Read Chapter 11: The Rescue

The rain had stopped, but the ground still squelched beneath Callum’s boots as he knelt beside the half-buried locket. The rebel emblem—a crude thistle etched into tarnished silver—glinted in the weak morning light. He’d found it in the burned cottage three miles back, and now the trail led here, to a tumbledown bothy wedged into a fold of the hills.

He heard them before he saw them.

Voices. Low, rough, laughing. The sound of a pot clattering against stone. Callum eased himself flat against the wet heather and crawled to the ridge’s edge. Below, in a shallow hollow, three men sat around a small fire. They wore the blue bonnets of the rebellion, but their muskets lay carelessly propped against a fallen tree, and the bottle passing between them spoke of long hours with nothing to do.

Annabel was tied to a post inside the bothy’s crumbling doorway. Her dress was torn at the shoulder, mud streaked her face, but her eyes were bright with fury. She wasn’t gagged.

“You can scream all you like, lass,” one of the men called over his shoulder. “There’s none to hear.”

“My father will hunt you to the ends of Scotland,” she spat.

The man laughed. “Your father’s a factor for the English. He’ll not risk his precious trade for a daughter who wandered where she shouldn’t.”

Callum counted again. Three. Two muskets within reach of the fire. A third leaning against the bothy wall behind the closest man. He had his dirk, his knife, and a pistol with one shot.

He waited until the bottle made its third round.

The first man—the talker—stood and stretched, turning his back to Callum as he walked to the treeline for a piss. The second man’s head nodded over his chest. The third was stacking peat near the fire, his movements slow and careless.

Callum moved.

He came down the slope in a low run, the wet heather muffling his footfalls. The talker was thirty yards away, still fumbling with his breeches. The third man heard something—a scrape of boot on stone—and began to turn.

Callum didn’t give him the chance.

He crossed the hollow in six strides, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest and carrying him backward over the fallen tree. They hit the ground together. Callum’s dirk came up, but the man was quick, catching his wrist with both hands and twisting. The blade bit into the moss beside his ear.

The second man was on his feet now, fumbling for his musket. Callum smashed his forehead into the bridge of the first man’s nose. Blood sprayed. The grip loosened. He rolled, came up with the dirk, and threw it.

The blade took the second man in the thigh. He screamed and went down, clawing at the hilt, his musket forgotten.

The talker was back, his face twisted with rage. He had a knife—long, jagged, the kind used for skinning deer. Callum rose to meet him, drawing his own knife.

“You’re the hunter,” the talker said, circling. “MacRae. I’ve heard of you. Traitor to your own blood.”

Callum didn’t answer. He watched the man’s shoulders, the way he held the blade low and loose.

The talker lunged.

Callum sidestepped, caught the man’s wrist, and used his momentum to spin him into the fire. The talker screamed as the coals scattered and his bonnet caught flame. He beat at his head, staggered back, and Callum’s knife took him in the chest.

He went down without a sound.

Callum stood over him, breath tearing his throat. The first man was crawling toward the treeline, dragging a useless leg. The second was sobbing in the mud, hands pressed to his thigh. Callum left them.

He crossed to the bothy and cut Annabel’s bonds with the same blade that had just killed her captor. She didn’t flinch.

“I didn’t expect you,” she said, rubbing her wrists.

“They’ll send more.” He pulled her toward the slope. “We go now, or we don’t go at all.”

They moved fast, up the ridge and over the back side, away from the hollow and the sounds of men dying behind them. Callum set a pace that would have broken most women, but Annabel kept up, her breath sharp but even.

They reached a shallow burn half a mile on, and Callum stopped to let her drink. He scanned the high ground behind them for any sign of pursuit. Nothing.

“Who were they?” he asked.

“I don’t know their names.” She knelt by the water, cupping her hands. “They said the rebellion needed coin. That my father would pay for my return.”

“They weren’t with the regulars?”

Annabel looked up. The fury in her eyes had been replaced by something harder. “They said Duncan MacRae had promised them the fee. That he was the one who told them where I’d be.”

The world tilted.

“Duncan,” he repeated.

“Your brother.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I thought you knew.”

Callum’s hand went to the knife at his belt. Not to strike her—to steady himself. “My brother doesn’t traffic in hostages.”

“He does worse.” Annabel sat back on her heels, watching his face. “Three days ago, I was riding with a message for the rebel council. That your redcoats would move on Glenshiel within the week. I was stopped by a patrol, but the man who led them—your brother—let me go. He said he’d deliver the warning himself. He did not. He delivered me to those men instead.”

The words landed like stones in his gut, each one heavier than the last. Duncan had sent her to warn the rebels. And then he’d sold her.

“Why would he do that?”

“You don’t know?” She laughed, bitter. “Your brother is not what you think. He plays both sides better than you ever will. He warned the rebels to gain their trust, then handed me over to his own rabble to gain coin, all while sitting in that cell of yours, waiting to see which way the wind blows.”

Callum’s mind raced. Duncan in the cellar, denying any rebel connection. Duncan the merchant’s courier. Duncan, who had flinched when Callum tested him with the invented name.

Duncan, who knew every messenger route, every safe house, every name.

He’d made Callum believe he was a pawn. A man caught up in forces beyond his control. All the while he’d been weaving his own web.

“He told me,” Annabel said quietly, “that if I cooperated, he’d see me home. If I didn’t, I’d be sent to the mines. He said he had a brother who owed him—” She stopped, realization dawning.

Callum met her eyes. He didn’t need her to finish.

“He meant to use me,” Callum said. “From the cell.”

Annabel said nothing.

They moved on, following the burn eastward toward the British encampment. The sun had burned through the clouds by the time they reached the picket line. Soldiers recognized Annabel and raised a shout. She was taken to the surgeon’s tent, wrapped in blankets, already telling her story to a scribbling clerk.

Callum stood at the edge of the camp and watched her go. Captain Thorne would hear the tale within the hour, if he hadn’t already. And when he did, he would want to know who had taken Annabel. Whose name she had spoken.

Callum could stop it. He could tell Thorne that the kidnappers had been random rogues, unbranded and unknown. Annabel had not seen his face when he cut her free until after the fight was over. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know Duncan.

But Duncan had sent her to warn the rebels of a British attack. Callum had hidden that, buried it alongside the false intelligence and the dead soldiers and the boy Fergus.

He could not hide it.

His feet carried him toward the command tent. Thorne would be inside, already composing his report. Callum would stand before him and speak the truth—that the kidnapping was a rebel scheme. That Duncan was deeper in it than treason.

But the words wouldn’t come.

He heard Annabel’s voice again, sharp over the din of the camp. “The man who led them is in your custody. His name is Duncan MacRae.”

Callum stopped.

For a long moment, he stood in the mud with his heart hammering against his ribs. Then he turned, and walked past the command tent, past the cookfires, past the smell of meat and bread.

He went to the supply tent and took a loaf and a skin of water.

Duncan would be hungry.

And Callum had questions that needed answering.