Page 8 of Rekindled (The MacTavish Heirs #5)

In which Lucas has a breakthrough, and Catriona borrows the butler’s clothes.

Lucas…

Going through Cat’s phone records is harder than I expected.

Evidence of a life lived without me, dozens of texts for outings with her cousins, daily yoga, weight-lifting. Good, she’s staying with Dr. Tennant’s plan.

After going back through a year’s worth of messages, I notice there’s nothing about a man. No dates, no mentions of meeting up, though there is one conversation where her cousin Kenna pushes her to go on a date with one of the doctors in her medical group.

I’ve never liked Kenna. She used to drag all the girls into trouble when they were younger.

Really, arsehole? Or is it because she wanted Cat to move on?

Pictures …

They hit me like a punch in the chest. Cat dancing, head thrown back in that boisterous laughter she gives out for any ridiculous situation.

Images of lunch with friends, dinner at the MacTavish estate.

A couple of her in her lab, excitedly holding up some concoction or another.

There’s one from a black-tie fundraiser, I remember trailing her at events like that for hours, itchy in my custom tuxedo.

With a build like mine, it’s hard to buy anything off the rack.

Moving on to her social media, I look for patterns, or anything out of the ordinary.

Like the rest of the MacTavishes, her social media presence is extremely limited and most of her accounts are private.

There are no personal messages of note. Looking over her TikTok account, I notice several message requests, but she never opened any of them.

Clicking on one, I get the notification that “This request has been withdrawn.” There’s at least fifteen of them.

I dial Xenia’s number, my fingers tapping impatiently on the desk.

“Xenia here. Who is this?” Our resident hacking genius always sounds slightly suspicious. I respect that about her.

“Lucas Stewart.”

Her tone immediately brightens. “You’re back? Thank god, you’re the best tracker we’ve got. ”

I had belonged to the MacTavishes. Not anymore.

“I’m going through Cat- Miss MacTavish’s social media and I need some help. Can ye track a deleted message on TikTok?”

She snorts. “Now you’re just insulting me. I’m in my lab, one floor below you, suite sixty-one.”

“Be right there.”

Cat always claimed that Xenia’s place looks like Apple and Microsoft had a baby and the baby threw up all over her lab.

There’s twisted cords and wires, multiple monitors on the walls and most of the light from the windows is blocked by a long series of incomprehensible grafts.

She’s a tiny blonde thing from the US with a voracious appetite for skimming through the dark web and energy drinks.

“I come bearing’ gifts.” I hold up a twelve-pack of Celsius drinks.

“You remembered!” She presses her hands to her chest like I’ve just presented her with a diamond bracelet and a dozen roses.

“Need ye sharp and alert.” She cracks one open and downs half of it in one enormous gulp. “Do ye have three stomachs, like a cow?” I ask. “Because I dinnae know where ye keep it all. I’m thinking your internal organs are drowning by now. ”

“This shit is the only thing keeping me sane, you idiot. Don’t disrespect the process.” She’s already swung her chair around and she’s tapping furiously on her keyboard, pulling up Cat’s social media records.

Leaning over her, I point to the messages column. “Someone tried to message her repeatedly, but she never opened them. They withdrew their request. Can ye track the IP address? Even an email?”

“Take a seat and learn from the master, my lad.” Her fingers are a blur as she skips from one monitor to the other and back again. “Hmmm…”

“What does ‘hmmm’ mean in this case?”

Blindly reaching out, she seizes the half-empty energy drink and downs the rest of it. “You might have to give me a couple of hours. This shit is encrypted. Whoever it was didn’t want anyone finding them. Probably a man. Got his widdle feelings hurt because she wouldn’t answer his message request.”

“Sounds accurate. Can I use your facial recognition software while ye go through the messages?”

“Use the laptop on Georges’ desk,” she says absently, eyes narrowed and watching whatever meaning the random streams of data are showing her .

There’s something itching at the back of my mind, the picture on her phone from the fancy dress charity event.

Pulling it up, I watch the facial recognition tracer scan the faces.

Most of them are relatives or close friends.

The cursor hovers over the few faces in the background, other guests just passing by.

I scroll over the faces, most blurry and out of focus.

Hovering over one face, I dismiss her. Blair Murray’s been chasing after Michael for years. Another of a man who looks vaguely familiar… ah, he’s a banker.

The cursor moves over the next face and the image sharpens slightly. I click the text box and the name pops up.

Hugo Dubois. He’s side-eyeing Cat avidly, all but licking his lips. Googling him brings up a myriad of stories. An eccentric who loves to dress outlandishly. A vicious businessman who’s not above extortion. He’s a leader in the pharmaceutical industry, but his passion?

Rare poisons.

Calling Xenia back, I wait for her distracted, “Huh?”

“It’s Lucas.”

“Oh, good!” she says. “I was just dialing your number. The message requests were from- ”

“Hugo Dubois?”

She huffs irritably. “You just can’t let me be the one to make the dramatic announcement, can you? Yes, it’s from one of Dubois’ encrypted emails. He was quite persistent. The messages kept coming until about a month ago.”

“Thank ye. I’ll be sending ye a case of Celsius every week for the rest of my life.”

“Please, Lucas,” she laughs. “A case would only last me a day or two. But throw in some Flaming Hot Cheetos and you’ll be my favorite person forever.”

“Ye have it, lass.” As I disconnect the call, a faint flicker of light fills my chest.

It’s hope.

I finally have a target.

Catriona…

If I thought I smelled as bad as it could get this morning, I was wrong.

édouard’s face falls as he hurries into the dining room. “ Bon sang , what has he- Here, mademoiselle, let me help you up. I’ll get a robe.”

I’m already tearing at the back of the dress, the thin silk ripping like tissue paper. “Give me your jacket. ”

“Je vous demande pardon?” He looks horrified, as if he’s the one stripping off his clothes.

“I’m not sitting here in a puddle of my own sick.” It’s taking everything in me not to hurl my dinner plate at his head. Most of the dress drops to the shining walnut floor and I kick the hoopskirt away.

“Of- of course, here.” His long butler’s jacket is off in an instant and he’s holding it out, while looking everywhere but at me.

“Thank ye.” His coat smells like tobacco and sage, oddly comforting. Wrapping it tightly around me, I lift my chin. “Can ye direct me back to my room?”

His face droops into an expression of deep desolation. “Of course. Follow me, please.”

My shoes are off and édouard’s footsteps are nearly silent on the marble floor. “So, does your boss often poison his dinner guests?”

“The ones he likes? That is unusual,” he says apologetically. We pass three more sets of guards, all of them brandishing rifles. “My most sincere apologies, Miss MacTavish.”

Pausing outside my room, I lean closer, whispering, precisely shaping every word. “If you are truly remorseful, édouard, you would help me get out of here. ”

He shakes his head sadly. “I am not that remorseful. Goodnight.”

I’m gonna kill fecking Hugo. I was thinkin’ of sparing édouard, but I might have changed my mind.

The next morning…

I wake up feeling scunnered. Throwing up my dinner removed the immediate threat of the mushrooms, but while the Acetylcysteine keeps the poison from killing me, it does nothing for the side effects.

Today will not be a good day.

With impeccable timing, Eloise knocks and brings in my breakfast tray.

“I’m not gonna be able to touch that,” I wheeze, turning pale. “Will ye please get it out of here?”

She still looks like she could tear my head off, but she unbends enough to hold up a delicate bone china coffee cup.

“Aye, please leave that,” I say gratefully.

She bustles around a bit, folding a towel and straightening some knick knacks. When she heads into the dressing room and returns with one of the white lab coats, I’m engulfed in fury.

“That fecking bastard thinks I’m gonna play lab with him today after poisoning me? That son of a-”

“S'il te pla?t,” Eloise whispers. “Fais ce qu'il te demande. Il s'en prendra à moi si tu refuses.”

“He’ll hurt you if I dinnae play along?”

Oh, he’s gonna die. I will not leave this place without his head in my handbag.

She nods, looking at the door as if she’s waiting for him to burst through it. She could be making this up as a pressure tactic. But after last night, I have enough reasonable doubt to stand up unsteadily and wobble into the bathroom.

“There you are!” Hugo greets me in the lab, arms spread out like last night. “Cat, you look lovely.”

“Dinnae call me that.” It bursts out of me, sharp and furious.

“You don’t like it?”

“No one calls me that,” I say.

No one but Lucas.

“Very well,” he says, looking disappointed. “You handled last night’s challenge rather well. I’m quite impressed.”

“Lovely.” I smile around my gritted teeth. “Your turn next time.”

He laughs, insisting on showing me around the lab and explaining his research.

Damn him, this is fascinating. “The compound is designed to break down within ten minutes of being released, you see,” he says.

“This prevents an unintended spread. Some clients can be so clumsy.” He clicks his tongue disapprovingly.

“What is this called?”

“I’m not one for fanciful names,” he says. “It is C-1161, because that is the trial that finally worked as it should.”

“You’ve added in the comparative toxicity to the agent,” I murmur, following the computer model as it combines the elements. “The regular predictors of severity wouldn’t work here because the PSS classification is already at four.”

“Oui,” he smiles modestly. “No room for error. Always fatal.”

“I would never have thought of combining the proteins,” I marvel, watching the molecular chain spiral on the monitor. “That’s very clever.”

Hugo preens a bit as he taps out a cigarette and puts it to his lips.

“Wait! Are ye mad?”

He pulls the cancer stick from his mouth and looks at it. “Oui, it is a filthy habit. I am attempting to quit” He pulls up his shirt sleeve to show a nicotine patch. “You see? ”

Not to mention lighting up in a lab full of volatile compounds, I think irritably. He’s certainly welcome to blow himself to bits, but I’d prefer not to be in the room when it happens.

“Not that I dinnae appreciate the elegance of your design,” I say, because I really do, damn him. “But why am I here?”

“Because, we both know that a poison cannot be used in any useful way unless an antidote has already been created, oui?” His face falls.

“I’ve had no trouble in the composition of the formula, but my efforts to create the corresponding antidote have reached a bit of a roadblock.

I am missing something in the steps.” he angrily tosses his cigarette pack into the garbage.

“You, mon petit chou , my little cabbage, I know you will find the answer.”

Leaning against a lab table and folding my arms, I stare at him incredulously. “You’re expecting me to help you with something that could kill an incalculable amount of people? For fecking money? Ye dinnae need any more money, for feck’s sake! Why are ye doing this, then?”

Hugo chuckles fondly. “It is not about the money; it hasn’t been for decades.” He leans closer, his eyes glittering. “It is about control. Power. The ability to have what others need, and they will do anything to get it.”

I must look horrified because he sniffs contemptuously. “Do not pretend, my little Mafia princess, that your family does not run the massive machine of your empire for mere money any longer, the cogs and wheels slick with blood. The MacTavishes want the same thing as I do.”

“We MacTavishes do not create resources to kill people in new and exceptionally vicious ways!”

Well, except for Uncle Lachlan.

“It takes a special brand of sociopathy to take pleasure in this kind of destruction,” I say.

“It is your choice, mon cher. Would you rather I sell C-1161 without a way to stop it?” He’s eyeing me closely. “I think not. Think about this, oui? We’ll speak in the morning. I know you think your family will come charging to your rescue, guns blazing, but this place?”

Hugo clicks his tongue, “This place is impenetrable. It is off most maps; there is no record of my ownership. Even a satellite would not track activity here. I cannot force you. Your brilliant mind must want to create this antidote. But you will be here for a very long time. Goodnight.”

Calling for two of the guards, he tells them to return me to my suite, my opulent, gilded prison.

I sit on the terrace off my bedroom for most of the night, watching the moon rise and sink again.

For the first time in my life, I deeply regret refusing to get a tracker implanted under my skin like most of the family.

I’m also certain that Michael will likely pounce on me the minute I’m back home and hold me down while Ma gets the insertion device and puts twenty or thirty of them in my arm.

My back. I wouldn’t put it past her to shoot one into my arse.

At this point? I might nae even fight them on it.

My family must be close.

I just have to hang on ‘till then.

An unwelcome thought pushes through. If Lucas were still my bodyguard, he would find me.

He could always find me, even when I dinnae want to be found, he was there. A solid, reassuring presence at my back.

Straightening my shoulders, I go back inside. He isn’t my bodyguard anymore. And he’s never coming back. Every time I remind myself, it hurts just as much as the first time I realized he’d left me.

***

Bon sang - French for damnit

Je vous demande pardon? - French for, “I beg your pardon?”

Scunnered - Scottish slang for feeling like complete crap