Chapter Two

“Don’t pull out the knife!” Luke warned, staring in horror at the man, who now slumped in a seated position on the floor. Carly MacDonald had raced to him, dropping down by his side.

“Help me—please, God—not that monster!” the young woman on the rack cried.

She was a victim; she had to be helped first. But Luke wanted the monster on the floor alive, too. That was the only way they might get more information and stop the ridiculous spread of the murder society.

Carly hadn’t pulled at the knife; she was stanching the flow of blood from the wound the best way she could while Aaron smiled weakly.

“I’m like God, man. I make my own choices on life and death!”

That the man could talk was encouraging. There was a chance, a slim one, he had missed his vital organs. And the woman on the table needed to be freed. While Carly dealt with the wound in Aaron’s chest, Luke worked at the ropes with one hand and used the other to reach for his phone and dial Emergency.

Ambulances first—their victim deserved desperate care; while Luke didn’t think the man on the floor deserved help, unlike Aaron, the FBI agent was well aware he wasn’t God. He also knew he wanted the man alive.

He freed the young woman, telling her she had to remain calm and help was on the way. When she tried to rise, she couldn’t. He then realized she had to be in agony, as one or more of her joints had been dislocated.

He was impressed by the speed of help. On the one hand, each second in the dim dungeon area of the castle seemed like hours, and yet sirens blazed through the night within minutes of his call. Soon, medical help and police were pouring down into the basement. He was able to step back and close his eyes for a minute as the young woman on the table was helped, as emergency personnel took over on attempts to save Aaron Miller.

Carly MacDonald was covered in blood. She was wearing a flannel nightgown, and while it covered her completely and was probably warm, he knew they needed to go with the police to fill out reports. They needed to help local law enforcement understand the worldwide alarm regarding the strange new brand of murderer they had apprehended.

He walked over to her, sliding his jacket off and putting it around her shoulders.

“I’m fine,” she assured him.

“It will be cold out.”

She looked as if she might refuse, as if she was determined she would always do everything on her own.

Not promising behavior in a new partner, but...

“Thank you,” she said simply. “So—”

“We can drive in ourselves. Apparently, there is someone from the National Crime Agency arriving to go through all of this with us,” he told her.

Both the young woman and Aaron were taken away at last, taken to hospitals in separate ambulances.

The police on duty were looking as shocked as anyone might as they remained at the crime scene awaiting a forensic team.

Inspector Malcolm Finnegan, senior officer among the four who had arrived, walked over to Luke, shaking his head. “Quite well. You stopped this fellow before he managed to finish off the poor lass!”

Finnegan was a tall man, solid in stature and demeanor. His voice was low and his accent seemed to add a solidtruth to his words as well. Luke truly respected the man; he’d arrived quickly and handled the situation with admirable efficiency.

“There is that. Saving a life, ah, sir, a good day it is, then. Even...here.” The man stretched out an arm, indicating the extent of the torture chamber Aaron Miller had created.

Luke nodded, but even as he did so, he noticed at the far end of the dungeon, there was a massive fireplace, surrounded by stone, but with a metal grate that had to have been about six feet broad and three feet deep.

“Excuse me,” he murmured.

It was far past the torture machinery that had been gathered to the area, just beyond a damaged settee and a few plain wood tables.

“Blood.”

“What?”

He hadn’t realized Carly had followed behind him, observing.

“The table,” she said quietly.

“I don’t think we stopped this man before he murdered people,” he said simply.

She didn’t reply. He saw the blood on the table and hurried on to the fireplace with her in tow. He stopped low, balancing on his toes, to move a poker through the ashes below the grate.

Bone.

Human bone.

Just how many had Aaron managed to kill before they’d gotten there? And how the hell had he created such a killing machine of the castle with no one noticing?

That, of course, had been one of the nineteenth-century Chicago killer’s points of expertise; he’d fired construction workers constantly so that no one but him knew the full layout of his “castle.”

He’d heard Inspector Finnegan come up behind him. “Tattie ower the side!” the man swore.

Luke didn’t know the Scottish expression, but he did understand the emotion in the man’s voice. They hadn’t realized what a disaster they’d stumbled upon.

“Forensic and medical examiners will need to comb through here and sort out what they can,” Carly said evenly. “We’ll need to compare DNA if we can find it with those reported missing. I’ll go up to my room to clean up and change. I will bag my nightgown as evidence for the forensic team.”

Luke and Inspector Finnegan watched Carly make her way to the stairs.

“It’s glad I am that our man from the National Crime Agency will be meeting with us. In all my years, and they’ve been aplenty, I’ve not seen the likes of this,” Finnegan said. “Brendan Campbell, the man’s up in the ranks, he’s a specialist but likes to be referred to as Agent Campbell. He was approached by your people working with Interpol earlier, but...well, to be honest, we didnae think such a thing could be coming here. Though this fellow Aaron is—”

“American. We know,” Luke interrupted.

“Not that we do nae ha’ our share o’ monsters!” Finnegan said.

“The world simply produces monsters now and then,” Luke assured him.

“But we ha’ stopped this one!”

When Finnegan was emotional, his accent grew stronger. Rising, Luke looked at him and nodded. “Thank you, sir. We must celebrate our wins because we do face our losses. So—”

Carly quickly returned with the bloody nightgown in an evidence bag. She was clean and dressed and ready to go.

“We should drive on in. Follow me, if you will. We’ll leave Forensics to it.”

He headed to his car, not thinking to ask Carly if she wanted to drive. But in the car, he glanced her way at last.

“Sorry. I’ve been on my own for a bit, and I just—”

“You just act. I understand. It takes a bit to get used to being a partner again.”

He arched a brow and studied her curiously. He had to admit, hearing he was meeting with Carly MacDonald had made him think she’d be a slender blue-eyed blonde, innocent and fragile looking, as such an undercover operation might require.

He figured she could gush with enthusiasm and appear to be delicate and naive. She was slender but shapely and had the most unusual eyes he’d ever seen, almost golden, bright against the darkness of her hair. She managed to be fiercely feminine, he thought, and purely professional, all in one.

He had to wonder, too, what might have happened if he hadn’t come along. She seemed to be wary and well trained, but while he’d received the permissions necessary to carry his weapon, she hadn’t been armed when he’d come upon her. Then again, he understood the number of police officers in the United Kingdom—including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—numbered about 155,000-plus police officers by any title and less than seven thousand of those were authorized to carry weapons. Of course, the population of the UK was just short of seventy million, and less than six million of that number resided in Scotland. Then again, he’d learned in the sparsely populated cornfields of Kansas that monsters could operate just about anywhere.

The police station was small. Of course, they were in a rural area that was only huge now because of the love for the games that stretched beyond the country.

As they headed in to meet with their National Crime Agency counterpart, Luke couldn’t help but notice that those there under arrest appeared to be young and had most probably been brought in for being drunk and disorderly—perhaps with a charge or two for prostitution thrown in.

They were led to a small conference room.

Brendan Campbell was not seated at the table there waiting for them. With his arms crossed, he was pacing the small area, waiting, shaking his cleanly shaven head all the while.

He stopped to greet them and walked around the table to shake their hands. He was a thin man, about six feet in height, with blue eyes that seemed to blaze against his features and the shiny surface of his bald pate.

“Pleased to meet you, pleased to have you here,” he told them. “I’ve been in contact with your supervising field director.” He paused as if he was sometimes as confused by American ranks within agencies as they could be in the UK.

“Jackson Crow,” Luke said. “And heading our team in Europe, we have Mason Carter and his partner, Della Hamilton.”

“Right, right, thank you. And the good Lord help us! Thank you for finding out what was happening at the castle. Shocking. I’ve also spoken with Billingham, and he’s still working the scene south of London and... Who is this that these people are emulating? And has no one discovered where this is coming from—the dark web?”

“Sir, the dark web is just as it sounds—dark. Our people are working on it, but they follow trails, they have a lead, the site goes down and it pops up again. The dark web is not as much a mystery to me as is the sheer number of those it seems to reach,” Carly told him evenly.

“We’re field agents,” Luke added politely. “Our mission is to get around and stop every head of the hydra that we can while those who are geniuses at maneuvering the internet seek out every bit of information they can. Trust me, without the help we’ve been receiving from our main offices, we wouldn’t be finding what we are.”

“Well, I’m grateful that perhaps your stay in Scotland is over,” Campbell said, and then he seemed to realize the harshness of his words, for he added quickly, “Forgive me! We love having visitors in Scotland. It’s just—”

“We understand!” Carly interrupted softly. “And we’re hoping ourselves that our stay here is helpful and—”

“You should go to the games,” Campbell said, smiling. Then he shook his head and grew serious. “I mean, yes, the Highland Games are wonderful.”

Carly smiled. “I’ve been to them, sir. My grandparents were from here. We came back often enough.”

“Ah! Thus, the good Scottish name. Lovely! But for now—”

“Now,” Luke said, weary, wishing it wasn’t now almost four in the morning. “I’m assuming you want to understand more of what is happening.”

“What has happened. Pray God there will be no more here!”

Luke nodded. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe; he did. He knew there was a God and knew the human soul went on.

But just as good things happened in the world, so did the bad. And monsters would carry out their deeds where they chose whether this man wished them all gone or not.

“All right, then.”

“Sit. We’ll have tea. Or coffee,” Campbell offered.

“Either would be lovely,” Carly assured him, glancing at Luke. There was something in her eyes. Was she warning him not to be abrasive?

He didn’t mean to be abrasive. He’d just seen what this heinous dark-web society was causing; he knew it stretched far and wide and knew wishing it was gone wouldn’t make it so.

Luke glanced at Carly and she nodded and they both sat.

“I would truly enjoy a cup of coffee, sir,” he said, as the man joined them, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table.

Luke lowered his head for a moment, wondering why he was feeling like a perp might after being brought in and questioned.

Because Campbell was planning a strange kind of interrogation.

And he could handle it. He was more well-versed in America’s first serial killer than he had ever wanted to be.

Campbell smiled. “I’m going the coffee route myself, as it is. Agent MacDonald, for you?”

“Make it easy. Coffee all the way.”

He hit a little buzzer on the desk, asking that a coffee service be brought in. A tray with cups, a coffeepot, sugar and creamer was brought in—along with a plate full of scones. He realized he was hungry.

But with a cup of black coffee in his hands, he decided that he needed to start talking before he wolfed down any food.

“There is someone out there—and we have no idea what country he or she is in—who has pulled together a ‘society’ dedicated to imitating a man whose real name was Herman Mudgett but is better known as H. H. Holmes. His expertise was insurance fraud, but to acquire the benefits from that fraud, he became an expert at murder and an expert at the disposal of bodies.”

“The fireplace at the castle, the grate—the bones,” Campbell said.

Luke nodded. “Holmes was born in 1861 in New Hampshire as Herman Mudgett and first used his pseudonym Holmes when he headed to Chicago, circa 1885—he abandoned his wife and child to make that move. Neighbors didn’t have any bad things to say about the family or Herman when he was a child. All that would be noted later was that he really loved money, and he had probably stolen from his employers and clients at the odd jobs where he worked. Neighbors later also said he was a loner. What may have been a bit of inspiration for what was to come was the story that a number of local boys shoved him into a doctor’s office, where he was forced to stare at a skull. It terrified—and fascinated—him. Anyway, he married, wound up going to medical school in New Hampshire and then Michigan. It’s believed by profiling minds that it was there he learned first what a skeleton and other body parts might be worth, and he also learned a great deal about dissection. The World’s Fair, or, at the time, the Columbian Exposition, was due to take place in Chicago in 1893. Before the event, which would draw tens of thousands of visitors, the man started work on what would become known as his ‘Murder Castle.’”

“And that’s...” Campbell said, casting his head to the side as if he was confused.

Carly stepped in, saying, “No one really knows exactly when he started killing. But many people in psychology and criminal profiling believe he first murdered for profit. As Luke said, he discovered in medical school just how much corpses were worth. He was most probably involved in grave robbery at the time. He went into insurance scams—finding ways to have policies written out to him under various names, and then having the victims die. He got money from insurance—”

“And then from selling the corpses,” Luke told him. “In his Murder Castle, he even arranged for vats with acids to remove flesh from the bones, and other vats were filled with bleach to totally prepare them. The skeletons were worth a great deal.”

“Then,” Carly added, “around 1892, he went into the phase that some call his sex murders. He was apparently charming and could easily sway women. There were four women he was supposedly married to at one time or another, and three of them wound up disappearing, along with the child of one and the sister of another. No one really knows exactly what he did or didn’t do. He wrote his own confession, but he lied so often in life no one knows what was true in it. Some people he claimed to have killed were alive after his execution, which finally came in 1896.

“For another fraud, and something truly heartbreaking, he pretended to have come up with a scheme that involved one of his partners, Benjamin Pitezel. Pitezel would leave behind a large insurance policy, and they would pretend he had died, with Holmes producing a corpse from elsewhere. Except he really killed the man. Then, pretending he was helping the man’s widow, he traveled with three of the Pitezel children, murdering a young boy first, cutting up his body and burning it, and then gassing two of the sisters and burying them in Canada, where their bodies were found. It was for the murder of Pitezel that he was finally condemned to death, although his arrest was initially for insurance fraud, and it was the Pinkerton Agency that finally caught up with him because he had a talent for moving around to avoid the law.

“But...the Murder Castle was Aaron Miller’s inspiration for what he did with his castle here. Again, experts believe Holmes first killed because he was a ‘homicidal entrepreneur.’ He killed women because they provided money or because they were getting in his way or refused his advances. He killed children because they might be witnesses. The thing is...”

“That there is now a society dedicated to this man?” Campbell asked disbelievingly.

Luke sighed and grimaced. “Sir, we’ve seen what can happen in human society. Many people may hate others for reasons of sexual identity, ethnicity, religion or race—but they keep it to themselves until someone in power or adored by the public for some reason makes horrible behavior seem all right. Something to go ahead and speak on or act on. At any time, there may be those out there harboring fantasies of murder. For them, the H. H. Holmes Society makes those fantasies seem acceptable, something someone might act upon.”

“There just can’t be that many people out there who would...who would act out murder because others were doing it!” Campbell said.

“Let’s hope not,” Luke said. “What we have today that didn’t exist back then is social media—people across the globe in massive numbers can be reached. Even a small percentage of that number is more than we want out there. But what we also have today is far more in the field of forensics—the same media that may reach monsters also reaches law enforcement. We got Aaron and we will keep investigating until we’ve got the site down—and every adherent to H. H. Holmes.”

Campbell shook his head again. “So, this castle Holmes created had a dungeon? I’ve not been, but I have heard there are castles in America. There’s a Hammond Castle, right?”

“Yes, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, built in the early twentieth century,” Luke said. “But the Murder Castle wasn’t a castle. Holmes just called it a castle. It was a new building he had constructed several years before the World’s Fair. It didn’t have a dungeon but a basement that was used for torture, murder and body disposal. And here, Aaron Miller had work done—just as someone did south of London—to re-create some of Holmes’s killing machines. Rooms where gas could be piped in. Vaults where people might be asphyxiated. Chutes to dispose of bodies, fireplaces that burn at tremendous heat, vats with acids...”

“No one will easily get away with selling bodies these days in Scotland!” Campbell said indignantly. “This is a contemporary world and we are a part of it. Scotsmen were indeed a great part of the industrial revolution, and we continue to make and use all that technology and communications avail us.”

“Of course,” Luke agreed politely, glancing at Carly again, trying to assure her he knew how to play decently with local law enforcement.

“Do you believe more of these maniacs might be working in Scotland? I can’t imagine many Americans might have purchased castles in Scotland,” Campbell said.

Carly stepped in quickly, as if afraid his patience wouldn’t last.

“Sir, it doesn’t need to be a real castle, and another killer might not even be American,” she said. “The problem with today’s technology is that people can reach out across the world and find what I believe in my heart to be a small percentage of human beings capable of being so truly evil. Our people at headquarters are studying everything they can that might be suspicious and are searching for the site again. And if Aaron Miller lives, he may give us information we need.”

Campbell studied his phone for a minute. He looked across the table again at the two of them, nodding. “This is the third incident we know about, though one is suspected in France, where your coagents are looking into the situation. But there is one event we know about that took place in the States, one south of London, and now here. Do you want to be part of the crew ripping apart the castle now? Finding out just how far this horrid event went on before your arrival?”

“There is one thing I want,” Luke said, “and that’s to speak with Aaron Miller, if he survives.”

“I will see that it happens,” Campbell said grimly.

“Thank you,” Luke told him.

Campbell sat back, shaking his head. “They don’t call us ‘Bloody Scotland’ for naught. Our history is rich with wars, betrayals, martyrs and triumphs. But...wars were fought for kings, for country, for power and, sometimes, for ideals and freedom. This sickness is different, heinous, and we cannot abide it. We are grateful you are here, and I swear we’ll avail you of every effort of Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency to stop it!”

Campbell had grown suddenly passionate. For a moment, the older man reminded Luke of one of the great warriors of old, a modern-day William Wallace.

“Thank you,” he said again.

Campbell grimaced. “For now, paperwork. Agent MacDonald, you’re in agreement with all I’ve said, and I believe—”

“We’re grateful, sir,” Carly said. “We will await whatever help is still needed from us. And as far as Aaron Miller’s castle goes, we trust in your people. I just need to retrieve my belongings. And I’m with my partner on his request.”

“Aye. That be fine and good. Scotland is no different from America in one regard,” Campbell warned them.

Luke almost smiled at that. “Paperwork?”

“Indeed.”

“Then we shall get to it,” Luke said, looking at Carly.

“Always,” she said, nodding in turn.

When they were at last ready to leave, Carly asked, “Do you mind dropping me? I don’t need to be there when they discover the victims or speak with those who will need to vacate the castle. But everything I travel with is in the bedroom where I was staying.”

“I have no intention of just dropping you. I’ll wait while you retrieve your belongings,” Luke assured her.

“And then I’m assuming that we’ll join Mason and Della in France and see where they’ve gotten with their investigation. They know that people have disappeared in the wine region where they’ve been working with the local police and Interpol, but—”

“We’re not to leave,” he told her, studying his phone.

“But—”

“Check your phone. There’s a message from Jackson Crow,” Luke said. “‘Blackbird needs to continue soaring over bonny Scotland. More when we have specifics. Arrangements made for a B and B off the Royal Mile.’”

She pulled out her phone, read the message herself that had been sent to them both and nodded. “Okay. Well, I do love the Royal Mile, and I was afraid we’d be sleeping in an airport.”

He grinned at her. “You’re new to the Krewe of Hunters.”

“I started with the Bureau three years ago—just three months ago with the Krewe,” she told him.

“Well, we’d never have to sleep in an airport unless horrendous weather was grounding everything. Adam Harrison has afforded the Krewe a lot of what he sees as necessary benefits. He’d have made sure we had a flight—just as someone in power has seen to it we have rooms. We do the work, and we work for an agency within the Bureau created by a man who never took a personal tragedy to a bad place but rather wanted to use his amazing financial expertise to help others. We’re incredibly lucky.”

She was smiling oddly.

“What?” he asked her, curious.

“Lucky. We deal with so much awful.”

“But we do our best to stop it, too.”

“Right. I saw your face,” she told him. She was staring at the road ahead, not at him.

“My face—”

“You didn’t want Aaron Miller to die. Many people would have felt he deserved death.”

“We need him alive.”

She turned to look at him at last.

“You were one of the agents who found the first copycat murder castle, so to speak. In America.”

“In Kansas,” he said flatly. She was watching him.

She wanted to know him, understand him. Not something terrible, of course. But he felt that, somewhere inside, he was still raw. He had received the best training possible for an agent; he had worked with many different branches in the Bureau. He would always put professionalism above emotion. But right now...

And still.

He was stuck with her. Could be worse. She was capable, professional, and had seemed to have the looks and ability to slip into just about any role. She even smelled good.

But since Kansas, his undercover work there and the horrible discoveries they’d made, he’d really turned into a loner. Maybe even a bit of a jerk or a bastard, and he probably needed the time with a therapist that hadn’t been mandated because field action was so urgent. He was now assigned to work this together with Special Agent Carly MacDonald, with Interpol and all local agencies there to help at a moment’s notice.

Carly had drawn out the monster of the castle; they had taken him down. And Campbell could be right. The danger in Scotland could be over.

And then again, it might not.

He had to try to be decent.

“Hey. Are you with me?” she asked softly, and he knew that her words meant more than simply for the moment.

“Yeah. In Kansas,” he repeated, shaking his head. “It was bizarre, being that Gary Houghton, the Society member, was from such a rural area. He started out with a typical farmhouse, completely surrounded by cornfields. Then again, due to tornadoes, he had a large basement built deeply into the ground. But there is a major Kiowa museum and several decent-sized towns fronting the farm there, enough so that during festivals he was easily able to attract visitors as a B and B, not too many at once, which managed to work to his advantage for quite some time.” He paused.

“When I got there—pulling a lot of what you did at Aaron’s castle—I slipped down to the basement at night. I had no choice. He had the point of a knife about to slide into a woman’s throat. One of our team members who’d been awaiting my signal arrived with perfect timing and had to shoot him. We found out he’d followed the entire Holmes manifesto—acid baths, bleach, massive incinerator and human remains that are still being sorted out. Some in better condition than others, a recent victim still lying in a pool of blood... The man liked knives. Holmes may have first become a killer after becoming a grave robber for the money that could be made on bodies and bones, but I don’t think money meant anything to Gary Houghton. He liked knives.”

“It must have truly been far beyond awful,” Carly said. She was looking at him evenly.

He sighed, giving her a grim smile. “And here is the problem. We are looking at a society of people with sick urges, all making their sicknesses seem fine because they have others they can share with, making them feel as if what they want to do makes them special and powerful.”

“Like you told Campbell—we have our advantages, too!” she said, her tone a little fierce.

Luke felt a real smile curl his lips.

“We do!” he agreed. He felt his phone vibrating again, but hers was in her lap and he didn’t need to reach for his.

“I’ve got it—message from headquarters,” she said. “And it reads, ‘Have a rest tonight—organizing intelligence and working out travel plans for tomorrow.’ Okay, so...”

“We’re here,” he said quietly, turning into the drive to the castle that was still filled with law enforcement vehicles.

Finnegan greeted them somberly when they entered the castle.

Naturally, the registration desk was now empty, as were the great halls stretching in either direction.

“We have no idea what we’ve got. We’re digging up floors, digging out his firepit... ’Tis a horror museum,” Finnegan told them. “I was below but needed...”

“A break. We’re human,” Luke said.

“Have you—” Finnegan began.

“We’ve just come for my things—we’ll be right out of your hair!” Carly promised sweetly.

Finnegan smiled at her. It was obvious she did all right with their British counterparts. That was good. Luke needed to accept her as a partner—and maybe even relearn how to be a bit more like her.

“Finnegan,” she continued. “Irish?”

He laughed softly. “Well, going back, y’know, tribes from all over moved on up or over in the British Isles. The Romans referred to the Irish as the ‘Scotia’ around 500 AD. Came to be a name for Gaelic peoples, and then again...count the centuries! People have been hopping over the island for years and years.”

“I’ve just always loved the name,” Carly told him. “I took a class on Finnegans Wake back when I was in college. Loved it! I’ll just be a second, or a few seconds, I promise!” she added.

She left them, hurrying for the stairs to the second level.

“Yer a lucky bloke, my friend,” Finnegan said. “In this...well, someone of good cheer and optimism can help clear a few o’ the dark clouds!”

Luke gave him a friendly nod.

But Finnegan was staring at him, somber again. “Such a situation found south of London and yet there may still be more?”

“We don’t know. Let’s celebrate discovering and ending this horror show, shall we?” Luke asked.

“Yer right, of course. But—”

“Ah, wow! My partner is speedy!” Luke said. He was glad that Carly was already heading down the stairs; she traveled light. She had one roller bag that would fit in the overhead bin in most commercial airplanes and a second over-the-shoulder one, and that was all.

She was quick and adept. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, of course, to reach for a bag, and he did so.

Again, he thought she would rebuff him, but she released the handle of her roller bag and gave him a quick smile and thanks before turning to Finnegan.

“Thank you for being so prompt!” she told him. “Arriving with law enforcement and the medical help we needed.” She offered him her hand.

“Special Agent MacDonald, a pleasure,” Finnegan assured her. “And it’s with sorrow that I hope we do not meet again.”

“Understandable,” she said.

“Unless it’s over a pint or a wee bit o’ our best whiskey!” he said.

Luke decided to rescue his new partner by stepping forward to reach for and shake Finnegan’s hand.

“A pint somewhere, sometime!” he said. “We’re heading for some sleep, sir. I haven’t been to sleep since delving through two of these sites, so...”

“Looking forward to me own bed!” Finnegan said.

Luke placed an arm around Carly’s shoulders, aiming her toward the door.

They were out.

He set her bag in the truck and slid into the driver’s seat, then frowned as he saw she was walking away.

“I’ve got a car here, too!” she reminded him. “Thanks for helping with the bag—I’ll meet you at our little motel or B and B or whatever!”

He smiled and nodded. He hadn’t lied, he realized. It had been hours and hours since he’d slept.

Or eaten.

Past lunch, before dinner. But Edinburgh was an amazing city and beloved by tourists; something would be open for a meal, and then with any luck, he thought grimly, they’d get to sleep.

He was about to set the car into gear when he felt his phone vibrating again. He pulled it from his pocket, glancing down at the text he’d just received.

It had been sent to both him and Carly and had been written by Mason Carter.

Had hoped to see you. I believe you heard from Jackson Crow. Great croissants here. Maybe not, too busy to enjoy. Get some sleep in Edinburgh. You may be heading a ‘wee’ bit north, between Urquhart Castle and Inverness. Details in the morning, still gathering intel.

Urquhart Castle sat on Loch Ness, with the city of Inverness about twenty miles away.

His phone rang as he held it. Carly, of course.

“We may have a bit of a stay in Scotland,” she said.

“We’ll be heading to Loch Ness, so it seems.”

“But not to find the monster.”

“Not the monster. But a monster, nonetheless. You hungry?”

“Hey, sure, all that talk of monsters, really revs up the appetite.”

Luke grinned. “See you soon.”

He ended the call. They weren’t far from where they’d spend the night before heading out deeper into the center of the country in the morning.

But it was going to be okay. They’d get something to eat. They’d get some desperately needed sleep.

And Finnegan was right.

He was lucky.

He wasn’t sure how, but in her way, Carly MacDonald did help when it came to tamping down the demon monsters that plagued his mind.