The Striker Read online

  She was tempted to point out they might not welcome Eoin MacLean’s wife. “I’m not too tired. But it’s getting dark. If you keep pushing like this someone will get hurt—Eachann could get hurt.”

  He stiffened, and the other man—Ewen Lamont—turned to look at him. “Eachann?”

  “My son,” she explained. “Our son.”

  Lamont muttered what she thought was a rather strong curse, and his gaze went to Eoin’s for confirmation.

  Eoin’s mouth tightened. “She claims the lad with MacDowell is my son.”

  Lamont gave a long, low whistle and shook his head, his expression seemingly one of sympathy for Eoin.

  Margaret had to bite her tongue to keep from arguing about “claims.” “I know you want to catch my father, but if you keep pushing like this, my father will keep pushing, and Eachann is the one who will suffer. Have you thought of what this pace must be like for him?”

  Eoin answered with a flex of his jaw that made a muscle start to tic. “What do you suggest we do? Let your father escape? If he makes it to the coast and a ship, we won’t have a chance of catching them before he reaches whatever heavily fortified castle he decides to hole up in. They can’t be more than mile or two ahead of us. We would have caught them by now had we not needed to avoid the parties of English soldiers your father sent after us. But there is no bloody way in hell I’ll stop now.”

  Margaret couldn’t believe this brutal, uncompromising man was her husband. He was more like . . .

  She grimaced. He was more like her father. “So you would put your son’s life at risk to prevent my father slipping through your fingers?”

  Eoin kept a tight rein on his temper. He didn’t need to defend himself to her. “It isn’t me who has put his life at risk. It’s your father.” He looked to Lamont. “Come on. We’ve rested long enough.”

  Eoin walked away. But just before Ewen Lamont went after him, she thought he glanced at her with a glimmer of sympathy.

  “Your son, Striker? Christ, why didn’t you tell me? I thought you took her with us for information.”

  Eoin mounted his horse. “I did, and there wasn’t time.”

  Lamont shot him a look as if he knew the explanation was shite—which it was. But finding out that he had a son—a five-year-old son—had thrown him in such a state of shock and confusion the only thing he’d been able to concentrate on had been the mission. Find MacDowell and then he’d try to come to terms with the knowledge of a son. He sure as hell hadn’t been ready to talk about it. He still wasn’t.

  “The lass is right,” his partner said. “This could be dangerous for the lad. If he is yours—”

  “He’s mine,” Eoin said, cutting him off angrily.

  Lamont lifted a brow. “You didn’t sound so certain a few minutes ago.”

  Eoin grunted a nonanswer.

  “More than one way to exact retribution, is that it?”

  Eoin glared at him. “Do you blame me? You know as well as I what she did.”

  His partner acknowledged the truth with a grim nod. “Aye. Although . . .”

  Eoin’s gaze narrowed. “Although what?”

  Lamont shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s just not what I expected.”

  “She hides the snakes beneath the veil.”

  Lamont ignored the sarcasm. “She can’t be much older than three and twenty.”

  “She turned five and twenty last June.”

  “She appears to genuinely care about the lad. And I saw her face when she saw you at the church. She didn’t look like someone who had sent you happily to your death.”

  Eoin’s mouth drew in a hard line. “Yet that is exactly what she did.”

  Lamont eyed him carefully. “You also didn’t mention that she is rather . . . attractive.”

  Eoin felt his muscles tense in a way they hadn’t in a long time. His wife had always drawn attention—masculine attention. Maybe more so now than she did at eighteen. How had Fin put it? Ripe as a peach? She was even riper. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “It doesn’t. But it was still a surprise. I didn’t think anyone could rival MacLeod’s wife.”

  Eoin shot him a glare. “How about your own?”

  Lamont lifted a sly brow, and Eoin swore, realizing his partner had tricked him into admitting more than he wanted. Eoin didn’t care about her anymore, how the hell could he still be jealous?

  “If you’re finished, I want to get back on the trail before we lose it again,” Eoin said sharply.

  MacDowell was a tricky bastard. He was also good at minimizing his tracks. But Lamont was the best tracker in Scotland. If there was a trail, Hunter would find it. Even in the dark.

  But as they raced across the countryside, plunging deeper into the moonlight-shrouded forest, Eoin couldn’t help but think how easy it would be for a horse to miss its footing. For a fall that could send a rider and the young boy with him sailing through the air to the hard ground. How easy it would be to snap a slim neck. Why were there so many branches sticking out? This was a damned “road.” One of those branches could pluck out an eye or . . .

  He stopped. Bloody hell, she’d gotten to him. She’d filled his head with a parade of horribles to make him do her bidding. They couldn’t stop, damn it. MacDowell would get away—with his son. A siege could take months. Besides, there was no guarantee even if they did stop that MacDowell would follow suit. His son could still be in danger even if Eoin did call a halt to the chase.

  But the decision was taken from his hands a short while later. They’d slowed for Lamont to check the prints, when he swore and called for a torch.

  “What’s the matter?” Eoin asked.

  Lamont shook his head. “I think they split up.”

  Eoin felt the fury rise inside him. “Why?”

  “There don’t seem to be as many prints.” He dismounted to walk up and down the path, counting off the horses in what seemed to be a jumbled mass of hoof marks. After seven and a half years as partners, Eoin had picked up enough tracking to know that Lamont could identify each horse by some defining mark—no matter how seemingly trivial—in its hoofprint. He counted off four. MacDowell and his sons had set off on five horses.

  “There’s one missing,” Eoin filled in, swearing when Lamont nodded.

  “Where?”

  Lamont shook his head. “Probably at the last crossing. Damn it, I can’t believe I missed it.”

  “It isn’t your fault.” It was Eoin’s. With his quarry in sight, he’d pushed them too hard. He’d been the one to hurry Lamont at the last crossing near Cockermouth. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll catch them.”

  But they didn’t. They backtracked to the previous crossing and rode for only a mile or two before coming to a large village where MacDowell had switched horses. By the time they tracked the new horse it was too late. The Cumbrian coast at Wyrkinton was only a handful of miles away—as was the heavily garrisoned peel tower of Sir Gilbert de Curwen. They wouldn’t be able to evade the English soldiers and catch up to MacDowell in time. They’d lost them.

  “What now?” Lamont asked.

  “We’ll find them in Galloway.”

  “I can think of at least six castles he might take refuge in. It could take weeks to find him.”

  Eoin didn’t realize Margaret had come up beside them. “He’ll go to Dumfries,” she said. “It’s the strongest, and easiest to access from the river.”

  “You sound so certain,” Eoin said.

  “As certain as I can be. It’s where I think he was planning to go after the—” She stopped. “When he returned from England.”

  After the wedding. Eoin felt his teeth gritting again. “And I’m just supposed to take your word for it? He could just as easily go to Buittle. It is also easily accessed by the river and heavily defended.”

  “Aye, he could, but I think he’ll go to Dumfries. It’s his favorite castle, and the keeper is one of his most trusted men.”

  “Who?”

  Even in the mis