I hit send.
I stuck the phone under my leg where I would still be able to hear it vibrate, but it also wouldn’t be staring me in the face while I waited for a reply that probably wasn’t going to come.
“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Fletcher said a little smugly.
“I will get you back for this,” I promised.
She laughed, and I settled back in my seat. Reilly and I had a similar easy rapport, and I found, though I would never admit this to Dunnel or anyone else, that I’d rather missed it. An empty car could swallow one whole, but having another person inside, even if they were silent, carried the ride along.
The further north we drove, the more rugged the terrain grew. The green-brown grass gave way to a dense, reddish plant that sat thick upon the ground, and the rough, tumbled rocks became larger and more populous. Some of the stones were flat enough to form shelves that could fit an entire car, marching up the hills like huge, mostly eroded steps. The sea became greyer and rougher, but it receded from us as we began to climb. The waves crashed against the softened, green and black cliffside below us.
I checked my watch as the sun began to droop towards the horizon. We were getting close. “We need a plan,” I said.
“I was hoping we would get to that,” Fletcher said, but the joke was strained and weak. I could hear her nerves in her voice as the Castle of Old Wick drew ever closer. “Please don’t say ‘let’s split up’ because I don’t think I can handle that.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” I promised. “Since we don’t know what we’re getting into, we should stick together.”
“Do you want to go in hard or quiet?”
“I don’t think the castle is very large. There might not be a lot of cover to sneak in, but we also don’t know how many people we’ll be up against, so we could get ourselves in a lot of trouble if we go in hard. How do you feel about playing it by ear?”
“Not great,” Fletcher admitted in a slightly high-pitched voice. “I’d really rather have a plan.”
Before I could answer, she slammed on the brakes, and we skidded to an abrupt stop in the gathering dusk, the backend of the car fishtailing. I braced a hand against the glove compartment as my butt threatened to slide right off the chair even with the seatbelt.
“Shit!” Fletcher yelped and hammered on her horn.
There was a flock of sheep trundling across the road. They paid absolutely no attention to Fletcher’s angry honk, just wagged their shaggy hindquarters at us as they went on their merry, unconcerned way. They all had blue dots spray-painted on their dirty, white fleece to differentiate them from the rest of the flocks roaming the Highlands. Fletcher laid on the horn again, but it made no difference. A few of the sheep simply stopped in the middle of the road, nudging each other with their snouts until Fletcher looked ready to scream.
“We don’t have time for this!” she yelled out her window. One of the sheep turned its black face to look at us and bleated dispassionately. “We’re so close. Get out there and point your gun at them.”
“They’re sheep. They don’t know what a gun is,” I said, but I climbed out of the car anyway, wincing as I awoke all of the day’s bruises. The evening air was cool on my face, sharp with the scent of salt and brine coming off the ocean. I approached the sheep and began to wave my hands to try to shoo them to the other side of the road. I’d never liked sheep. There was something in the face, a kind of blankness somehow paired with the unfathomable knowledge of the universe and a desire to bite whatever came in reach.
“You have to yell at them,” Fletcher suggested with her head hanging out the window. She honked at them again. It was a good thing we were still twenty minutes from the castle, or else the entire brigade would know that we were there.
Feeling a little ridiculous, I clapped my hands and shouted at three sheep, urging them to cross the road and rejoin the rest of the flock. I practically had to kick one before they finally decided to move, but it took five precious minutes to clear the road before we could continue.
I jogged back to the car, and as soon as I buckled in, Fletcher popped the clutch, and we took off, stretching our speed well above the speed limit.
I swallowed two painkillers dry in preparation for the upcoming altercation. There was not much else I could do after that except drum my fingers against my leg and wait. When we were a kilometre out, I told Fletcher to pull off to the side of the road and kill the lights.
“We’ll go on foot from here,” I said. “Maybe we can catch them off guard.”
Fletcher and I climbed out of the car into the grey landscape. The light was almost gone now. Out here, once the sun began to set, it fell fast, night arriving before you knew it. That would help mask our approach… I hoped. I checked the map on my phone before we set off so that the white light wouldn’t give us away later on. The road led right up to the castle grounds, so we didn’t have to worry about getting lost on foot.
We stood in the brush just off the road, consulting the map together. In the phone’s glow, I could see the worry sketched into her face. I knew Fletcher had never done anything like this before. She was doing her best to hide her fear, but it was
