The Wellspring (Kaitlyn and the Highlander #12) - Diana Knightley Page 0,67

then a moment later with his two hands, sending dirt in a plume through his legs like a dog, so fast, dig dig dig dig, just like he and Ben would dig at the beach. Watching him was the most awful, scary, nerve-wracking thing I had ever had to watch, and I had seen a lot of terrible things.

But then he was pushing on something, pulling and then pushing and struggling — He found it!

He glanced over his shoulder and I waved him back. He rushed back to me and said, “Too hard.”

I glanced at Isla who sat with her eyes wide, quiet finally, realizing perhaps that this shit was real, and that something big and kind of scary was happening. I grabbed the knife from Archie. “Stay with your sister.” I rushed to the tree, sliding onto my knees in front of the hole containing the chest. I dug around the corner, exposing it more, using the knife to try and pry up the lid. I changed my position for more leverage and pushed and pulled, prying and then dug around more. I grabbed a rock and struck the knife handle, jamming the blade into the lid. The chest cracked apart.

I pried back the wood to get the full chest open, revealing a gun, and then under a piece of velvet, a vessel. And beside it a scrolled up piece of paper. I love ye, Magnus.

“I love you too,” I said as a helicopter rose from the deep forest in the distance, a searchlight sweeping, a commanding voice, “Hands up, or we’ll fire.” I shot toward the helicopter but it was too far away. That was stupid, Kaitlyn, so fucking stupid. Vehicles drove over the hills, headlights blaring, roaring engines, scaring the hell out of me. I fired at them too, futilely, while racing back to the kids, throwing myself onto them, screaming, “Hold on, hold onto me!” and twisting the vessel. “Don’t let go!”

I felt the ripping and tearing begin.

Forty-one - Kaitlyn

Wet. I coughed and spit sand out of my mouth before opening my eyes to see pouring rain, drenching, soaking, drowning, wind and storms, not one of our storms, a full-blown heavy-cloud gray-sky storm. I raised my head to see the ocean crashing, not six feet away, coming closer. Oh god. I looked to the right, Isla. The left, Archie. I lumbered to my feet, ow ow ow ow, and scooped her up, her head lolling. She was whimpering, and because I had to move Archie without the strength to do it, I grabbed his ankles and dragged him through the sand until we were above the water line. Then I collapsed.

I was never going to move again.

I raised my head and saw the vessel half in and out of the sand. Ugh. I crawled to it and got it just as a wave crashed in, wetting me completely. I dragged myself up the sand to the kids, and collapsed beside them staring up at the rain-pouring sky. Tis dreich, as Magnus would say.

I had left him.

Sick on the ground of a jail cell.

I left him there, to die.

Isla cried.

Weakly I said, “It’s okay, honey, Quentin is coming for us, any minute now.”

Quentin stood above me. “Why are you on the south end? Why didn’t you come to the house?”

“I don’t know!” I wailed. “I forgot, there was duress, a helicopter, shooting…” I waved a hand in the air. “Shitshow.”

Hayley’s voice, “We were coming to rescue you, where’s Magnus?”

I raised my head. “Hayley? You’re back from Scotland?”

“What the hell happened, we were on our way to get you it’s…”

“We got—” The downpour intensified.

Quentin said, “We got to get you guys home.”

Fraoch carried Archie. Hayley carried Isla. Quentin half dragged me to the truck.

At the house Emma buzzed around me. I shuffled into my bedroom and left piles of sopping wet clothes behind me on the carpet like little sopping islands of awful. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Horror show. It had been — what? So much.

I turned on the water and stepped in without waiting for a good temperature and then turned back and forth in a daze and then stepped out, dried off, and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I was back out in the living room without having truly washed all the sand out of my hair.

Emma had changed Isla’s diaper and put her in warm pajamas and as soon as I sat down Isla rushed me, climbed into my lap,