Ann relished the warmth of the jacket Alasdair gave her. She closed her heavy lids and leaned her head against the window. She would miss the Highland scenery, but that was okay. She’d see it next time, when she returned to Iona . . . and William. William. The memory of his firelit skin scorched her middle.
Something heavy dropped onto the seat beside her. She tore open her eyes.
The klutz from the ferry smirked and flashed a knife.
She gasped.
“Don’t scream.” He pinned her with his hard stare.
Her hands flew to her mouth. She heard the roar of her own blood and looked to the bridesmaids, silently beseeching one of them notice her plight.
“Don’t—”
She winced as the knife jabbed her side.
“—open your mouth.” His eyes were pitiless slits. His breath was foul.
“What . . . do you . . . want?”
He slid his hand up the back of her neck and slammed her forward so hard her forehead banged against her knees. His blade gouged her jugular vein as he spewed a hot warning against her ear. “If you want to live”—he slathered vehemence over her name—“Ann McConnell, you will do exactly as I say.”
Oh, God. He knew her name. She sold books across the globe. She was well known, but not this well known.
“At the next station, we’re going to get up nice and easy. You’re going to walk in front of me toward the back of the car. You got me?”
She nodded, strangely cognizant of her bouncing ponytail. Her heart thrashed in her chest. She trembled. Her arms felt like lead. Her teeth chattered.
Pull it together. If the wheels came off the cart, she was a goner.
They were getting off at a station. There would be people, cameras, security. She’d scream or run, maybe both. It was her only chance. Everybody knew the odds of surviving abduction were slim if the victim went quietly. Ann wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. She’d kick up one hell of a fuss. He might stab her, but he wouldn’t stick around after that. Someone would help her, get her to a hospital. She’d call Maggie, and—
“Arriving at Taynuilt,” the conductor announced. “Taynuilt.”
Her captor rose, pulling her up with him. He hauled her into the aisle in front of him. “Now. Go!”
She looked back at her tote and suitcase.
“Leave them.” He shoved her, then lifted a rattling duffel bag off a seat as they made for the doors.
She considered running into the next car.
The knife pricked her back. “Don’t even think about it.”
Fresh air chilled the sweat on her forehead as Nigel pushed her outside onto the gravel platform. He landed next to her with his bag. The train doors closed with a hiss, and the train sped off toward Glasgow . . . without her.
Ann leapt for the station door.
Nigel’s hand pinched her arm.
Her scream sliced the silence, but there was no one to hear it. They were the only ones to disembark. The station was a glorified cowshed. It had no cameras, no security officer, and no passengers, just a payphone and a timetable placard.
“Let me go! Let me go!” She tried to writhe out of his grip.
He punched her temple.
She fell to the sharp gravel, skinning her palms.
“Get up!” He wrenched her arm. She squealed and rose on unsteady legs, a siren ringing in her ears. Fireflies spiraled through her vision.
“What do you want from me?” She succumbed to her tears. “Who are you?”
He backed her against the station wall, his breath stinking like chicken guts. His hand slid down her cheek to wipe away the wetness. “Don’t you know, darling? I’m Nigel Lynch.”
~ ~ ~
A crossbill flitted in the evergreen canopy above her. Ann strained at the tape binding her hands behind her back. She shivered on soft pine litter, cold in spite of the Mylar blanket Nigel wrapped around her. She tried to put the thought of . . . it . . . out of her mind, but the sensation of his cock mushing against her privates was too recent. She recalled his icy touch and blasted a sob and snot across the duct tape fixed across her mouth.
His failed attempt to rape her left him furious and her pubic bone bruised. He’d slapped her—hard—and promised he would take her later, when they were warm and in a bed. He left to secure a room. Said he’d be back before nightfall. Said they would soon go for his shell, whatever that meant.
She twisted her wrists, but the tape held. He was smart enough to lay her in a ditch, smarter still to bind her knees and ankles, making rolling uphill impossible. She’d tried it. Her only reward for that attempt was a rash from the prick of pine needles.
Prick . . . She swallowed bile and concentrated on not vomiting while lying on her back. She focused instead on Maggie, who was probably looking at her watch at Queen Street Station. Maggie wouldn’t mess around. She’d call the cops and the consulate. The police would investigate her disappearance. She just had to stay alive long enough for them to find her. Buying time meant identifying Lynch’s main objective and prohibiting him from reaching it.
So, what did he want? Sex? There had to be more than that. He could have abducted any woman for sex; he went to a lot of trouble to snatch her.
It was tough to forge a plan with limited information. She would try to stay calm, study him, experiment, see what worked—and what didn’t.
The crossbill chirped alarm and flushed out of the boughs. Ann heard the rustle of footsteps and checked the sky. Night was coming, and with it, darkness.
Chapter 25
In the hotel lounge, Maggie checked her email for the millionth time. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Ann did not arrive on the three-thirty train from Oban, or the 5:48, or the 7:19. Station officials were useless. Why should they care? To them, Ann was just another Yank sleeping off a hangover in the Highlands.
Fuckers.
Maggie crossed the marble flooring to the front desk. Under a neon WELCOME TO HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS sign, the receptionist shook her head sympathetically. “Nothing yet. I’ll call you the moment I hear anything.” Maggie believed her. Women understood each other.
“I’ll be over there.” Maggie gestured to a booth, where her open laptop gave the vinyl seatback a cerulean patina.
Sick tension herded her back to her seat. This wasn’t like Ann at all. Ann was the careful one. If Ann said she would arrive at three-thirty, she showed up at three.
Maggie rubbed her taut forehead and reread Ann’s last email.
After this week, he’s a little too late, I think.
She didn’t name her new lover or give any details about him. What if she fell for a total weirdo?
An invisible thing gnawed at Maggie’s gut.
Come on, Annie, where are you?
She slammed the laptop shut, then slid out of the booth to pace the width of the foyer. Sitting on her ass accomplished nothing. She was the doer, the fixer, The Strong One.
She looked at her watch. Another fifteen minutes. If Ann failed to communicate by then, she was going to the cops, maybe call the embassy. Where the hell was the embassy?
A man burst through the revolving doors, nearly colliding with her. “Sorry.” He did not wait for a reply, but raced instead to the front desk. “I’m looking for someone. If I give ye a name, can ye tell me if she’s staying here? She’s a Yank. I figure she might pick this place.” He glanced up at the neon sign. “American chain and all.”
The receptionist shot Maggie a darting, uncomfortable look. “Sir, for reasons of confidentiality, I can’t—”
“Her name’s Ann. Ann McConnell.” He’d said it forcefully, punctuating each word with a thump of his index finger on the desk. “It’s important.”
Maggie’s breath caught in her throat. The receptionist looked uneasy.
/> “She’s here then,” the stranger said. “Right. I understand ye canny say one way or the other, but if I left a note . . . could ye at least get a message to her?”
Maggie thought about calling the police.
No time.
She’d handle this herself.
She strode to the desk. In her best don’t-fuck-with-me-voice, she asked, “What do you want with Ann McConnell?”
The stranger flashed eyes the color of Antiguan waters. He was not dressed to impress. His shirt was rumpled and dirty, like he’d left home in a hurry.
“Ye’re her friend,” he said. “The one she wanted to contact. I need to see her. It’s important.”
“She’s not here.”
He looked around the lounge. “What do ye mean, she is nae here? Of course she’s here. She has a scheduled meeting, and the two of ye have a flight to catch.”
He knew enough to prove he’d been with Ann. Maggie studied his face and found genuine desperation.
“You’re the reason why Mike’s too late.”
He tilted his head. “Pardon?”
“Ann’s ex.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter right now. Ann’s not back from Iona. I expected her at three-thirty. She wasn’t on the train.”
He pinched the skin at his throat. “That’s impossible. I saw her board the ferry to Mull. The bus picks up there and drops passengers at the Craignure pier. There are no stops in between. Train waits in Oban until the ferry arrives. It would be hard to miss it, but if she did”—he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall behind the reception desk—“she could have taken two others since.” He offered his hand. “I’m William.”
She shook it, squeezing hard to convey the futility in fucking with her.
“I’m Maggie.” She gripped his hand longer than necessary. “I was at the station for each arrival. She wasn’t on any of the trains.”
He ran his hands through his hair and turned toward the lobby doors, as if expecting Ann to walk through them. “This is terrible. Where could she be?”
“Come,” Maggie said, relieved to have a fellow worrier. “Let’s talk. Maybe between the two of us, we can figure it out.”
They sat in the lounge, now filling with boisterous teens that made it difficult to hear William’s story. After he recounted the details of Ann’s days on Iona, Maggie trusted him completely. And she worried more than ever.
“She emailed me from the Craignure ferry. Said she fell for somebody . . . you, I suppose.”
“She did?” William flushed. “I fell pretty hard for her, too. She made the ferry?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I canny imagine why she is nae here.”
“Nor can I. Not to be nosy, but what happened between the two of you?”
He stared at her.
Maggie wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. “I guess what I’m asking is whether things got so hot and heavy she went back to look for you.”
“She would nae . . . would she?” Hope lit up his face for a moment, then faded. “No, she would nae.”
“How do you know?” Maggie asked.
“Because I asked her to stay. She refused.”
You little vixen, Annie!
“Besides,” William said, “if she’d changed her mind, she’d have said so in her email so ye did nae worry.”
“Yeah, she would have, though she seemed pressed for time. Maybe she planned to email me from the train, but then lost Wi-Fi access, or maybe her tablet died.” Maggie sat back against the vinyl. “We need to get to Oban and ask around at the railway and ferry offices. Did you bring the train?”
“I drove from Oban. I can find oot if Ann’s on Iona wi’oot going back, though.” He pulled a Nokia cellphone out of his pocket.
“You into antiques?” Maggie gestured toward his phone.
“Ye’re not the first to tease me aboot it.” He held it at arm’s length to view the screen. “If she’s back on Iona, she’ll be at The MacDonald Centre.”
“Can we call there?”
“Centre does nae have a phone.”
“Jesus, how do you people survive in this country?”
“My friend Liam is working on Iona. If he’s not already pished for the night, he’ll walk up to the Centre and see if she’s there.” He composed a text with fingers too fine for a laboring man.
Curiosity got the best of her. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m an artist.”
She chuckled. Of course, Ann would fall for an artist.
A beep announced when William’s text went through. He pursed his lips and returned the phone to his pocket. “Now, what’s this aboot an ex?”
“Jealous?”
“A bit.” He flashed a deadly smile.
“Don’t be. He’s a hateful prick.”
“Does she want him back?”
“She did until today.”
“What happened to them?”
“You mean she didn’t tell you?”
He brushed a hand across the stubble on his chin. “It never came up. I’d like to know.” He smirked. “Just so I know what sort of competition I’m up against.”
“The kind that leaves a woman sitting in a fertility clinic while he bonks a twenty-year-old.”
“Ouch.” His posture stiffened. “Wait . . . she has fertility issues?”
“Shit. That part should have come from her.”
His head fell back, and he closed his eyes. Relief washed over his face. “So, that’s it.”
“That’s what?”
“When I asked her to stay, I told her we could be a family, that we could have wains of our own.”
“Oh, no. Nonono, dude, she has real issues. Thinks she’s less of a woman because she can’t have babies.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Of course it is, but she believes it, and who can blame her? I mean, her ex got the twenty-year-old pregnant, then filed for divorce. It turned into something real ugly in Ann’s head.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Silence stretched between them until William’s phone beeped.
Maggie leaned over the table as William read Liam’s reply. “Well?” she asked, unable to wait.
“Liam says she is nae there.”
“Okay. I’ve had enough of this shit.” Maggie slid her laptop into its case. “It’s time to go to the cops.”
“Station’s up on Stewart Street. I’ll take ye.”
Chapter 26
Maggie sat with a clipboard on her lap in a tiny room off the police station’s main lobby. They’d been there for over an hour. Next to her, William’s knee bounced. She glared at it. “That’s not annoying at all.”
“Sorry.” He stood, shoved his hands into his pockets, sighed, then sat again. “What’s taking the bastards so long?”
“Maybe we should have . . . Oh, here comes someone.” She uncrossed her legs to sit up straight.
An officer—a sergeant, according to the chevrons on his epaulettes—traipsed duck-footed into the room. His trousers matched the black necktie dangling over his paunch. He stripped the clipboard from Maggie’s hands, then slumped into a chair behind a desk. “Now, then”—his pen glided across Maggie’s responses on the questionnaire—“let’s have a wee look.” He slid a pair of bifocals up to the bridge of his nose.
Maggie blinked. That’s it? No introduction? No hey-I’m-sorry-your-best-friend-is-missing? Maybe the guy was all business. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? They needed determination more than manners right now.
She watched him scan the papers, resolving to be patient. But when the staccato hand of a wall clock clicked forward one minute, then, two . . . then three, she lost it. She cleared her
throat and shimmied to the edge of her seat. “Sir—”
Without taking his eyes from the clipboard, he held up his palm, the pen pinched between his fingers like a conductor’s baton. Urine-colored stains adorned the armpits of his creased shirt.
Maggie flopped back in her chair, ready to spit fire.
The clock hauled the minute hand another click forward.
William’s knee bounced.
In the lobby outside the office, two cops hauled a combative drunk toward processing. They wore smart mandarin-style shirts and combat pants with thigh pockets. The reflective word POLICE glowed on their sleeves. Those were the cops she wanted to search for Ann, not the slack guy who apprehended nothing but his next meal.
She could take no more. “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’ve been here for over an hour.”
William kicked her foot, then scowled and gave a quick shake of his head.
“This isn’t the States, Miss Mason.” The sergeant’s eyes peered above the rim of his glasses.
What did that have to do with anything? She fantasized about skewering his head with his pen. Ann was in real trouble, maybe dead. and this self-important asshole—this Navy Seal wannabe, legend-in-his-own-lunchtime, bloated turd—was going to take his sweet old time, if for no other reason than to show the “spoiled Yankee slapper” in front of him that he had the power to do just that.
“So, the absent person headed to Iona?” The sergeant leisurely flipped the page.
Absent person? What the flippin’ heck, dude? “Yes, but she was supposed to be back today, on the three-thirty train. And her name’s Ann McConnell, not Absent Person.”
He laid his pen on the desk, took off his glasses, then polished them with a cloth he pulled from the desk drawer. When he returned his glasses to his face, he gave her a hard stare and returned the handkerchief—slowly—to the drawer.
She looked at William, whose penetrating eyes begged her to keep her cool.
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