Loch

Chapter 15

Maddock couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the woman standing before him was. Long, wavy auburn hair framed a creamy complexion. Her intense, hazel-eyed gaze caused his breath to catch in his throat. Realizing he was staring, he gave his head a quick shake. What was he thinking?

The woman didn’t seem to notice. “Thank you for the rescue. I’m Isla Mulheron, and you are…”

“Dane Maddock.” They shook hands. She had soft hands but a solid grip. “This is my partner, Bones Bonebrake.”

For once, Bones wasn’t checking out the attractive woman in their midst. He stood, frowning down at Isla’s companion, a stocky, brown-haired man.

“You look really familiar,” Bones said. “Where do I know you from?” And then his eyes brightened. “You’re Grizzly Grant! The cryptid hunter.”

Grizzly smiled and gave a single nod, like a monarch accepting tribute. “You would be correct. Always a pleasure to meet a fan.”

Bones turned to Maddock. “This dude is a legend in cryptozoology circles, especially on the forums. He’s investigated some jacked-up stuff.”

Maddock shook hands with Grizzly. As he did so, he could have sworn he saw Isla roll her eyes.

“Any idea who those guys were who tried to grab you?” Maddock asked.

“No idea,” Grizzly said.

At the same time, Isla said, “The Tuatha.”

“Wait. The Tuatha de Dannan?” Bones said sharply.

Isla nodded. “So, you are after the treasure?”

Bones and Maddock exchanged glances.

“Sort of,” Bones said.

“We’re after a treasure,” Maddock added. “Are the two of you looking for the Stone of Destiny?” Maddock asked. “That’s what we’re focused on at the moment.”

Isla frowned. “The Stone of Destiny? But it’s not missing.”

Grizzly held up a finger. “Not so fast. That all depends on who you ask.”

A tangled conversation broke out between Bones, Isla, and Grizzly. Each person did a great deal of talking and very little listening. Maddock pressed his hands to his temples, took a deep breath, and raised his voice.

“All right! Everybody take a breath.”

They cut off their conversation abruptly, and silence reigned as they gazed at him. Bones grinned, Isla appeared confused, while Grizzly looked downright affronted.

“I don’t know whether or not we’re all on the same trail, but we’ve run afoul of the same people I think we should compare notes, but not here. We don’t know if those guys will come back, and I don’t know about the two of you, but Bones and I aren’t armed.”

Tires screeched as the SUV careened along the narrow country road. The lush, green landscape flashed past his window, but Brown barely saw it. They had failed badly.

They crested a hill and Campbell hit the brakes as a stray cow wandered across their path.

Brown’s head snapped forward, and he instinctively grabbed the dash with both hands.

“Hells bells, Campbell. You’re going to kill us if you don’t have a care. We’re well away from them.”

“And I want to keep it that way,” Campbell snapped. “We don’t need them catching up with us. You already got yourself seen.”

“If you’d helped me, like I said, instead of waiting in the car, we’d already be away with the girl.”

“Bollocks.” Campbell rolled down the driver’s window and spat a wad of phlegm on the speed limit sign as they zoomed by. “Did you see how fast those blokes were? Especially that big fellow with the long hair. What was he, anyway?”

“American Indian from the looks of him,” Brown said. “But he wasn’t supposed to be with them.”

When they’d been sent to Dunstaffnage with instructions to search for any clues relating to the ancient Tuatha de Danann, they’d also been provided with a description of a man and woman whom they might encounter. The pair supposedly had information the Tuatha needed. Their orders had been to shadow them and find out what the pair knew. He and Campbell had done so at first, but it soon became apparent that they would learn nothing by following the two around.

Brown let out a long sigh. The attempted abduction had been his decision. When he’d finally gotten close enough to recognize the woman, he’d panicked. Now he was wondering what to do next.

“You know we’ve got to go back,” he said.

Campbell looked at him as if he were crazy. “The situation has changed. There are four of them; not the two we were initially told about. And at least two know how to handle themselves. If Fairly wants us to explore Dunstaffnage, he can bloody well give us a few more men. Besides, that girl and her friend obviously didn’t know anything. They were wandering around like lost sheep.”

“You didn’t recognize the girl, did you?”

Campbell shook his head. “Should I have done?”

“It was Isla Mulheron.”

This time Brown didn’t catch himself when Campbell slammed on the brakes. His neck and spine wrenched from the force of their stop as they skidded to a halt in the middle of the road.

“Tell me you’re joking.” Campbell’s face was ghostly pale in the midday light. “You

Brown shook his head.

“But she’s hands-off. Watch and report. Always has been.”

“I know.” Brown buried his face in his hands. “I saw her, and something said the fastest way to find out what she knew was to grab her and…”

Campbell squeezed the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip. “You panicked.”

“I know. We can’t let Fairly know we failed, and we certainly can’t tell him we tried to grab Mulheron.”

“You tried to grab her,” Campbell corrected.

Brown nodded, still not quite able to believe how badly he’d botched this assignment.

“The only way out of this is to finish the job,” Campbell said. “We’ll go back tonight and find whatever it is we’re supposed to find. That or make damn well sure there’s nothing there.”

“And what if her men give us trouble again?”

Campbell shrugged. “Kill them.”

Isla and Grizzly led them to a pub a short drive from the ruins of Dunstaffnage. Trying to blend in with the locals, not an easy task with Bones in their party, they settled around a small table, ordered pints of an ale called Skull Splitter, and compared notes on their respective searches.

Maddock recounted the discovery of the U-boat, the tooth, the captain’s journal, and showed them the strange black rock. Isla examined the stone with interest. She had some familiarity with the legend of the Stone of Destiny but was interested in Calderwood’s take on it. She quickly impressed Maddock with her keen mind and insightful questions. Several times he had to remind himself that he was in a committed relationship. At least, he thought he was.

Disappointed that they had not brought the tooth with them, Grizzly gave the stone a cursory inspection and immediately launched into speculation about its alien origins. Bones grinned and nodded along, visibly hanging on the man’s every word.

Isla’s story took a bit longer, as she brought Maddock up to speed on the history of the Tuatha de Dannan. Bones and Grizzly had apparently heard it all before and busied themselves swapping legends of lake monsters. By the second round of drinks, Grizzly was regaling his one-man audience with an improbable story of a Finnish lake monster and lost Nazi troops, though he couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether it was a squad, platoon, or regiment.

In contrast to the cryptid hunter, whom Maddock thought was a windbag, Isla was bright, witty, and articulate. They shared a mutual interest in history, and she’d also done some climbing, which was one of Maddock’s passions. Several times he caught himself steering the conversation away from the topic at hand and in a more personal, get-to-know-you direction. Each time he found himself, he quickly returned to the subject of treasure hunting.

She told him about the treasure of the Tuatha: the spear, the sword, the stone, and the cauldron.

“You honestly believe in it?” Maddock asked.

“Searching for the treasure of the Tuatha is sort of a family tradition. My parents,” she hesitated, “believed in it too.”

Maddock didn’t miss her use of the past tense, but he chose not to press her on it.

“I know it sounds far-fetched,” she went on, “but I guess I’m a true believer. Not much better than those two.” Her eyes darted to Bones and Grizzly, who were laughing about a viral video of an alleged river monster that both agreed was nothing more than a fishing net caught on a log.

“Sure it wiggled back and forth,” Bones was saying.

“Because of the current,” Grizzly finished.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Maddock said. “Bones and I have been doing this for a long time, and we’ve found some things that no one would have believed were real.”

“Really?” She leaned in close enough that Maddock caught the scent of her perfume. It reminded him of vanilla, coffee, with a faint hint of something woodsy. “And what sorts of things would those be?”

Her smile sent a hot flash from the base of his neck down to his spine, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This part was always awkward. Upon meeting someone new, if he or Bones revealed too much too soon, they’d be thought a couple of crackpots. If they came across as hiding something, however, it could impede the building of trust.

“We found the Amber Room, for one,” he whispered.

Isla sat up ramrod straight. “You’re lying,” she accused. “Word would have gotten out.”

Maddock shook his head. “We were in the SEALs. Top-secret mission. Everything classified.”

She gaped at him, then barked a laugh. “You’re winding me up.”

“Look me in the eye,” he said, leaning closer. “I swear it’s true.”

That was a mistake. Isla gazed into his eyes much longer than Maddock thought necessary. Her face seemed to swim toward his, her eyes drew him in, and he had the strange sensation of falling forward. Damn, she was beautiful.

“All right. I believe you.” Her words broke the spell. They both sat back and took long pulls of ale. He thought he noticed a pink hue to her cheeks as she drank.

“Where is it?” she whispered.

“Can’t tell you. Like I said; classified government stuff.”

She stuck out her lower lip in a delicate pout. “Be that way, then. What else have the two of you found?”

“More than our share of treasure,” he said. “Lots of other stuff, some of it pretty crazy, but we’ll have to get to know one another better before I elaborate.”

“Are we going to get to know each other better, Mr. Maddock?” Her eyes flitted to his left hand, and then back to his face.

“I hope so.” He cleared his throat. “About this treasure. I think I see a connection between our two searches.”

“The stone that cries out beneath the king when he claims his throne,” she said.

“Exactly. It sounds very much like a stone that monarchs would sit upon when crowned, doesn’t it?”

“But where do we look?” Bones asked. Apparently, he and Grizzly had wrapped up their water monster conversation and had started paying attention to their companions. “Both our trails led to Dunstaffnage, but it doesn’t seem like anything’s there.”

“There has to be,” Isla said. “It’s too great a coincidence that, despite following different clues, we both ended up there, along with whoever is chasing us.”

“The modern descendants of the Tuatha,” Maddock said.

“Probably,” Isla said.

“Back to the treasure,” Grizzly interjected. “We went all over that place with a fine-tooth comb, and I don’t think there’s any treasure or even any clues there. At least, not anymore.”

“Unless it’s buried deep,” Isla added.

Maddock’s phone vibrated. He was pleased to see it was a lengthy message from Jimmy. Along with the other projects he’d given his old friend, he’d asked him to research Dunstaffnage. As usual, Jimmy did not disappoint. He grinned as he read the message.

“Actually, it looks like Dunstaffnage might still have some secrets to give up.” He looked around the table, smiled. “Does anyone here feel like going for a dive?”