“So, then,” she said, picking up a paring knife from the nearby drainboard and examining the edge critically, “what shall we do?”
Bree drew a breath and sipped cautiously at the hot, milky tea. It was sweet, silky, and very comforting—but not nearly as comforting as that “we.”
“Well, first—would you let Jem and Mandy stay here while I go do a few things? It might be overnight; I brought their pajamas, just in case.” She nodded at the paper sack that she’d set down on one of the chairs.
“Aye, of course.” A small frown formed between Fiona’s dark brows. “What . . . sorts of things?”
“It’s—” Brianna began, intending to say, “better if you don’t know,” but in fact someone had better know where she was going and what she was doing. Just in case she didn’t come back. A little bubble of what might be either fear or anger rose up through the sense of warmth in her middle.
“I’m going to visit Jock MacLeod in hospital. He’s the night watchman who found Jem at the dam. He might know the man who hit him and tried to take Jem. And he does know Rob Cameron. He can maybe tell me who Cameron’s mates are outside of work or in lodge.”
She rubbed a hand down over her face, thinking.
“After that . . . I’ll talk to Rob’s sister and his nephew. If she’s not involved in whatever he’s up to, she’ll be worried. And if she is involved—then I need to know that.”
“D’ye think ye’ll be able to tell?” Fiona’s frown had eased a bit, but she still looked worried.
“Oh, yes,” Brianna said, with grim determination. “I’ll be able to tell. For one thing, if someone I talk to is involved, they’re probably likely to try to stop me asking questions.”
Fiona made a small noise that could best be spelled as “eeengh,” indicating deep concern.
Brianna drank the last of her tea and set down the cup with an explosive sigh.
“And then,” she said, “I’m going back to Lallybroch to meet a locksmith and have him change all the locks and install burglar alarms on the lower windows.” She looked questioningly at Fiona. “I don’t know how long it might take. . . .”
“Aye, that’s why ye brought the kids’ nighties. Nay problem, hen.” She chewed her lower lip, eyeing Brianna.
Bree knew what she was thinking, debating whether to ask or not, and saved her the trouble.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about Roger,” she said steadily.
“He’ll come back, surely,” Fiona began, but Bree shook her head. Horrifying Realization Number 3 couldn’t be denied any longer.
“I don’t think so,” she said, though she bit her lip as if to keep the words from escaping. “He—he can’t know that Jem isn’t there. And he’d never ab-abandon him.”
Fiona was clasping Brianna’s hand in both of her own.
“No, no, of course he wouldna do that. But if he and the other fellow go on searching and find no trace . . . eventually, surely he’d think . . .” Her voice died away as she tried to imagine what Roger might think under those circumstances.
“Oh, he’ll be thinking, all right,” Bree said, and managed a small, shaky laugh. The thought of Roger’s determination, the growing sense of fear and desperation that must inevitably eat away at it, his fight to keep going—because he would; he’d never give up and come back to tell her Jem was lost for good. For if he didn’t find any trace of Jem, what could he think? That Cameron had maybe killed Jem, hidden his body, and gone to America in search of the gold? Or that they had both been lost in that horrifying space between one time and another, never to be found?
“Well, and he’ll be praying, too,” Fiona said with a brisk squeeze of Bree’s hand. “I can help wi’ that.”
That made tears well, and she blinked hard, scrubbing at her eyes with a paper napkin.
“I can’t cry now,” she said, in a choked voice. “I can’t. I haven’t got time.” She stood up suddenly, pulling her hand free. She sniffed, blew her nose hard on the napkin, and sniffed again.
“Fiona . . . I—I know you haven’t told anybody about . . . us,” she began, and even she could hear the doubt in her own voice.
Fiona snorted.
“I have not,” she said. “I’d be taken off to the booby hatch, and what would Ernie do wi’ the girls and all? Why?” she added, giving Brianna a hard look. “What are ye thinking?”
“Well . . . the women who—who dance at Craigh na Dun. Do you think any of them know what it is?”
Fiona sucked in one cheek, thinking.
“One or two o’ the older ones might have an idea,” she said slowly. “We’ve been callin’ down the sun on Beltane there for as far back as anyone knows. And some things do get passed down, ken. Be strange if nobody ever wondered. But even if someone kent for sure what happens there, they’d not speak—no more than I would.”
“Right. I just wondered—could you maybe find out, quietly, if any of the women have ties to Rob Cameron? Or maybe . . . to the Orkneys?”
“To what?” Fiona’s eyes went round. “Why the Orkneys?”
“Because Rob Cameron went on archaeological digs there. And I think that’s what made him interested in stone circles to start with. I know one man named Callahan, a friend of Roger’s—who worked up there with him, and I’ll talk to him, too—maybe tomorrow; I don’t think I’ll have time today. But if there’s anyone else who might be connected with things like that . . .” It was more than a long shot, but at the moment she was inclined to look under any stone she could lift.