Going Dark Read online

  Making a quick escape, she heard Julien explain behind her, “WC.”

  She’d forgotten that Jean Paul hadn’t spent much time in America. She’d learned from Julien that “bathroom” and “ladies’ room” didn’t translate well in Europe.

  For a Tuesday night the pub was packed, and Annie had to “excuse me” her way through the crowd of men in front of the bar—there were very few women—as she made her way to the “toilet.” Given the number of locals, she assumed it was a favorite hangout. Although from what she’d seen of the town, the Harbour (with a u) Bar & Guest House probably didn’t have a lot of competition.

  She had nearly made it past the long, glossy wooden bar lined with taps of ales and ciders, when the door that she’d been about to go through opened, and she had to step back to avoid being hit. Unfortunately she stumbled over someone’s foot and knocked into—nearly onto—a man who was seated at the end of the bar.

  Instinctively she reached out to catch herself before she fell on his lap. One of her hands found his leg, and the other . . .

  Wasn’t gripping rock-hard muscle.

  “Oof.” The grunt he made gave the location away. Even through the denim of his jeans, she could feel the unmistakable solid bulge of something else. She pulled her hand back as if it—he—were on fire.

  Or maybe that was just her. Her cheeks flamed with mortified heat as she hurried to apologize. “I’m so sorry! I tripped and didn’t see . . .”

  The man looked up from his hunched position over his beer, and the cold, steely blue eyes that met hers from beneath the edge of his faded blue cap cut off her breath like a sharp icy wind.

  Her first thought was how the hell had she missed him? Her second was What did I do?

  He was a big guy. Tall—even with him seated on a stool, she still had to look up to meet his gaze—and broad-shouldered, he wore an oversized sweatshirt and puffy down vest that, had she not felt the evidence to the contrary, she might have thought hid a little extra bulk. But that bulk wasn’t fat; it was all muscle.

  The guy was built like a tank. Or maybe a prizefighter. Beneath the heavy beard—what was with those anyway?—the face that met hers had the tough, pugnacious masculinity of a Tom Hardy or Channing Tatum. Sexy as hell, but maybe a little too much to handle.

  She liked men a little softer. And there was nothing soft about this guy. Not just his body, but the way he was looking at her. It might be the middle of summer, but the iciness emitting from those striking blue eyes made it feel like the dark days of December.

  Shiver. She managed not to do that, instead giving him a friendly smile. “I’m sorry again. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  Which hardly seemed possible, as he was about twice her size.

  She expected an immediate denial, a few assurances that it was nothing, and maybe even a return smile. That was what would have happened in any bar in America. In the South it would have been given with a lazy drawl, a charming twinkle, and no doubt a ma’am or darlin’ or two. In New Orleans, it would be “cher” or, as it was pronounced, “sha.”

  What she got was a shake of the head and a gruff grunt that she assumed was meant to serve as his acknowledgment, before he turned sharply around to hunch back over his beer.

  She stood there for a moment, staring at the broad back, hunched shoulders, and straight—maybe a little shaggy—dirty blond hair beneath the faded powder blue cap.

  What in the world?

  She shook her head at his rudeness. Maybe this was Oz after all.

  Two

  The chilly exchange the night before was forgotten in the warmth of a sunny new day as Annie made her way from the guest house to the harbor along the sunny waterfront street, walking hand in hand with Julien. Ahead of them she could see the distinctly shaped ferry terminal, which looked a little bit like a sombrero, that Julien told her had once been the site of the original castle in Stornoway. The pretty Victorian stone castle that dominated the opposite side of the harbor had been built a couple of hundred years after the original castle’s destruction. When she’d asked about visiting the new castle, the innkeeper told her that Lews, as it was called, wasn’t open. On prodding, she’d reluctantly added that it was being converted from use as a college to a cultural center.

  Annie couldn’t blame the Islanders for their standoffishness—or in the case of the man last night, outright rudeness—but she wasn’t used to her friendly overtures being rebuffed. She supposed it was something she would have to grow accustomed to. The activists were clearly unwanted, and the tension with the locals was only going to get worse with what they had planned.

  Something big. Something that will make a difference.

  Her stomach fluttered a little. The thought of what they were going to do made her even more nervous now that she was actually here. It will be fine, she told herself. Greenpeace did it all the time. Even Xena—Lucy Lawless herself—had done it. But climbing aboard a drillship in the middle of the North Atlantic to stage a sit-in had sounded much more exciting—and much less crazy—at home. But Julien was right. To draw media attention, they had to do something big. And sadly dramatic got attention—scientific articles didn’t.

  If she was suddenly having second thoughts, she pushed them away.

  Once they passed the ferry terminal building, another reason the locals were likely to become even more unwelcoming came into view.

  She winced at the sight of the Porta Potties, tents, and makeshift banners that filled the parking lot. With the daily influx of activists growing, and guest houses and campgrounds full, the camp was only going to get bigger and even more of an eyesore.

  Julien must have been watching her closer than she realized. “Is something wrong, ma belle? You are not still upset about last night?”

  “I wasn’t upset. I just hit the jet-lag wall,” she said, repeating the excuse for her unusual quietness she’d given him when they returned to their room. Not wanting to give him another opportunity to ask her impressions of Jean Paul, she motioned to the camp. “You have to admit, it’s a bit of an eyesore. We aren’t likely to rally the locals to our cause with that marring the chamber of commerce views around here.” She looked around at the blue skies, the boats bobbing in the idyllic harbor, and the green-covered hillsides that framed it. “All those tents and banners”—not to mention the toilets—“won’t make very pretty postcards.”

  Especially if the drilling went forward, and this turned into a permanent camp like the one on the Scottish mainland at the nuclear plant of Faslane, which had been there since 1982.

  Julien smiled reassuringly, perhaps intuiting that she needed it, and squeezed her hand. “The point is to be noticed, Anne.” She didn’t usually like her name, which was why she went by Annie, but if everyone pronounced Anne like Julien, she might change her mind. Instead of the hard a, it was soft with the emphasis on the long n sound. Ah-nnn. “The more unsightly and disruptive we are, the more they will be unable to ignore us,” he added. “That’s how it works.”

  Annie felt silly. She looked up at him apologetically, a lopsided grin turning her mouth. “I know. It’s just that”—she shrugged—“I didn’t expect this place to be so pretty.”

  “Which is why we are here. To keep it that way, oui?”

  He was right. The unsightly camp was much better than oily black water, a coastline of sludge, and dead wildlife. The exploratory drilling set to begin a scant seventy miles west of Lewis, Harris, and the dozens of other islands that made up the archipelago would be devastated by a spill. There were already over seven hundred oil fields in the North Sea east of Britain, but this proposed one to the west in the North Atlantic was too close. And she had the studies to prove it. But no one wanted to listen to her research when they had their own “experts.”

  “Oui,” she agreed.

  Julien waved to a group of activists he knew as they walked by, still holding h