Page 14 of A Time & Place for Every Laird (A Laird for All Time #2)

“Hugh? Hugh?”

Hugh blinked and yawned, looking around in confusion. “Did I sleep?”

“Yes. Sugar coma, I think.”

“I willnae ask what that means,”

he replied, ignoring her grin as he looked around. He was still in the car but they were stopped, packed tightly amidst other conveyances in a structure of some sort. Long lamps on the ceiling overhead lit the space, shedding light on the iron walls and the openings in them, and Hugh could see that night had fallen. Beyond the open windows, there was water shimmering in the moonlight. Were they at sea?

“Where are we?”

“On the ferry,”

Sorcha answered, gathering her purse and coat. “I thought we could get out and stretch a bit. The ride will be about half an hour.”

“Ferry? Tae where?”

he asked confusedly.

“Come on, sleepyhead,”

she teased. “Shake off the cobwebs. I told you we were going to an island.”

“My apologies. I’m nae my best when I first awaken,”

Hugh said as he got out of the car. Cool air immediately surrounded him, prickling a refreshing path over his skin and clearing his mind.

“Don’t forget your coat,”

Sorcha said, but Hugh just raised an arrogant brow at the reminder. He’d been born on the fringes of the North Sea. Such a mild chill as this only served to invigorate.

They climbed narrow metal stairs to the large passenger cabin of the vessel. It was bigger than he had thought, perhaps four hundred or more feet in length and almost a hundred across. It was easily twice the size of any ship Hugh had ever been aboard. The main cabin was walled in incredible sheets of glass and spanned the entire length of the ferry. People were everywhere. Young, old, tall, short, fat, and thin. Some were dressed more formally and others in jeans like the ones he and Sorcha wore. Many faces seemed unfamiliar to Hugh, hinting at ethnicities and places he had never seen, yet they melded together here. More than that, the crowd was loud, and noticing a door at the far end of the cabin, Hugh suggested they step out onto the deck.

Sorcha nodded and followed him out onto the stern deck, where the cool breeze licked at their cheeks. With a sigh, she leaned against the railing and stared down at the wake trailing the ferry.

Hugh, however, could not look down when the sight elsewhere was something quite beyond his experience, perhaps more astonishing than anything he had seen in this century thus far. A mass of lights lit the shore like a cluster of stars hugging the ground. But, like the stars, many ascended toward the heavens and formed shapes against the night sky. “What is that?”

There was enough awe and curiosity in his voice to draw Sorcha’s attention away from the water below.

“That? It’s Seattle.”

Hugh had never heard the word before, so it did nothing to fulfill his curiosity. “But what is it?”

“A city.”

Those huge rectangles were buildings, he realized, lit against the night sky. How could that be? It looked like no city Hugh had ever seen, and he wasn’t na?ve. He had seen much of the world and what it had to offer. He had seen the soaring spires of the greatest castles in Europe, but none of them had reached such heights as this. And the tallest one of all seemed to be held up by nothing more than thin legs. These buildings touched the heavens and were lit with a thousand colorful lights. Blue lights flashing against the sky. Red ones. How?

A tremor snaked its icy chill through Hugh’s chest.

What a fool he had been to think that one world was much like next. To think that he was equipped to face what lay before him. To think that he might even do it all alone. It had all seemed so simple in Sorcha’s home, with walls blocking out the horrible reality of his situation, when there was some joy to be found for an inquiring mind.

But this?

When faced with such a harsh reality, Hugh realized he had about as much influence over his own life as an ant did beneath a man’s boot.

“How am I to survive this, Sorcha? I had thought I might …”

he whispered into the brisk night air, shaking his head. “But, nae. This place is foreign. Nae even that. I might hae become accustomed tae a foreign land, but this is alien tae me. ’Twas a simple thing yesterday and today during our journey tae hide beneath bravado and humor. Tae ignore what I knew deep in my soul and cast aside my … fear.”

Hugh swallowed as he finally said the word, which was almost as alien to him as this land. He had never truly felt its power before. Never understood how it could seize a man’s soul. Not even in the heat of battle had he felt such terror.

“Hugh,”

Sorcha whispered, breaking her own rule to reach out and squeeze his shoulder sympathetically.

Hugh did not pull away as he normally would have in the face of such compassion. Indeed, he longed to give in to a childish impulse to lay his head against her soft bosom and be cradled like a bairn in need. “I ken nothing of this world, Sorcha. Nothing at all, and it is that verra ignorance that frightens me more than anything else.”

“The one good thing about ignorance, Hugh, is that it can be cured,”

she told him. “I can teach you what you need to know.”

Hugh raised a haughty brow, and Sorcha answered it with a sheepish grin, adding, “And what I can’t teach you, books and the power of the Internet can. You’ll be fine. We’ll get through this together.”

He envied Sorcha her conviction on the matter. “I wish I had such faith.”

“I thought you medieval men were all about faith and religious quests.”

“I hae told ye before, I …”

Hugh started irritably but halted at the sight of her mischievous grin. “Ye think to solve all our woes wi’ humor.”

“Great minds think alike. It worked for you, right?”

Sorcha drew her jacket more tightly around her, hugging her arms tightly over her chest. “Now, let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.”

Hugh took off his sport coat and threw it around her shoulders. Sorcha was a study in contradiction. Bold enough to brave the authorities of her own country but not the cold. Wary but trusting. Solemn but humorous. Her words of wit had often been biting in their humor, but when Sorcha had lost herself to laughter that afternoon in the car, her bonny face had lost all traces of the sadness that seemed to always linger there, replacing it with unmitigated joy.

That laughter had lit her eyes and softened her features, her winsome smile blinding white and radiant. The sight of it had filled his heart with the same light. Hugh had never seen anything so enchanting. He had wanted to frame her face in his hands and kiss her thoroughly, sharing in that joy. Their agreement kept him from doing so, but the sight had inspired more desire in him than her scant nightwear of the previous evening.

Now, she burrowed deep into the warmth of his jacket and smiled up at him freely, as if their shared laughter had demolished any barriers between them. As if somewhere along their journey she had crossed over the line between benefactor and friend. “Won’t you be cold?”

The cold wind could hardly cool the desire warming his veins. Hugh could only scoff. “Ye would ne’er hae survived in my time.”

“Let’s get you through mine first, then maybe we’ll test that.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Hugh’s mouth and he bent in a courtly bow. “I will expect ye tae honor yer challenge.”

“Mrs. Manning,”

Phil Jameson called as he pounded on the door to the townhouse one last time before stepping back and nodding to the nervous man at his side. “If you could, please.”

“I have to tell you that I can’t imagine Mrs. Manning being in any kind of trouble,”

Rogers, the townhouse’s landlord, said as he shakily inserted his master key into the lock.

Jameson didn’t deign to respond. While it was true that he didn’t have any evidence against Claire Manning, he was certain she was aiding the anomaly in some way. Only three people had left the campus before the lockdown. But of the three, only Claire and one other had been seen near Fielding’s office. After hours of watching the video surveillance, he had pulled the feed on her as she had driven past the security gate. There had been something in her expression—not fear but enough of something—to make her the likely culprit. None of the others leaving the lab had looked even mildly suspicious.

Only her.

She had been forced into helping in the escape, he knew it. Now all he needed was the proof.

The only thing that didn’t make sense was her behavior when he had come to this townhouse before. She had been breezy then, deliberately so. When compared to the expression captured on the video camera just hours before, the change between them was primarily what had caught and held his mistrust.

“Search every room,”

Jameson ordered the fistful of men under his command, a combination of NSA and INSCOM personnel charged with the suppression and containment of the lab breach. The men fanned out through the townhouse, leaving Rogers lingering nervously at the door. “Bring me something.”

“I can’t imagine why you would think that this Manning woman helped at all,”

Agent Nichols, his INSCOM counterpart who was in joint command of their task force, said. “There is nothing to link her to the experiment.”

“Call it a gut instinct,”

Jameson said, though the question plagued him as well. Why? He had seen the footage from the cellblock that Fielding’s office had become. The escapee was a brute of a thing, capable of killing Claire Manning without effort. Clearly, it had forced her aid to escape. So why hadn’t she confessed when she had the chance? What could it have threatened her with?

Jameson looked around the townhouse. Everything was tidy and neat. The sink was empty, and the dishes in the dishwasher were clean. There were no signs of either an unwanted guest or a forced departure.

“Jameson, sir,”

one of Nichols’ junior INSCOM agents called out.

“What do you have?”

“Not much, sir. No purse or keys, but that doesn’t mean much. Nothing else looks to be missing, though it would be hard to tell from a woman’s closet if she took anything from it,”

the junior agent, Majors, said.

“Come on, people!”

Jameson barked irritably. “There must be something!”

“Sir, I think I have something!”

Jameson turned to find one of his own agents standing at the head of the stairs. “What is it, Marshall?”

“We’ve found what look to be traces of blood in the shower drain, sir.”

Was it Claire Manning’s or the anomaly’s, Jameson wondered? It didn’t matter. The blood was enough. For him at least. “That’s it! Let’s get a BOLO out on Mrs. Manning’s car. I want to know where they are and where they’re going!”

Nichols raised a brow. “On what grounds? A little blood? Gut or not, in my opinion, you’re barking up the wrong tree here, Jameson.”

“And when I find Claire Manning harboring our anomaly you will be proven wrong.”