She was worried about him. Fighting a fire was dangerous. All sorts of complications could arise. Water heaters could blow up, glass could explode and come flying out, or the grange could collapse on top of them.
What a sheltered life she’d been leading these last fourteen years, locked away with her work, pushing numbers around until they fit into whatever puzzle she was building. How safe she had been. How self-consumed.
And how trivial compared with baby giggles and smiles, flint green eyes boring into her soul, kisses that made her heart melt, and waking up with a man of steel draped over her body. Now, that was danger.
Risk. And the very fabric of existence that she intended to experience every day for the rest of her life.
“Are ya thinking it’s going to blow up right now?” Ian asked from right beside her.
Grace looked over to find him also staring at the wire in her hand. She stood on tiptoe and quickly wrapped the naked wire around the cable.
“No. Nothing will happen yet,” she assured him, taking the other piece of wire and wrapping it around the frame of the huge wheel anchored in concrete that turned the cable back up the mountain.
She darted a quick glance at Ian. “Have you ever been electrocuted?” she asked. “Touched a bare wire or been close to a lightning strike?”
He eyed her suspiciously. “What does lightning have to do with this?” he asked, waving at the lift.
Grace shrugged. “Nothing. You just wanted to know if touching this cable would burn you. And lightning bolts are shafts of electricity without the protection of wire casing. Lightning can kill a man, or sometimes it just knocks him senseless.”
“I know that,” he said, taking a step back. “Is that what we’re doing?” he whispered, his face suddenly paling. “Are ya making lightning, lass?”
Grace turned away to hide her frown. “No,” she said. “The voltage will be too low. Lightning strikes are much more powerful and impossible to predict.”
He took another step back. “I…I’m thinking I should go have a look for that Jonathan fellow,” he said.
“To see if he needs my help.”
He was out the door before she could protest. Grace moved to watch Ian’s limping but sure-footed retreat toward the hotel. She absently looked down at her own feet, turning an ankle to see the spare set of creepers Ian had brought her and insisted she put on. What had she said to upset him? The man had all but run away, looking as if he had just seen a ghost.
Actually, Ian looked much the same way Michael had when he’d told her his story of traveling through time.
Grace turned back to her work, thinking about Ian’s reaction and why she had felt compelled to bring up the subject of lightning in the first place.
Perhaps it was because she was unable to get Michael’s story out of her head. He had been so sure of what had happened to him. So believable in the telling, the attention to detail, from the lack of buttons all the way to noticing the difference in calendars. Granted, she didn’t know much about ancient Scottish warriors, but Greylen MacKeage owned a sword, Ian acted as if electricity were more magic than science, and all of them lived in a castle.
Four years, Michael had said. If for some phenomenal reason time travel was indeed possible, was four years long enough for medieval men to be assimilated into modern society?
Grace started to tremble at the realization of what she was thinking. It wasn’t possible. She knew it wasn
’t possible. The scientist in her knew that no one had ever been able to prove that manipulation of the fourth dimension was possible.
But then again, neither had anyone been able to prove it wasn’t possible.
A desperate shout suddenly came from the direction of the hotel, and Grace quickly ran to the door. She peered through the rain, saw movement just inside the generator shed, and started running toward it.
As she got closer, she could see more clearly that Ian was struggling with another man. Ian was holding the man’s wrist over their heads. Then she saw that the other guy was holding a gun. As she approached the shed, Grace frantically scanned the area for a weapon—a stick or a shovel or anything other than her bare hands. She saw nothing and decided that if she could just get close enough, she could kick Ian’s assailant in the shins with her ice creepers, which would distract him enough for Ian to overpower him.
But as she stepped into the shed, an arm came around her waist and lifted her off the ground. A hand covered her mouth at the same time, muffling her scream of surprise.
Chaos erupted as the small area filled with men, all of them scrambling in every direction. Grace flinched when a gunshot suddenly cracked through the shed, reverberating off the granite stones in deafening echoes. Grace screamed again into the hand over her mouth and lashed out with both feet as she watched Ian fall to the floor.
She was whirled around and slammed into the wall, the breath knocked out of her. Her assailant grabbed her hands, turned her to face him, and roughly wrapped duct tape around her wrists.
“Jesus Christ, Frank,” the man who’d fought Ian said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You could have helped. The bastard is stronger than he looks,” he added, kicking Ian, who lay crumpled on the floor.
Grace could see blood seeping from Ian’s forehead and the corner of his mouth. She threw herself at him, but the man named Frank caught her and shoved her back against the wall. He roughly slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth before she could protest. Grace kicked him as hard as she could in the shin.
With an angry curse, Frank drove his shoulder into her stomach and lifted her over his back. He turned, whirling her yet again, and Grace feared she would throw up and choke to death on her gag.
“Wayne, grab Stanhope, and let’s get the hell out of here,” Frank said, walking around the large generator in the middle of the shed and heading out the back door. “Tom, did you get that snowcat running? Where the hell is it?”
Grace lifted her head and saw Jonathan being hauled to his feet, bound and gagged. Jonathan’s assailant, Wayne, picked him up by the shoulder and shoved him toward the woods in Grace’s wake. The other man, Tom, held the gun that was still smoking from the heat of being fired.
Tom was the man who had shot Ian.
But Ian wasn’t dead. She knew he wasn’t. He had opened one eye just a slit and nodded his head slightly just before Frank had carried her out the back door.
Bless Ian. He knew he was no match for three men, two of whom had guns. He was playing possum and would go for help if he had to crawl to the hotel on his hands and knees.
Grace heard the snowcat’s idling engine before she saw it. Frank had carried her a ways through the woods up the mountain behind the hotel. Tom had jogged ahead and was already waiting at the snowcat, holding the door open while Frank unceremoniously shoved her into the backseat. Jonathan came barreling in beside her and was shoved up against her. Wayne followed him inside and finished filling the backseat, crushing Grace against the far wall with enough force to make breathing through only her nose nearly impossible.
Frank sat on the passenger side, and Tom climbed into the driver’s seat and sent the snowcat growling forward before his door was shut. Frank reached into his jacket, pulled out a map, and studied it.
Grace lifted her bound hands and carefully pulled the duct tape off her mouth, working her jaw and running her tongue over her lips to feel for missing skin. She looked at Jonathan. He was staring at her over his own gag of duct tape, his left eye swollen nearly shut, his nose bleeding, and his one undamaged eye leaking tears as he fought for breath.
Grace gently worked the duct tape from his mouth. Wayne tried to push her hands away with the barrel of his gun, but Grace refused to let go of the tape and ended up ripping it from Jonathan’s lips.