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Prologue

Loch Laoch, Glentree, Skye, Scotland, 1989

Up on the black rocky beach four boats, half-cabin wooden skiffs, were being filled with not the ocean’s catch, but untaxed whisky. They were lit by the moon’s bright light on that cloudless night. The wet, cold bit at the men’s heels as news from earlier of the tax man set to raid MacLaoch castle set a frantic rhythm to the otherwise clandestine and quiet pace required for aging raw spirit into Clan MacLaoch’s Glentree golden whisky. The oak barrels from the Castle’s lower caves were actively being evacuated. Clansmen sporting tight stone-washed denim, mullets, cigarettes between tight lips, and swatches of tartan tied around their wrists to protect against the metal bands on the barrels rolled, then loaded the five-hundred-pound casks into boats.

Rowan, a young boy then, vaguely remembered the way tobacco smoke hung in the air like a kind of misty layer over their illicit activities.

Then word came. The authorities were close. The black rocky shore made loading the boats hard and harder still when their high tops slid on the wet stones. News squawked over two-way radios: police were racing through Glentree toward the castle.

Men not carrying casks of MacLaoch gold were running on the beach, throwing their arms at the beached skiffs to, “Go! Go! Go!”

The last one to receive her heavy load was Chief Desire, Rowan’s uncle’s skiff.

Off in the dark, watery distance, a motorized engine, something large by the low tone of the hum, was coming up from the south, its searchlight a dot on the horizon. The authorities were coming by both land and water.

The last barrels were loaded when the searchlight and the yacht-sized vessel with the words HR Coast Guard emblazoned on the side crested the horizon. Out there beyond the break, it seemed like a ghost.

Cigarettes were flicked to the ground, indicating that things with the last skiff had gotten serious. The incoming tide had taken the remaining boats but Chief’s Desire, who was still too heavy for the water lapping under her flat wooden hull, stood still.

The white sneakers of the man nicknamed Double-A streaked over the side of her hull. “Oye! Giver!”

The men rushed the bow and shoved in time with a low incoming wave. Aided by their force and the buoyant lift of the water, the skiff moved out with the retreating wave. All five men soaked their jeans as they gave her a final shove before climbing in.

Rowan remembered the sound of the outboard motors on his uncle’s boat coming on. The sound caught another memory: his uncle’s whisky boys talking about those overpowered white and shiny outboard motors the day they’d been installed. The clansmen had talked of the two hundred horsepower they combined to make and how it was all so American. That somehow, Miami Vice had gotten the better of his uncle all the way out there on that northern port of Skye. 

As he stood on that beach, the searchlight of the incoming powerboat washing over the wave tops like an accusatory finger, did Rowan feel his uncle’s boat, even with all that extra power, couldn’t possibly outrun their English overlords. Even the skiff, with its half-Miami Vice overhaul, was still a blunt-nosed, sleepy wooden vessel whose original designs were for quiet fishing in the late nineteenth century. His uncle needed a pointed nose, a fiberglass bottom, and an unlimited fuel supply.

That man, his uncle, clan chief, and mentor stood beside him. He was the only one not to toss his tobacco; his cigar was clenched between his teeth. His uncle christened Seac James Douglas MacLaoch but went by Jacky, uttered a Gaelic prayer under his breath just as the winds changed, interrupting him with the request from the coast guard, “Cease activity and return to shore.”

“They’ll make it?” Rowan remembered asking.

“Lady MacLaoch willing.”

Those words hadn’t soothed him; in their legends, Lady MacLaoch was a woman who cursed them and all in her lineage, including him.

Then his uncle added, “And pray those engines don’t rip tha’ boat apart.”

“What?” he squeaked.

Just then, Rowan heard the skiff’s motors go full tilt, jettisoning it forward through the chop. The nose lifted at the first low, sloppy wave that struck the bow, making the men shout. The engine went slack, and two men were ordered to the nose and grip the wood rail. Double-A put power back into the propellers, and with the nose weighed down, they broke through the waves.

What it lacked in wave plowing ability, it made up for with its flat bottom in the shallows and the experts at its helm. The boat wave-hopped toward the channel, a line of low, slopping waves where the skiff could bypass the cresting waves more easily. Out of the protected bay, they’d catch the coastal rip current that sped north to the Orkneys. They didn’t plan to go that far but Her Royal Highness’ Coast Guard didn’t know that.

The Coast Guard boat, however, was a wave-smashing colossus with a diesel motor built for high sea chases. It pierced through the outer chop, closing the distance to the running skiff at the open mouth of the bay like a boot about to bash a roach into the rocks.

“Uncle…”

“Dinna fash yersel’. Even with her load, she’s made for the shallows. Her royal highness’ ship cannae be foolish enough to attempt what they are imitating to do.” His tone went low and dubious. “I hope.”

Rowan watched as the skiff hit the calm waters of the channel as the coast guard closed in. They were near to the mouth of the loch.

Next to him, his uncle whispered in their mother tongue to keep the men safe, the water to guide them, and for the MacLoach marshes to be ready to receive them.

Young Rowan ran then. Across the rocky beach, up the cliff trail where the smell of spilled whisky was heavy in the air. At the top of the cliffs, he watched the water chase as he ran, following their progress.

The large coast guard ship indeed looked to be preparing to ram the skiff; Rowan’s heart went into his throat. He shouted for Double-A to stop. Stop this madness; they’d surely die. But there no way Double-A would hear him and did not; he kept to his course, following the edge of the bay. Then suddenly, the coast guard banked hard away from the skiff, allowing it to fly out the mouth of the loch.

Rowan shouted and punched his fist in the air - their first gamble was a good one - as his feet ran again toward the MacLaoch bluff.

He needed to ensure the skiff made it all the way, so he watched them. His feet stumbled over loose rocks on the trail.

The coast guard had righted and returned to the chase. They were much better equipped to fly through the ocean waters, and soon, they were once more on Double-A and his men. This time, the skiff veered away from the safety of the shallow waters. Rowan thought it wasn’t a move they should have made as the coast guard vessel was on them again.

Commands echoed off the basalt rocks of the cliff’s shoulders; they reached him in broken waves, sounding harsh. They were being ordered once more to stop. It had the underlying feel of “or else” in the command’s tone.

The skiff wasn’t going to make it to its final destination. That Rowan could plainly see. The English looked mad and ready to ram his clansmen with their massive white boat. Rowan lost them again as he ran into the forest following the trail, making his way through and to the forest cliffs on the other side. He popped out again just in time to witness the skiff dodging left again, pushing even farther out. Rowan bellowed, “Nooo!” It was farther into the bigger ship’s territory and a sure way to drown when the larger vessel’s hull exploded the skiff.

The coast guard vessel followed and, anticipating a cut-back by Double-A, turned. Rowan screamed. The water frothed as Double-A indeed had cut back.

The Chief’s Desire was surely cut in half from where he stood. The churning water, poor lighting with the spotlight, and not enough from the moon made the boat and the bodies impossible to see. Covering his mouth and his scream as if the authorities could hear him, Rowan felt hot tears sting his eyes. His uncle’s men, clansmen who were second fathers to him, were surely killed. And he’d bore witness to the authority’s brutality to an already brutalized clan. His stomach went sick.

Then the searchlight went mad on the water below, and in the moonlight, Rowan saw Chief’s Desire running like a mud skipper over the water. The English boot had tried to crush them but failed.

Rowan whooped, punching his fist in the air, and sped along the cliffside trail again. The skiff, lit by searchlights, was headed straight toward the cliffs as the coast guard followed.

Double-A kept the motors blazing. He tore into the shallows, and while Rowan was relieved, the water there was riddled with underwater boulders that could crack the hull. The men were in a literal rock and a hard place. It was too dangerous to sustain. The coast guard vessel would pace them until they crashed, then pluck them from the water—those who survived.

It was as if the Coast Guard heard Rowan’s thoughts and put on an extra burst of speed to trap them there in that gray zone of destruction.

The skiff, however, began to pull away as if they discovered they had another outboard motor and just remembered then to turn it on. Farther and farther ahead, the skiff led from the coast guard vessel. Another burst of joy surged through Rowan when he realized what was happening. Double-A had found the rip current that traveled to the Orkneys. It hadn’t been out far where Double-A had been; it was close to shore that night.

He watched as the larger vessel turned its diesel engines on high—the growl of it reached Rowan—to catch the skiff moving with two hundred horsepower in a stream of water at eight feet per second. It was the equivalent of having the wind at their back.

The vessel kept on them, its massive searchlight trailing them. But then, in a blink, the skiff was gone. Rowan knew that Double-A made a hard right out of the spotlight, and by the time it took them to readjust it, the skiff disappeared. The Coast Guard worked in the area for some time. It searched the water and the shore for parts of the boat, and eventually, they discovered what his clan had over a millennia ago: a break in the cliffs that led inland.

Smiling and feeling righteous, Rowan ran back to the castle in a stream of whoops and hollers. They’d done it! They’d saved the clan’s whisky; they’d be able to serve their clan’s needs and make a tidy profit to fix the castle roof and help their clans people when they needed money for school or medical bills.

Rowan’s feet slowed when the Castle came into view, and his jovial mood plummeted. Blue and red lights of police cars bounced off the upper turrets of Castle Laoch, a reminder that they’d not wholly gotten away with it.

The rest of the night was a blur. He remembered finding his uncle’s hand and slipping his smaller one into his larger one. It gave him the reassurance he needed as the authorities boots moved up and down the basement stairs and then out to the lower cave. The rest of the MacLaoch gold was forfeited.

There was one pungent moment, though, that Rowan hadn’t recalled in a long time. One where his present day circumstance pulled it up and out of his deep subconscious. His uncle was a colorful man who wasn’t one to shy away from responsibilities, a party, or a fight.

“What’d you say, MacDonald?” Rowan remembered his uncle saying out front in the roundabout, the police and their vehicles the backdrop to their loss. The tone was one of aggression, and it made Rowan’s stomach churn; his uncle was angry. Then, “Is that right?” just before the officer had his head knocked back.

The mayhem that ensued was foggy to Rowan, but that name, MacDonald, stuck.

Now, sitting before him at his office desk, a MacDonald too grinned, “This is long overdue, isn’t it?” The underworked and overindulged man in a suit much too large for his shoulders but large enough to button around his rotund middle slid loan forfeiture paperwork across the desk to Rowan. “Ye can’t outrun your bad blood, MacLaoch. And yer uncle was the worst kind. I’ll finish what my own uncle started and be taking the castle from ye and yours as ye justly deserve.”

That’s what he’d said to Rowan before Charmaine had shown up, and turned things further upside-down. Now, though, looking down at the winking gold on his ring finger Rowan sighed, that was water under the bridge. But the bankman wasn’t. If they had that confiscated whisky now, it’d be worth a fortune, and he could be done with the MacDonald bankman once and for all.

Back to top.

Chapter 1 Mother Called

The afternoon in our cozy cottage at the cliff’s edge brightened as the summer sun began to break up the cloud cover outside. Beyond the front windows, the salt spray hung in the air, giving everything a gossamer glow.  

Inside, the glow evaporated. I sat on the couch in the living room of our one-bedroom cottage; I could feel the tension beginning to build the moment we’d hung up with my parents in South Carolina. Rowan was next to me, still gripping my hand. My parents informed us that TJ was about to step off a C-130 and make his way to our part of Scotland. I was gauging how much time we had to change our address. That moment wasn’t great for a family visit.

“Can a C-130 land at Eli’s airfield?” I asked.

“Only if it wants to end in the water, there’s not a runway long enough there. They’ll land down Glasgow and then make their way north. We have a few hours to set up the welcome mat and clean things.”

I looked around, “TJ won’t care that we haven’t vacuumed, babe.”

“No, not that.”

“Right, the field.” Then I remembered, “Oh, the castle still has clanspeople in the upper halls.”

“Aye, we just fought a mystical being, got married, and turned the library into a makeshift hospital.”

He seemed calm when he started the sentence, but by its end, he looked panicked.

“I’m meeting your kin. And the place is a bloody mess. Literally.” He shoved his hands through his hair and stood before looking around as if the answer was tucked under the couch cushions. He cursed resoundingly.

Now, we were getting on the same page. “That’s more the reaction that I was thinking. We have a lot to do still. And this is a lot to try and explain to TJ – much less them – about what just happened. All my mother will hear is confirmation that we’re married. And for her, doing that without her is…tantamount to murder.” I felt a nervous giggle bubble up. I was a grown woman, but my parents still held sway over a small but consequential part of my brain. The brain that was still reeling from the day before but still instinctively wanted to make Mom and Dad proud.

 Luckily, it wasn’t them coming. TJ was amiable, and the secrets I had on him were akin to those of a priest to his local parishioners.

Getting up from the couch, I started, “Row—"

He was in the kitchen on his phone, calling Marion and Flora to get the front halls swept, foods ordered and rooms cleared. He hung up, and I noticed his skin was taking on a sheen.

“Hon, none of that stuff is necessary for TJ’s visit—"

His slate blue eyes were wide, “Ye have family.”

I looked around the room as if they were standing there, “Yeah, of course I do—”

“No, you’re not an orphan. Like me.”

“Right, I have—”

“I’ve even spoken to them, but now it’s real. They’re real. The things I’ve done, the things we’ve done. How do I face your da? And most importantly, your brother? They’ve every right to take my head off—”

“Whoa,” I said, going to him, slid my arms around his middle, and laid my ear to his chest. His heart was hammering. “You’ve faced down much worse than a couple of rednecks like us, you’ll be fine.”

I listened to him take breath after breath until his heart rate came down. “Rednecks? Like…”

“I mean, we’re country, we’re nothing fancy.”

I heard him sigh, “So…never mind.”

“So, what?”

“Nothing.”

I looked at him, “You’re wondering if TJ is my brother-cousin, aren’t you?”

He gave a nervous laugh.

“He is. Best to keep things in the family, right?”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or no’.”

I lead him on a little longer, “You’ll finally meet TJ, you decide. Some people think we’re twins. Our genetic code is so similar.”

At this, he scoffed, “Aye, yer joking. He looks nothing of you. Tan and straight brown hair.”

“You must be really rattled if you forgot that. Yeah, he takes after my father. I mean, when I said we’re redneck, love, I’m using it in an endearing term that we’re very country, and we do things our way, the rest of the world be damned. So, we won’t expect formalities when TJ or my parents arrive.”

“Ah,” he said and kissed my lips since they were so close, “All right then, but if you allow it, we Scots are also a bit ‘country’ up here, and we’ve got a mind to stick to tradition like a wart on a toad so I’ll be rolling out the red carpet to any and all of your family when they come.”

“Fine, but when we mess it up. Don’t come crying to me.”

He laughed and kissed me again, “Ye know I’m a sensitive boy; dinnae make fun of me.”

I hugged him tighter, and Rowan hissed, “Not so tight.”

“Oh, right.” I gently touched his abdomen, “Are you sure we shouldn’t see a doctor about your bruise? It looked rough this morning.”

Against my temple, he murmured, “Nae, nothing but a few days off of abdominal work, and I’ll be fine. Dinnae fash yersel’” and his palm went to the round of my bottom. “So, none of this,” he squeezed, “not until I’m recovered and your brother is tucked into a nice bed of his own far away.”

That sounded like an eternity away, “That could be…forever.”

He kissed the end of my nose, “Then we never have sex again.”

I grinned at him, “I think we’re worrying about the wrong things.”

“Aye, but it’s a fun distraction. Shall we get to it then?”

I took a deep breath and grabbed the button of my jeans, “If this is our final time, yes, let’s get to it.”

Rowan laughed at my antics and inability to hear anything from him that wasn’t a turn-on, “No. Cleaning and prepping for his visit. Let’s head up to the castle.”

I feigned a sad frown, “OK, fine.”

Rowan held the door open for me as we stepped out into the weak sunshine of the early cloudy afternoon.

“I’d like to look at the field for a few hours to see what’s left and see if we have to wrap up our research work with, ‘Everything is a charbroiled briquette—the end,’ or if there’s an after story here. At university, we studied the aftermath of crown fires - fires that travel from tree top to tree top, leaving nothing but ash in their wake - and discovered solid ecological work to be done, even in the ash. We can study the regrowth over time though with lightning from an ethereal being, I doubt we’ll be dealing with an elemental situation like a wildfire. But who knows?”

Rowan nodded; his eyes were on the charred hill coming into view. When he took a stabilizing breath, I looked up. The blackened soil came down from the research field, and after only several yards of walking through green grass, it began to change to yellow, then to brown, and finally to black-scarred earth.

I wove my fingers through his and gripped his hand tight. That charred grass was a reminder of the near loss of everything we held dear.

“I’m sorry TJ is popping in at a time like this. I can take care of him and let you focus on the clan's recovery and the bankruptcy proceedings—or rather, their lack thereof since he never showed up.”

“It’s just a matter of time with the bankman. When he was here last, he reminded me of our history. For him, it’s personal. But we’ll see it through. I’ve no idea how, but we must.”

It was a minor mystery we had since he failed to show. It was like he disappeared with Mickey Gillian.

With Mickey, I could only assume he’d taken one look at the glowing skeletons and taken off, protecting his lying, cheating hide. 

“We could just sell it,” I said, returning to the bankruptcy as the field turned proper black and plant shadows were blasted against rocks.

“Och,” he said again. He became nonverbal when there were subjects he didn’t want to discuss.

With everything that had just happened, bankruptcy was the one thing that seemed fixable. “I’m just saying the Ulfberht sword—”

“And I’m just saying, while tha’ may make a fine collectible in a sassenach’s collection for several million pounds, I’ll not sell the sword that is your birthright. It might bring tha’ damned man back.” His back sounded like he was hocking it out the back of his throat like a rancid piece of haggis.

“Yeah, yeah, so you have said. I’m saying that if it will help save the castle from the bank man’s noose, as you so eloquently say, then I think it’s worth it.”

“Och, no.”

“Fine,” I drawled, then thought I’d poke at him, changing the subject from bankruptcy which was making him dark again, “You know I’m a sassenach, right?” I said, referencing the word that was sometimes used as a curse but meant outsider.

“Aye, and no. Now that you’ve reduced yourself to marry me, ye are no longer a sassenach but a Scottish lass.”

I smiled at him and bumped him amicably with my shoulder, “Awe shucks, you say the purdiest things.”

He grinned back at me, “And we both know what a load of manure tha’ is; you are just as much a part of these hills and dales as I. Just ask Ormr Fucking Minorisson.”

“If it’s OK with you, I won’t.”

“Aye it is—”

He broke off as we squinted into the distance into the circle garden, where we both caught sight of a brown-haired figure with a high and tight haircut cutting through at a swagger’s pace.

Suddenly, I was back home in South Carolina laughing, trading bawdy jokes, and eating Mother’s tooth-achingly sweet pecan pie, which she made whenever he and I made her ‘stressed to the gills.’

“He’s not… that’s not… actual skipping,” I said as if I had to explain why TJ walked the way he did, “He just walks like he owns the world and he’s on a stage before millions.”

We stopped, and I waved as Rowan released my hand as if scalded. It was as if holding my hand was a dirty little secret. He wiped his hands on his pants as TJ, in his civilian gear, held a green pixelated camo rucksack over his shoulder and came at us smiling.

I mumbled, “And it’s never a good sign to see TJ smiling like that. He’s up to something.”

His eyes were bright and clear. He was on cloud nine, and when he saw me, his smile broke into a genuine grin of joy.

I grinned back at him and felt that familiar sensation of being home, and I’d missed the hell out of him and his hijinks.

“Well, my my, if it isn’t Miss Nicole Ransome Baker!” he shouted.

I couldn’t help but laugh. Seeing him made me remember every funny moment we’d ever shared. “TJ, you jackass!” I exclaimed with love, “How the hell are you?”

“Great!” he said as he got close, “Hold this,” and tossed his rucksack to me.

I narrowly caught the fifty-pound sack.

 “Oof!” I grunted just before TJ socked Rowan squarely in the stomach.

Back to top.

Chapter 2 - TJ Arrives

Rowan's breath shot out as he doubled over. TJ smoothed his hand over Rowan’s back and patted, “That was from my folks. They didn’t like you getting my sister pregnant and marrying her without Pop’s consent. Mom, though, wants the baby to be named.” He paused, looking at something written on his palm: “Fredrick if it’s a boy and Francine if it’s a girl.”

He gave Rowan a double pat as if that settled it.

I loved my brother, I really did, but when he socked my husband only hours after we’d just survived a mythic battle? I returned the favor.

I dropped his rucksack and lunged. My fist caught his surprised cheek, “You waste of breath pissant excuse for a human being! He’s injured—”

TJ blinked in surprise as my fist turned his cheek. He grabbed a handful of my sweater absently as I tackled him into the cosmos bed. Pink and white petals blew up into the air. I sat on him and tried to sock him in the face again. TJ dodged to the side again and again.

“Whoa!” he shouted.

“And,” I said as I punched missing. 

“I’m not,” punch. “PREGNANT!”

He was surprised enough to stop and say, “What?” Just as I clipped his jaw.

“OW! Stop it!”

“YOU, stop it! You hurt him! I’m not pregnant, and he’s my damn husband, and if you were born with ears that worked properly and an actual brain between them, you’d have asked! Damn you—”

He looked beyond me to Rowan, “You OK, man?”

I slapped TJ across the head for good measure and looked back at Rowan, who was on all fours on the gravel, one hand clutching his abdomen. He’d gone ashy and was struggling for a breath.

“Shit,” I scrambled off TJ and gripped Rowan’s shoulders in time to catch him from fainting face-first into the gravel. I murmured to him, “Rowan? Honey?” And as he went to dead weight, I caught his head on my thigh and pulled him into my lap. “TJ!” I hollered, “You damn shithead!”

Only TJ, whom I sometimes forget is an army medic who buzzes into active war zones to save people, was on his cell already.

“What do you mean he’s injured?” TJ asked, putting his fingers to Rowan’s neck pulse to make sure he’d just fainted and wasn’t dead as a doornail.

“I mean, he got hit yesterday, hard, in the stomach, and it made a huge bruise. And why the hell are you here at all?! Mother and Daddy said you wouldn’t be here for another day!”

He shouted back, “I caught a ride!” TJ cursed, “He’s got cuts all over him too; what the hell was he doing?” he said, examining Rowan’s prone body before gingerly rolling him over and lifting his shirt.

“He was…a tree fell,” I improvised.

TJ gave me a dead-eye stare, “Yeah, right. You don’t get knuckles like his if a tree falls on you. You suck at lying.” He gave Rowan’s abdomen a gentle tap-tap with his fingers over the purpley bruised area. Then cursed again as someone answered his call.

“Yeah, you still with your transport?” he said to the person on the other line, “Roger that. Standby.” And pushed some buttons on his phone, “Can you get a geo locate on me?”

I piped up, “Just tell the paramedics we’re at Castle Laoch, they’ll know how to get here, at the circle garden.” Panic slithered in, having not gotten far enough from the events of the day before; all I could think was how shitty it would be for Rowan to survive everything, and a single punch from my jackass brother would kill him.

TJ said, “Yeah, you heard that? Know where Castle Loch—”

“Laoch.”

“Right. You know where that is?” he said into the phone, then, “Roger that, ten-four.”

TJ hung up and tucked away his phone before gently tapping Rowan’s face, then his collar bone calling his name. He checked his eyes, pulling his lids up.

I filled the silence, “How long did they say they’ll be here? Sometimes, they have an ambulance sitting at Glentree. Was it there? Shit, TJ, this feels serious. He’s unconscious, Tee.”

TJ didn’t look up but put his ear to Rowan’s chest and tapped. Then stood abruptly and went to his pack and rummaged through it for a secondary bag that had been smashed into the rucksack; it was the primary guts of the bag. He unzipped his med bag, dropped it next to us, put his stethoscope to Rowan’s chest, and tapped again.

I heard the distant purr of a machine and thanked the heavens that the ambulance was indeed at Glentree. Only the purr of the motor got louder and turned into a chop chop chop sound closing in quickly. I recognized the sound of a helicopter as, TJ’s phone rang.

“Go,” he said then, “Yeah, put it down in the flower bed. Yeah, the circle one. Yeah, I’m sure!”

Wide-eyed, I looked around us. “Here?!” I said, thinking of the royal coastguard chopper out where Eli worked; it wouldn’t fit.

TJ just ignored me, and within moments, something more frightening peaked over the trees in the distance. The helicopter was something out of the wet dreams of every child who wanted to decimate their opponent on the G.I. Joe battlefield.

“Good Christ, TJ is that what I think it is?”

He didn’t respond to me; it was obvious the black war bird he usually rode around in when he was saving asses was about to land in the circle garden or on the corner of the castle. My head felt like it was going to roll off with the force of the wind under the rotating blades as it paused high over the top of us.

TJ stood as I ducked over Rowan’s face, protecting him from flying debris, and tried not to think about what it meant if TJ thought it pertinent to have his taxi driver come back and get us.

TJ gestured to the pilots like a robot on a runway as they gingerly took the chopper down. The flag atop the castle’s parapet flicked and snapped in the wind until it gave up and ripped off. The thunder of the rotor wash pounded through my chest and roared around us. I watched under my arm as the experts behind the stick slowly set the wheels down like a snail through the garden (with a tornado attached to its tail). The power was reduced before the blades relaxed to a whine.

Everything from there on was a blur of TJ running, the co-pilot assisting, and Rowan being braced for flight. His eyelids fluttered when he was moved from the ground to the backboard, and he groaned. We were in the chopper and airborne within minutes. I advised them on the nearest hospital. It was over the ridge where our lone surgeon was in residence. The same hospital I flew with him to the year before when he’d needed his bullet wound stitched shut. There was radio chatter of Rowan’s description mixed with acronyms, numbers, and the occasional words I understood like unconscious, breathing, and unresponsive.

The drone of the engine and helicopter blades became white noise, and I watched TJ go through his paramedic motions of listening to Rowan’s breathing and pulse and setting him into an IV.

It was a short flight. If the pale gray Rowan’s face didn’t scare the piss out of me, I would have found the quick trip humorous. We were on the concrete helipad in a minute, and for the second time in my life, I never wanted to see that chipped white paint of the air ambulance cross on the tarmac or the weeds that were trying to crawl up through its cracks, ever again.

We were out. Rowan was put onto a waiting stretcher. TJ was running alongside the stretcher, yelling things over the rotor wash to the surgeon. Again, once inside, I was stopped at the surgery doors and asked to take a seat in the waiting room.

No matter how many times it happened, I would never get used to that feeling of despair when those doors shut on me.

This time, though, my brother was there. He was still out at the helipad speaking to the helicopter’s personnel after peeling off the stretcher once the surgeons were briefed.

By the time I reached him, the chopper was airborne, and he was walking back to me, the sober, all-business brother in place.

I started the conversation, “You piece of shit—”

“He didn’t fall out of a goddamn tree—”

“How could you? Two seconds, you’re with us, and you put my husband in there,” I whipped my pointer finger to the squat concrete building behind me in case he was as dumb as I thought he was.

“He should have been in the hospital yesterday. And don’t fucking lie, Nicole. What the hell?”

I took a deep breath, and guilt crawled into my stomach. I knew it. I knew Rowan should have gone to the hospital last night.

Instead, I shook my head and crossed my arms. In the distance purply highland hills towered, and even though we were inland, we could smell the faint brine of seawater.

“Well?” he asked. “He’s got level three contusions on his abdominal muscles, and when I hit him, it ruptured something internal that had ruptured before causing a hematoma, and by the bruising, I’d say it was less than twelve hours ago. Did he catch a missile with his flack jacket on? It sure as hell wasn’t my damn love punch.”

“Love punch? That’s what you’re calling it?”

“He has internal bleeding, but yes, let’s focus on me.”

I sighed, feeling defeated, and put my face into my hands; the tears were there before my hands touched my face, “I knew we should have taken him.”

“We who? And why didn’t you?”

I dropped my hands and said with some heat, “I don’t know if you noticed the scorched earth behind us when we met?”

“Hard to forget. Forest fire?”

“Something like that. Look, it isn’t very easy to explain. And knowing you, you’ll have to see it to believe it, so I’ll save the explanation for later. Right now, I need to contact Marion; she’ll want to know why all the second-floor windows have been blown out. And maybe Clive,” I mumbled, thinking he’d been Rowan’s right-hand man these days. I returned to the hospital’s emergency side entrance, wiping my tears, TJ behind me.

“Nicole… Pipsqueak,” he said, using his nickname for me, “If he sneezed today, he would have ruptured whatever it was. I’d say he had some bleeding yesterday, and related or unrelated, he also got himself a nice internal hematoma, and I just so happened to be the sucker that burst it. So would have a cough, or eventually just sitting up. Don’t be pissed at me.”

I turned on him at the doors, “I’m not—no, wait, I am. Of course, I’m mad at you! YOU PUNCHED MY HUSBAND!”

“He deserved it! No one in our family really knows who he is! He’s just some Harry Potter wank that’s convinced you to stay up here in the boondocks in some ancient pile of rocks he’s pretending is some historically important functioning castle.”

I was taken aback, way back, as in back the train up to the station. “Everyone thinks that?” It was way worse than I’d assumed, then amended, “No one thinks that!”

“Yes, they do, but they’re too damn nice to say anything. Mother and Daddy, no, check that; Mother is pissed. As in, if you weren’t in another country, she’d be sending you pie.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling my mother’s ire sideline me from my own. Mother baking was bad. Despite being raised as a good Southern woman, she wasn't a baking sort of gal or an eloquent home cook. She had her rebellion when she married my father, a farmer, who liked to cook and never requested her presence in the kitchen. So, when Mother did step into the kitchen, it was a loud pronouncement that she was doing something she hated, and therefore, everything that kitchen produced was ire in edible form.

“What kind of pie?” It mattered.

“Pecan,” he said it like it was a sharp metal dagger.

“Oh,” I said, not liking the drama or pie guilt that I was being subjected to.

“Yeah,” TJ said, gaining steam, “So, now you’re lying to me about him being hit before. Did you hit him? You’ve got a nice slice on your head. Did he hit you first and you got pissed and nailed him back with something big? You’re ready with the lies and not even a day into your marriage. Fuck ya I nailed him. When he’s better, I’ll do it again!”

TJ really knew where my big red button was and loved to sit on it, “FUCKER,” I shouted as the receptionist inside, on the other side of the glass entry doors, looked up concerned.

“Tell me I’m wrong. Did you hit him?”

“Ugh! You don’t understand!”

“Explain then!” he said, throwing up his hands.

“Ugh!” I responded, “TJ, I can’t just explain everything like they’re instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!”

“Try!”

“Fine!” I marched through the double doors into the waiting room and to the reception desk. I recognized the two women there from my last visit. “Hi,” I said with an aspartame smile.

They gave me a kind but wry smile in return looking at my brother and then at me. They immediately updated me, “He’s still in surgery.”

TJ rested his elbow on the bar height reception counter next to me, “Waiting.”

I threw my thumb at him, “Would you be so kind as to tell this moronic paramedic here who I am?”

The receptionist closest to me answered, “Mrs. Rowan Douglas James MacLaoch.”

“Ah, right,” I said as TJ scoffed, “I mean before Rowan and I married.”

She smiled and crinkled her nose, “He won’t understand.”

“I know, but let’s tell him anyway.”

“All right then. You’re the Minory lass.”

I looked at my brother behind me, “See?”

“Minory lass? Grandpappy’s real last name? So what of it?”

I waved her to continue and she eagerly complied, “She saved the laird of Castle Laoch by marrying him and being his one true love destined to break the curse from birth.”

I turned to him, smiling, “Still think you know what’s happening here?”

He looked from the woman to me, “Bullshit.”

END SAMPLE

Book 3 of the Clan MacLaoch Curse Series, The Legend of the Brotherhood, will be out in the fall of 2024. In the meantime, stay updated with release news and giveaways on social media and the monthly Author Becky Banks newsletter.