Countdown - Iris Johansen [109]
“I’ll call Kimbrough in Paris as soon as we get on the road. I haven’t used him in a few years and Grozak won’t have a fix on him.”
“How long will it take him to get here?”
“If he’s not on another job, a few hours. If he is, I’ll phone someone else.”
Jane heard Mario cry out and then begin cursing behind her. “Dammit, how much farther, MacDuff? I almost broke my ankle.”
“Too bad,” MacDuff said. “The uninvited have no right to complain.”
Neither Trevor nor she had been invited either. She wondered what MacDuff would—
She heard a watery slushing ahead of her. “What’s that?”
“The bottom steps are covered with water when the tide comes in,” MacDuff called back from around a curve in the stair. “I’m having to wade through it to get to the boat. Nothing to worry about.” He added slyly, “Except the occasional eel or crab that manages to come in with the tide. You’ll be okay. You’re not barefoot.”
“How comforting.” She turned the corner of the spiral and saw MacDuff and Jock ahead of her. They were thigh-high in water as they waded down the final steps toward a sleek black-and-cream motorboat tied to a steel post. A short distance away she could see a narrow opening leading to the sea.
“Okay?” Trevor was a few steps behind her. She hadn’t realized she had stopped.
She nodded and again started down the steps, holding her small duffel over her shoulder.
Three steps down she was waist-high in cold salt water that sent a shock through her. She suppressed a gasp and kept on going. A moment later she had reached MacDuff and Jock, who were climbing onto the boat.
Jock turned and held out his hand. “Give me your duffel and I’ll pull you up.”
“Thanks.” She threw him the duffel and then let him pull her on board. MacDuff was opening a box by the steering wheel and getting out oars. “You know your way pretty well down here, Jock.”
“The laird wanted me with him when we first came back here. He had work to do and he didn’t want me to be alone.”
Because Jock had been suicidal and MacDuff had been afraid to leave him. “I’m sure you were a great help.”
“I tried,” Jock said gravely. “I did what he told me, but I didn’t know all the things that Angus and the laird knew. It was Angus’s place, Angus’s room.”
“Room?”
“All those steps and the dark . . . I got lost. My head was all fuzzy and the laird had to pull me out of the water once.”
Lost? Was he speaking mentally or—
“Jock, I need you,” MacDuff called, and Jock immediately went to him.
“You’re soaking wet.” Trevor was climbing onto the boat. “Any towels, MacDuff?”
“In the box under the wheel.” MacDuff handed Jock an oar. “She can dry off later. Let’s get out of here.”
“I can row,” Mario said as he got on the boat. “I crewed at my university.”
“By all means. Earn your way.” MacDuff gave him an oar. “But you’ll find this rowing a bit more unwieldy.”
Trevor found the towel and handed it to her. “Dry off. We don’t need you sick.”
“I’m okay.” She tried to absorb a little of the water from her clothes with the towel. She made a face. “Nary an eel, MacDuff.”
“Really? How fortunate.”
“Let’s hope it continues that way.” Trevor untied the boat. “Get us out of here, MacDuff.”
Kimbrough met them at the airport outside Aberdeen where Trevor had landed when they’d come from Harvard. He was a small, fortyish man and all business. “Ready to take off,” he told Trevor. “I’ve filed a phony flight plan to New Orleans. We’ll have to take on fuel in Chicago, but we should arrive in Denver in about nine hours.”
“Good.” He turned to MacDuff. “You said you had a house outside Denver that you used when you came after Jock. Do you think it would help jog his memory to be in semifamiliar surroundings?”
“I have no idea. But it couldn’t hurt. We have to have a place to start. I’ll phone the leasing company once I’m on the plane.”
“You can’t do that. They’ll recognize your name from when you were there before. We can’t have any way to trace—”
“They