Unknown

ALEC IMAGINED THEY they presented quite the cozy, domestic scene, dressed and seated beside each other at the kitchen table. A pot of tea wrapped in a towel. Two simple teacups. A plate of scones.

But the thoughts that ran through his head were anything but docile. Never before had he woken to such glory. Images flashed through his mind. Ruffles and red hair tumbling over smooth shoulders. Dark shadows of her nipples beneath wet cloth. Her head tipped back in ecstasy as she rose and fell upon his hard length.

His groin grew heavy. He slid his gaze sideways, to where Isa sat, properly dressed, her hair bound primly at the base of her skull, and was unable to think about anything other than nibbling the lobe of her ear to see if he could reignite the flames that had crackled between them. Did his damp clothing‌—‌wet from the quick wash he’d given it earlier‌—‌steam from the heat of his thoughts?

Like a schoolboy, he’d spent the last half hour working miserably at the task before him: untangling the spiderweb writing Dr. McQuiston had scrawled upon page after page. The work was groundbreaking, but in his current mental state, Alec felt like he was trying to break the code of a cryptographer’s fevered musings. Not since he was a boy had he been so distracted by a female.

While they awaited the arrival of one specific skeet pigeon‌—‌from his brother‌—‌Isa sorted through the mail. Again and again she tossed curls of messages in the direction of a growing stack. He caught the most recent one in his hand. He had to know. “Three piles. One from prospective patients.” He’d noted the pain in her eyes for, as the situation stood, she couldn’t hurry to their sides. “Another containing notes from family members.” That pile made her look weary, a sentiment he fully understood. “But this pile has you snorting and rolling your eyes. Why?”

Her slight hesitation only magnified his curiosity. “Go ahead.” Her lips pressed together. “Read it.”

The perfect husband has been found. A location and a date was listed. Brow furrowed, he snatched up another strip of paper. And another. All contained similar messages. A certain possessiveness unfurled in his chest, crowding his lungs and making it difficult to breathe. “Why is everyone so desperate to find you a husband? Are you heiress to a fortune?”

“If only,” she said with a huff. “Though I have the financial means to remain independent, Finn culture abhors an unmarried woman of childbearing age.”

She touched her arm where the contraceptive was lodged and gave him a small smile. “Remember, no worries. I’m quite pleased with the status quo and have no intention of remarrying.”

“Only pleased?” He grinned, forcing levity into his voice. “I’ll have to do better.” Next time. He tapped the notebook. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her, but reading wasn’t the only‌—‌or even the most ideal‌—‌method to glean its information. “This is going to take me hours to sift through. Perhaps you might run me through an overview, provide any context that might enlighten your uncle’s motives. If I understand correctly, your work began as an effort to provide Finn with a better anesthetic?”

She gave a grim nod. “It was my intent to save Finn lives, not make them a target of a madman.” She took a deep breath. “With alarmingly high frequency, standard anesthetic agents can plunge a Finn into a dive reflex, dropping heart rate dangerously low to the point where it simply stops. Because lungs take in the volatile gasses, passing them into the blood stream, we hypothesized that Finn blood carried some component that caused the chemicals to be metabolized differently.”

He flipped the pages of the notebook backward, to a section containing extensive notes about individuals, their marriages and progeny. “Hence the family pedigrees?”

“Finn and Scots have interbred for generations, but to simplify our work, to discover a blood trait originating among the Finn, we needed to study the blood of a family whose line was pure Finn. Or as close as one might manage. We certainly couldn’t use mine.”

There was that flash of pain again. He frowned and placed his hand upon hers. “Is blood purity so important to your people?”

“In small communities? Ridiculously so. Not so much here in the city.” She closed her eyes. “Though both my head and my heart tell me it doesn’t matter, I spent my entire childhood censured for my grandmother’s indiscretion with a Scotsman.” She waved her hand at her hair. “One day, I refused to dye it brown. My decision was treated as an act of open rebellion, and my marriage was quickly arranged to subdue any further defiant tendencies I might express.”

“Arranged,” he stated, then recalled an earlier conversation. “By your uncle.”

“Yes.” Isa stood and began to pace. “He orchestrated the entire thing. I was promised a medical education.” A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “Naïve fool that I was, I expected to attend the University of Glasgow.” Her thumb rubbed against her upper arm, above the contraceptive device. “He told me children would hinder my application when, in fact, he simply wanted to ensure I might work, day and night, upon a project he now exploits for his own gain.” Her voice dropped. “Anton was also used. He wasn’t told about the device, and my seeming infertility drove us apart.” She shook her head at the impossibility of pleasing everyone. “I didn’t‌—‌don’t‌—‌want children. Someday, perhaps, but not any time soon.”

“You have other aspirations to attend to first.” Nothing Alec could say would take away the pain of the years she’d lost to her uncle’s manipulations, but stopping him would make a good start. “You’re a danger to him now, Isa. You know too much.”

“I also know you.” Her eyes glinted in a way that made him think wicked thoughts. “And we will stop him.” She dropped back into her chair and reached across him, flipping the pages of the notebook. “While comparing the purest Finn blood to the purest Scottish blood we could obtain, we discovered four blood type variations shared by both populations‌—‌factors designated as A, B, C and D‌—‌that affected the clotting of blood.” She paused to turn the page. “Among the Finn, a fifth variation was discovered, factor Q, a trait tightly linked‌—‌but not always‌—‌to syndactyly.”

“Groundbreaking,” Alec said. “Properly documented and published in a journal, this discovery would revolutionize hematological studies.”

“Alas, not only would that expose the Finn to unwanted scrutiny, but these notes indicate consent was not always freely given.” She pursed her lips. “In any case, factor Q stood out in that it seemed to have no influence upon blood clotting. To dig deeper, Anton took the samples to his laboratory in the Glaister Institute, cutting me off from the project.” She rubbed the back of her neck in irritation. “According to his notebook, factors A, B, C and D are glycolipids and bound to the surface of red blood cells. However, factor Q is a glycoprotein that is released into the bloodstream under hypoxic conditions.”

“So it’s not a stretch to believe factor Q might be responsible‌—‌at least in part‌—‌for your mad swimming skills.” He sat bolt upright. Fishermen. Boatbuilding. Careers in the Navy. It was no accident that Finn were attracted to such careers. What if‌—‌ “You mentioned interbreeding. I’m an excellent swimmer. Always have been.” And given the sexual proclivities of his ancestors, there was a good chance his blood wasn’t pure Scot. “What are the chances I express the factor?” Inexplicable excitement rippled through him at the thought of finding himself tied‌—‌no matter how slender the thread‌—‌to Isa’s people.

“Extremely low. You exhibit none of the stereotypical physical features of a Finn.” But her face grew red.

Guilt? The bloody rag from her boat. Had she used it to examine his blood? “You tested me already.”

“No.” She stared down at her hands. “Though I’ll admit to the temptation. You are a most excellent swimmer. Though you exhibit no physical features, a distant Finn ancestor is not out of the question.”

Curiosity sparked in her eyes. “Very well. Wait here in case a skeet pigeon arrives…‌” She left, returning a few minutes later to arrange a handful of items upon the table. “Give me your hand.”

A cotton swab of cold ethanol. The sharp bite of a lancet into the edge of his finger. A pinch of pain as a drop of blood was squeezed onto a glass slide.

Why did his heart hope a Finn existed in his family’s past? If one did, would he suddenly be eligible in the eyes of the matchmakers? Why was he contemplating such irrelevant questions? It would change nothing between them, even if they did wish for such a commitment.

He watched, fascinated, as a single drop of reagent fell from a glass pipette, joining his blood upon the slide. With a wooden toothpick, she stirred them together. “Now we wait a minute to see if it clumps.”

Two long minutes passed. One hundred and twenty seconds. But the small pool of red fluid remained smooth and translucent.

She smiled. “It merely adds to the supporting evidence that you are an exceptional Scot, a fact already established by your inclusion on the BURR team.”

“Perhaps it also means,” Isa said, setting down the slide. “That you cannot be targeted by the biomech octopus tentacle.”

“When I was in the tank, the boy‌—‌Thomas‌—‌wanted me to hold still while the tentacle tapped along the surface of my skin. He kept a close eye on it, knocking the tentacle away whenever it wandered away from my leg and shoulder, away from the location of large blood vessels.” She shivered and pressed a hand to her throat, swaying slightly upon her feet.

Alec pulled her into his lap, gathering her against his chest. He rubbed her back, but found himself unable to speak the usual lie. He’d seen the dead fisherman, seen how the tentacle targeted blood vessels. Everything wasn’t fine. “Go on.”

“He spoke‌—‌freely, as a child will‌—‌about how the tentacle wouldn’t stick to everyone. What if this biomech octopus is trained‌—‌engineered‌—‌to seek out the blood of people expressing factor Q?”

“Explaining why all victims discovered have been Finn.” Except Davis. Though not a victim of a biomech octopus attack, but he was certainly one of Lord Roideach’s test subjects. “If this glycoprotein was isolated in large quantities‌—‌I hate to think about how‌—‌could it be transfused into a Scotsman’s blood in order to attract a tentacle?”

Isa lifted her face from his chest to stare into his eyes. “That’s a most gruesome question.”

Alec closed his eyes. He too had heard things she deserved to know. “Your uncle was there, at the castle.”

A statement he wished he could contradict. “A few months ago, one of my teammates, Davis, died during a dive.” Impossible to keep the anger from his voice. So much had altered in a matter of minutes. A friend lost his life. Alec almost lost his, almost lost his leg. Though he was lucky to have this mechanical knee, it was hard to feel grateful. “Autopsy results found an unidentifiable foreign protein‌—‌described as ‘sticky’‌—‌in his blood.”

“It would,” Alec said. “Questions were raised, conveniently cut off by a man’s murder. And though I suspected Roideach’s involvement, I couldn’t understand why he would be interested in thickening a man’s blood until‌—‌while searching for you‌—‌I overheard him speaking with your uncle about the failed attempt to improve the diving ability of a BURR man so that he might attach a biomech octopus to a Scot, instead of a Finn.”

“He didn’t survive long enough for them to try.” Alec paused, not certain if that was a blessing or a curse. “Instead, they decided to target Finn directly. But to what end?” That was the crucial question.

At the front of the townhouse, someone knocked on the door. Their eyes caught, but Alec slowly shook his head. They couldn’t acknowledge their presence, not before knowing her uncle and Lord Roideach were in custody. Though the ransacked office demonstrated that anyone truly interested in breaching the front door wouldn’t be stopped by something so simple as lock. He glanced at their bags which sat, packed and ready, by the back door should they need to make a fast exit. He held Isa’s gaze, waiting for the unwelcome company to depart.

“You’re rubbing your knee.” She caught his hand in hers, and drew it close, pressing it to her chest. “Might this dive have involved a submersible and a collision with a solid, iron door?”

He’d not told her about the submersible exit that had gone so horribly, terribly wrong because explaining the why of his knee dragged up thoughts of Davis, thoughts that hadn’t yet sunk deep enough beneath the surface. Besides, he’d promised her a torrid affair. Not an emotional quagmire with a man whose career threatened to founder on the rocks.

The nature of the mission was confidential, but not the disaster that had occurred. A second later, he found himself unburdening the events of that fateful day, detailing the stress his team had been under, forced to dive at dangerous depths with aquaspira breathers. The apoplexy that took Davis’s life even as Alec attempted to save him. The unexpected dive that plunged the submersible over a halocline, slamming the door onto his knee. Negative buoyancy tugging him ever faster into the inky depths of the sea loch.

Isa’s slender fingers stroked the back of his hand as she hung on his every word, transfixed by his story.

Then he stopped cold. Too focused on Davis, on himself, he’d given it not the slightest thought. But Moray had saved him that day, plucking him from a depth that no normal human‌—‌not even a BURR team member‌—‌should survive. Yet he’d done exactly that. Alec owed him his life.

“Moray,” he said, wrapping his mind around the likelihood. “Aron Moray, your childhood friend, didn’t find your presence amidst the hyena fish at all surprising. He’s Finn, isn’t he? Why didn’t you say something?”

Isa looked away. “It was not my place to reveal his heritage. Men have been ostracized for less.”

They’d worked together for years and, try as he might, he couldn’t think of anything about Moray that struck him as unusual, save a disinclination to air travel and‌—‌ “There’s no scarring between his fingers.”

Tap, tap, tap. A skeet pigeon’s beady eyes peered through the kitchen window. Isa stood and crossed the room to fetch the clockwork avian.

“Syndactyly is a highly variable trait,” she said, holding the bird in her hand. “And as I recall it, his webbing was slight, a minimal stretch between the third and fourth fingers of one hand.”

“Almost certainly, to manage the breathtaking rescue you’ve described.” She pried open the small canister and unfurled its contents. All color drained from her cheeks as her eyes scanned the message. “It’s from your brother.” She handed it to him. “What’s CEAP?”

Investigations of unofficial laboratory papers highly suggestive of CEAP, but not actionable. Gathering individuals to make pilgrimage to the castle. You remain an independent agent.

He clenched his jaw. In other words, Commodore Drummond and Lord Roideach were still loose. Queen’s agents were on alert, but had‌—‌as yet‌—‌nothing definitive. But his temporary commission remained in place, authorizing him to pursue the suspects. The hunt continued. “Your uncle spoke of a sea cave,” he said.

“The Isle of Lewis is riddled with them.” Her shoulders sagged. “It’s impossible to search them all, even if we had a navy to assist.”

A key turned in the lock of the front door, and they both froze. Alec moved his hand to his hip, wrapping his fingers around the grip of his weapon. He waved Isa deeper into the kitchen, out of sight, while hurrying to position himself behind the staircase where he had a clear line of sight to the front door without making himself an easy target.

In walked a petite, brown-haired woman holding an infant. “Isa?” her voice trembled as she stepped tentatively into the dim hallway. “I’m so sorry to intrude, but we must speak. I bear terrible news.”