The Presence

  As she started across the grass, she saw Thayer. And she was certain he had been up in the rafters of the stables. He was walking toward her casually, though, smiling, taking long strides, his arms swinging, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  She stood still, feeling the cool breeze lift her hair from her forehead. “Top o’ the mornin’ to you, cous—ach! That’s Irish, eh?” he said teasingly. Then he stopped, seeing her expression. “Toni? What’s the matter?”

  “The constable is here.”

  “Aye?”

  “To arrest you.”

  “Arrest me?” He appeared honestly stunned.

  “For fraud.”

  “What?”

  “For fraud. For taking the lot of us.”

  He looked toward the door. Something else passed over his features. Turning, she saw that Jonathan had come out.

  “Bloody hell!” he muttered, and took off running.

  It must have been a moment of blind panic for him, for there was really nowhere to run. Or maybe there was. If he could have gotten down the hill and into the forest, he might have managed a real disappearance. But he didn’t.

  Jonathan Tavish could run. Seeing Thayer’s intention, he came out with a startling flash of speed and athleticism. Thayer hadn’t gone more than twenty yards before the constable tackled him. “This is bullshit! Bullshit!” Thayer roared as the two scrambled on the ground.

  Tavish was the stronger man, broader, and in better shape apparently. The scuffle didn’t last long. Thayer was quickly cuffed. Dusty and disheveled, he was dragged to his feet.

  As Jonathan led him toward the patrol car, he looked at Toni. “I didn’t do it! I don’t know what kind of crazy proof there is against me, but I didn’t do it. Toni, you’ve got to help me.”

  “Tell it to the judge!” Jonathan muttered, shaking his head wearily.

  “I need help, Toni!” Thayer called to her. “Legal help. I swear, I’m not guilty!”

  “We’ll get you a lawyer!” she cried out. “A solicitor…whatever you need!”

  The arrest was not like on a cop show. Jonathan didn’t protect his suspect’s head and put him into the back. Instead he opened the passenger door of his vehicle and shoved Thayer in.

  Thayer’s eyes remained on Toni’s, silently begging for help.

  David, Kevin, Gina and Ryan were there then, aligned on either side of her. “My God!” Gina breathed.

  “Well, Constable Tavish said that we could get some of the money back,” Ryan said.

  Toni spun on them. “He says that he’s innocent!”

  David looked at her sadly. “Toni, most people don’t go around yelling out that they’re guilty, you know.”

  She shook her head. “I believe him. And we’ve got to get to the bottom of this! He needs legal aid—whatever it is over here.”

  “They have a fair and judicial legal system,” Kevin told her sympathetically.

  “We should have never trusted an outsider,” Gina murmured.

  “Right, he’s my cousin, my fault,” Toni said angrily. “What if he’s innocent?”

  “Toni!” Gina argued, but gently. “They couldn’t have arrested him without some kind of proof.”

  “I want to know what proof!” she said. “And I want him to have legal help, right away.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” Kevin said.

  “Why?” Toni demanded.

  “Because we’re all broke!” he reminded her.

  “Look,” David said calmly, “we need to find Bruce. This is his place, and he always knows more than we do. We can get hold of his friend, Robert. He can tell us, I’m certain, what they really have on Thayer. Let’s hop in the car and drive around until we find him.”

  “Great,” Kevin said with a sigh. “We’re going to try to help the guy who screwed us all royally.”

  “Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?” Toni demanded.

  “We really need to put all this before Laird MacNiall,” Ryan said.

  “Could he have ridden down to the village?” Gina wondered.

  “I suppose you can ride anywhere around here,” Ryan answered. “Hey, David and Kevin—you two take the minivan down to the village, ask if anyone has seen Bruce. Gina, Toni and I can hop in the car and try driving around these roads, cover the farm paths and all that.”

  Toni backed away. “Thank you,” she murmured. “But I’ll stay here, in case he’s not in the village, and you miss him on the roads.”

  “You’re going to stay here? By yourself?” Gina asked her.

  She shrugged. “Eban is around somewhere.”

  “Oh, great. Eban! That gives me a real sense of security for you!” Gina said.

  Toni shook her head. “It’s all right. It’s broad daylight. I’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t like it,” David said.

  “Oh, for the love of God, will you please go! If Bruce doesn’t come back soon, or if you guys don’t find him, I’ll just hop on Wallace and come down to the village,” she said. “Please, let’s all move. I doubt if they’ll be keeping Thayer in the village. They’ll want to take him to a jail in one of the larger cities. We really need to move on this.”

  “All right,” Gina said. “But, Toni, you’ve got to accept the fact that he might have done it.”

  She nodded, then backed away, toward the castle. But when both cars had started down the road, she walked resolutely toward the stables.

  Entering, she noted Wallace in his stall, walking to the gate, expecting her to come and rub his nose.

  “Sorry, boy!” she murmured, heading straight for the ladder. She climbed quickly to the rafters and looked around. A layer of hay covered the floor. She walked the planked surface, thinking this was foolish. She couldn’t find something—whatever it was that brought Thayer up here—if she didn’t know what she was looking for.

  Then she heard whistling and stopped short. Eban. She listened as he strode into the stables, walking straight over to Wallace. “He y’be, lad, yer special treat!”

  He was feeding the horse something. But what?

  It occurred to her then that the strange little man may well have been feeding the horse something that made him sick. After all, Shaunessy had never been taken in. But why would Eban do such a thing? To sabotage their efforts? Or maybe he thought, as Bruce had originally, that they were mocking Scottish history.

  She held very still, listening.

  “Ah, there, lad, aye, eat it all up!”

  She forced herself not to move, not to breathe. She waited. Eventually, she heard him leave the stables. Even then, until the sound of his whistle was long gone, she waited. Then, in a fury, she began to kick the hay around, desperately…searching.

  “You’ll not get me on this!” Thayer told Jonathan. “I didn’t do it.”

  “You should be ashamed! A Scotsman, doing such a thing!” Jonathan said.

  “Listen, I’m telling you—”

  “Don’t be tellin’ me!” Jonathan warned him.

  “Listen to me—” Thayer began.

  “I’m warnin’ ya!”

  “Aye, and I’m beg—”

  The constable had no more patience. He lifted his elbow as he drove, slamming it against Thayer’s head.

  The blow hurt. Like bloody hell! Stunned, Thayer reacted to the strike. He swung his elbow back, and caught the constable on the side of the head. Jonathan’s skull crashed against the glass. He lost control of the car. It began to careen down the hill.

  Jonathan swore just as the car hit a large boulder—and flipped.

  Toni kicked up a lump of hay and saw it—a plastic bag. She crouched down and picked it up, looking at the contents. Grass?

  Running her hands over the floor, she found a second bag. It held matches and brown cigarette wrappers. She sniffed the first bag, no longer puzzled.

  So Thayer had been coming to the stable rafters to smoke weed. It seemed evident, but it wasn’t the answer she’d been looking for. She’d wante
d something to either convict him or exonerate him on charges of fraud!

  Sighing, she returned his stash, thinking she sure as hell didn’t want to get caught with it herself. Rising, she walked gingerly to the ladder, not wanting to run into Eban again. She crawled down quickly, then made a detour to Wallace’s stall. She eyed the horse carefully and critically. He whinnied. “I don’t have anything for you. And if that man is giving you anything bad at all to cause a colic, I’ll punch him out myself, okay?”

  She glanced at her watch. Though it had seemed like she’d spent aeons in the rafters, only fifteen minutes had passed since the others left. She hesitated for a minute, afraid, and then she purposely walked back to the castle.

  She resolutely made her way upstairs, into Bruce’s room, and sat in the chair by the cold embers in the fireplace. Then she closed her eyes and spoke softly.

  “If you’re here, this would be a great time for you to appear,” she whispered. “Please, we’re alone now. And… I’m going to trust you. I’m not going to scream or panic.”

  And when she opened her eyes, he was there, watching her gravely, sadly.

  Come.

  “Yes, as you wish,” she said.

  He turned, tartan swaying, taking large steps with his long legs. He exited the master chamber, heading out to the hallway.

  Toni moved along the hallway, following. He led her to the landing of the stairs and paused there. She waited as he looked back, assuring himself that she followed. Then he started down the stairs and she came behind.

  Once again, he paused in the great hall, assuring himself that she was following still. She knew where they were going. “Down to the crypts?” she whispered. He stared at her with silent gravity, turned again, and traversed the secondary hall.

  As she had feared, the door to the winding stairway down to the realm of the dead was open. Once again, he awaited her.

  She stared at him, shaking her head slightly. “Why me?” she asked softly.

  There was no reply; she hadn’t expected one. Again he turned and started down the winding steps. Toni followed quickly. This time, however, she turned on the lights.

  The lights didn’t seem to help much, though, not when she was down there by herself—with a ghost. She was grateful that the MacNialls had not chosen to lay their dead out in simple shelving, that there were no decaying shrouds resting upon bodies left to go to dust with the passage of time. Still, ancient marble and words etched in Gaelic, monuments and carvings all reminded her of where she was. There was a certain cold down here that defied all logic. And as she wandered through the crypts, alone in the castle, with only the presence to guide her, she wondered at her own sanity.

  As she ventured deeper into the recesses of the hallway, the light seemed to fade. On her left, the tomb of a laird from the 1500s was adorned with the life-size figure of a Renaissance man, seated upon his coffin, head resting upon a hand, marble eyes staring. She looked away quickly, feeling as if the blank eyes were watching her. She knew where she was going—the end of the hallway in the crypt.

  She arrived, and though she had followed the vision of the great MacNiall down to this point, he was gone. The far end was cast in deep shadow. She stared at the marble figure, too much like the Bruce she knew, and wondered why she was here again, what it was that she hadn’t seen.

  Her blood seemed to turn to instant ice as she saw what was different tonight.

  The stone sarcophagus just behind his—which had been set beside his own in the niche hundreds of years ago by someone determined that one day Annalise’s earthly remains would one day join those of her be loved in death—was ajar.

  She frowned and whispered aloud, hoping that the ghost would hear. “But she will come home, you know. Bruce will see to it. She will come home and lie beside you!” Her voice echoed back to her eerily in the arched stone corridor.

  She moved forward, stepping around the edge of the effigy of the great MacNiall in death, trying to ascertain how and why the simple slab atop the second vault had been left open.

  The shadows were thick and heavy. At first she could see nothing. She started to press at the stone, thinking she could see better if she could move it, but the weight seemed far too great for her at first. Then she heard a scraping, stone against stone. It was giving, moving back.

  And she saw what lay within the coffin.

  A scream tore from her throat. Loud, shrill, terrible. It ricocheted off the stone and echoed with resounding horror.

  Toni backed away from the tomb, turned and ran down the corridor, desperate to leave.

  She had her answer. She knew what the great MacNiall had been trying to tell her.

  19

  There was nothing like riding, especially a horse as fine as Shaunessy. And God forgive him a certain pride, but there really was nothing as beautiful as the hills of his native land. Drawing to a halt at the top of a crest, Bruce surveyed the lands—dotted with sheep and cattle—that stretched in shades of green and purple as far as the eye could see.

  It was amazing to look out over the peacefulness and tranquility of the scene below him. So much tragedy, bloodshed and pain had come before in this very area, where ancient tribes had battled for the best land, where the early nationalists had waged war against imperialism and where, in later years, men had shed their blood again and again for their loyalties, ideals and pride.

  The last gave him pause, for he was disturbed, deeply disturbed. And uneasy, as well. He felt a growing sense of something…about to happen. Something about to break.

  “Foolish, eh, old boy?” he said aloud, as Shaunessy pawed the earth.

  He turned from the tranquil setting of the valley to stare into the dark green depths of the forest. Ten years had passed, yet the case he had solved still disturbed him. Why?

  He knew why. He had entered the mind of a heinous monster, and it had scared him. It had made him wonder if, in doing so, he could become a monster himself.

  I do not believe…! he told himself. And yet…just as he had never forgotten the case, he had not, in the last days, been able to rid himself of the vision of Toni, face down in the stream.

  Ghosts and ghost-busters! he thought angrily. Aye, tricks could be played with the mind, and all of this was playing tricks with his own.

  Darcy Stone had gotten to him. As had Toni. There had been such a serenity about her. No driving passion, no wild speech. And he couldn’t help but wonder, as he sat there atop Shaunessy, what the hell he was doing? Because one thing was true.

  The vision returned again and again, haunting him. And the sense of fatalism was growing.

  Toni slammed against the door, absolutely terrified that she would find it locked. But it burst open as it had before, easily allowing her an exit.

  The phone. She had to get to the phone.

  Eban! Eban was around somewhere. Not in the main castle. He never came in…or did he?

  Striding for the main hall, she came to an abrupt halt before she could turn for the stairs.

  Thayer was standing in the doorway, looking dazed, wild. Like a madman. Blood covered his forehead and caked his hair. His shirt was ripped; he was filthy. The handcuffs he’d been wearing dangled from his one wrist.

  “Thayer?” she said.

  “There was an accident,” he said.

  “An accident?” she said carefully. What she had seen below was still so vivid in her mind that she realized she didn’t trust anyone. An hour ago she had been de fending him so staunchly. But now, the way he looked…

  “What happened?” she asked thickly.

  “Hit…the constable…bastard…hit me. I hit him back.”

  “Where? Where is the constable?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I crawled out. I…Toni!” He started walking toward her. Panic seized her. She’d been too trusting. He’d been up in the rafters, smoking dope, when they’d all been in a precarious situation. Can’t hang a man for that! she chided herself. But the way that he was staring at
her…

  He grinned suddenly, but it seemed lopsided and eerie. “Toni, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Been prowling around in the castle graveyard, eh?”

  That did it. Screw the phone. She was getting the hell out. When he walked toward her, she pushed him. Hard. He staggered back, falling. “Toni!”

  Ignoring him, she raced toward the stables, thinking to get Wallace. But she came to a dead halt. Eban was coming from the stables. He had an oilcloth in one hand and a sword in the other. He was just cleaning the sword! she told herself.

  “Miss Fraser!” he said. “Coomin’ to the stables, are ye? Aye, and good. Y’can see to old Wallace, good old lad!”

  She shook her head, trying to appear nonchalant. Wallace! Good old Wallace. Was the horse dead this time? Had Eban poisoned him?

  “I’m off for a bit of a walk, Eban!” she said, and waved jauntily, hoping Thayer wouldn’t appear behind her right then. But…maybe it would be best if he did. Both men couldn’t be guilty of heinous things….

  Or could they?

  She quickened her pace, grateful that she was going downhill. A walk at first, a trot, a lope…and then she was running.

  “Toni!”

  She looked back. Thayer, menacing in his stagger and tone, was coming after her.

  It was a long, long way to the village.

  She paused, looking back, taking a deep breath. He might not have moved quickly enough when Jonathan was coming after him, but he was cutting some speed now.

  She happened to glance to the other side of the slope and saw the constable’s car, overturned, down below.

  There was no other choice.

  She turned for the forest, tearing into its dark shadows as quickly as she could.

  Bruce rode back to find the stables empty, the cars gone and his front door open. Striding into the great hall, he shouted, “Toni? Gina…David! Anyone?”

  A sense of emptiness was his only reply. Still, he strode through the second hall, thinking someone might be in the kitchen. But he never made it there. The door to the tombs was standing open.