Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

C arys was drunk, and she was rarely drunk. But the Four Crowns public house was right next to her hotel, and it had seemed like a good idea when she arrived back in town at three in the afternoon to start drinking to calm down.

Now she was calm.

Very, very calm.

"Can I get you another, dove?" The bartender was an intriguing dark-haired man with an angular face, a fine jaw, and brilliant blue eyes that looked at her like he could see into her soul. He had a line of fine gold rings climbing up his left ear, and his hair fell over the right side of his face like a golden-brown waterfall.

God, she was really drunk.

Carys squinted. "Is everyone in this country attractive?"

The bartender flashed her a wicked smile. "I guarantee you no."

As if to prove his point, a group of three old men with overgrown beards walked into the bar, laughing raucously and shouting at the woman behind the bar to get them three pints.

"See?" The man's eyebrows went up.

She smiled and raised her empty glass. "Point made. "

"You're visiting from America." He narrowed his eyes and looked at her, then leaned down and stared into her eyes, his mouth falling open a little.

"What?" She looked down at her shirt. Had she spilled something? It was highly possible. "What are you?—"

"You aren't American, are you?"

Carys frowned. "I think I know where I'm from." What a strange man. The gorgeous cheekbones were not making up for the intrusive questions and the staring.

"But you were born on this side of the ocean, weren't you?" The man kept his eyes on hers. "In Cymru."

"Wales." She blinked. "I was born in Wales. How did you know?—"

"Oh yes. Wales ." The man's shock melted away, and a glorious smile spread over his face. "So you're visiting this side of the waters. Isn't this delicious?"

"Visiting?" Carys sighed. "Kind of. It's not exactly a vacation."

The long-legged man slid into the booth across from her. "Do you mind? I love a good story." He leaned forward. "In fact, I live for them."

His cheekbones were high, and his jaw was dusted with black stubble. Blue eyes shone out from arching black eyebrows that reminded Carys of blackbird wings. His lips were full and red, as if he'd been eating blackberries in the summer. She tasted the sweetness just looking at his lips. The tart burst of blackberry juice?—

Carys blinked. "I should probably get a coffee and not another whiskey."

"Should you?" The dark man pulled a whiskey bottle seemingly out of nowhere and refilled her glass, then the glass that was suddenly in front of him. "Why did you come to Scone?"

That's right. She was in Scone, Scotland. Lachlan's hometown. The town where he'd run through the dense pine forest and hunted deer with his father. The town where he'd learned to ride horses and all the other idyllic things he'd told her about.

She stared at the glass in front of her. It hadn't been there before, had it? Or had there been a glass sitting on the table the whole time ?

The room around her began to spin.

"My dove?" The man leaned in and spoke softly. "Why did you come to Scone?"

"I… I'm looking for someone."

"Who?" The man took a drink and watched her.

She hadn't seen the forests or deer that Lachlan had talked about. The trees she'd seen had been sparse and leafless from the cold. There were more sheep and cows than deer.

Maybe she was in the wrong place after all. The childhood Lachlan had described seemed like it had come from one of the fairy tales she taught in her Intro to World Mythology class, not a rural village an hour outside the Scottish capital.

"Who are you looking for?" he asked again.

"Lachlan Murray." Carys blinked, looking up into the man's blue eyes. "Do you know him?"

His mouth formed a small o , but he quickly hid his surprised expression behind a cocky grin. "Lachlan of Moray? Oh aye, I know that name. Tell me more."

"It's Murray, not…" She blinked when she heard his accent. "You're not Scottish."

His smile curved slowly. "No, I'm not. In your way of thinking, I'd be called Irish, I suppose."

"So is this an Irish pub or a Scottish pub if the bartender is Irish?"

His smile got bigger. "It's my pub. Do you want to know my name?"

She looked around the pub, but it was strangely quiet. She saw people on the other side of the room, but their voices were distant and muddled. The only one she could hear clearly was the man across the table from her.

She blinked, trying to clear her head. "Are you hitting on me?"

"Hitting you?" He sat back, his eyebrow rising in shock. "What are you talking about?"

"Not hitting me. Hitting on me." She racked her brain for the Scottish term Lachlan had used once. "Chatting me up. Are you chatting me up?"

"Am I?" The man's red lips curved into a smile again. "Do you want me to?"

"No." She shook her head. "I'm looking for Lachlan. I love him. And he loves me. That's why none of this makes sense."

He let out a soft sigh. "Oh, it makes too much sense, doesn't it?"

"What makes sense?"

His glittering eyes softened. "The distances we travel for love."

"Yes." She reached for the glass and realized it was empty. Where had the whiskey gone? Had she drunk it already? She didn't remember drinking it. "You understand then. I came here because I love him. And I need to know what happened."

Do you? A teasing voice that sounded like her mother's whispered in her mind. Curiosity, my Carys. You will follow the rabbit into the forest, never seeing the wolf that follows at your back.

She opened her eyes and saw the man more clearly. "How do you know Lachlan?"

He leaned back in the wooden booth and lifted the whiskey bottle. "How about another drink?"

She heard the door to the pub open again, and a gust of cold wind dusted her shoulder, making her shiver and pull her sweater up her neck. "I don't want any more whiskey."

"It warms the blood." The man looked amused. "But I suppose it depends on what kind of blood you have."

His dark hair fell past his shoulders in curling waves that reminded Carys of the whorls of grain in polished maple her father had loved.

"He made my mother a drawing table from that wood." Carys's head was spinning.

The man narrowed his eyes. "What wood? Who made a table?"

She was really drunk.

Her father had been a shop teacher at the local high school and a carpenter in his spare time. He'd loved the redwood forests of California and had built a small house with his own hands after moving his wife and infant daughter from rural Wales to the American West Coast.

When she closed her eyes, she was back in Baywood, standing behind that house on the edge of the forest, looking into the trees and peering through the shadowed trunks where the light jumped and danced as branches moved in the breeze.

Her parents weren't dead in this memory. They hadn't perished on a hillside in the dead of night, lost to a car crash in the wilderness. Her mother was still painting in her studio, and her father was still polishing wood in the barn.

She watched the faint lights in the forest, dancing like fireflies at twilight. Don't be curious, my Carys, her mother's voice whispered in her mind. Leave the rabbit to the wolf. Never follow the lights. They want to lead you away from me.

"Duncan Murray. Here to collect your American friend?"

The bartender's voice roused her, and Carys opened her eyes.

Duncan was standing over the booth, his arms crossed over his chest. He nodded at the bartender. "Dru."

Carys looked up at him and squinted. "You."

The bartender looked up and smiled. "I was just about to ask your friend her name. Perhaps you can tell me."

"Out of the booth, Dru." Duncan's voice was gruff. "You don't need her name."

"But I'm fairly sure I know one of them." The strange man's eyes were twinkling. "Don't you want to tell me the other, my dove?"

Carys looked at the man and tasted the sweet burst of berry juice on her tongue. "Nothing you say makes any sense."

"Not now, but wait." Dru winked at her. "Very well then." He slid out of the booth. "Your seat, Duncan?"

"And a glass," the brutish man said. "Leave the bottle unless it's one of yours."

Dru flipped the neck of the bottle with his fingertips, and it seemed to disappear. "I'll bring you another. "

Duncan slid into the booth across from Carys as Dru walked away. "Of all the pubs you go to, it had to be this one."

She pointed over her shoulder. "It's right next to my hotel."

"Of course it is." He was folding his hands, then unfolding them. "Listen, I'm sorry I was rude today, but you surprised me and?—"

"You shouldn't have been surprised. I called you, like, a dozen times after Lachlan went missing." She was far too drunk to be polite. "What did you think was going to happen when your brother up and left my house and five hours later, his phone was pinging in Scotland?" She leaned forward. "Five hours, Duncan. That's not possible. At one thirty his phone was at Mad Creek Bridge, and four hours later it was in Edinburgh."

Duncan stared at her. "You didn't tell me that part."

"You didn't really give me a chance."

"Fine. Tell me what happened."

Carys sighed, trying not to think of how many times she'd told this story in the past month. To Laura and Kiersten. To the police. To her dean. "He went for a hike in the forest behind my house."

Duncan scratched his beard. "You two liked to hike. He told me that."

"Yeah, and we know how to be safe in the woods. We don't hike after dark. We take water and protein bars with us. We take a compass because cell phone service is shit back in the hills."

"What's in the woods?"

She frowned. "What do you mean, ‘what's in the woods'? Trees. Bears. Too much poison oak. He knew all that stuff. He'd been around long enough."

"Four months." He stared at the table. "When he was in Baywood, did anyone come around looking for him? Did he mention anything strange?"

"No. I would have told the police. Search and Rescue went out to Mad Creek looking for him and they looked for like four hours, but by then I'd come back to the house and some of his stuff was gone, so then I checked where his phone was and… poof! Scotland. Which…" Her head was swimming. "How? But there were his boots, so…"

Duncan frowned. "What about his boots?"

How was he so dense? "Someone took some of his clothes and his boots . Then they left his old muddy ones by my back door. So the police think he took off."

"But you don't."

"Of course I don't." She waited for him to say more, but he didn't. "He left his passport, his stuff. He left his car, Duncan. That is not a normal ‘hey, this isn't working out.'"

"No," Duncan muttered. "I can see why you were confused."

"You've talked to him, right? You said you've talked to him since he's been back."

"Uh…" He frowned. "Not exactly."

"So how do you know he's okay?"

"Because I know." Duncan sighed. "What can I do to convince you to leave this alone and go back to your life?"

"Nothing. The man I love is missing ." She finished the whiskey Dru had poured for her. "I shouldn't drink any more, but this is better than any whiskey I've ever tasted."

"Oh, I bet it is." He snatched the glass from her hand. "Don't drink that. If you insist on more, wait for the next bottle."

"Why not?" She tried to grab it, but his hand moved too fast.

His hands were pocked with small scars and burns, callused from work, though his nails were neatly trimmed. While the rest of Duncan looked just like Lachlan, his hands were very different.

Carys blinked at him through bleary eyes. "Maybe I should just go to the police. I can give them all the information I have from the police in Baywood." Her voice rose a little bit. "I got a copy of the report there. I can give them your name. Lachlan's passport. The screenshots of his phone pinging in Edinburgh. All his paperwork and the name of his lawyer in California and?—"

"Stop." Duncan put his hand over Carys's and lowered his voice. "Carys Morgan, you need to stop. Leave this be. Leave Lachlan be. "

Don't follow the rabbit into the woods.

Carys was going to disappoint her mother so much. She probably already had. "I don't believe you that he's fine." She glared at Duncan. "I think someone forced him to come back here, so until you let me see him, I am going to stay here and raise so much noise that nothing about your life is going to be peaceful. Ever again."

The first hint of panic touched his brilliant green eyes. "Please."

"I'm persistent and I'm pissed off. At you. At Lachlan. At… the stupid police back home. I'll call the police here. I'll call the newspapers. I'll call?—"

"Okay, stop." He swallowed. "Carys, stop."

"Take me to see Lachlan."

Dru walked over and thunked a bottle of whiskey on the table before he walked away again.

Duncan watched him until he was back behind the bar, then turned to Carys. "You want to see Lachlan?" He cracked the bottle open and poured two fingers of scotch in his glass and then in hers. "You really want me to take you to Lachlan?"

"Yes. I do." Wait, was he really going to do it?

He downed the whiskey with one gulp. "Fine."

"Fine? Does fine mean yes?" Was he really going to take her to see Lachlan?

"Yes. I'll take you. And if anyone complains about it, I'm blaming my fucking brother."

The next morning Carys woke up with a massive hangover and a note on the bedside table. Carys rolled over, squinting in the grey morning light, and saw a message written in surprisingly graceful writing .

Check out of your hotel and come to my house. Bring all your things. This may take some time.

Below that was an address, or at least what passed for one in Scotland. She'd have to ask the woman at the front desk how to get there, because after her roundabout drive the day before looking for Duncan's factory, she didn't have any confidence in her navigation skills.

She rolled back into bed and closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to her temples.

She'd been rude to Duncan the night before, but she'd been so angry. She could feel the shadows of depression threatening her mind, like coastal fog waiting to roll onto shore. She kept pushing it back with action. With anger. With determination.

She wasn't leaving this country without Lachlan. At least not without an explanation.

Carys reached for her phone and called Kiersten. The phone rang a few times before she realized it was probably really late in California.

Luckily, Kiersten was a night owl and picked up. "Hey! How did today go? Or… yesterday? I'm not sure."

"Complicated. How's home?"

"Good. No sign of Lachlan yet?"

"No, but I did meet Duncan."

"The brother! How was that?"

"They're twins. Like identical twins. So that was weird."

"Whoa. I bet. Did Lachlan ever tell you his brother was his twin?"

"No. And Duncan was rude as hell, but he said he'd take me to see Lachlan today."

"I knew it." Kiersten watched too much true-crime television. "There's family drama there. I bet Lachlan got roped back into some toxic family dynamic he was trying to get away from here. He's kindhearted. Dysfunctional people will prey on that. "

Carys could always depend on Kiersten for a positive take. She was notoriously forgiving.

"All I know is that on top of being worried, I'm pissed off. I understand needing to go back to sort out family stuff, but there's no excuse for not calling me."

"If they took his phone though."

"There are other phones in Scotland, Kiersten."

"Okay yes. But tell me this: Do you know anyone's phone number anymore?"

Carys fell silent. Shit . That was a good point.

"See? I probably can't even remember Laura's, and she's had the same number for fifteen years."

Carys suddenly felt foolish. Or was she still pissed off?

Yeah, still a little pissed off. "You know what? I'll decide how I feel about Lachlan when I see Lachlan. Right now I just need to find him." She grabbed the paper on the bedside table. "And figure out how to find… Murrayshall House."

"That sounds fancy."

"I hardly think it's going to be that fancy. His brother is a blacksmith."

"Being a blacksmith sounds like a cool job." Kiersten's voice perked up. "Your dad would have loved that."

"My dad was the kindest and most considerate man in the world," Carys said. "I don't think he'd have loved someone who tried to brush me off when all I'm doing is trying to find out what the hell happened to Lachlan."

"Still. Blacksmith or finance bro, Lachlan's family drama reeks of OMP."

"What the hell is OMP?"

"Old money problems. Trust me, I've dated enough trust fund boys to know. All this shit? The disapproving siblings, the mysterious ‘responsibilities' back home. The extended travel. All of it sounds like old money problems to me. Besides, who can actually make enough money with a blacksmithing business to randomly fly across the world for months at a time?"

I'm a disgustingly wealthy prince who's run away from home for a bit to enjoy being unemployed.

"Oh my God, I think you're right." Carys closed her eyes, and her temples pounded. She groaned and fell back into bed. "Kiersten, I should just leave now."

"Absolutely not! Lachlan was happy with you. They were paying him to sing at the pub, you know. He even asked me about how to get work at the mill a couple of weeks before he disappeared."

"You didn't tell me that."

"He told me not to say anything." She took a deep breath. "He was making a new life in California, and if his family took him away from that with… lies or guilt or some shit like that, he needs you."

Carys took a deep breath and sat up again. "You're right. He needs me." And I need him. "Okay, I'm taking a shower, getting some aspirin, and checking out of the hotel. I'll try to call you later, but reception around here is hit or miss."

"Sounds good. Love you, Carys."

"Love you too." She turned off her phone and set it on the bedside table. Then she rubbed her face, reached for the bottle of aspirin on the table next to her, and tried to calm her wobbly morning belly.

Whiskey was dangerous.