Page 28 of A Scot on the Rocks

The gray daylight should have been less than twenty yards in front of them. Fiona should have been standing somewhere beyond the lintel, yelling at them to hurry up, probably glaring at her watch. Olivia should have been able to see the restoration lights, the orange safety barriers, the gravel yard, and the pale blur of rain beyond them.

Instead her headlamp struck a wall of dark rock. There wasn’t any opening, no fallen debris or visible collapse. Only solid stone where the tunnel had been moments earlier.

Calum moved first, pushing past her and running both hands over the wall.

“What the hell?”

Olivia followed, the quaich still clutched against her palm.

“There was an opening here.”

“I know.”

He turned toward her, breathing faster now. “Where did it go?”

Olivia didn’t know, and that frightened her far more than she wanted him to see.

Her headlamp flickered. The beam dimmed, recovered, and dimmed again as Olivia froze.

Calum reached for the radio clipped to his vest.

“Fiona?”

Static snapped through the tunnel.

He pressed the button again. “Fiona, come in.”

Nothing answered except another burst of static.

Olivia pulled her phone from the inside pocket of her jacket to see that the screen was black. She pressed the side button once, waited, then pressed it again.

Nothing. The battery had been at eighty-seven percent when she checked it outside. She held the button down.

“Come on.”

Beside her, Calum tried the radio again, his voice louder now.

“Fiona, do you read?”

But there was nothing but static.

Olivia stared at the dead phone in her palm. Her headlamp was battery powered, the phone was battery powered, and Calum’s radio was battery powered. All three had failed within seconds.

“This isn’t possible.”

The old woman stood where she’d been before, calm amid the dark stone and falling water, and as Olivia looked at her, tiny points of light appeared deep within the folds of her cloak.

She’d noticed them in the cemetery and convinced herself afterward that they were beads, rain, sunlight on wet fibers, anything ordinary. There was no sunlight underground to make anything sparkle. Maybe being trapped underground was making her hallucinate?

“The past isna dead, lass,” the woman said. “It waits.”

Olivia swallowed. “For what?”

The woman held her gaze.

“For ye.”

“Olivia?” Calum’s face was pale. “Who the bloody hell are ye talking to?”