“Wait,” Alec said before the trio could walk off. “How do I get the deed to you?”
“Just come to the castle. We’ll be waiting. Just not too long.” The man winked, and then he and his two associates walked off into the night, hands stuffed casually in their pockets as if they hadn’t just upended Alec’s entire life.
Thirteen
I stared across the table at MacGowan after he finished his tale, tapping my nails against the metal table as I thought it over. What he said rang true, not just his words but his tone of voice and the nervous look on his face. The man was genuinely terrified for his son.
Yet a spot of anger still crawled in my gut. It may have been for a good reason, but MacGowan still abandoned his son. He left Finn and his mother to fend for themselves while he went gallivanting off who knew where. Finn would have been too young to remember him, but that sort of thing still left a hole. I should know. And then MacGowan’s plan failed. He still opened his son up to the dangers of his life, and his distance only meant that he hadn’t been around to stop it.
“Do you have any idea who these men are?” Fletcher asked, but MacGowan shook his head.
“I’d never seen them before.”
“Castle of Old Wick…” She looked at me. “What’s special about that?”
I shrugged. I was pretty sure it sat on the coast somewhere up north, and it definitely wasn’t one of the castles that attracted swarms of tourists, but other than that, I knew nothing about it.
“Your man with the squashed nose attacked us today,” I told MacGowan. “Whoever these people are, they’re not messing around.”
“I’m sure they’ve already heard about my arrest,” MacGowan said. He sat all the way forward in his chair and stared at me with pleading eyes. “They’ll know I told you everything. They’ll hurt my son. Please, you have to save him.”
“Of course, we’ll save him,” Fletcher said. She looked at me. “We’ll have to move fast.”
Moving fast was the last thing my battered body wanted to do, but I nodded and dragged myself from the chair. We left MacGowan in the interrogation room for Owens to move back to holding.
“Do we want to wait for Dunnel and get back up?” Fletcher asked as we walked across the station.
“If what MacGowan says is true, there’s no time. If we wait, we risk the kid getting hurt.”
“We can take my car since yours is… out of commission.” She winced apologetically as she said it, and I glowered at my desk as I dug through it for my half-empty box of paracetamol, stuffing it in the pocket of my duster along with my phone charger and an extra magazine of ammunition from the bottom locked drawer. “The castle is two hours from here. If something happens…” She let the thought trail off, but I knew what she meant.
If something happened, we wouldn’t have a cat in hell’s chance.
“We’ll call Dunnel on the way, let him know where we’re going,” I suggested. He wouldn’t like it. This was exactly the sort of operation he’d want done carefully and with plenty of back-up and contingencies, but as I already said, we didn’t have time for that. A kid’s life could be on the line. Haruto Sato would have to wait. I could be mostly confident that he was safe for the night. I couldn’t say the same for Finn.
We jumped into Fletcher’s car, and she cut off three other drivers as she reversed out of her spot, earning us several honks and an annoyed shout, but she ignored them and peeled out of the parking lot, and we were on our way. I plugged my phone into the USB port to charge then dialled Dunnel, placing him on speaker so we could both hear.
“Dunnel,” he answered, sounding annoyed at being interrupted.
“It’s MacBain.”
“This is one hell of a mess you’ve left me with.”
“And it’s about to get worse,” I assured him. Fletcher cranked the wheel and burst onto the street, blending seamlessly into traffic. “We found Finn’s father. He’s being blackmailed by the same people who attacked us. We think we know where Finn is. Fletcher and I are headed there now.”
“Now?” Dunnel spluttered. “MacBain, you two were just in a car crash and a firefight. You’re in no shape to go cavorting off somewhere. Wait for backup. Do this safely.”
I shook my head, though I knew he couldn’t see me. “There’s no time. If these people, whoever they are, figure out MacGowan told us the score, then it’s bad news for the kid. We don’t have time to wait for backup. We’re headed to the Castle of Old Wick. Send a team to meet us there. If this goes well, we’ll need help with the cleanup.”
“And if this goes poorly, they’ll be cleaning you up,” Dunnel said sourly.
“Your concern is touching,” I replied. “Haruto is safe?”
“He’s got two officers outside his apartment,” Dunnel replied. “Did you find anything out about those licence plates?”
“They were rented by some company called Allraise Ventures. It’s based in Edinburgh. No answer at the phone number.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Us neither.”
“Do not get yourselves hurt tonight, do you hear me?” Dunnel ordered. I could practically hear him pointing his finger in my face. “Or I will put your ass in the hospital myself.”
“Redundant as I would already be in the hospital,” I shot back and cut off his angry reply by hanging up. I dropped my phone into a cup holder in the centre console with a sigh. “He’s going to have my badge if this goes wrong.”
Fletcher avoided the city centre and its narrow, jam-packed streets as she headed for one of the bridges over the Moray Firth. “I am so glad I transferred up here from Glasgow. I thought it would be kind of quiet and boring
