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He was stunned, looking at her  - wild-eyed, but focused.  The moon cast a white bolt of light along her smooth cheek. Her full mouth parted as she breathed heavily. She caught his stare and returned it. Fearless. Proud.

The most  beautiful creature MacColla had ever seen.

He felt it too late. The hands damp and hot on his calf, tripping MacColla, pulling him down before he knew what he was about. He fell hard, the dead weight of seventeen stone of muscle slamming onto the glen, an d the two  Campbells were on him in an instant.

Haley edged away. She was loose. She could run.
 
Where?

She looked down at the scrum. The man called Alasdair

fought for dominance, trying to best the odds. He had  released her, leaving her to three attackers and a worse  fate.

But then he'd come back.

She saw a hand  - she didn't know whose  - draw a knife.

Haley looked behind her. The stone building at her back loomed tall in the darkness. Not a lighthouse. Not a  McMansion either.
 
Looks like a damned Scottish tower

house.

She scanned the night. The girl stood on the horizon shivering, whimpering. Haley could run, but if Alasdair were bested, would that girl be next? She knew with certainty that the pathetic creature wouldn't survive five

minutes with those men. And Haley might not like the girl,

but that didn't mean she wanted to see her brutalized.

Besides, Haley could run, but she doubted she'd be able to escape these two men who clearly had a taste for blood.

One of them was on top of her kidnapper now, h ands around his throat. The other one knelt, and she once again saw the flash of steel in the night.

She and her dark-haired stalker appeared to share the same enemy, which made him her ally. For the moment.

If she wanted to save her own life, she'd have to save

Alasdair.

Scampering backward, she dropped to her knees, frantically combing her hands through the cold, damp grass, her eyes never once straying from the scuffle in front of her.

All the years of training with her father, and the most frustrating thing had been realizing she'd never have a shred of hope in a fight if pitting her strength against a man's. The average woman didn't, against the average man. And so Haley had learned to fight dirty.

There.
 
The sharp edge of a stone at her fingertips . Ignoring the soil jamming under her nails, she dug, pulling the rock free. It was small, just smaller than her palm, with one end coming to a point. It was the best she could hope for.

The second man sat back on his heels, helping hold down  Alasdair as  he watched his friend choke the life from him.

He smiled as if enjoying the show.

Which one?
 
She weighed her options, the stone warming in her palm. Knock out the kneeling man, or distract the other?
 
First things first.

Alasdair was being strangled to de ath. He pummeled his attacker, the brute force of his blows making his enemy sway with each hit. But the man clutched tenaciously at his neck, despite the blood that blackened his nose and eyes in the darkness.

“Alasdair!” the other woman screeched.

The  attackers' attention momentary faltered, and Haley saw her opportunity.

The one choking him then.

Haley was crouched in the grass, clinging tight to her stone, its sharp point jutting from her fist like an arrowhead. She sprang, landing with a thud on th e man's back, wrapping one arm tight around his neck as she brought her other down hard, slamming the rock into his temple.

“Alasdair!” the other woman screamed again, this time with

a sound like hope in her voice.

She loves him.

Haley didn't have a moment to contemplate the import of that last thought. She felt the ground whooshing from the balls of her feet as the man bobbled to standing and began to thrash her arms with fierce blows.

Haley threw down her rock and hung on to her attacker, trying despe rately to gouge his eyes, wrapping her legs around his waist to slam her heels down at his groin.

Alasdair had recovered quickly and was locked in a hand-to-hand battle with the one who'd been kneeling over him.  Fragments of his fight pierced her consciousness. The whistle of steel slashing down to his neck. His left arm jutting over, catching his enemy's blade arm. His right swinging up, cracking the man's arm at the elbow. A grotesque wet snap sounded, and the blade flew to the ground.

The man Haley rode spun and slammed her hard to the ground. Her breath came out in a sharp squeal, and she forgot Alasdair. The man turned, pinning her, yet the only thought she could spare was the desperate desire to pull air into her lungs.

Something very wrong had happened to her ribs. The man over her seemed merely a nuisance now; pure bodily survival had become the far more acute crisis. She fought to breathe, feeling as if each inhale sucked shards of glass into her chest.

Time slowed. Darkness nagged at her, as Haley came to, then went dim, and then roused once again. And still the man was over her, until it seemed he'd always been over

her, trapping her hands, grabbing at her breasts, fumbling

his knees between her own.

And then, suddenly, he was gone. He'd just disappeared from over her, as if more than merely pulled away, the man had simply been eradicated from being.

She lay in the grass panting shallowly, each breath a shocking, nauseating stab. Haley brought a trembling hand up, wiping cold tears and warm snot from her face. The movement was fresh agony.

Ribs.
 
She fought to dampen the fresh spike of adrenalin.

Something was gravely wrong.
 
Broken?

She tuned her senses outward. What was happening?

Focus.

She tried to slow her breathing and her teeth ground together, biting through the shrill keening that escaped her with each exhale.

Can't breathe.
 
A fresh spill of tears was hot on her cheeks.

She tried moving. Was able to shift, ever so slightly.
 
Not broken.
 
Fresh nausea roiled through her, and she parted

her lips to breathe through clenched teeth.
 
Something…

torn.

A dull scuffling sounded at her feet. Clipped grunts. And then silence.

Haley braced, wondering if she had any fight left in her, fearing more than anything the resignation that beckoned.  She didn't have to find out what had happened, where she was or with whom, when darkness was teasing her with such promise of stillness and peace.

There was movement again. She stiffened, readying herself for the inevitable.

But the hands that picked her up were gentle. She hated the whimper of pain that escaped her.

It was the black- haired man, his face close in the moonlight. And this time his eyes were soft as he looked at her.

“Alasdair… ” Her voice was hoarse, his name neither a

question nor an address on her tongue.

“Aye. I am called MacColla.”

Alasdair
…
 
MacColla
.

Her eyes shot open to gawk at this man who had taken then left her, only to turn around and save her. A fierce savage of a man.

A man who claimed the same name as a hero of old.

Chapter  Five

Delusions about Alasdair MacColla? Haley's dissertation must be getting to her, thinking she'd somehow landed in old Scotland with James Graham's friend MacColla. Either

that or she'd injured more than just her ribs. She blinked

her eyes shut tight to expel the thought.

“Should we… should we leave her?” Jean's hushed voice

washed over Haley where she lay, dazed, in the grass.

MacColla had somehow gotten his hands on two ponies, and they'd ridden hard through the night, with Haley doubled up in front of him.

When he finally stopped at dawn. Haley had slid gratefully to the ground, hand clutched tight to her side. She was hungry and she was dying of thirst, but all she could do for the moment was lie there.

Rather than feeling open and wide above, the sky seemed to press down on her, gradually lightening but never warming beyond monochromatic shades of gun -metal.  Damp seeped into the fabric of her dress, its chill clutching her, snaking up and around her aching sides like an embrace from the grave. Her toes had lost feeling, and the mud-soaked leather of her boots shrank tight over her feet.

Still, these seemed like quaint discomforts compared to the agony she felt with each breath. Haley was relieved simply to lie there, momentarily lightening her body's pull on her

rib cage. Curling into her pain, she was able to find the

space in her torso for more than just shallow panting.

“Truly, Alasdair, we'll travel faster if ”-

“I can hear you.” Haley said to nobody in particular.

“Wheesht”
 
He silenced her  like a child. “Hush, Jean. The

lass goes with us.”

Travel faster if… you leave me? That's right, girlie. Please do leave me.

Haley shut her eyes tight.
 
If only.

She needed to get away from these people, but with such pain in her ribs, she'd never be able to outrun the man.

“Your rest is over.” His voice was close. She opened her

eyes to see him standing above her. “Are you ready?”

“You sure are pushing hard.”

“Campbell won't rest. Nor will I.”

“Aren't
 
you
 
a charmer?” she mumbled.

She ignored his outstretched hand, and MacColla made a small grunting sound. Three quick pants of air and she sat up on a sharp exhale, biting back a groan. She struggled to her knees, then her feet, and made her way to the horses.

She studied them in the morning light. They were stout little beasts, one with a mane and tail so black, they seemed dyed compared to the lighter dun of its coat. The other was a shade of gray to match the drab sky.

“Where'd you get these nags anyway?” She rubbed her  backside, dreading another minute of riding. Haley looked  around, desperately trying to place where they could be. “I  sure hope some Choate girl isn't missing her prized  ponies.”

“If you can jest, you can ride.” he said, sweeping her up

and onto the saddle.

It was the creak of leather beneath her that silenced Haley.  She realized that even their horse was tacked up in period garb, with such an archaic saddle. As each step took them impossibly farther from civilization, she wondered what messed-up fantasy these two were reenacting.

Or what kind of nut job would pretend to be Alasdair  MacColla. Haley glanced down at the thickly muscled legs jutting from behind her. The man sure was dressed for the part. He even had the six-foot long, two-handed sword  MacColla was known for; one just like it had been tucked and waiting for him in a copse not far from that weird castle.

“Too bad,” she muttered. “If you were the real MacColla,  you could probably tell me if James Graham were still  alive.”

She felt the man grow still at her back.

“What did you say?” His voice was a menacing whisper in

her ear.

Not the thing to say, apparently. “Nothing ,” she replied quickly, thinking she might not know what they were about, but she did know that these two were dead serious about their little performance.

Anxiety curdled her stomach as much as her pain did now, wondering where they were taking her, and whether she'd be ready to fight, then flee, when the time was right.

As the hours passed, Haley tried to formulate a plan. She studied every hill and valley as they rode, thinking surely they'd soon approach a town.

She'd at first tried to track their movements, but found it impossible to place where they could be. It was odd she hadn't seen any signs of life. No cars  - not even any real roads, for that matter. They must've taken her some ways out of Boston. She knew parts of Massachusetts were quite rural, but she'd never understood just how extensive it