then jumped a hedge of purple heather before touching down on the solidly packed road.
Cowboy boots weren’t designed for running, and her sprint wasn’t pretty. She tripped but she didn’t go down. Two steps later, she realized she’d lost a boot in the gravel of the parking lot, but she didn’t slow. The roaring engine of a sports car gave her an added shot of adrenaline and she flew across the lot, then the land-bridge, and past the gate before the car ever made the last turn out of the woods.
She slowed, looking for a bit of blue. It was there at the back corner of the castle. Both sisters were waving her on and she obliged, limping, cursing her lost boot until she’d rounded the corner, out of sight of the road.
The sisters clutched at her, pulling her toward an open door, ignoring her resistance and her need to catch her breath. After they’d taken a dozen steps into the dark castle, she heard a strangled sound, as if a certain small car were four-wheeling from road to rocks, by-passing the chains, then barreling across the bridge and toward the back of the castle.
“Those people in the manor house!” She grabbed a boney forearm and forced one woman to stop. “He’ll kill them! Can you call them? Tell them to run and hide?”
“No one is at home, dear. They’ve all gone to the city. How else would we have been able to break in?”
Juliet shook her head. Her relief was a tidal wave, but not complete.
“You have to hide,” she told them. “I need a weapon...from the great hall...and you two need to hide!”
A flashlight materialized and the sisters led the way, silently. After a couple of turns, Juliet didn’t know up from down.
“Hang on. Did you understand me? You two need to hide—”
A door crashed open behind them.
“No use for it, sister. We’ll have to put her in the hole.” The light was dimmed against a blue sweater, but two nodding heads were still visible.
“You want to hide me in a hole? And where are you going to hide?” Juliet whispered, but the man stomping around in the dark castle wouldn’t have been able to hear much.
“Juliet Bell!” The hitter’s voice echoed around them, but he seemed to be coming no closer. “I know ye’re in here, lass! I found your boot in the car park, all but pointin’ the way!”
Great. Skedros had hired a local. No wonder he’d had red hair. If he’d have worn a kilt and hung around the ruins, she might have walked right up to him!
One sister grabbed her hand and pulled her along. They finally came to a staircase and Juliet got a funny feeling. Deja vu, maybe. Not really a foreboding, but...yeah, a foreboding. She’d gotten them often enough, she should have recognized it for what it was.
When she’d tried to explain it to Nikkos once, she’d told him it was like playing the Hot & Cold game. Only something in her gut would tell her whether she was getting closer to something important, or moving further away. She’d felt like she was getting warmer the second she’d touched down in Scotland. Now she was burning up.
Either the hitter had stopped stomping around, or they were moving so far underground they couldn’t hear him anymore. After the hallway made a hairpin turn, the lead sister took the flashlight away from her sweater and shined it on the ground. A minute later, they hurried into a small room with a single large barrel in the center.
“Up on the barrel, dear, if ye please.” One sister offered a hand for support, but in this light, with shadows playing in the deep wrinkles of their faces, the pair looked too old to support their own measly weight, let alone hers.
The other shined her light on the odd ceiling. A large slab of stone capped the room, and in the center of it, a hole had been carved but was now plugged with a perfectly fitting block of wood.
“Just push up on the wood, dear. I assure ye there are no bodies inside the tomb.”
“A tomb? Are you friggin’ kidding me?” Jules couldn’t have whispered if she’d tried. That foreboding had turned into a loud clown orchestra with bells and whistles and all kinds of alarms going off.
“Shh.” A cool boney hand clamped down on her mouth, but Jules carefully removed it before glaring a warning at its owner.
“That’s the hole we’re going to hide