Page 8 of Blood Game

“I’ll let Anne know you arrived safe and sound,” he said in parting. “And don’t worry about the boy. He’ll have a few bruises, but he’ll live.”

Once inside her room, Kris leaned her carry-on against the wall. Even though it was late, and in the early morning hours New York time, she sent a quick text message to her publisher to let him know that she had arrived, and copied Alex at the London office, then scrolled back to that message from Cate.

She looked at the time it was sent, just hours before the accident but it hadn’t come through right away.

“I’ve sent you something...”

Kris opened the attachment. There had been only that brief glimpse at the tavern at Kingussie. Studying it now, she was evenmore confused. It appeared to be a black-and-white photograph. But of what? And why had Cate sent it?

The image was blurred as if Cate had quickly taken the shot of the photograph and then sent it off. Studying it closer, it appeared to be a piece of artwork.

“We need to talk...”

Whatever the reason Cate had sent that message it, had been important.

But what did it mean?

CHAPTER

THREE

INVERNESS

The hotel front desk manager arranged a rental car for her the next morning for her appointment with Cate’s lawyers and the drive afterward out to the Tavern, where Cate had lived after retiring.

The solicitor’s office was located in the city business center a short drive from her hotel. The attorneys for her publisher had cleared all the legal hurdles for her before leaving London. After the meeting, the keys to the Tavern lay on the passenger seat beside her shoulder bag.

She navigated the turnaround at the town center, then caught the roadway north out of the city. The rain and snow were gone, the sun breaking through the clouds. The temperature was in the high forties, the morning air sharp with that blend of rain, earth, and time that was so typical of the Highlands.

Inverness was both old and new, the old castle on the hillside looming over the city, the newer part of the city glimpsed in modern offices and store fronts. As soon as she left the city, the old returned, a thousand years of history in the sprawling hills and glens that spread into the Highlands.

Old places, Cate once said about Scotland.

As a war correspondent on countless assignments, she had traveled to other old places over the years—Israel, the Far East, the Middle East during both Gulf wars. But this was where she chose to live when she retired, and had started the next part of her life.

Her father, photographer Paul Bennett, whose career started during World War II with those iconic photographs of the bombing of London, battlefields, and then the Normandy invasion, had been born in Scotland. For Cate, it had been like coming home, reconnecting to the places he had told her about as a child.

She had lived almost her entire life in hotel rooms and one-room apartments in city towers with crowded elevators, or sleeping on bunks or cots in some remote location, bags constantly packed, preparing for that next assignment, a gypsy life not made for permanent relationships. It was the remoteness of Scotland that had drawn her. The great quiet of the mountains. After moving to Inverness, she often drove up into the Highlands, hiking some of those distant trails. Getting back to her roots, she called it, usually with a flask of her favorite single-malt tucked into her kit.

Wise, with a wicked sense of humor, C. B. Ross could hold her own interviewing heads of state, a dangerous third-world dictator, or the man on the street. She was completely unpretentious, generous to a fault, but didn’t suffer fools. She’d lost her father and numerous friends along the way in that career, some of them on those battlefields. Each one was deeply felt. She had written about it.

“You cry, curse, and shake a fist at God, then you pull up your big-girl panties and get on with it!”

Kris was never certain if the saying was original to Cate, but she certainly embodied it.

The roadway stretched out beyond the city, giving way to rolling fields, stands of old oaks and elm trees, with a sharp pungent fragrance after the storm.

It hit her then, all the moments of the last several days that she’d kept under control, pushed the memories back, refused to think of anything except the book. But as she pulled into the tree-lined drive that had once been part of an old coach road on the outskirts of Inverness, surrounded by towering elms, it all swept over her and the tears came. Slowly at first, then streaming down her cheeks as she stared at the stone walls and the roofline, windows staring blankly back at her.

The scent of rain, wet leaves, the autumn season with winter not far behind, unique to the Highlands, swept over her when she stepped out of the car.

This time was different. The breeze in the branches of the old elm was different, the sound of the stream that ran behind the Tavern was different. The quiet was different.

She slowly walked up the flagstone walkway, half expecting Cate to throw open the door in greeting along with some comment about how long it had been since she was last there.

How long? The question hung in the brisk air.

She had been planning to come over when the book was finished, stay a few days, relax, maybe hike into the highlands.