Page 29 of A Scot on the Rocks

Water burst through a crack overhead before Olivia could answer.

Calum lunged and caught her by the upper arm, hauling her sideways as a chunk of loose stone struck the floor where she’d been standing. Mud splashed up her pants, and something glanced off the side of her hard hat before her shoulder slammed painfully into the wall.

For one disorienting instant, she smelled the pub back in Boston. The old beer soaked into the floorboards. Grandma Bennett’s lemon soap. Fryer oil from the kitchen. Rain cooling the brick. Then the scents vanished beneath peat smoke and damp stone.

Olivia opened her eyes to see that the old woman had moved closer.

“Ye may step back or forward. Choose.”

Olivia stared at her, her shoulder throbbing where it had hit the wall. “What does that mean?”

The faintest curve touched the woman’s mouth, and for reasons Olivia couldn’t explain, that annoyed her more than the vanished tunnel entrance.

The woman lifted one hand. Somewhere beyond her, stone groaned deep inside the hill.

Calum shouted Olivia’s name. She glanced toward him for no more than a second, and when she looked back, the old woman was gone.

“Olivia!”

Calum caught her sleeve just as the tunnel shuddered again, the walls shook and his hand slipped from her arm.

A sound split the darkness ahead of them, sharp and deep, as stone shifted against stone.

“Olivia, hurry, the opening is up ahead. I can see it now. We’re almost there. Keep going.”

She could hear Calum yelling, but he sounded so very far away.

Then light appeared. It began as a pale line where no opening had been before and widened slowly between the rocks until daylight spilled into the passage. It wasn’t the cold white glare of the restoration lamps. This light was soft and yellow beneath clearing clouds, the kind that came after a heavy rain when the sun found a break along the horizon. Smoke drifted through it.

“Do you see that?” she asked.

Calum didn’t answer, and when she turned toward where he’d been standing, he was gone.

Her stomach dropped so violently that for a second she thought she might be sick.

“Calum?”

He was gone. “Calum!”

The passage was empty. There was no sign of his orange safety vest. No radio static or the sound of his boots scraping through the mud. Nothing.

She looked toward the opening. Another crack sounded overhead, followed by the rattle of small stones striking the ground.

Whatever explanation existed for any of this, she wasn’t going to find it while standing in a tunnel that was about to collapse.

Olivia ran, boots sliding in the mud as she pushed toward the light, one hand catching the wall whenever the floor shifted beneath her. As she drew closer to the opening, the air changed. The smell of wet grass, woodsmoke, peat, horses, and sheep filled her senses.

Olivia stumbled and caught herself. The absence of familiar smells struck her almost as strongly as the new ones. No diesel from the restoration vehicles. No exhaust drifting up from the road, and no coffee from one of the workman who drank it all day long.

The tunnel groaned again as Olivia ran the last few yards. She caught her right boot in a muddy rut beyond the opening, and fell hard onto both knees in wet grass.

For several seconds she stayed where she was, breathing through the ache in her shoulder while cold water soaked into her gloves.

The storm had passed.

Olivia slowly lifted her head. The hills rolled green beneath a clearing sky, heather darkening the upper slopes, rainwater shining in puddles. Dunarraidh still rose above the glen, the shape of the land so familiar after weeks of walking the lands that for one brief hopeful instant she thought whatever had happened in the tunnel had left the world unchanged.

But no one was waiting for her. No Fiona or Calum. The restoration scaffolding was gone. So was the temporary fencing, the gravel access road, the parked vans, the modern outbuildings, and the distillery itself.