Her mind skittered away from the thought and focused on the present. She knew that Cousin Avery was close by, but it appeared that he wasn’t aware of her.
Gavin,
her mind sobbed.
I never told you that I love you.
Fight him tooth and nail, Kate. No quarter asked, for none will be given
.
Fight him!
She waited . . .
That was it? She had bared her soul to this man, and that was all he had to offer? And what did it matter? If Gavin were dead, she wouldn’t want to live.
Her archenemy moved, and she turned her head toward the sound. Something odd was going on. With arms outstretched, he was feeling his way around the periphery of the cellar. Comprehension slowly dawned. He was like a blind man, while her cat’s eyes had never been keener. She could see him, but he couldn’t see her. Then what was he looking for? What did he expect to find in those walls?
It was just out of his reach, the old boiler that concealed the tunnel to the escape route. Is that what he was looking for? She made a small sound, and the next instant, he turned and fired his revolver. It sounded as though he’d fired a hundred shots. The bullet ricocheted from wall to ceiling and God alone knew where. She curled into a ball, and when the noise died away, she chanced another look at him. He was feeling the walls again, but going the other way.
Ask for no quarter, for none will be given.
She looked around for her revolver, but there was no sign of it. She might have lost it in the blast or when she tumbled down the stairs. Even so, she wasn’t helpless. She was a witch, if Gavin was to be believed. She had gifts that Cousin Avery could not begin to imagine.
“Stay out of his way,”
her mother had scolded.
“He is evil through and through.”
Déjà vu. She felt like that little girl again. Her cousin was evil through and through. He liked hurting helpless animals. He liked hurting her. But her mother saw what he was and stepped in to protect her. There was no one he feared more than her mother.
He looked over his shoulder, scanning the shadows, and at last she had a clear view of his face. It was Gordon Massey of the newspaper empire! She could have kicked herself then. What a fool she had been. He’d told her that he was escorting his elderly parents to Braemar to look for long-lost relatives. What a perfect cover for making his inquiries! And all the time, he had been looking for her. He hadn’t found her, but he’d found her mother’s file in the clinic and put two and two together.
If only she’d confided her secrets to Gavin, they wouldn’t all be paying for her stupidity right now.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. It wasn’t going to end like this.
She stirred. “Cousin Avery,” she said, “I should have known it was you. Still the same, I see. Still the sadistic little bully you were as a boy.”
Her voice echoed from every corner of the stone cellar, and though it was dark, her cat’s eyes saw him start, then his shadow turned slowly from side to side as he tried to pin her down. She pulled herself to her knees and felt with her fingers, frantically trying to find her revolver. Nothing.
She wanted to keep her cousin talking till she found it, then she’d show no mercy. She’d put a bullet into his black heart. This man had murdered innocent people because they were connected to her, all in an effort to mislead the police. He had murdered Will and his own accomplice, John Liddel. But she was his real target. She may have doubted it once, but no longer, and now that she knew his identity, she knew that he had to be stopped, once and for all.
“So,” he said, “you’ve finally worked it out? Clever, clever Kate.”
“You know,” she said, “I used to feel sorry for you, the bastard son, left out in the cold. You were barely tolerated by our grandfather. Even as a child I always knew you hated bearing your mother’s surname. Smith, wasn’t it? Avery Smith. And now you’re Gordon Massey. So, Avery, you finally appropriated the family name for yourself. I can’t think why you would want to. Our branch of the Gordons isn’t exactly illustrious. Their glory days are long over.”
She wasn’t babbling. She was thinking on two levels. He had a gun. Her revolver seemed determined to hide from her. How could she kill him without a gun? And she knew she had to kill him. It was him or her. A bullet at close range would not ricochet if it hit its target. She could do it, if only she had a gun.
But something else was circling at the back of her mind. He was in no hurry to escape because—
“Tell me about the blast,” she said. “What happened there?”
He clicked his tongue and sighed theatrically. “You were
all
supposed to die. I might have guessed that Hepburn’s dog would turn up like a bad penny. He saved you in the snowstorm, Kate, but he won’t save you this time. He ran at my little grenade as though someone had thrown him a ball to play with. Sad to say, I couldn’t stay to watch. Time was of the essence.”
Gavin and the others dead? She didn’t believe it. Then why didn’t they come storming down the stairs and rescue her? There was another exit, the one Calley had filled in with earth. Is that how he meant to rescue her? Then why didn’t she hear anything? And why was Avery so confident that he could escape unscathed?
His examining the walls made perfect sense now. Someone had told him about the secret passage. It could well have been her own father. He wouldn’t have known the precise details but said enough to point Avery in the right direction. So Avery had entered the house by the secret passage, and that’s how he meant to leave it, after he killed her. After all, she was his target, not the others. She smiled grimly. Unfortunately for Avery, he had lost his bearings in the dark.
Advantage to her!
“You were hiding in the priest’s cell,” she said slowly.
“How clever of you to work it out,” he replied. “Yes, I was hiding in that tiny cell behind the fireplace. I thought I would suffocate before the soldiers arrived. I couldn’t release my little surprise before the shooting started. The soldiers would be blamed, of course, and I would slip away unseen.”
“By way of the escape route.”
“Precisely.”
A memory slipped into her mind. Avery could never do anything to please their grandfather. She hadn’t tried to make a friend of her grandfather either. He hated her, too, both her and her mother. They weren’t good enough for his firstborn, Geoffrey Gordon. That was why her father had moved them to Deeside. It was, for so short a time, a golden age. Then her father died, and everything changed.
On a sudden inspiration, she said, “This is about grandfather, isn’t it? That’s why you kept a grudge for twenty years.”
“I should have been his heir,” he bit out. “He let me think that I
was
his heir. It wasn’t my fault that my father was a wastrel.”
As to herself, she said, “It wouldn’t have made a difference. My father was the elder. He or his heirs could claim a major share of grandfather’s fortune. That’s the law.”
For once his voice had a lilt in it. “Not if you’re dead, and I have a death certificate to prove it. Then everything passes to me. It was in grandfather’s will. The old boy had all but given up hope of finding you. He thought that I was the only one left with his blood in my veins.”
“Why not let everyone think I was dead?”
“Didn’t you hear me? They, the solicitors, wanted proof of death. Only a body and a genuine death certificate would pass their eagle eye. And I thought, why not do this right? They must never suspect that I murdered you.”
“So you murdered four innocent people to mislead the police!”
With her cat’s eyes, she saw his shoulders lift and drop in an indifferent shrug. “Don’t you read the papers, Kate? It was a deranged lunatic with a grievance against psychiaters who was responsible.”
Now that he was talking, she wanted answers to things that had always tormented her. “I knew that someone was hunting for my mother and me. After my father died, I mean. Was that you?”
His laugh turned into a cough, reminding her that the air in the cellar was thick with the residue of gunpowder and dust.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I was only a boy then. Grandfather hired men to track you, but you had disappeared off the face of the earth.”
She should be thinking of how to escape. She should be thinking of her psychic powers and how she could use them to disable him. But the last pieces of the puzzle were too riveting to give up.
“I take it our grandfather is dead?”
He almost spat the words. “But still ruling us from the grave. I don’t see a penny of my money until I’m the only one left to inherit.”
She suppressed a shudder and moved on. “How did you find me?”
He coughed again. “I knew your mother was a Catholic. It took my agents more than a year to examine every parish roll in the north of Scotland. Mary Macbeth. Who could forget a name like that?”
“My name is Cameron.”
“Catherine
Macbeth
Cameron. It was in your file. You were adopted by the Camerons.”
“What about Dr. Rankin?” she said. “Why did he have to die?”
“Ah, Hepburn’s friend.” She could hear the shrug in his voice. “I underestimated him. I presented myself as a journalist writing a story about the mentally ill. That was long before Miss Cardno’s wedding reception. I hadn’t counted on being snowbound with the man. I’d never written that article, you see, and three of his patients had met with suspicious deaths. He was going to make further inquiries, and I couldn’t allow that.”
She wasn’t frightened now; she was enraged. “Your man was the waiter, John Liddel. He overheard Dr. Rankin telling Hepburn he was going to Aberdeen.”
“Correct.”
He was edging his way to the sound of her voice. “If you come any closer,” she said, “I’ll fire my revolver at the ceiling.” She had no revolver, but he couldn’t know that.
She could sense his uncertainty. He was silent for a moment, then said slowly, “Your bullet will ricochet. You’re just as likely to hit yourself as me.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Kate, Kate, you’ve misconstrued the situation.” His reproach sounded genuine—if you didn’t know him.
Her thoughts came thick and fast—how she’d refused to take Gavin seriously; how she’d pooh-poohed his suggestion that she try to read his mind; how she’d kept secrets from him because she was ashamed of who and what she was.
Never again,
she promised.
Never again, Gavin
.
Do you hear me? Please, just let me hear your voice and, as God is my witness, I’ll never shut you out of my mind again.
No voice came to her, only the acrid smell of gunpowder smoke and the tread of a step nearby crushing glass beneath it. He was closing in on her to make the kill.
Then what was she doing, hiding like a child playing hide-and-seek? She was a witch, a novice witch, perhaps, who had yet to test her powers. The trouble was, she had suppressed them for so long they were practically nonexistent. It wasn’t so when she was a child. She could read minds. She could see into the future. Isn’t that why the local children had thrown stones at her and called her names? All she’d ever wanted was to fit in. And this piece of slime—
Her heart clenched when his voice finally broke the silence. “You won’t escape me, Kate.”
A veil was torn from her mind.
“You won’t escape me, Kate.”
She’d come upon him when he was beating his pony mercilessly. She was going to tell on him. He’d come after her then, but she’d hidden herself in the privy, and her mother had rescued her.
There was no one here to rescue her now. Strangely, she didn’t want rescuing. She wanted this evil man to come by his just deserts. She had to find a way to raise the alarm.
The entrance to the secret passage was behind the old, broken-down boiler. There was no point in trying to conceal her movements. He might not be able to see her, but he would hear the shrill screech of the boiler as she heaved it out of the way. He wouldn’t chance another shot. All the same, he was stronger than she. He could kill her with his bare hands.
It was now or never.
She ran at the boiler with arms crossed over her breasts. The impact knocked her back on her heels, but the boiler wasn’t nearly as solid as it looked, and it moved a good two feet, giving her enough space to squeeze through.
He heard the sound and came after her.
If she’d had time, she would have pushed the boiler back on its tracks, but he was only a step behind, and she had to run the race of her life.
He didn’t have everything his own way. He thought that she had a gun. It made him cautious, fearing, no doubt, that any bullet fired would bounce off the walls and would hit him and not his intended victim.
Her thoughts raced ahead. When she came to the end of the tunnel, she would come to the holding pen where the smugglers once stored their contraband. She could hide there, but not for long. He
had
to kill her. Without the body, there would be no death certificate and no fortune to claim. She had to outrun him.