Highland Protector (MacCoinnich Time Travels #5)(55)
Author: Catherine Bybee

Kincaid offered the same confused looks she most likely gave him.

From opposite directions Helen and Simon appeared both above and below them in the stairwell.

“Amber’s gone!” Kincaid told them.

“Gone?” Selma froze.

“Gone. Moved in time, I think.”

“She wouldn’t. Not without you…without one of us,” Simon told them.

“Go look for yourself.”

Simon passed Selma on the stairs while the charm on her neck felt as if a brick of ice surrounded it and burned her skin. “I’ve got to check on the girls. Something awful is happening.”

Helen swung in Selma’s direction. “What are you talking about?”

“I gave the girls charms. I linked them to this.” She moved up a few steps and extended the necklace to Helen’s hands. As soon as Helen touched it, her face grew white and her eyes closed. “Oh, no.”

“You see something?”

Helen nodded, her eyes pinched together. “They’re scared…in a closet. There’s blood.”

“Where? Where are they?”

“The closet is painted green… lots of toys and clothes.”

“Their mom’s house.”

Helen dropped the necklace. “You need to call Jake.”

“Helen?” Simon called from above.

Both of them ran toward his voice.

The room was empty.

Candles that sat in a circle flickered.

Giles ran in behind them and stopped short at the door. “Damn.”

Kincaid glared at his friend, pointed a finger in his direction. “Keep searching for other answers, Giles. I need to find my wife.”

“What happened to make her run?” Simon asked.

For an uncomfortable moment, Kincaid stared at the floor. He then stared at Giles. “I’ll let him explain.” Kincaid swiveled his head toward Simon. “Trust what you’ve seen and not what you hear.”

He took a giant step back and the blue aura of his shield swam around him. Though he mumbled under his breath, Selma knew he was about to move time. Unwilling to get caught up in the vortex, she moved away and watched as Amber’s husband disappeared into thin air.

They stood there, stunned, and all eyes turned to Giles.

Before anyone could question the man, Selma felt her stomach cramp, and she doubled over with a pain so intense she felt her coffee erupt.

“Selma?” Helen knelt beside her. “You’re cold.”

All she could see were the twins. Their anguish and pain. “I have to get to them.”

“What is it, lass?” Simon asked.

“The twins…they’re in trouble. I have to go.”

Helen helped her upright. “Should we follow Amber?”

Simon frowned. “Amber will go home. She has protection there.”

“The twins are children,” Selma reminded them all. “Innocent.”

“Then we go there first.”

Selma turned from the room and darted around Giles.

“Stay here with Mrs. Dawson,” she heard Simon order Giles “We’ll discuss Amber and Kincaid when we return. Call Jake. Tell him we’re en route.”

****

A vortex of color surrounded Kincaid as his mind reached for the energy of his other half. Find her, he chanted. Amber. Find my Amber.

His stomach pitched, his head felt heavy enough to explode. All the while he grew closer, knew she was near. His hands stood at his side, his weapons at the ready. When the world shuddered to a grinding halt the gasps of women drew his attention first.

Stone walls. Large hearth with a fire blazing. MacCoinnich Keep.

Farther in the past than he’d ever seen.

Four witnesses. Two men, formidable foes…allies? Two women, one younger than the other, dressed as mistresses, not common servants. His assessment clicked off in rapid fire.

The older man tensed first as he dropped the object in his hand and unsheathed his sword.

Amber was there…somewhere. He felt her.

Kincaid removed his weapon by instinct, pointed at the man with the weapon.

From the other younger warrior, a knife flew. With a flick of his hand, his shield stopped the weapon a foot away and it fell to the floor.

“Where is she?” he yelled.

“Who?” the older man questioned, his eyes never wavering. The dim light in the room left the man in shadow.

Kincaid met the other man’s stare. “Where is Amber? Where is my wife?”

The only emotion on the older man’s face was the flare of his nostrils. Inside the man steamed.

The women were harder at guarding their reaction to his words.

The younger man shielded the women as he came to rest in front of them, shoulder to shoulder with the older man.

Before Kincaid could ask who these men were, he felt her.

Who they were could wait. He needed to find Amber before she ran again.

Kincaid bolted from the room, the beat of his own heart moving faster as he rounded the halls and ran up the familiar steps of the Scottish fortress. The room was cooler, the tapestries different, but it was the same space. He knew the others followed, but he had one goal. Find her. Keep her in one place long enough to talk to her. Explain.

He twisted a corridor, rounded another, found stairs, and moved up and up. Away from the warmth of the main floors. Away from the nagging emotions of everyone in the Keep.

The door he sensed her presence behind was massive, its hinges made of thick iron and not easily breached.

Inside Kincaid’s head, he felt Amber’s confusion, her worry. But he didn’t sense she knew he was near. Instead of giving her warning, he aimed his weapon at the door and quickly dissolved the iron with two blasts before kicking her door in.

She stood in the center of the room with a gown in her arms.

He drew in a relieved breath and lowered his weapon.

“You found me.”

He heard the others behind him, ignored their presence.

“We’re bonded, Amber. You can’t escape me.”

“God’s Blood,” someone said behind him.

Amber looked past him and the harsh expression on her face softened. She opened her arms. “Mother.”

Kincaid grew cold.

The older woman moved past him and into his wife’s arms.

Of course.

Where else would a scared newly married woman flee but home?

Which meant he, Gavin Kincaid, had actually drawn his weapon on his father-in-law. More than that, he drew his weapon on the man he’d sworn to protect through time.

Could it get any worse?

Then Kincaid remembered the information Giles delivered before he’d left the twenty-first century.