A Highlander for Christmas

by Christina Skye

  A voice boomed out of the shadows. “Just let me have the blackguard within my reach. I’ll teach him to intrude!” White lace shimmered, followed by shoulders draped in black satin. “The utter audacity to bring an object of harm here to my abbey. I won’t have it, by heaven!”

  At his feet the holly stirred, and a gray form ghosted into view. The great cat jumped to the stone bridge and meowed.

  “Where, Gideon? In a truck just leaving the estate?”

  The cat’s tail flicked side to side.

  “Too late?” Adrian Draycott spun about, staring to the south where the gravel drive twisted away, lost in a row of oak trees. “I’ll set a bolt of lightning on the bounder if he sets foot on abbey soil ever again.”

  The cat’s ears pricked forward, suddenly alert.

  “He’s going to open the box? The bloody fool. Expert or not, Commander MacNeill will require our help.” Adrian rubbed a spectral hand across his jaw. “I thank the saints that the viscount and his family are nowhere about.”

  A mass of holly flew down in a rain of dark leaves as his face turned thunderous. “Trouble, always trouble,” he muttered. “A pack of fools, these mortals be.”

  The lace at his cuffs fluttered, then melted into the stone wall, followed an instant later by the length of Adrian’s tall form. “Are you coming, Gideon?” The words boomed from empty space. “I will need your help, my friend. We must go to work.”

  In answer the cat took a delicate leap across the stone bridge. His head rose. Then he raced over the lawn toward the old conservatory.

  ~ ~ ~

  Jared lifted the heavy paper carefully.

  He had dealt with explosives often in Europe and the Middle East, in places where schoolchildren grew up familiar with names like Semtex and C-4. Over long months of duty he had developed the distance and objectivity to confront each assignment as if it were a simple exercise with no effect on the safety of himself or others.

  But now, sweating amid the ferns in the abbey’s conservatory, Jared found his objectivity fraying:

  He had already called in full backup. A municipal security team would bring metal containers to house the package until the firing mechanism could be disrupted and the device detonated harmlessly. Meanwhile, Jared had constructed a makeshift barrier of heavy iron lawn furniture and two solid metal gardening tables.

  Hardly foolproof, but it was a start.

  Now with every brush of his fingers, Jared felt the link tighten. The slightest touch brought an onslaught of cold emotion, marking state of mind of whoever had wrapped and delivered the box.

  Jared suspected that Lion Express would appear on no corporate index or directory, in spite of Izzy’s relentless searching, and Jared refused to sit by and wait for disaster to strike.

  Gently he slid a specially adapted stethoscope along the nondescript brown wrapper.

  Silence.

  Patiently he tested every inch, and each time he was met with utter stillness. The mechanism might be digital, triggered by silicon chips and microcircuits. It could also be chemically or magnetically triggered.

  Jared lifted a black metal box with a long probe and ran the boom carefully over the brown paper. H waited for an electronic hum or a burst of static indicating the presence of a wireless transmitter that could trigger a detonation from a distance. Each pass came up clear.

  So far the box was clean, yet Jared’s senses were screaming. Both experience and his singular intuition warned of close risk. His first priority was safety. He had to presume detonation capability until proven otherwise. And if he made a mistake, the conservatory and a sizeable part of the abbey could be blown into rubble.

  Sweat dotted his forehead as he sprayed the top of the box and watched the paper glisten, then turn translucent. There was no trace of the oily stains that chemical explosives might leave. There was no network of wires or structural tubing visible beneath the paper.

  Jared opened and closed his fingers, fighting to stay calm, trying not to think about the deafening blast and an acrid wall of smoke as circuits and wires clicked to their deadly purpose.

  He called up the rules learned over years of exacting training. Forget everything but technique. Use your eyes and ears as if your life depends on them because it bloody well does. He almost smiled at the memory of the barrel-chested demolitions instructor from Leeds who had cursed and goaded him through his first year of specialized training.

  And don’t bloody well forget to breathe.

  He forced a stream of air into his lungs and then studied the box.

  Not heavy, but that meant nothing. These days detonators could weigh less than five pounds and triggers even less.

  No indication of motion or sound. Again, equally inconclusive. What he needed was a topflight CAT scanner and X-ray equipment, along with the newest disruptive devices. But he had none of them.

  What he did have was his singular gift.

  Summoning his energy, he focused deep, past the brown paper, past the scrawled lettering and the cardboard. Tightening his concentration, he probed the heart of the box.

  The contact shimmered to life. Instantly he caught images of a lonely seacoast and scrub pines in mist.

  He heard the muted sound of a foghorn.

  He shifted, driving his focus deeper into the cold cardboard and rough paper. There he found anger, cunning, and the premeditation of a keen mind, but no active bomb. Fear, not death, was the sender’s intent. Fear was meant to grow, feeding on itself, until Jared and Maggie watched for shadows of their own invention.

  While a stranger waited.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jared saw something move beyond a dwarf orange tree dotted with white blossoms. He was reaching for his Browning Hi-Power pistol when a gray shape ghosted through a row of ferns and brushed against his ankle.

  “This is no place for you, my friend. You’d best be gone.”

  The cat’s tail flicked once. He jumped onto a broad oak table jammed with ceramic pots and watering cans.

  Jared scowled. “Out with you. This is no time for showmanship, damn it.” Jared felt his blood freeze as the cat shot forward, dislodging a watering can. With nightmare clarity, he saw the heavy pewter fall toward the box on the table.

  He dove headfirst. Brackish water sprayed over him, soaking the box. Every muscle tensed as he struck the floor and waited for the deafening wall of sound that would be the last thing he would ever hear.

  Water dripped over the paper. The box seemed to deteriorate, collapsing inward with a hiss. Jared grabbed the cat, and leaped beyond the protective barrier.

  Seconds passed.

  There was no deafening explosion. Water trickled down his cheeks and hands, the only sound in the room. Then the cat gave a low cry and squirmed free of Jared’s fingers.

  In one leap he was on top of the box, which crumpled to a damp shell.

  “Someone very special must be watching over you,” Jared said softly as he pushed to his feet. He felt an almost painful awareness of everything around him, from the exquisite lace of a foxtail fern to a dust mote that danced through the thick sunlight. The scent of orange blossoms and the rich smell of potting soil filled his lungs, making him feel almost giddy.

  It was over, he realized. Something had changed. Perhaps the water had offset some delicate chemistry inside the box.

  He tugged at the wet paper, assailed by a pungent, bittersweet scent as he pulled away the last fold. All that was left inside were long streaks mounded against the cardboard, interlaced in perfect squares.

  Jared stared. He had seen lines like those before. The embassy bombing in Greece? The attack on a British school in Malaysia?

  The memory eluded him.

  He sniffed the drying white squares. Crystals of some sort. Sugar, possibly. But why?

  The cat pressed closer, inquisitive and unafraid. Jared ran a hand over the sleek fur while he studied the patterns in the crumpled paper. Were these simple circuits made of sugar mixed with some organic, conduc
tive material? Or was a biohazard hidden in that innocuous sugar?

  Jared knelt by the box, feeling no further sense of threat. The paper was cold, inert beneath his fingers. “Somehow I think this was all meant to manipulate us. Someone is watching us squirm. He’s careful and I suspect he’s also deranged.”

  The cat swatted the box disdainfully, then hissed as a pool of melted sugar ran toward his foot.

  “Watch that.” Jared pulled the cat away from the box. “No telling what’s mixed with that sugar without a complete set of tests.”

  The cat stepped delicately across the stream of melted sugar, then turned to look at Jared. Almost as if waiting.

  The pattern on the brown paper drifted in and out of Jared’s vision, a puzzle that should have carried meaning. There was no doubt that he’d seen those careful squares before.

  Hong Kong, he realized. When the explosive device of a criminal Triad group was confiscated following a string of bomb threats in public buildings. Was the same man at work here?

  No, Jared sensed that this was personal, a message of power and a declaration of ultimate knowledge of Jared’s past, just as the Middle Earth address was meant to show knowledge of Maggie’s family and where she could be hurt most.

  Jared watched water trickle down the sodden box, streaking the address until the black letters blurred. Nothing so far had been a coincidence. Everything had a meaning.

  He stared at the blurred address, seeing parts of letters and lines.

  Lion Express.

  The box’s message finally clicked into place.

  Daniel Kincade. Daniel … in the lion’s den.

  I’m here for Daniel Kincade, the box was meant to say. I’m here and I’m waiting. And I will win.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Maggie paced beside the heavy leaded windows. There was no movement in the conservatory or beyond the trees. The moat rippled and the roses swayed, but there was no sign of Jared.

  Her hand tightened on the sill. She tried not to think of him crouched by the box, testing for the presence of explosives, tensed for a blast.

  Guilt hit her. Her fault. Hers and her father’s.

  The game had gone on long enough. She refused to allow any more danger to the innocent people around her. She would leave tomorrow. Back in the States, she could track down some of her father’s old friends and…

  And what?

  Maggie took a hard breath as something nudged her hand. She looked down to see the gray cat padding over the windowsill. His keen amber eyes burned, full of a restless intelligence.

  “What am I going to do?” she whispered. “I’ve brought this danger to all of them.”

  The cat’s tail arched with feline grace. He sat on the sill, staring down toward the conservatory almost as if he could read the course of her thoughts.

  “Ridiculous,” Maggie whispered.

  The gray ears pricked forward. He pushed to all fours, meowing loudly.

  Maggie leaned closer. “What is it?”

  The great animal did not move, body tense, ears erect.

  Wind brushed her face, and Maggie had the sense that she was being watched.

  Simply nerves and too much imagination.

  Suddenly voices boomed along the front stairs. Maggie followed the sound, crossing the marble foyer. Through the open door to the front salon she saw Jared with one arm braced on the wall, his body rigid. Across the room a man in a black vest and military fatigues paced with an arrogance that was nearly palpable. Tension snapped between them.

  “Still fouling up, MacNeill? What’s the body count this time? Or have you stopped keeping score?”

  Jared’s fingers tightened. “What are you doing here, Cox? I specifically requested you not be assigned to this call.”

  The man in black drove a gloved finger against Jared’s chest. “There was no one else. And you know I’m still the best.”

  “The threat has been immobilized.”

  “Is that a professional opinion?” The man named Cox smiled thinly “I guess your mind really did go unscrewed in that box in Thailand.”

  Jared’s hands locked. “I believe that’s enough.”

  “Is it? You said the threat had been immobilized in Kowloon, too, and look what a botch-up that was. Seventeen dead and a score more wounded.”

  Jared stared at the marble mantel as if it might be hiding an answer to some vast and insoluble problem. “You’re wrong as usual. It was six dead, seven wounded.”

  “And most of them were ours. Good men doing a job you weren’t fit to oversee. You make me bloody sick.”

  “Take it outside, Cox. Take your team with you. Tell your superior he’ll have a complete report in triplicate waiting on his desk tomorrow.”

  Cox’s ruddy face tightened. “He’d better. Otherwise there’ll be a lot more men here asking questions, and you might just get roughed up in the process. No one’s forgotten Kowloon.”

  “Forget Kowloon,” Jared said harshly. “You wanted Daphne and she didn’t want you. Why don’t you grow up and put it behind you?” From the cold way Jared spoke, Maggie knew he had said the same words before.

  “You wish,” the man beside him snarled. “Because she was finished with you, you bloody Scot. She was going to turn Crown evidence.”

  Jared shook his head. “And you believed her? Just because her hands were beyond magic and her skin was like golden pearls and she could do things that made you forget your own name? Don’t be a fool. Daphne Ling had a whole scrapbook full of men wrapped around her finger before she was even fifteen. It was what she was raised and trained for, and the Triads always collect on their investments. Especially the human kind.” He sounded tired suddenly, as if the story and its outcome belonged to someone else and he had heard it once too often. “Forget Daphne. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself.”

  “Like hell I will. She was going to break off with her husband and the Triads.”

  Jared laughed softly. “No one breaks with the Triad, Cox. They’ve made criminal loyalty a high art form in Asia, and you’re either one hundred percent with them or you’re one hundred percent dead. Daphne had become accustomed to the style of life that narcotics, gambling, and prostitution provided for her. What could you give her on a common soldier’s pay?”

  Cox reached for the pistol holstered beneath his arm. “She loved me, damn it. She was going to have my baby,” he snarled, pain and rage tightening his voice. “And you couldn’t stand it so you set her up, wiping out half a dozen innocent people in the process.”

  “I didn’t set the bomb that took Daphne’s life,” Jared snapped. “I didn’t oversee the final dismantling either.”

  “But you gave the assessment. You set the m.o.” Cox’s finger stabbed into the air. “And you killed her, MacNeill.”

  “Stop thinking with your hormones and read the files. The evidence backs me up.”

  “I don’t give a bloody damn about files or evidence. We both know how easily papers can be changed.”

  Maggie inched into the shadows, understanding enough to see that two men had been betrayed by a clever woman. Was this the source of the pain that filled Jared’s eyes when he thought no one was watching?

  Jared paced to the window. “Do us both a favor and go home, Cox. Otherwise tell me what you really want here.”

  “What I want is Daphne and the heat of her unforgettable body. Since I can’t have that, I’ll settle for revenge. You’re going to pay for Kowloon. I’m going to see you dragged through the mud.”

  “Better men have tried, Cox.”

  “Maybe you should have stayed in that box. Another year might have made you almost human.”

  Jared pushed away from the fireplace. “Good-bye.”

  “Don’t walk away from me, MacNeill. I’m not finished here.”

  Maggie saw him pull the gun from its holster and level it at Jared’s back.

  She crossed the foyer, lunged for a silver vase full of roses, and spun around, tossing the cont
ents into the officer’s ruddy face.

  The pistol jerked violently as water trickled down Cox’s cheeks. Two red roses fell, quivering against his shoulders.

  “Attractive, Cox.” A tall man in black fatigues and a padded vest moved quietly past Maggie, then halted in a stiff military posture. Maggie recognized him from the police station in London.

  “You’ve work to finish outside. And you’ll holster that weapon before I remove you from duty permanently.”

  Cox snapped a salute, while the roses continued their slow slide down his vest. “Yes, sir.”

  “Outside. Finish the inspection detail. And clean off those bloody roses.”

  “Sir.” Cox’s boots made wet, sucking noises as he crossed the room, leaving a trail of muddy footprints across the priceless old Peking carpet. Then he was gone.

  The white-haired officer strode toward Jared. “Good to see you again, MacNeill.” He stretched out his hand, then gestured at the bandaged palm. “I won’t shake, if you don’t mind. Took a bloody sliver in training last week. Sorry about Cox. The man always was a hothead. I apologize for any unpleasantness.” The officer turned to Maggie. “Am I permitted an introduction?”

  Jared seemed to hesitate. “This is Margaret Kincade. Her jewelry has been selected for Lord Draycott’s first exhibition. Maggie, this is Major Hugh Preston, Royal Marines.”

  The thin, craggy face creased in a smile. “Call me Hugh, please.” He studied Maggie thoughtfully. “Exhibition? I suppose that would be the Abbey Jewels event? I saw something about it in a memo last week, but all this paperwork makes it impossible to remember anything.” He started to hold out his hand, then shrugged. “A bloody nuisance, this thing. It’s a pleasure, Ms. Kincade.” He turned crisply. “Well then, I’ll be off. We’ve the package safely contained now, and the first reports should be coming in within the hour. Some new chemistry, by the look of it. Possibly a new toxic agent in a crystalline base.”

  Jared gave no answer.

  The older man seemed to consider his next words carefully. “Sorry to hear about Thailand. Those people should have been shot.” He took a hard breath. “Anytime you’d consider coming back, let me know.”