Secrets of the Highlander

by Janet Chapman

  He tossed his head back in laughter, his handsome face bathed in the afternoon sun. Megan immediately faced forward again and started calling Gesader’s name.

  “Ye mentioned you refer to the old priest as Father Daar around the moderns. What do you mean by moderns?” Kenzie asked when she paused.

  “It’s how my father and uncles have always referred to the people here. Those who traveled through time are the old ones, and anyone of this century is a modern. What was it like, to travel through time?”

  “Violent. Terrifying. Nothing I care to repeat.”

  “Robbie’s wife, Catherine, accidentally traveled back with him once, and she said she never wants to do it again, either. She also said that when she landed in twelfth-century Scotland, she was naked.” Megan grinned.

  “Is that why she and MacBain had to marry?”

  “No. In fact, today men and women can even make love without having a wedding—not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Are we still talking about Robbie and Catherine?” Kenzie asked softly. “Ye sure do get prickly at the mere mention of marriage, lass. Why is that? Did the father of your babe not ask ye to marry him?”

  “That’s none of your business!”

  “We’re related now, are we not? Does that not make you my business?”

  “Your brother is married to my sister,” she countered. “That doesn’t exactly make us kissing cousins.”

  Megan immediately slapped her hand over her mouth. Kissing cousins? Where in hell had that come from?

  Kenzie laughed so hard she would have fallen off Goose but for his strong arm wrapped around her. “No,” he said through his laughter, “that doesn’t make us kissing cousins.” His arm around her tightened. “So where is the father of your babe?”

  “Burning in hell, I hope,” she snapped.

  “Tell me where he is, and I’ll to go fetch the bastard.”

  “What for?” she sputtered, looking over her shoulder.

  “To marry ye!”

  Megan took a deep breath and faced forward again, reminding herself what century he was from. “I would never consider marrying a man who doesn’t love me.”

  “Love has nothing to do with it, lass. The two of ye are having a bairn together, whether ye wish it or not.”

  “I am quite capable of raising my child without him.”

  “I don’t doubt ye are. But does your babe not deserve to know his father?”

  “He or she will have dozens of uncles and male cousins. I have a whole family to help me here in Pine Creek. If Wayne Ferris ever grows a conscience and decides he wants to meet his son or daughter, I will deal with him then. In the meantime, I want nothing to do with the jerk.”

  “Does he know about the babe?”

  “Yes.”

  Kenzie fell silent for a time, then softly said, “Our sister was abandoned by the father of her babe. Her name was Fiona, and she had no family to help her. Matt and I were off fighting wars, and our mother had died the year before. Fiona only had our father, and it’s my understanding he’d started to lose his mind by then.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died giving birth, and her babe died soon after.”

  Megan hugged her rounded belly. “I’m so sorry. I guess that pretty much explains why you’re so concerned for me.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “But I really will be fine.”

  Goose plodded onto a windswept ridge and the forest opened to a spectacular view of Pine Lake nine hundred feet below. Kenzie reined to a stop and dismounted, then helped her down.

  “Aye, you’ll be fine. I will make sure of it,” he said. “Now, about Gesader,” he added, gently gripping her shoulders. “There…ah…there’s something I’m needing to explain to ye, lass, about your missing pet.”

  Jack Stone rested his arms on the door of his cruiser to steady himself, and trained his binoculars on the north face of TarStone Mountain. He started his search at the narrow fingers of snow stretching from summit to base, ignoring the skiers as he looked for more substantial, four-legged movement. Satisfied the horse wasn’t traveling up the edge of the ski slopes or along the chairlift paths, Jack panned west over the dense spruce and pine trees, stopping at occasional openings in the forest long enough to determine each one was empty.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Where’d you disappear to?” he said softly. “And who are you riding with?”

  Jack continued working his way across the mountain, though he knew spotting his target in the rugged terrain was about as likely as finding a teenage runaway in New York City. But having beaten those very odds more than once, he continued his methodical search with the patience of a hunter unaccustomed to failure.

  “Bingo,” he said, when the horse carrying two riders stepped onto a granite ridge halfway up the mountain ten minutes later. Jack tossed the field glasses on the seat of his cruiser, strode to the back of the blue and white SUV, opened the rear hatch, and grabbed his rifle case. He looked up and down the remote road, then lifted out the high-powered rifle that had not been issued with the handcuffs and badge when he had become head of Pine Creek’s new police force last week.

  With a derisive snort, he slid open the bolt of the rifle. Some force. He was chief of exactly one deputy officer fresh out of the academy, and a grandmotherly clerk.

  Pine Creek, along with the neighboring townships of Lost Gore and Frog Cove, had been growing in leaps and bounds, the town selectmen had explained to Jack during his interview. And though they had the county sheriff’s department and state police to back them up, the three small resort communities wanted their own arm of the law to call whenever someone thought it would be fun to swap personal possessions between citizens.

  Honest to God, those were the very words the selectmen had used. Nothing had actually been stolen; a few gas grills, toys, holiday decorations, and mailboxes had merely been redistributed between houses, seasonal camps, and businesses. Jack had nearly offered to take the job for free, if a bunch of bored teenagers constituted Pine Creek’s hottest crime wave.

  He walked to the front of his truck and leaned on the hood to look through the scope attached to the rifle barrel. He spotted the horse, riderless now, and then the two people standing beside it. Without taking his eye from the lens, he turned up the magnification until Megan MacKeage finally came into perfect focus.

  Jack sucked in his breath at the sight of her. Her shoulder-length red hair kept blowing in her face despite her attempts to tuck it behind her ears, her lightly freckled cheeks were flushed from the cold, and her eyes—which Jack knew were startling green—were narrowed against the noon sun as she looked up at the man holding her shoulders.

  Jack had made the TarStone Ski Resort part of his daily rounds, fairly confident that if he were to drive past Megan, she wouldn’t recognize him. Seeing people out of context of their known environment, especially when their looks had changed as much as his had, always made hiding in plain sight easier.

  While cruising through the resort’s parking lot this morning, he’d spotted Megan leaving her home on horseback, snuggled against the chest of a man he’d never seen in town. Jack was good with faces, postures, mannerisms, and genetic heritages. And though the man had been a couple of hundred yards away, Jack hadn’t seen any resemblance to any of the MacKeage and MacBain men he’d met, other than the guy’s size.

  Jack trained the powerful rifle scope on him now. He surely was a big bastard, at least a foot taller than Megan’s five foot three. His shoulders were broad and he had the build of someone Jack would want on his side in a fight.

  A cousin? Or an uncle, maybe?

  Or a boyfriend?

  The sound of a vehicle approaching from the direction of town ended his surveillance, as well as his speculation. Jack strode to the rear of his truck and set the rifle back in its case, then dropped the hatch just as a blue and white pickup rounded the corner and came to a sliding halt.

  Officer Simon Pratt emerged through the cloud o
f powdered snow he’d created. “Your radio’s not working,” he said, peering in the open front door of Jack’s SUV. “Hey, it’s not even turned on,” he added, reaching inside to the console. He straightened and frowned at Jack. “Ethel and I have been calling your cell and radio all morning, and I’ve spent the last two hours hunting you down.”

  Jack pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to check for a signal, only to discover it wasn’t turned on, either. “Sorry,” he said, turning the phone on before tucking it back in his pocket. “So what’s up?”

  “The bakery was broken into last night. The place is a mess.”

  “They broke in? And trashed the place?” he asked in surprise. “But that’s not their MO. They usually just take stuff sitting around outside.”

  Simon shrugged. “The bakery’s not open on Monday, so the owner didn’t arrive until eight this morning. She’d planned to catch up on some paperwork, and found the back door busted open and most of her supplies scattered everywhere. She called our office, and Ethel and I have been looking for you ever since. We were just about to call the sheriff.”

  “Why?”

  His question seemed to startle Simon. “Because we couldn’t find you.”

  Jack gave him a level look. “Did it ever occur to you to just go to the bakery without me and process the scene?”

  “Ah, sure, I did that, I mean, I secured the scene. I strung tape around the place and had the owner put a Closed Until Further Notice sign in the front window.”

  Jack plucked his binoculars off the seat and slid into his cruiser. “Then let’s go have a look at your crime scene. On the way, try to recall what the academy taught you about processing a break-in.”

  “My crime scene?” Simon looked startled again.

  “You took the call, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. But you’re the chief.”

  “And I won’t always be available, will I? So since you’re my second in command, I expect you to deal with whatever comes up.” He lifted a brow. “You graduated with honors, right?”

  Simon squared his shoulders. “I could process that scene in my sleep.”

  “Then I’ll follow your lead,” Jack said, closing his door.

  He watched Simon stride back to his truck, looking a good two inches taller. Jack turned the key in the ignition and put his truck in gear, gave one last frowning glance at TarStone, and stepped on the accelerator.

  Oh, yeah. He would definitely follow Simon’s lead—because despite what his résumé implied, Jack didn’t know squat about processing a crime scene, since his talents ran in a completely different direction.

  Chapter Two

  Megan looked at Kenzie as if he’d just sprouted a second head. He forced himself to remain perfectly still, though he wanted to pull her against his chest and soothe her shock. He just as desperately wanted to run deep into the forest in shame. He realized his grip on her shoulders had grown fierce and stepped back, tucking his hands behind him. He could only imagine how she felt. Until he’d actually said the words out loud, even he had started to believe it had been nothing more than a two-hundred-year-long nightmare.

  “Y-you can’t be Gesader,” she whispered, her face as pale as the snow. “I’ve known him since he was a cub.”

  “You’ve known me, lass. You only need look at me, Megan, to realize it’s true. Are these not the eyes of your pet?” he asked, touching his face under one eye, then covering his heart with his hand. “I’m the panther cub MacBain brought forward from twelfth-century Scotland.”

  She backed up a step, as if trying to distance herself from what he was saying. “But you can’t be Gesader,” she repeated in a barely audible whisper, taking another step back.

  His urge to comfort her finally won out, and Kenzie moved with lightning speed to gather her in his arms. She immediately started to struggle, so he simply sat down in the snow with her on his lap. “I lay dying on the battlefield when Matt found me a thousand years ago,” he explained. “And that was the day my brother made his deal with Providence.”

  She went still and stared straight ahead at Pine Lake, her curiosity apparently overriding her horror.

  “Matt had no way of knowing what his demand would set into motion,” he continued. “I was the only family Matt had left and I was mortally wounded. So my brother accepted his calling as a powerful drùidh, on the condition that my life be spared.”

  She remained silent and rigid in his embrace. He took a shuddering breath and continued. “Only I’d already started heading for this incredibly bright light, ye see, that offered me blessed relief.” He leaned in close, his chin brushing her hair. “I so badly wanted to experience what that light promised, but apparently Matt needed me more. Only it was too late for me to continue living as Kenzie Gregor, and I hung in limbo for what seemed like forever before I suddenly became a young colt—born of a mare right there on the battlefield.”

  Megan gave a soft gasp.

  “I spent the next two hundred years as various animals. I lived, died, and was reborn hundreds of times as both wild and domestic creatures.”

  “Then Matt gained nothing,” she said with no emotion. “You weren’t Kenzie, you were an animal.”

  “Aye, but we still recognized each other, lass. And four times a year, on the solstices and the equinoxes, I became a man again for twenty-four hours.”

  “So your becoming a…an animal upset the continuum?”

  He brushed a strand of her hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Matt’s deal with Providence was in blatant disregard for my own free will, Megan. I was never given the chance to decide if I would prefer death or life as an animal.”

  She turned her head to look up to him. “What would you have chosen?”

  “Death. Which I finally did after two centuries, when I asked Matt to please find a way to allow me to die one last time, preferably as a man. He realized he needed help to undo his wrong, and began devising a way to meet your sister. He lured Robbie MacBain back to twelfth-century Scotland to bring the taproot from his tree of life, and me, forward to this time.”

  “Why did he need Winter’s help, if he’s such a powerful drùidh?”

  “Besides being a drùidh, Matt is also a guardian, and guardians can’t actually interfere in our lives. They can only guard us from the magic.”

  “He interfered in yours!”

  “Aye, he did. And he so upset the continuum, we all nearly paid the price for it.” He squeezed her gently. “But thanks to your wise and very stubborn sister, everything has worked out. I am myself again, I shall die a natural death one final time, and together with Providence and a bit of help from Talking Tom, Matt and Winter now have an even more powerful tree of life.”

  Megan suddenly scrambled off his lap, her face flushed as she turned on him. “Winter! She’s known all along!” she cried. “I’ve been so worried about Gesader this week, and she couldn’t even tell me you were him!”

  Just as quickly as her anger had come, her face paled again. “I…I’ve been crying all over you for the last four months,” she whispered. She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’ve been sleeping in my bed!”

  Kenzie stood up, worried she’d back off the edge of the rise. “As a panther, Megan,” he said, moving toward her. “Not as a man.”

  “I told you my deepest, darkest secrets.” She took another step back. “I—”

  He lunged, reaching for her at the exact moment she realized her peril. But instead of grabbing him for support, Megan used his momentum to knock him off balance. She gave him a surprisingly forceful push in the chest and bolted away.

  Kenzie fell over the rise instead, landing in a snowdrift as deep as he was tall. “Megan!” he shouted. “Don’t run, lass!”

  She peered over the edge, saw that he hadn’t fallen far but was stuck, then disappeared.

  “Megan!”

  She didn’t return.

  “Goose!” Kenzie called out, throwing his body back and forth to fr
ee himself from the snowdrift.

  The horse’s head appeared over the edge of the rise, his hooves knocking more snow loose. “I’ll make my own way back. Go catch up with your mistress and take her home.”

  The horse disappeared, and Kenzie gave a snort. So Matt had figured right: he really could talk to animals.

  Jack surveyed the small kitchen of the Pine Lake Bakery & Bistro. “What’s that smell?” he asked the two people staring at him, apparently waiting for him to say something police-chief-like.

  “I noticed it, too, the moment I stepped inside this morning,” Marge Wimple said. The petite, gray-haired bakery owner wrinkled her nose. “It smells sour.”

  “Like rotting vegetation or something, only laced with sugar,” Simon Pratt added.

  “You go arrest that brat Tommy Cleary this minute,” Marge said. “Everyone knows he’s their ringleader, and the Cleary place sits right next to a bog. That’s where this smell comes from.” She pointed to a brown spot on the floor. “Where else you gonna find mud in the middle of the winter?” She then pointed her finger at Jack. “You put the fear of God in Tommy, and make him tell you who his accomplices are. Just look at what they did to my shop!” Her tearful gaze moved over the mess. “It’ll take me a week to clean this place, and another week to restock all my supplies. That’s two weeks right out of the middle of my busiest season.”

  Jack bent down and touched one of the brown spots. “I need a bit more than the fact that Tommy Cleary lives next to a bog to bring him in for questioning.” He sniffed the mud. “This is definitely out of a swamp, but that’s not the smell lingering in the air.” He spotted a slimy substance on the edge of the smashed doughnut display case and walked over to sniff it. “It’s coming from here,” he said, moving aside and motioning for Simon to take a whiff.

  “Whew!” Simon said, jerking upright. “That’s rank. What is it?”

  “The lab will have to tell us that.”

  “What lab?” Simon asked.

  Jack frowned at his deputy. “The state has a forensics lab we can use, doesn’t it?”