alone,” she said.
“And ye say ye’re not Jillian. Then just what are ye doin’ in the witch’s hole, wearing Jillian’s own face?”
Jules huffed out a breath and summoned up the courage to answer.
“I’m the sister, the sister she conveniently doesn’t remember she has.”
She’d been practicing that line for a while, only she’d hoped to say it to Jillian’s face. Now she’d never get the chance. That was, unless the hitter was so stupid he couldn’t find the basement. If she hurried, maybe she could get out of the castle without being caught, but she wasn’t about to run away and let these people take a bullet meant for her.
Then she got an idea.
She grabbed the barrel and started tugging.
“Please, Mister,” she said. “Do me a favor and climb up into the hole. Just for a few minutes. I wasn’t kidding—a killer is gunning for me, and he can’t know you’re in here. There’s nothing you can do for me, so you may as well save yourself.”
She stopped trying to move the barrel. The guy was shaking his head, standing there with his arms crossed like she’d said something to piss him off.
“I’ll never stick so much as me nose in that tomb, lass. And no man is coming. Daniel would have made a great clattering if someone tried to get past him.”
Great. Well, at least she’d given it a shot. It wasn’t like she could force him into the friggin’ ceiling. Although...
She still had the hammer in her hand. It didn’t feel very heavy, so she’d have to put her weight behind it. And she’d have to get him to turn around.
“Give me that, Jillian.” He pulled the hammer out of her hands as if she wasn’t resisting at all.
Considering the look he was giving her, like he wanted to tell her that little girls shouldn’t play with such things, she thought it would be no use asking him to reach into the hole to get the crowbar for her. Since she’d been in New York, working alongside a lot of Greek men with the same attitudes, she knew better than to beat her head against the wall trying to convince this guy she could take care of herself.
“I’m hurt, I am, that ye’d think of clouting me with it,” he said. “I’m Ewan. Do ye not remember me, lass?” His bottom lip, plump and pink, was suddenly visible in the middle of all that hair on his face.
“Oh, don’t go getting your feelings hurt. It wasn’t your head I was thinking about bashing,” she lied. “And I told you, I’m not Jillian. My name’s Jules.”
“And ye left Jillian back there?” The guy kept looking up into the dark hole above their heads.
“Back where?” she asked.
“Back in the twenty-first century.” He looked at her and frowned, like he wasn’t buying the sister act and thought she was just Jillian, messing with him. And now he was messing with her.
What the hell. Life was short and getting shorter by the second. She’d play along.
“Oh?” she said. “Have I left the twenty-first century?”
“Aye, lass. Ye have. Welcome to the Year of Our Lord, fourteen hundred and ninety-six.”
Well, if that were true, if the big Scot wasn’t out of his gourd, that would explain why the hitter hadn’t ever made it to the basement. And she wouldn’t be responsible for anybody’s death today. Not even her own. Too bad it couldn’t have been true.
Then again, she had prayed for a miracle. Did that mean she might find a nice Highland warrior for sale too?
She laughed. Too bad all she had tucked in her bra was a Visa, and there were about eleven dollars left before it was maxed.
“Fourteen ninety-six?” she asked.
“Aye, lass.”
Well, he certainly smells like a medieval Scot should. She snorted. And he’d peed on the floor without so much as blinking.
She looked at the dark outline in the dirt.
And the floor hadn’t been dirt before.
She tried to remember. Maybe it had. It’d been pretty dark.
There was a torch hanging on the wall, for hell sakes.
Since she knew nothing about torches, that meant nothing.
And there had been that foreboding...
No. The warnings in her head were due to the fact that a hitter was minutes away from taking her out.
But the flashlights had disappeared.
Trying to think in a straight line was taking the fight right out of her and she wondered how long she’d be able to stay on her feet. Gabby’s hitter would burst into the room any second, and she wouldn’t