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Silence.

She'd just imagined it then. A trick of her eyes, tired from straining all day under the fluorescent lights.

Haley stood. Her heart pounded suddenly, jolted to life as if by an electric shock.

There was something on the table.

“Sarah?”

No answer. She stepped closer. A dirty wooden panel sat in the middle of the table. It looked like a rough sketch of two people.

“What the ”-

She called more loudly now. “Sarah?”

Her bag slipped from her fingers as she looked around. It wasn't like Sarah to just plop something on the table without saying hi. Haley had only turned her back for a minute. And she would've heard the door open anyhow.

Unless someone had been in the room all along, hiding.

A surge of panic focused her. Marshalling her nerves, she ducked around the table, peeked between the cabinets, looking in nonsensical places where no person could have fit.

She shivered.

Was it some sort of creepy joke?

Could Sarah be pulling her leg to get her back for having to stay late?

She picked up the panel. The smell of charred things filled her nose and turned her stomach. “Freaky,” she muttered.

Etchings of runes and strange patterns had been crudely hacked along  the edges of the panel. Haley brushed her thumb lightly along them, the wood raw and splintered where the knife had carved.

She blew the dirt from its surface. A man and a woman

had been sketched with what looked like charcoal. Their

features seemed like  they'd been rendered quickly, loosely,  picking up only the salient details. He was tall and broad,  with wild hair and thick slashes of black for his brows. The

woman was shorter, but not what you'd call small. She also

had black hair, pulled back tight but for a hank loose over

her brow. Haley tucked her own hair behind her ear.

She blew harder on the panel. There was something familiar about the woman. Squinting, Haley looked closer.

She cried out then, a single, sharp sound hitting the antiseptic walls. Her skin felt as if it was shrinking on her body, seizing her flesh into goose bumps all over, rousing the dust of thousands of hairs to stand erect.

The woman had a scar on her neck.

Haley's hand flew to her own scar, as if touching it would bring clarity to the image in her hands. Even though she knew it was empty, her eyes darted once again around the room. Was this supposed to be a picture of her? Was the man in the drawing some sort of stalker?

Haley had avoided touching the sketch for fear of smudging it, but she brushed it roughly now, trying to see it more clearly. Slivers of wood bit into her palm and she cursed, panic and anger and fear hammering through her.

Her head began to buzz, and she fought to stay focused.

She wouldn't let the shock and adrenalin drown her.

The scar.
 
There was something on the woman's scar.

She tilted the panel. Light hit it at an angle, winking briefly along the mark on her neck. She inhaled sharply. The scar was the dull crimson of spilled blood.

A tinny squeal lanced her eardrums. She shook her head roughly.
 
Stay focused.

Haley was mesmerized now, compelled to reach tentatively from her neck to the woman's. Gingerly, she touched it.

The cool of still-damp blood was tacky beneath her

fingertip.

The air around her seemed suddenly thick, humid and dense in her lungs. She felt a tug.
 
Fainting?

Falling.

The blackness swallowed her scream.

Chapter Four

MacColla eased his sister to the ground and placed a kiss on her forehead. He put his finger to his mouth, motioning for her to stay silent.

He needed to get her to safety immediately, but leaving  Campbell's tower house was proving a more daunting challenge than entering. He nudged the wooden entry stairs with his foot. They lay perpendicular to the open doorway, having been pulled haphazardly up and into the building at day's end. Lowering them back down without the aid of another man would make a noise fit to wake the

dead.

He glanced at the three souls passed out from drink on the far side of the great hall. Even a house full of drunken  Campbells couldn't weather such a racket.

MacColla was leaning from the opening, assessing the long drop to the ground below, when he heard the crash. He spun to standing, dirk poised and ready in his hand, expecting to see a Campbell man.

Instead, a woman materialized before them, her white face ghostly in the darkness, dark gown fluttering at her legs as if a wraith in the night's breeze. Thick hanks of black hair hung loose around her face, blown gently along the sides of her  cheek and full lips.

Their gazes held. Her eyes were gray in the ambient moonlight, transfixing him with the strange sensation that,

if he only but focused a bit more, he could see forever in

their depths.

The woman stumbled and he gave a start. Not an

apparition.

She squatted to the ground, holding herself up on hands and feet like a wild creature. He stepped closer, straining for details in the shadows. The lass's dress stretched over

her breasts and knees, baring a pale stretch of calf that

MacColla couldn't help but note.

Not an apparition at all, but a Campbell. He'd been ogling a bloody Campbell.

“God spare me,” he muttered, thinking he'd somehow  bypassed a sleeping Campbell  - one who'd managed to  approach him unawares.

She slowly teetered to standing, and her dress continued to hug her body tightly. Though it exposed just a proper V of skin at her neck, it clung to modest swells at breasts and hips and thighs. Strange, low boots peeked from the hem, encasing her feet and lower legs in snug, black leather. His gaze raked back up her body, then stopped, snagged once more by those strange, luminous eyes. He finally found his voice, hoarse and low.
 
“An e Caimbeulach a tha annad?”

He walked toward her. “Answer me, woman. You've  Campbell blood in your  veins? A sister, is it?” He leaned down and grabbed her chin roughly, turning her face from side to side. She had strong features. Thick lashes framed wide eyes and a lush mouth compensated for her almost-

prominent nose. Prettier than he'd thought a Campbe ll

would be.

She tensed, and he felt the lean, firm muscles of her arm flexing in his hand.
 
And stronger too.

Her skin was smooth and unlined, creamy next to what seemed a coarse halo of jet-black hair. “Nay,” he said. “Not sister. Niece, then.”

“
A bheil Gàidhlig agad?”
 
she asked haltingly. Her grammar

was stilted, overly familiar.

“Aye, I speak Gaelic,” he replied in English. “And what  else?” He pushed her chin roughly from his hand. “But  apparently you've strange notions of the
  
Gaedhealg
 
tongue.”

He  spared a glance to the men passed out by the fire, then  MacColla squinted, studying her. “Where is it you're from?”

She leaned toward him, peering through the shadows.  “You!” Terror lit her features like a torch. “You were in

that… that painting. Who the  hell are you?” She looked

around frantically. “Where the hell'd you take me?”

Was she cursing him to the devil? Did this wee Campbell lass dare damn him? MacColla glared at her, trying to make sense of her strange accent. She seemed to be speaking English, but none like he'd ever heard. Her words were like the sharp claps of a barking dog. “Speak slow when you curse me.”

He approached her. He saw spirit in those wide gray eyes, and he was compelled to look closer.

She shuffled back, arms askew as if to brace herself on thin air. The lass was shouting at him now, unintelligible words.

MacColla took her in once again, from head to foot. She was a well -proportioned one, of modest height and with just enough meat on her bones. If Campbell had a mind for kidnap, two could play at his game. If only he could understand her clamoring.

“Air do shocairl”
 
he commanded, speaking over her. “Och…  slowly now. I'd hear your curses… ” He studied the  movement of her mouth, trying to understand her words.  Her lips were full and dark against the pale glow of her  cheeks in the moonlight. He'd taste this Campbell woman,  he decided suddenly. “Before I wipe them from your  mouth.”

He grabbed her, wrapping his hand easily around her upper arm. Though he'd pillaged in his day, MacColla was never one for rape. But a kiss? One kiss would be no crime.

The woman once again flexed her arm in his grip and he smiled outright. The feel of her solid flesh in his hand madehis heart kick. Many a lass had offered themselves for a kiss by the great hero MacColla. But none such as this.  This one had muscle to spare.
 
Interesting.

Curse it, but he wanted a bloody Campbell.

He leaned down, closing the distance between them. The woman froze, like a hare paralyzed by the sight of the hunter's bow. A low laugh rumbled in his throat, so eager was he to taste her. His free hand clutched the soft flesh of

her rump, pulling her toward him.

MacColla kissed her. He'd wanted at first to be rough, but she was soft. So soft and sweet, his mouth gentled in the tasting of her. And, for a single moment, he imagined the lass kissed him back, her breath sighing into him, her mouth opening just enough for him to taste her, fresh and warm on his tongue. And then, with a tiny growl, she caught his lower lip hard between her teeth and bit.

MacColla pulled away. She glared at him, bored her teeth, and exhaled with the measured breath of a prowling wolf.

He studied the wee Campbell hellcat before him, and then strangely, inexplicably, he found himself laughing. These long years of exile, his father's imprisonment, his sister's capture  - all a pall of waiting and dread that had clouded his vision for so long now. It was as if the veil had suddenly burnt to ash kindling MacColla to life. A deep, freeing laughexploded from low in his belly.

One of the men by the fire stirred.

He looked to his sister and the terror and confusion in her

eyes made him remember himself. Clearing his throat, he  nodded to Jean as if she'd communicated more than simply  her silent, charged glare. “Aye,” he whispered. “We must go  from here.”

He looked back down at the woman. “A bonny Campbell for my spoils,” he said, licking the blood from his lower lip. It left a taste like rust on his tongue. He smiled wide at the lass then, knowing full well  that the blood reddened his teeth.

He didn't need a man to help him lower the castle stairs after all, MacColla thought as he guided her to the entryway. He was of a mind to make the wee Campbell assist instead.

Snagging his hand in her hair, he cupped her head and guided her toward Jean. Despite the violence of the gesture, he tried not to hurt her  - the ravaging of women was an ignoble sport. Though he'd half a mind to scare her into docility. He imagined he might need such tactics if he were to manage  such a fiery soul as this one.

His aim was to use her for barter. The next time one of

MacColla's Royalists found himself in a Campbell cell, this lass would be good to have at hand. Family members were the most effective bargaining chips.

He scowled. It was a lesson Campbell himself had taught, with MacColla's own father and brother as the example. He had handed over any number of his enemy Covenanters, all in hopes of trading for their lives. And if he'd had someone closer to Campbell's heart with which to barter?  Perhaps he could've spared his father and brother so many long years imprisoned.

* * *

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck
… The thought pinged through her mind like a loosed pinball.

Big man, black hair, those brows. And what the fuck was with her reaction to him? The first sight of him had sent an involuntary shiver through her. He'd kissed her, and her body had sent up a quick flare, pure animal reaction to the sheer size of him.