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CHAPTER ONE
‘Salt?’
‘It needs frosting.’
‘What?’ Aileen shrieked, popping her head up from where she was frowning at the curry bubbling on the hob. ‘Frosting?’
Isla McIntyre looked up from the Baker Babes magazine she was flicking through and blinked. ‘What? I think’ – she stabbed a finger down on the glossy pages – ‘it needs more frosting. Maybe in a lighter shade of blue.’
Aileen pointed towards the pot she’d just added a bit of sweet paprika to. ‘I was asking about my chicken curry pot.’
Isla shook her head. The action sent her wild red curls bouncing. She’d tied her hair up in a high ponytail, accentuating her flushed cheeks and cat-like green eyes. It gave her hair more space to bounce, Isla had declared when she’d adopted this new hairstyle. Now, she stabbed a finger towards Aileen. ‘You need a better name than that.’
Aileen groaned. ‘You know I—’
‘Can’t name a recipe that isn’t yet ready. I know, I know. And it will never be ready. What do you want? For everyone to like it?’
Aileen bit her lower lip, staring again at the reddish-brown sauce that made her mouth water. She would be more satisfied if everyone liked it. She wrinkled her nose. ‘There’s something not quite right with it. So, salt?’ Aileen spooned some into a small bowl and set it beside Isla. ‘It’s very hot. Wait a bit before you—’
Isla tipped the sauce into her mouth, made an ‘O’ with her lips and blew. ‘Hot! Hot!’ She shook her head, then chewed again. ‘Oh wow!’
Aileen rolled her eyes. ‘How do you know if it’s wow? You just burned your tongue!’
‘Not entirely. And it smells delish. You need to stop perfecting what’s already perfect.’ Isla snapped her magazine closed. ‘That being said, I need to get back to the bakery. They should be swamped by now.’
‘You need a break.’ Aileen reached for the cabinets where she stored her Tupperware. She’d save some of the curry for later, and perhaps… aye, she could get this to Callan for his lunch. Isla was heading into town, wasn’t she? ‘You’ve been baking well into the morning to perfect your new menu, while still finding new ideas for said menu, expanding your bakery next door, while running your current bakery, meeting the tourist demand and taking care of a bairn. I’m exhausted even listing all of that.’
Isla waved Aileen off. ‘Daniel’s helping with the expansion. I only nip in when he lets me. It’s a big surprise apparently. And he’s got Carly most of the day now, except…’ Isla peered through the kitchen doors into the empty dining area where they’d set up Carly’s pram. She’d been watching a cartoon on the tablet but had fallen asleep.
Carly was almost three now. She talked, walked and did many cute tiny-human things.
Isla sighed at her daughter. ‘My husband is a godsend.’
‘And you are superhuman,’ Aileen said while clicking the lid of the container in place. ‘Do you mind if I come with you? I want to drop this off for Callan. He can give me a ride back later, once I’ve been to the grocer’s. I need to buy a few spices, and I fancy getting out for a bit anyway.’
Isla stopped packing her things and narrowed her eyes at Aileen. ‘I don’t think you want to get away. You want to see your boyfriend. And to think three years ago you told me you couldn’t stand the man! Now look at you. I mean, you’re living together. Don’t you see enough of him already?’
Aileen bit the inside of her cheeks, knowing a blush was creeping up her neck. ‘You told me to ask him!’
‘No, you decided to ask him,’ Isla shot back. ‘After Daniel realised the man hadn’t been in his flat for two weeks! I’ve never seen two more boneheaded people. You love each other, spend every moment of your free time together, live together – you didn’t need separate addresses. What were you? Victorian eejits having a secret love affair?’
It had made sense, and Aileen had been building up the courage to ask him to stay. She hadn’t lived with a man before; hadn’t lived with anyone for a long time. Then Isla had told Aileen how good it was when you lived with the man you loved. And that had been it. She’d demanded Callan move in, and he’d argued with her on why he needed to move in, which of course didn’t make any sense, but it was them, and they didn’t do anything without arguing about it first. Later that very night, Aileen had driven them to Callan’s flat, and they’d moved his things into Dachaigh.
Since then, it had been absolutely bloody brilliant. Even if Callan could be a bit ornery at times… she loved him for it.
For the first time in her life, Aileen understood why Isla sighed in that dreamy way when she spoke about her daughter or husband. Aileen and Callan didn’t have any future plans, not concrete ones. But without a life plan, and standing at the age of thirty, with a business that was slowly turning a profit, Aileen was happy, content.
She sighed. ‘I want to see him. And I want to get his opinion on my curry. An opinion I hope will be better than adding frosting.’
Isla hooted out a laugh and woke Carly up. ‘Oops! Well, Dan’s putting her to bed later. And after that long nap, I pity him.’ Isla walked up to her daughter, cooing at her.
Aileen packed up the container in a bag, wrapped a dinner roll in foil and made sure the curry was stacked upright before plopping the bread into the bag.
She hand-combed her brown-hair and pinched her cheeks to add some colour to them. Callan had seen her in worse shape but… Well, she stared into her eyes, as dark brown as her hair. He thought her eyes held fire in them. All she saw were two brown orbs, nothing alluring like Callan’s electric blue with their special glint of grey.
Aileen shook her head. That man was blind in love with her.
It took them ten minutes to load Carly into the car and lock up the back door of the inn. Aileen’s part-time housekeeper was in. She’d promised to keep an eye out, but they were fully booked, so they would have to refuse any walk-in guests.
Added to a full inn, today had dawned and stayed sunny, a rarity in their wee north-western corner of Scotland. Hell, anywhere in Scotland, the sun was a scarce sight, but in Loch Fuar, it made everything so much cheery.
The green grass gleamed, a contrast to the greyish-blue waters of the Loch Fuar. The mountains in the background also shimmered adding that awestruck gasp to the entire scene.
Life was good.
Aileen buckled herself in and struck up a conversation with Carly about the unicorn on her left shoe. The bairn had developed a new love of ‘ooni-corns’ and babbled on and on about them.
‘She’s been asking for a stuffed unicorn. Haven’t you?’ Isla said as she turned left to exit Dachaigh’s car park.
Carly said, ‘Aye! Birthday gift.’
Aileen chuckled. ‘Your birthday’s ages away. By then you won’t want unicorns anymore.’
‘No! I love them! They fly.’
‘Fly?’ Aileen turned to Isla, who shook her head.
‘Her nursery teacher showed them a picture of a Pegasus the other day. She didn’t like that it didn’t have a horn, so my brilliant daughter used a Sharpie to draw on it.’
Aileen laughed. ‘Well!’
‘God, Aileen. It was the teacher’s copy. And Carly pulled it out of their class library and sketched on it when the teacher wasn’t looking. I’m not sure if that’s smart or deviant.’
Aileen looked at the girl in the back seat, who was trying to peer out the window to look outside. With her strawberry curls and twinkling eyes, she looked ever the innocent. And she was. Aileen loved the bairn to bits. But she’d seen her ‘negotiate’ with Callan and win, so Aileen never stood a chance of saying no to the girl. ‘She’ll be alright. It’s better to be bold than a doormat wanting to please everyone.’
Isla hummed as they raced across the stone bridge towards the market square. ‘You’re not—’
Aileen caught the glint of metal and heard the drone of an engine before she saw the car. ‘Watch out!’ she cried.
A car – a shiny navy convertible – hurtled towards them. It was a vintage model, only it made a horrendously loud noise, like that of a new race car. Its headlights, a sort of hooded pair of eyes, flashed at them.
The driver didn’t slow down, honking as he barrelled his way towards them instead.
Isla cursed and swerved to avoid it.
Aileen pressed a hand against the dashboard, trying to grip it, knowing there was nothing she could do but pray Isla had control of the car.
They continued off the road, heading for the ditch that ran alongside them.
‘Oh shit!’ Isla yanked on the handbrake as her left foot hit the clutch and her right the brakes.
Aileen braced herself as the car skidded closer to the ditch. Time slowed, the sound of gravel under the car’s tyres grating in her ears.
Instinct had Aileen pushing into her seat, as if her backward momentum could halt the car in its tracks and save them from plunging into the ditch.
A wail pierced the air. Carly.
Their journey forward didn’t seem to slow down.
Isla cursed when the car’s tyres kissed the verge, and they tilted downward.
Hell!
* * *
Forms. They were the absolute bane of his existence. If he’d once thought Aileen’s clashes with death would send him to an early grave, papers were what he’d be buried in.
Callan stared around his office. Somewhere underneath all that paper was a paper-producing machine. Why else would that spot on top of the printer he’d left vacant yesterday now be stacked with two box files?
Callan plopped into his chair and massaged his forehead, still staring. It was a privilege, having an actual office. When he’d worked in a large city, where you constantly had to rub arses with other colleagues, having your own space had been a rarity.
It could well be possible that his office was supposed to be shared by at least two other coppers, so either the state of this place had driven someone away, or they were understaffed.
‘Late night?’
Callan sat up at the sound of his boss DCI Rory Macdonald’s voice coming from the doorway. Rory had trimmed his usually candy-floss-like white hair to a close crop like Callan’s, although Callan’s hair was the colour of his clothes: black. While his was a maintenance choice, Rory’s latest grandchild had developed an affinity for pulling hair, so Rory had chopped his hair short to protect it – so short, in fact, that Callan could make out his pink scalp.
‘Thinking,’ Callan said. ‘We had three almost hit-and-runs yesterday. We’ve very little to go on, but the driver – male, Caucasian – spent some significant time driving around town, nearly hitting three people and driving over a few hedges.’
Rory walked into the office, picked up the pile of papers on the visitor’s chair and dropped them to the floor with a clap. ‘If we had an actual HR department, they’d have flagged this office as a health hazard.’
‘Aren’t we lucky we haven’t got one then?’
Rory rolled his eyes as he took a seat. ‘Find the man. We can’t afford to have eejits on our roads, not at the start of the tourist season.’
‘The start? They’re bloody everywhere, like ants. Dachaigh is booked full. It feels like I’m always running into some eejit or the other.’
Rory laughed. ‘That’s what happens when you move into an inn. Now that we’re on the topic of inns, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.’
Callan frowned, sitting up straighter in his chair. It wasn’t every day his boss walked into his office to talk about Dachaigh. ‘Is there an issue?’
‘No.’ Rory shook his head. ‘I’m talking about the Cartwrights. Have you heard of them before?’
‘Er, should I have?’
‘Not unless you like holidaying in fancy hotels. Cartwright Hoteliers is a well-known company in the hospitality industry. They’re chiefly in the tourist business and have many successful hotels – several five stars in big cities.’
Callan figured out where Rory was headed with this. His heartbeat picked up. This couldn’t be good for Dachaigh. Aileen would be gutted. ‘The Cartwrights want to build a hotel in Loch Fuar?’
Rory scratched his chin. ‘They approached the development trust with an idea for a luxury camping site near the distillery. We discussed it of course, thinking about the impact on Dachaigh. But the Cartwrights are known to create this entire experience for their guests, and they’re famous. Famous enough to get more tourists to Loch Fuar. It would help other businesses.’
Oh no. No. This would help others, but Dachaigh was still growing, barely pulling a profit. He wasn’t relaying this news to Aileen. Not when all her hard work was just paying off. ‘Rory, I think you should send a letter to Aileen or have someone else talk to her. I—’
Rory waved Callan’s comment off. ‘Let me finish.’ He scratched at an invisible stain on his trousers. ‘As I was saying, the Cartwrights reached out to us asking about the crime rates and safety around the distillery, particularly after what happened there a year and a half ago.’
He fought the urge to roll his eyes. ‘You just said they want to set up near the distillery. Why ask about the crime rates now?’
Rory shrugged. ‘I don’t pretend to understand business or how hotels are set up. They wanted to know if we could provide extra security. Now—’
‘We are the police, not a private security company.’
‘Stop interrupting me, will you?’ Rory crossed his arms across his chest, shaking his head at Callan. ‘I told them we couldn’t provide around-the-clock security. It’s not what we’re here for. At the same time, I don’t want tourists to go AWOL in the bog or trespass on the wrong property.
‘I want you to create a policing plan that we can work on to include the distillery in our patrols more than we already do. The Cartwrights are investing in twenty eco-friendly sheds for their glamping site. Do you know what glamping is? I might take my wife there for a night or two actually. But,’ Rory forged on when Callan opened his mouth to speak, ‘it’s a heavy investment for them, so it’s only right that they want to cover their bases.’
Callan pulled his notepad out. ‘What’s the timeline like?’
Rory spread his arms wide. ‘When you’ve got all the resources money can either buy or expedite, time is hardly a limitation. The email from a woman called Scarlet said they should be set up for summer. This summer.’
Callan wasn’t sure how long it took to put up sheds. And he wasn’t sure how sheds would fare against the winds that often threatened to uproot the evergreen firs. But he wasn’t an engineer. Still, summer sounded a bit too soon. He shrugged, just as his phone rang.
‘It’s Robert,’ he told Rory, and answered PC Robert Davis’s call. ‘What?’
‘There’s been another almost hit-and-run. He almost hit Aileen, and—’
Callan instantly popped out of his chair, reaching for his coat. ‘Aileen? Is she okay?’
‘They’re—’
‘Where are you? I’m on my way,’ Callan barked before giving Rory a brief explanation and hurrying out of the office.
That eejit driver hadn’t hurt anyone so far, but he had sent a pedestrian diving into a bush. If he’d hit another car – Aileen would be in a car if she’d left Dachaigh – it could prove fatal.
Rory’s curse bellowed after Callan as he reached the reception area. ‘Find the goddamned bastard today! Are they hurt?’
‘No, shaken though. Carly was in the car,’ he said as he stepped outside, then began running towards his own car. To Robert, he growled, ‘Have you told Daniel?’
Robert hadn’t, otherwise Callan’s best pal and Isla’s husband would have already been there.
Callan cut Robert’s call then phoned Daniel. If his wife and daughter had been in an accident, he’d want to be there. And maybe smack the bastard who’d caused it.
‘Callan.’ Daniel answered on the second ring. ‘What’s up?’
‘Isla and Aileen were on their way into town with Carly. Some eejit ran them off the road. I’m headed there. I’ll be outside your shop in five.’
When Callan turned left and pulled up outside the hardware shop Daniel owned, his pal was already there, pacing. ‘What happened?’
‘Not sure. The paramedics are there, and so is Robert. They might need to tow the car. They said no one was hurt, just shocked. This eejit has been racing around since yesterday, but we haven’t found him yet.’
Daniel sprinkled the car with a few of his own curses.
Callan floored the accelerator and was soon out of the market square and headed towards Dachaigh. There was only one road there and back. It didn’t take long for him to spot the police truck in the bright day.
Robert had parked to one side, behind the ambulance. The road was narrow enough that they were blocking it, and not because Isla’s SUV was on the road. It wasn’t. In fact, it was off road, tipping into the small ditch between the road and the land on the other side. The small ditch where the burn ran.
Daniel let out a curse. ‘The front tyres are almost in the ditch! What if they’d drowned in the burn?’
Callan’s objective brain pointed out that wasn’t quite true – the car was just tipped forward thanks to a puncture. And a burn was just a small stream, unlikely to cause much harm.
Yet, Callan cursed at the mud the front tyres rested on. It was the sort that could crumble under weight. Thankfully, the women and the bairn were no longer in the car.
He parked behind Robert. Daniel jumped out and ran towards his family before Callan could cut off the engine.
His best pal drew Isla and a blubbering Carly, who were standing by the ambulance, into his chest, squeezing them close. The paramedics were talking, and the blanket around Carly’s shoulders slipped. When Daniel straightened, he and Isla spoke to the medics while running concerned hands over Carly’s back.
Callan’s chest burned with something. Relief that they were alive and seemingly unhurt, and anxiety as he scanned for his love. He saw her in front of Robert’s car, watching Isla and her family while talking to Robert.
Callan slid out of his car and strode towards her. ‘Who was it?’
‘As I was saying’ – Aileen raised her voice, laced with annoyance, and shot a glare his way – ‘it was a navy-coloured car. Glinting like it had been polished recently. A retro convertible. But with a sports car engine. He – and it was a Caucasian man – came at us like a bullet. I saw him before Isla did. She turned the car – and if she’d panicked even for a second, we’d have had a major accident.’
‘And you didn’t recognise the car?’ Robert asked.
Aileen shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. The only thing that way is Dachaigh.’
‘And the exit to the bypass leading to the dual carriageway,’ Callan said. But no one ever took this exit as the one from town was more convenient. Where had this man come from? Why had he driven here?
‘He didn’t wait after?’ Robert asked.
Aileen shook her head again.
Callan crossed his arms over his chest. He was tempted to wrap them around Aileen, but he felt her reluctance. ‘What else did you notice about him?’
‘He was wearing a hat. It looked like a Sherlock Holmes hat. And a tweed jacket.’
Robert noted it down. ‘It sounds like the man cutting about town running people over. Only now he’s managed to almost— Well, he did run you off the road.’
He’d almost killed them. Callan saw the slight tremor in Aileen’s hands as she wrung them in front of her. That was it.
Callan drew his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. ‘What did the paramedics say?’ he asked, almost in a whisper.
She swallowed, the fight and anger dissolving. ‘They checked Carly over, she’s fine just scared. Isla’s taking her to see their GP to follow up, just in case. Isla was terrified.’
So was Aileen. Still, he asked, ‘How are you?’
Aileen straightened her shoulders. ‘I was just the passenger. I’m fine.’
The tremors racking her body said otherwise. He squeezed her until her curves melded into his hard body. ‘Robert, write it up, get a tow truck. And ask around for someone driving a blue car. Old with a sports engine. If the guy’s been about today, he’s definitely staying here but not at Dachaigh – I haven’t seen that car in the car park. I’m taking Aileen home.’
Aileen opened her mouth to argue, but Callan pressed a kiss to her head, silencing her. He whispered, ‘We’ll have some tea. Please.’ He needed that because since falling in love, he’d become a sap. And this had scared him more than he’d thought possible. A head-on collision killed people, no matter how fast or slow you were driving. And he was damned lucky to have three important women in his life breathing and alive.
He just needed to catch his own breath now.
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