Read Chapter 27: The Daughter's Secret

The timber storehouse smelled of damp pine and rot. Callum had counted the knots in the planking above his head twice, then a third time for lack of anything better to do. Dawn was coming. He could feel it in the cold that crept through the gaps between the boards, in the way the rats had grown bolder, skittering across his bound ankles as if he were already dead.

He heard footsteps outside—two sets, not one. The bolt scraped back.

Eilidh entered first, her face a mask of careful neutrality. Behind her came a woman Callum did not know. She was small, with red hair pulled tight beneath a woolen shawl, and she moved like someone used to walking quietly through rooms where she did not belong.

“This is Annabel,” Eilidh said. “She’s the factor’s daughter.”

Callum’s hands went still around his knees. The factor on MacLeod land was a man named Grant, who collected rents for the British and reported any whisper of disloyalty to Inverness. His daughter, standing in a rebel camp at dawn, was either a spy or a very foolish girl.

“She came to us three days ago,” Eilidh continued. “Brought information about troop movements from her father’s ledgers. The council didn’t trust her, but Rab did. Said no one could fake that kind of hatred for her own blood.”

Callum studied Annabel’s face. There was something hard in her eyes—something that had nothing to do with youth and everything to do with grief.

“Your father,” he said.

“Is not my father anymore.” Her voice was flat. “Not since he gave my brother to Captain Thorne for questioning. They returned him in a wagon. He smiled through the whole burial. Said it was a lesson in loyalty.”

Callum said nothing. He had seen what Thorne did to men he suspected of disloyalty. He had done worse for him, once. The memory sat in his gut like a stone.

“She knows about the sniper,” Eilidh said.

Annabel stepped closer. In the gray light filtering through the cracks in the wall, her face was pale but set. “Captain Thorne came to my father’s house the morning before the shooting. I was in the next room, mending. I heard every word.” She paused. “He told my father that Rab McLaren needed to die. That the rebellion would collapse without its loudest voice. That killing him there—in the camp, during the council—would do twice the damage of any battle.”

“And your father agreed,” Callum said.

“He had no choice. Thorne holds the deed to our land. One word from him, and we’d be evicted—we’d be nothing.” Her jaw tightened. “But Thorne made a mistake. He mentioned the man he’d sent. A former soldier from the Black Watch, name of Reeve. Sharpshooter. Thorne said Reeve had been paid double for the shot, and that he’d be hidden on the eastern ridge above the camp.”

Callum’s pulse quickened. The eastern ridge. The same place Eilidh had gone looking.

“Did you find anything?” he asked Eilidh.

She reached into her coat and withdrew a folded scrap of paper. “I found this.” She handed it to him. “Tucked in a crevice where someone had been lying in wait. There’s powder residue on the stone. And this—I think it’s a note.”

Callum unfolded it. The writing was cramped, hurried, the hand of a man who did not like putting words to paper.

*Target confirmed. McLaren dead, as agreed. Second payment on arrival. The hunter is a complication—he saw the position. Recommend removal before the march. —Reeve*

Callum read it twice. The hunter. That was him. Reeve had seen him, that day at the ridge. He had watched Callum scan the treeline and knew he’d been made.

“This is proof,” he said slowly. “Proof that McLaren was killed by a British sharpshooter. That I had nothing to do with it.”

“The council is convening in half an hour,” Eilidh said. “Some of them wanted to hang you before breakfast and be done with it. I convinced them to wait until they’d heard Annabel’s testimony.”

“And if they don’t believe her?”

Annabel laughed, a short bitter sound. “They’ll believe me. I carry my father’s name. That’s all the proof they’ll need that we’re enemies.”

Callum looked at her again. Grief had sharpened her into something dangerous, something willing to burn her own life down to get at the man who had killed her brother. He recognized the look. He had seen it in his own mirror often enough.

“Why are you here?” he asked. “You could have gone to any camp. You could have waited for Thorne to be tried by the Crown.”

“There is no Crown for me,” she said. “There’s only what Thorne took, and what I mean to take back.” She met his eyes. “Your brother. I heard about him. He died trying to play both sides. I’m not playing. I chose.”

Callum felt the weight of Duncan’s name settle in his chest. He had not told anyone about the list—about the officers who secretly sided with the Jacobites, about the promise he’d made to Duncan in the cave. The paper was still in his coat. The Laird’s ring was in Eilidh’s keeping, entrusted to her for the council.

“The ring,” he said. “MacLeod’s ring. Eilidh, do you still have it?”

She nodded. “I didn’t hand it over. I told them you were being held while we investigated, and that I was keeping it safe until your name was cleared.” She paused. “I also told them about Duncan. About the list. I thought some of them might waver if they knew what your brother had sacrificed.”

“And did they?”

“A few. But Rab had loyalists who aren’t interested in the truth. They just want a head on a pike before the march.” She looked at him with something like apology. “You were convenient. A hunter, tied to the British, who walked into camp with a story. If not for Annabel, I don’t know if my word would have been enough.”

The storehouse door banged open. A man Callum didn’t recognize stood in the doorway, a musket in his hands and a hard set to his jaw.

“Council’s ready,” he said. “They want him brought out.”

Eilidh turned to the man. “He’ll be brought out when I say. I still hold MacLeod’s authority.”

The man hesitated, eyes flicking between her and Callum, then backed away. The door stayed open.

Callum pushed himself to his feet. His legs were stiff from the night on cold boards, and his hands had gone numb from the rope binding his wrists. He looked at Annabel, who had watched the exchange without moving.

“You’ll testify?” he asked.

“I’ll do more than testify.” She reached into her shawl and pulled out a folded paper, creased and worn at the edges. “I took this from my father’s desk before I left. It’s a letter from Thorne to a British officer in Edinburgh. He names every rebel stronghold he knows within twenty miles, including this one. He’s been planning to hit the camp the day after the march begins.” She held it out. “This isn’t just about clearing your name, hunter. Thorne is coming here, for all of us. And he means to burn us out.”

Callum took the letter. He did not read it—he had no time. But he could feel the weight of it, the shape of Thorne’s hand in the ink.

So it had come to this. Thorne had been hunting him all along. Through the patrols, through the guardhouse where Duncan died, through the bullet that killed Rab McLaren. Every step of it had been aimed at the same target: the rebellion, the clans, the hope that MacLeod’s death had lit. And Callum had walked into the middle of it, carrying his brother’s list and a dead laird’s ring.

The conflict had become personal, whether he wanted it or not.

He tucked the letter into his coat beside Duncan’s list. The paper rustled against the folds of his shirt. Two secrets, two promises, and one way out.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Before the council decides to hang me without a hearing.”

Eilidh moved to his side and cut the rope from his wrists in a single stroke of her knife. He rubbed the circulation back into his hands, flexed his fingers, and followed her out into the cold dawn.

The camp had gathered around the central fire, a ring of grim faces lit by the last of the embers. A man Callum did not recognize was standing at the head of the circle, already speaking. His voice cut through the morning air.

“—and I say we don’t need a hunter who brought the British to our door. We need to move. We need to strike.”

Callum stepped into the firelight.

“You’ll strike without powder or proof of who killed your leader,” he said. His voice carried, even unarmed and unwashed. He held up Duncan’s list in one hand and Thorne’s letter in the other. “Unless you want to hear what your enemy has planned for you.”

The man fell silent. Every eye in the camp turned to Callum.

And Callum began to speak.