Page 13 of Highlander’s Curse (The Daughters of the Glen #8)
Eleven
I f only the sun would chase away the dark, heavy clouds, it might yet turn out to be a decent day.
Abby shivered and pulled the zipper on her jacket all the way up to her chin, huddling into herself against the early morning chill. The rains had finally stopped early yesterday, but the clouds hanging low over the dig site looked ready to burst open at any moment. Summer in the Highlands.
“Okay, people. Gather round so we can go over today’s plan of action.” Mackenzie Lawrence tapped her pencil impatiently against the clipboard she held. “Come on , people! Mr. Flynn doesn’t have all day for us to waste.”
Puh-leeze . Abby forced herself to stare at her own feet so that no one would see her eyes rolling in irritation. As if every single person out here this morning wasn’t every bit as committed to this project as that annoying little harpy.
Like Abby, most of the others were so excited and grateful to have been chosen to participate in this dig, they’d all minded their manners and deferred to Jonathan Flynn’s every word.
Not Mackenzie. She’d quickly appointed herself their benefactor’s right-hand woman and clearly considered herself head and shoulders above the rest of them because she’d been working as some professor’s assistant for the past year.
Big frickin’ whoop.
Pretty pushy, in Abby’s estimation. Especially for an undergrad. Abby herself had no illusions that Ms. Lawrence knew more than any of the others. She didn’t. It was only that none of them—including Abby—worked so hard at trying to be in charge.
Or at kissing Jonathan Flynn’s butt.
Besides, they’d been over this same little speech so many times, Abby could almost give it herself. After all these weeks, she seriously doubted that the item Jonathan sought was even here to be found.
Her head snapped up when she realized Jonathan had already launched into his description, only to find his eyes fixed on her as if he spoke directly to her.
“I have faith in your ability to locate the stone marker we seek, even though it likely will be in small pieces since the site has been so thoroughly damaged by time.”
Damaged by time? Abby was willing to bet a full month’s salary there was more than time that had gone into the deteriorated state of this particular site.
With an undergraduate degree in archaeology, she’d seen thousands of photos from more than her share of ancient sites located all over the world.
This one looked like none of them. Granted, she had never been to the British Isles before, but she had firsthand knowledge of dig sites all across the southwestern United States and she’d never seen any in this shape.
In fact, this site looked as if a wrecking crew had been here with sledgehammers, paid to pound the place to dust.
The effects of a thousand years of warring tribes and wet weather, according to Jonathan. That might well be, but Abby had her doubts. This destruction looked intentional to her. Intentional and absolutely complete.
She tuned out the drone of Jonathan’s voice and began her mental preparation for the day’s work.
As she always did, she visualized herself sending out delicate tendrils of fluorescent green energy.
They curled across the ground, lashing out like lizard tongues testing the air.
They probed the rubble and beneath, deep into the earth under her feet, determinedly seeking their prize, the Marker Stone.
According to Jonathan, centuries ago the stone would have stood as tall as a man, its surface engraved with strange Pictish markings.
He’d shown them a rough hand-drawn sketch of what he expected to find based on his research.
The drawing had reminded Abby of a snake curling around a Do Not Enter sign.
She filled her mind with the image of the drawing but, again today, she felt nothing other than her own frustration. If the marker was here, it wasn’t in the location where she was assigned to dig today.
Their standard pep talk ended, Abby made her way to the spot where she’d been working for the past week and stepped gingerly into the taped-off square. Down on her knees, she laid her hands on the dirt, spreading her fingers in her own private ritual.
There were archaeological treasures somewhere below her hands. She could feel them. Lovely bits and pieces of past lives, clues to a people long gone, calling to her to expose them to the world once again.
But no Marker Stone. Nothing with the design Jonathan sought.
Neither was her own special treasure here.
For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to travel to Scotland on an excavation. Something here had called to her. Something ancient. Something special meant for just her to find.
Ah, well. There were still two months left. She might yet locate that special something.
The locals had told them there were a few small caves in these mountains and she had hopes that she’d have a chance to explore those areas to see what they might hold. Who knew? One of them might hold the treasures she sought.
For now, though, their dig site was centered in this little glen, which was just as well, really.
As much as she wanted to see what history the local caves might hold, the idea of actually going inside a small, dark hole in the ground made her almost physically ill.
It was that fear of small, dark places that had led her to study early Native American and Ancient Celtic peoples rather than to venture into Egyptology.
The whole idea of being sealed in a pyramid was more than she could bear to entertain.
In a matter of moments, her mind filled with variations of what might await her on this particular day. As always, she was lost in her work, completely absorbed in digging away the thin layers of dirt and debris separating her from the treasures calling to her.
“Give me your opinion on this, Abigail?”
Abby dragged her attention from the little trowel in her hand, so completely immersed in her work it felt as if she were swimming up from the bottom of a deep, dark pool into the bright sunlight.
When had all the clouds burned off?
Jonathan towered over her, clutching some small find in his hand. Light glinted off the sunglasses he’d pushed up on his forehead as he smiled down at her and held out a hand to help her to her feet.
He really was an attractive man. Tall and broad-shouldered, with long blond hair pulled back and tied at his neck, he looked like he belonged in a commercial for expensive big boy toys.
If she squinted just right, she could almost picture him standing on the deck of a yacht with some fancy drink in his hand.
And yet, here he was, smiling down at her, his shirtsleeves rolled midway up his forearms, some muddy little prize clutched in one hand as he reached out to her with the other.
She accepted the help willingly, realizing as she stood that she had no idea how many hours she’d spent on her knees, only that, from her stiff legs, it had apparently been a good long while.
“What do you make of this, love?”
Her cheeks heated as several sets of eyes turned in their direction and, not for the first time, she wished he’d stop calling her that.
Initially she’d assumed he used the endearments for everyone simply because he couldn’t be bothered with remembering their names.
But it had quickly become apparent that not only did he remember everyone’s names, he used them.
It was only her he singled out for the pet names.
She took the small dirt-encrusted stone from him and rubbed her thumb over it to examine it more closely.
“I don’t see . . .” Anything. Nothing at all. It looked like just a plain old stone to her. She ran her thumb over the surface, detecting no irregularity of any kind.
“Don’t you think that could be a bit of engraving?” He pointed the tip of the little gold pocket knife he held at a particularly mud-caked spot. “Just there. On the edge.”
He handed her the stone, pointing to a spot with the tip of the little knife. There might be something there. She shifted the stone into the palm of her hand just as he scraped the long edge of the knife against it.
“No!” He hissed the word as the blade slipped from the stone and sliced into the palm of her hand.
Both stone and knife fell to the ground unheeded.
Abby gasped, staring at the spot where the skin splayed open, feeling strangely removed as the crimson of her own blood oozed out and the sting of the wound registered in her brain.
It had all happened in the blink of an eye, and yet it was as if time had come to a stop, the sound of her own heartbeat echoing loudly inside her head as if heralding some momentous occasion.
Thub-Dub.
“No,” he denied on a whisper, clasping her hand between his own as if he could undo the accident.
Jonathan held her hand fast in his, her strength no match for his when she tried to pull away. Murmuring a string of unintelligible apologies, he lifted her palm to his lips.
Thub-Dub.
Shock stiffened her body when his tongue stroked over the wound in her palm an instant before she felt the unmistakable pressure of his sucking against the site.
Their gazes locked in the moment and a second shock tingled down her spine, this one tinged with an unreasonable fear, strangely reminiscent of the way she’d felt in the dream she’d had the night before she’d gone to search for Colin.
Thub-Dub. Thub-Dub.
His eyes, usually masked to hide whatever he felt, glittered now. The green of his irises seemed to sparkle with some emotion she couldn’t begin to identify.
Thub-Dub. Thub-Dub. Thub-Dub.
She tore her gaze away, focusing instead on the little gold knife he’d dropped at their feet.
She stared first at the silver blade, a streak of her blood covering its edge, and then at the fancy little letters engraved on the handle, as if memorizing the scripted F.D.A .
could somehow transport her away from this moment in time.