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Haley shook her head to get rid of the memory. She'd get ahold of herself.

He was clearly the man from that hideous thing she'd found in the storeroom. Blood pounded in her fingertips, throbbing with the memory of that wooden panel, now gone from her hands.

Stark terror stole the breath from her lungs and the gush of adrenalin through her system dizzied her. Haley forced air into her paralyzed body.
 
Not a victim again. Not this time.

She summoned her brothers' voices in her head. Their

goading and their challenging. She heard them speak to

her, girding her.
 
Man up, Hale.

“Get the fuck off me.” She tried to flinch her head from his

grasp. His hand was mercifully gentle at the nape of her

neck, though no less firm. The bastard just chuckled.

Who the hell was he? And what was with the Gaelic? Was

he in her  department at school? He'd surely been stalking  her, but she'd never seen him before. How had he gotten  into the museum?

Oh God. Sarah.
 
Her panic turned to dread, a cold wash sweeping up from her belly. Was Sarah okay? If anything had happened to her, it  was all Haley's fault.

“Where's Sarah? What did you do with Sarah?” She planted  her feet hard, making him stumble slightly. He stared at  her a moment and hatred surged through her. “Don't you  speak English?”

“Aye, I've the English.” He grasped her chin,  pulling her  face toward his. “Who's Sarah? Is it you've a sister hiding  about as well?” The man looked around, glanced at his  companion, and Haley registered the other woman for the  first time.

Haley couldn't move her head much in his grip, but rolled her eyes as far as she could to study the woman. She seemed to be in league with the man.
 
What kind of scene is this?
 
She was slender and pretty, but Haley was gratified to see the girl also appeared to be a total wreck, her breath hiccupping, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Who are you people?” she snarled, struggling in vain.

He ignored her. focusing only on his companion. “Easy,  Jean,” he told the woman in Gaelic. Then Haley thought he said. “We'll put down the stairs and be gone from here.”

Stairs?
 
Haley glared at them, trying to make sense of it.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Alasdair.” the other woman finally spoke, her voice a  tremulous whisper. “The lass isn't right. She gives me the  evil eye, even now.”

The girl had meant not right in the head. Haley squinted hard at her. If there was any such thing as an evil eye, she'd summon it now for this simpering thing.

The man barked out a laugh, which seemed to distress his companion all the more. The girl seemed to yield before him, ceding all control. It annoyed Haley, made her want to stand up to him.

“Please.” The girl spoke again, addressing only Alasdair.

“Please just take me from this place.”

His eyes softened when he looked at his companion, his fearsome mask melting into something kinder. A single-minded concern warmed his features, eased his full mouth.

Haley realized, startled, that he was…
 
handsome
.

And so completely focused on the girl's well-being. She felt a rush of inexplicable jealousy and glowered at her with renewed zeal, even as she  thought how silly her impulse

was.

She
 
didn't need a man to look out for her. Haley was perfectly capable of looking out for her own damn self.

The girl's eyes widened. “Leave the lass be,” she whispered.  “She…   She's…”   Apprehension   and   sympathy   both

animated her features. “She's not right, Alasdair.”

Haley could deal with apprehension. It was the girl's sympathy that pushed her over the edge. She tried to wriggle free from the man's grasp, hissing at his companion as she did so.

“Och, enough.” He pushed Haley forward once more,  toward what looked like a hole in the wall leading straight  into blackness. “We must go, and now.”

She wracked her brain to make sense of it. He must've

knocked her out, but where had he taken her? It was like a  castle. Had the freak taken her to some crazy McMansion

outside Boston?

She looked around as much as her immobilized head would

allow, expecting to see mounted animal heads and gaudy  wrought iron fixtures. But the large room was mostly  barren. There was just a crude dining table and a few men  passed out by the fireplace.

She considered calling to them for help, but her eyes adjusted and she thought better of it. The dying fire highlighted the ragged halos of their matted hair, sticking out from soiled plaid blankets.

How had he gotten her there? She did a quick internal check. Nothing was sore, so he couldn't have knocked her out. He must've used chloroform or something. He'd surely had to drive far out of the city to have found this place.

Where the hell were they? Maybe somewhere near the  Cape? A lighthouse maybe? She strained, trying to hear or smell signs of the sea.

He nudged her, bringing Haley to stand before the opening in the wall.
 
Oh God.
 
Was he going to push her out a window? The panic exploded again, dimming  her vision, and Haley instinctively went into action, throwing her weight back, forcing her body away from the gaping blackness. She felt his hand grip her harder, but she frantically kicked herself backward, scuffing her heels along the stone floor. Her feet struck something hard and in her frenzy she noticed a wooden flight of steps like something from a theatrical stage blocking their path.  Haley froze.

She tried to look again at the man's companion.
 
Useless
,

Haley thought with derision.
 
Just standing there trembling.

And then the surreal realization clicked. Her captors wore bizarre clothing, as if they'd just returned from some kind of historical reenactment. They were both filthy, her in a long gown, soiled black at the hem, him barefooted and in a kilt. And not like those dapper kilts and sporrans men wore at the Highland Games. This one seemed threadbare, winding around him, the end tossed haphazardly over his shoulder.

Oh shit.
 
Dread chilled her. Haley couldn't say why, but their clothing set her  already screeching internal alarms into high gear. She didn't know what these people were into, but getting kidnapped by a couple of Gaelic-speaking

medieval history buffs didn't seem like something that bode

well.

His hand on her neck was loose now. He kicked at the

long, rickety staircase.
 
Typical man
, she thought with a

disgust that cleared her head.

Calm. Calm. I'm calm.
 
She did another internal check, forcing her mind and body to stillness. Her heartbeat grew regular. Her muscles felt juiced from the adrenalin, but no longer jellied from shock.

Typical man to underestimate a woman.
 
She could get free.  She'd have to jump. If that staircase represented their height above the ground, she only had about one story to fall. She'd have to roll her landing.  Then run like hell.

She didn't give herself time to think. Haley tugged away from the man's hand and she winced, feeling a clump of her hair tear from her scalp. Leaping forward, she stepped one foot onto the edge of the stairs and vaulted into the void.

“Ciod e… ?”
 
The cursed lass had flown out, black hair  streaking behind her, like a crow loosed into the night.  MacColla raced to the edge and looked down in time to see  her hit the ground with a roll and take off running. “Och,  Christ.”

He looked to Jean and back out again. “Och,” he growled once more. He grabbed his sister by the hands and eased her out the entry door, lowering her down until his belly

eaned over the edge and he could get her no closer. “Run,”

he hissed as he dropped her. “Now.”

The Campbell lass was already far in the distance, fleeing like a deer across the moonlit glen.

Jean stumbled forward and MacColla wasted no time

leaping to the ground, landing with a grunt and rolling  quickly to his feet. He sensed commotion in the castle  above . The Campbell men were stirring.

“Run!” he called, clapping his hand on Jean's back. “Now,

lass”  - he grabbed his sister's hand and tugged  - “run!”

Jean finally came out of her daze and, hiking her dress over her knees, took off with surprising speed.

MacColla ran ahead, pumping his arms and legs until he closed in on the woman. He waved his hand out to snag her dress once, twice, but she ran only faster, winding an uneven path over the grass. “
 
Caile mhallaichtei
” he snarled.

He sprang forward then, grabbing hard around her waist, tumbling them both to the ground. MacColla wanted to catch the lass, not crush her, so he went immediately into another roll, coming to rest with her straddled over him.

He gripped her hips. Then an urge so great swept over him, he didn't question the impulse. MacColla simply ground the lass to him as the vision of her riding him filled his head.

Watching those mystical gray eyes widen at the feel of him beneath her sent satisfaction surging through his veins.  Panting hard, he felt the life pumping through him, and a smile burst onto his face, flush with his triumph.

Then like a feral cat she was clawing at his cheeks, swatting, and trying to gouge at his eyes.

“You wee hellcat.” MacColla ducked the blows as best he

could, clutching tightly to her hip with one hand, trying to

deflect her blows with the other.

“Alasdair!” It was Jean's voice, crying a warning from the

shadows.

MacColla saw three men racing toward them and rolled the woman to the ground beneath him.

Grabbing her by both hands, he looked quickly to his sister. He cursed himself. Jean's safety was the only thing that should take his attention now. He couldn't let his

thoughts be diverted by some mysterious Campbell clans

woman.

He looked at the woman and regretted that he had to let her go. Regretted he'd never know the name of this strange lass who'd gotten the better of him.

A Campbell captive would've been quite the spoils, and such a beautiful one all the more so. But he'd not lose

sight of the most important thing: freeing his sister, seeing

her safe once more.

“Och.” His voice was a low grunt. The men were closing  fast. He looked from the lass, to the men, and back again.  A challenge was in her eyes.

“Och, God help me.” Holding her arms above her head with  one hand, he took her chin with the other, and crushed his  mouth to hers for one last taste. He knew he needed to get  his sister to safety, but he knew too that he had to press  once more into that softness, feel one final lick of that heat.  He pulled back and gave a quick laugh, having just missed  her bared teeth.

MacColla pushed up from the woman and, grabbing Jean's cold hand in his, raced away, the Campbell castle at their backs.

He'd done it. He'd freed his sister. They had but to get to the ponies he'd tied hidden in the woods, and they'd be gone from there.

But then MacColla heard it.

A scream tore through the night, a ghastly, blood-chilling sound that stopped him dead.

Jean stumbled and fell beside him, looking up from her knees, terror in her eyes.

And then again.

It was the lass. Shrieking a sound of such horror, as if she'd been beset by demons, that MacColla's skin crawled from it.

He dragged Jean to standing and shoved her back into a run with force enough to launch her feet from the  ground.

“
Ruith
!” he commanded.
 
Run

.

He turned, squinting to make out the figures in the darkness. The men had overtaken her. Moonlight limned their bodies, making them appear like fallen angels come seeking evil mischief from beyond. She struggled madly  in their hands.

MacColla took off at a lope. Then the lass's scream broke. A hideous sound, it tore from her body until her voice grew ragged, then cracked finally into a wail of despair.

And MacColla broke into a run.

He didn't spare a thought as to the why or the how of it, but she was being attacked by her own kinsmen, and he'd not let a man get the better of any woman.

Especially
 
this
 
woman.

They had her pinned now, all atop her like wild dogs worrying a bone, and MacColla dove toward them, grabbin g wildly, catching a man in his hands and peeling him up by his head, breaking his neck and shucking him away from the pile like so much garbage.

That left two on her, and, just as he was leaning down to tear away another, the lass surprised MacColla by kicking her own self free.