending staircase, but saw nothing new.
“Well, Delaney, you get your wish,” she murmured. She moved to one side of the stairwell and, using the wall for balance, she carefully began her descent into the lowest reaches of Stonelachen castle.
TWENTY-NINE
Delaney descended the final step and paused to take a deep breath. The stairs were so steeply pitched they’d felt almost vertical. They had plunged onward and onward, until she was thankful her flashlight grew dim so she could only see a few feet ahead at a time.
The thin beam was almost gone now. The stone wall was clammier, but not cold. She had to be far down inside the mountain at this point. It should be chillier, but while the air felt more humid, it wasn’t cold.
She crouched and slid her backpack gratefully from her shoulders. She took out new batteries and carefully arranged them before switching off her flashlight. She made the exchange quickly, relieved when the bright beam of light filled the landing.
A solid wall of stone was yards ahead, but the edge of the beam caught
the continuing passage to her left. This one was surprisingly large, more a round-shaped tunnel. Judging by that, and the humid air, she guessed it had been formed by water. She checked her watch. A long time had passed. Were they following? She turned back to the tunnel feeling very alone.
Enough, she scolded herself. Think of this as a grand adventure. As a child, she would have been enthralled by the opportunity to explore such a mystical place. It was her yearning for such far-flung adventure that had led her into the military as an eighteen-year-old. It was the most direct way for a girl from Kansas to see the world. And see the world she had.
She hadn’t changed much from that little girl. She still liked adventures, especially if they landed her in the world’s hotspots. She thrived on the action. It made her feel vital. Right now, however, despite finding herself in a place even her fantastical childhood imagination couldn’t have conjured up, she was having a hard time working up that enthusiasm. She was tired, hungry, and concerned for the rest of her group. She felt anything but vital.
She was delaying the search for the key because of her own stupidity in wandering off. If this had been a mission and she was team leader, she’d have chewed her ass up one side and down the other for pulling such a bone-headed move. And she would deliver that ass-chewing lecture, just as soon as she found a good spot to set up a makeshift camp for the night. It wasn’t going to be on this stone slab landing.
She paused long enough to pull a package of cheese crackers out of her pack as she moved forward through the tunnel. After two slight curves, it ended abruptly, as everything the MacKinnons built seemed wont to do. This time, however, her gasp wasn’t in fear, but in wonder.
The tunnel stopped more than fifteen feet up from the floor of a giant cavern. Weak light filtered in from small slits and crevices in the rock ceiling. It was close to dusk, so it was likely that it would be even lighter by day.
Weaving through the center of the ballroom-size floor was a stream, around which grew an amazing festival of plants, lichens, and moss that, even in the dim lighting, were brilliantly green. A tumble of rocks had caused the formation of a large pond in the center. Gauging from the steam pockets she saw escaping from some of the rocks, the stream was at least partly fed by a thermal spring.
There was about a ten-foot drop if she lowered herself in a full stretch. The big problem being that once down there, getting back to the tunnel would be difficult at best, impossible at worst.
She stared at the pond, visually tracing the feeder streams. Something is not right with this picture. It was as still as glass. Not all that unusual since the feeder streams were fairly narrow. But the feeder streams were flat as glass too. They should be moving, flowing, but all the water in the cavern appeared to be totally still.
She squinted again at the steam coming from the rocks and the trickles of water that ran down them. That water moved, but it wasn’t enough to form the feeders on the cavern floor below, or to maintain such a large pool. Then she realized that the widest path down the rocks wasn’t actually water … at least not at the moment. But it was evident that water often poured over that top rock. Not only was it still damp, but it was stained and permanently grooved by the natural flow of water.
And at the height of that top boulder, that water flow would have created quite a waterfall. A thundering one, in fact. The sound of rushing water she’d heard!
Delaney had to rub at the sudden wash of goosebumps on her arms. She noticed the water marks on the rock beds banking the streams, all much higher than the current water level. How do you shut off a waterfall? The same way you shut off a passageway, perhaps? With a Druid door?
She tried to see above the top of the boulder, but it was higher up than she was by quite a bit.
She had to climb those rocks and find the source of the waterfall. If it was a moving door, maybe she’d have some luck opening it. She took the time to write another message, and anchored it to the floor with the dead flashlight batteries.
She pulled her pack on, said a quick prayer, rolled to her belly and shimmied back over the edge until she hung by her fingertips. She glanced down, gauging the landing zone, inched over a bit to her left … and let go.
By the time she’d skirted the pond, it was full dark. She’d have to wait until morning to climb the rocks. She decided to reconnoiter the cavern floor instead. There might be a passageway she hadn’t been able to see from her perch at the end of the tunnel.
Two hours later, she was exhausted and trying not to feel discouraged. The streams that she’d tracked each disappeared into a gouge in the rocks at some point. She flashed her light around in front of her, debating the best place to make a bed for the night, when she saw it.
She trained her beam on the jutting edge of something wooden. A crate? She moved closer and realized that the boulder in front of her actually curved inward, leaving a gap big enough for a person to move through. She walked around that curve and gasped. It was a crate all right. One of several dozen. Some were wooden, the rest metal. All modern. She played her beam over the writing on the side of the one closest to her. It was in Arabic.
“Wonderful.” She had a sick feeling she knew exactly what was in these crates. She raised her eyebrows at the international kaleidoscope of languages she discovered. Whoever was amassing these didn’t play favorites when making his—or her—purchases.
“Bingo,” she said softly as she spied the American flag. She’d understood most of the labeling she’d read so far, but none of it had been conclusive until now. “U.S. Army,” she read. Followed by a code number she knew well.
“An international black-market arms dealer, holed up in a castle in Scotland?” It made no sense. Or maybe it made perfect sense. Scotland wasn’t on any of the United Nations hot zone lists, nor did it show up on any Interpol lists in terms of terrorist harbors. But this locale definitely had some geographic plusses. Its close proximity to Northern Ireland for one.
“Figures,” she sighed in disgust. She’d come into this marvelous, intriguing inheritance and had hacked time out of her schedule to come and see it … and her job followed her anyway.
She was honor-bound, for several reasons, to check into this more extensively. Not the least of which was that this was her property! It also occurred to her that if the government, or worse, the media, somehow discovered that an American antiterrorist specialist was found to be stockpiling black market arms on land she owned in Britain, well, this would not be a good thing. She had to handle this with utmost caution.
“Lovely,” she said sarcastically. “Simply lovely.” She cleared out of the gun nest and moved back around the pool and made camp behind an outcropping of rock. She was fairly certain she was alone, but there was no point in being obvious in case Mr. Arms Dealer decided to show up while she slept.
The sound of heavy panting roused her. The wet tongue scraping her cheek startled her eyes open. But it was the sound of a gun being cocked that brought her to full alert status. She would have scrambled back and sat up, but the muzzle pressing against her temple encouraged her to remain still. The two-ton dog pressing her flat on her back, baring his teeth in her face was another good reason to remain put.
“Who are you?” came the rough demand. The speaker was just out of range of her peripheral vision. And the lighting, which indicated it was past dawn, was still weak enough to keep the immediate area in shadows.
“Your dog has lousy breath,” she said carefully.
“He likes you,” came the flat reply. “Can’t y’ tell?”
The accent was light, but distinctly Scottish.
“I like him, too. But I make it a rule not to French kiss on the first date.”
The dog cocked his head at her voice, his tongue eventually lolling out of the side of his mouth. Drool splattered on her face.
“Balgaire, down,” he commanded easily, but nudged the gun harder against her temple. “Move, and we’ll end this date without a goodnight kiss.”
The dog lu
mbered off her body, bruising at least half of her internal organs while doing so. “That’s no dog,” she said, grimacing as the last paw pressed against her lower abdomen, “that’s a small horse.”
“He’s sensitive, thinks of himself as a lapdog, so watch what you say.”
Delaney’s heart was finally crawling back down from her throat. She was beginning to think clearly, so she shouldn’t have been amused by his dry banter.
“Who are you?” he said sharply, nudging her again.
“A lost soul.” She strained to see him, but he was a shadow. “Who are you?”
“Someone who doesn’t take kindly to trespassers.”
“Well, see, this is where we might have a problem.”
“Not we, lass, you.” He shifted further to the rear, sliding the muzzle of the gun to just behind her ear. “Put your hands on top of your head and sit up. Slowly.”
He knew something about taking prisoners, she noted. She carefully did as he asked. Sitting provided her a broader range of opportunities. She went to curl her legs under but he nudged her again.
“Legs straight out in front of you. Heels on floor, toes to the ceiling.”
Okay, so he knew more than just a little about taking prisoners.
He leaned in closer. She could feel his breath on her hair.
“Your name.”
“Is not something I offer up freely. Of course, in the spirit of sharing, I might be moved to be a bit more generous. You are …?”
“This place you trespass on belongs to me.”
“Oh? When did you purchase it? From whom? Because I happen to know the owner. And it isn’t you.”
There was a pause. Good, she had him thinking.
“How did you enter the cavern?”
“Is there more than one entrance?”
“Enough word games!” He jerked her to her feet and pushed her, face first against the boulder. He pressed his mouth to her ear; the gun was pressed slightly lower. “Tell me who you are, who this supposed owner is, and how you entered the cavern.” He held her hands above her head in one giant fist; one of her cheeks was pressed hard against the damp stone. His body—much taller and broader than hers—covered her almost completely.
The Legend Mackinnon Page 27