Death of an Adept

Chapter Thirty

ADAM woke the next morning with the previous night's revelations still heavy on his mind, but he did his best to maintain a cheery facade over breakfast with Ximena. With their wedding celebration now but a week away, and today the first full day the two of them had been able to spend together for most of the previous week, he was determined not to dampen the day's pleasures by interjecting any reminders of the past week's stresses. Lightly brushing off Ximena's inquiry about his progress with McFarlane's dream journal, he made casual admission that he had, indeed, found a few items of interest and planned to stop by McLeod's office briefly on their way home to pass on the information, but he would not let himself be drawn further.

It was not that Adam doubted her ability to cope with at least a superficial explanation of what was taking shape. In light of their recent experiences with the Hand of Glory, he knew Ximena was unlikely to question Raeburn's potential to wreak material havoc through supernatural means. At the same time, until he had consulted with his Second and engaged his help in communicating directly with the spirit of Andrew Kerr, there seemed little point in revealing the seriousness of Raeburn's threat until he had some idea how to deal with it. The knowledge that Imbolc was the first likely target date for Rae-burn to act lent further justification for keeping silent.

They set out for the city shortly after nine o'clock, with Humphrey at the wheel of the Bentley and McFarlane's journal locked in the boot in Adam's briefcase. Then, while Adam stopped in at the hospital for a scheduled consultation with a senior staff member, Humphrey escorted Ximena on into the city center to do some shopping in Prince's Street.

They rendezvoused for an intimate lunch at the Caledonian. Only when Ximena shrugged off her coat did Adam realize she was dressed in the same cream ensemble she had worn on Christmas Eve, a touching reminder of the commitment they had made and would be affirming publicly in only a week's time - and an indication of his own preoccupation that he had not noticed earlier. Lingering over a fine meal and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, her hand in his, he made a special effort to set aside the tension of the past week and more, if only for a few hours.

The moment lingered as Humphrey drove them to their appointment with the engraver, a colleague of Lady Julian's who maintained a small studio and art gallery in Portobello, a quiet suburb to the east of the city itself. Though Julian herself had designed and fashioned their wedding rings, she lacked the equipment needed to do the very fine engraving required for the insides of the bands. There were no parking spaces on the road in front of the gallery, so Humphrey was obliged to pull the Bentley into a restricted zone around the corner on an adjoining side street.

"You'd better wait here with the car, just in case there's a traffic warden prowling around," Adam told Humphrey. "We shouldn't be very long."

The proprietor was expecting them, and had the rings ready for their inspection. The style Ximena had chosen for the inscription was a delicate copperplate match for the one used on the wedding invitations.

"Very nice indeed," Adam said to the engraver. "I must thank Lady Julian for referring us to you."

He settled the account and slipped the ring box into his coat pocket. They lingered a few minutes to admire some of the sculpture on display in the gallery itself before taking their leave. The number of people in the street had dwindled and the streetlights had come on, prompted by the gathering gloom of the January dusk. Ximena checked her watch and clucked her tongue.

"I still can't get over how early it gets dark in Scotland in the wintertime," she said with a sigh. "It's only half past four, but it looks more like half past eight."

"It's these northerly latitudes - too near the Arctic Circle,"

Adam said with a grin. "If it's any consolation, just remember how long the days are in the summertime."

Ximena turned up her collar with an exaggerated shiver.

"Now I know why groundhogs hibernate! Sometimes I wonder if maybe we shouldn't think about deferring the wedding till June, when we can celebrate with an all-night garden party."

Adam maintained a straight face. "If that's what you really want. But I think it only fair to warn you that we shall be a scandal to polite society in the meantime."

"Perish the thought!" Ximena said with a roll of her eyes. "No, we've done enough shilly-shallying already - and I don't think I could keep up this pretext of only being engaged for much longer. Like the U.S. Postal Service, we must keep to our existing schedule, come rain, snow, sleet, hail, or any other adverse weather condition!"

"Far be it from me to contradict!" Adam retorted with a chuckle.

They carried on downhill past an array of parked cars. A stepped close opened up to their right, its cobbles overshadowed by the buildings flanking it on either hand. Several yards further on, Ximena paused to admire a Victorian doll house on display in the cluttered window of an antique shop. Adam was about to suggest that they should be moving on, blowing on gloved hands and shifting from foot to foot against the cold, when the street reflections on the glass in front of him registered a flash of movement rushing up on him from behind.

Before he could turn or cry out, his masked attacker rammed him hard in the back. His forehead hit the plate-glass window with stunning force, and a muscular arm simultaneously caught him round the neck in a throttling choke-hold, jerking him backward.

Ducking and throwing himself forward, Adam tried to buck his assailant over his head, but only succeeded in tightening the stranglehold. Still struggling, he managed to gasp out, "Run, Ximena!"

It had all happened in the space of a few heartbeats. Even as Ximena was drawing breath to scream, drawing back her arm to clout Adam's attacker with her shoulder bag, two more masked figures darted forward from between two parked cars.

One of them made a lunge for Ximena; the other flung himself at Adam. As the combined weight of his two assailants crowded him against the wall, a gloved hand clapped a damp pad of cloth over his mouth and nose.

Adam recoiled, but not before he had inadvertently taken in a gulping lungful of chloroform. His stomach lurched and his eyes swam. He tried to hold his breath, making a sickly, frantic attempt to twist away, but powerful hands were locked around his wrists, and he could feel the first effects of the chloroform already eroding his coordination.

A sharp blow to his solar plexus drove the air from his lungs in a sharp whoof! Reflex made him draw another gasping breath, despite his determination not to, and further resistance began to drain away like water from a sieve as his captors began hustling him toward the curb.

Meanwhile, Ximena's attacker had one arm twisted behind her and was attempting the same procedure that had felled Adam. Squealing and twisting, she jammed a high heel into her adversary's instep with all the force and weight she could muster. His grip loosened and he reared back with a pungent curse. Before he could regain control of her, she wriggled loose and screamed for help, for Adam was sagging limply between his two assailants, being dragged into the street.

Her cry raised shouts of alarm from farther down the block, but her attacker lunged after her, catching her by the sleeve and whirling her around, dealing her a backhand blow to the side of the head. The force of it, plus her own efforts to escape, knocked her spinning into a puddle on the pavement and left her assailant with only a handful of overcoat to show for his labors. Even as she scrambled backwards out of reach, frantic over what was happening to Adam, an anonymous black Edinburgh taxi came swooping down on them and screeched to a halt at the curb.

The driver threw open the back door and barked an order to hurry up. Adam's assailants were already stuffing his sagging body unceremoniously onto the floor of the back seat, scrambling in behind. Abandoning Ximena, the third man ran to yank the front passenger door open, vaulting in even as the back door closed and the driver mashed the accelerator, barely managing to close his own door as the taxi roared away in a cloud of diesel smoke.

Stunned by the suddenness of it, and the blow to her head, Ximena could only insist to herself numbly that this could not possibly be happening, as the first of several would-be rescuers came running up and helped her stagger shakily to her feet. She answered the ensuing flurry of questions as best she could, but her mind seemed all at once benumbed. Only when Humphrey came rushing to join them did her focus return, and she choked back the sob rising up in her throat as she seized his arm.

"Humphrey, call Noel McLeod, before you do anything else," she said in a surprisingly calm voice. "Adam's been kidnapped."

McLeod was sitting at his computer console, working on a routine press release, when his telephone rang. Expecting word that Adam had arrived for their promised meeting, he was surprised to hear Humphrey's voice instead. Surprise yielded to shock when Adam's butler informed him of what had just occurred.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you much more, sir," Humphrey insisted, in response to McLeod's blurted demand for details. "I was waiting around the corner with the car, so I only caught a glimpse of the taxi racing by, just after I heard Dr. Lockhart scream. We've two beat officers here now, and they've called in for support, but Dr. Lockhart instructed me get in touch with you directly."

"Is she all right?"

"She took a nasty fall, and I believe she has a few bruises and abrasions, but she insists that it can wait until she's given her statement. One of the officers is with her now."

"I'll be there as soon as is humanly possible," McLeod assured him, grabbing a pen and pulling a notepad closer. "What's your location?"

Humphrey gave him the address.

"I've got it," McLeod muttered, jotting it down and then copying it a second time onto the bottom half of the paper. "Whatever you do, don't let Dr. Lockhart out of your sight until I can get there. And tell her to try not to worry. We'll find him - no matter what it takes."

A bellow out the door of his office summoned Donald Cochrane on the run. As McLeod tore his note in two and handed half to his aide, he minced no words in acquainting Cochrane with the bare bones of the situation.

"Adam Sinclair's been kidnapped," he said bluntly, as he pulled on his coat. "That's where it happened. They'll call in bigger guns than me to handle this, as soon as the word gets out, but I want to be the one to handle the preliminary investigation. Tell anyone else who wants to know that I'm on my way to the scene."

"Do you want me to drive you, sir?"

"No, I need you to anchor for me at this end. I'll take Gilston. For starters, I want you to notify Adam's mother. She isn't at Strathmourne; she's staying with a Lady Julian Brodie, here in the city. You'll find the address and number in my files, under fi for Brodie."

"Will do," Cochrane agreed, scribbling a notation. "Anything else?"

"Aye, get onto press relations and alert them to what's happened. This won't make the evening papers, but the TV folk will be all over us as soon as word gets out. Tell McDade I'll ring him with an official statement as soon as I know more. Then just stand by."

Knowing he could trust Cochrane to follow through, with no questions asked, McLeod grabbed up his hat and overcoat, collected P. C. Gilston from the outer office, and within minutes was striking out eastwards across the city in a raucous blare of sirens and emergency lights. Three uniformed officers were in attendance when they arrived, two of them protecting the crime scene. The third was taking a statement from one of the men who had tried to come to Ximena's rescue.

"DCI McLeod," the inspector said, displaying his warrant card to the first officer he approached. "Where's Dr. Lock-hart?"

"Over in the squad car, sir."

McLeod was already headed in that direction, for he had spotted Humphrey leaning down to talk to someone sitting inside the car. At the inspector's approach, Humphrey turned, a look of profound relief on his face.

"She says she's all right, sir, but I really think she ought to be checked over," he told McLeod. "She took a couple of nasty whacks to the head."

Ximena was huddled miserably under a tartan rug that McLeod recognized as belonging in the Bentley, which was now double-parked behind the squad car. Her face was very pale, and a bruise was beginning to show on her right cheek.

"Noel, oh thank God!" she exclaimed, sitting up with a start as he opened the back door of the car. "Tell me you know who did this - or rather, tell me you don't know."

"I have a pretty fair idea," he acknowledged bleakly, crouching down on his hunkers. "But before I let you in on my suspicions, I'd like you to tell me everything you can about what happened."

Ximena nodded numbly, drawing the tartan rug closer around her with a shiver. "It happened so fast," she murmured. "They seemed to come out of nowhere. I think they stunned Adam when they slammed him into the plate-glass window." She gestured vaguely toward the front of the antique store. "They were dressed all in black, and wearing gloves and ski masks, so I couldn't make out anything of their faces. When they grabbed Adam, they clapped a cloth over his nose and mouth. They tried the same thing on me, but I managed to get away. It was chloroform, Noel. They had this planned."

The remainder of her account only served to confirm McLeod's worst fears.

"I expect they've been tailing him for some time, waiting for their chance," he observed grimly. "And today was a bonus, because they might have got the two of you at once - followed you to the engraver's studio, where there weren't apt to be as many people around, then set themselves up to jump you when you came out.

"After that, I'm afraid the pattern is all too familiar. I don't think there's any doubt that the man we want is an old adversary by the name of Francis Raeburn. We've been after him for some time, but by God, I intend to nail him this time."

Philippa met them a short time later in the casualty department of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, while they waited for Ximena's skull films to come back. She, too, was looking pale and shaken; and McLeod was not surprised to see that she was wearing the heavy scarab ring of gold and sapphire which symbolized her Adeptship.

"I suppose we should have expected something like this, after that attempt on Peregrine and Julia," she told Ximena grimly, "but somehow we all must have thought Adam would be immune to such a direct attack."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Ximena asked.

Philippa passed a hand across her brow. All at once she looked every one of her seventy-seven years.

"It means," she said with bleak candor, "that we have every reason to fear for my son's life."