“Oh, sure, until they come alive in the middle of the night and try to kill you.”
She frowned. “I hate when that happens.”
“Should we start back?”
“Do you want to walk up to the castle?” Robin asked as we headed west. “I still need to walk off dinner.”
“Sure.” It was a beautiful night, cold but not unbearable, and I didn’t want to go back to the hotel just yet.
“We can stop at a few pubs for a nightcap or two,” she added.
“That’s why I love you,” I said, weaving our arms together and pulling us to a stop at the red light.
“Well, we are in Scotland, after all,” Robin said. “Home of the best pubs in the world, filled with hardy, handsome hunks in kilts who drink Scotch all night and play rugby all day. That takes balls, you know. Big ones, made of leather.”
“And we’re back to our theme of the night,” I said with a laugh, then shivered from a cold waft of air that swept up South Bridge.
Robin continued singing the praises of hunky Scotsmen, but I tuned out as a sudden stinging awareness told me that someone was watching us. I’d felt that same eerie sensation once before, in San Francisco after Abraham was murdered. I’d brushed it off then, to my detriment. Now, after another murder and a day of near misses, I wasn’t quite ready to dismiss it.
I glanced around but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. People walked the streets, going from here to there, minding their own business. A group of college boys whooped it up outside a record store across the street. None of them cast a menacing scowl my way.
But there were shadows and dark alleyways everywhere along the Royal Mile. Was someone hiding, waiting, planning?
Beside me, Robin was humming and swaying to some internal groove, daydreaming of men in kilts, oblivious to any danger lurking nearby.
So okay, maybe it was my imagination. Let’s face it, I was slightly tanked and still on edge from the attack at the library earlier. And these narrow, cobbled streets of Old Town naturally conjured up ghosts and spirits and evildoers where there was really nothing, nothing but the whispers and sighs of the soft winds that wafted up the myriad lanes and passageways leading to the High Street.
Uh-oh. I was waxing poetic, and that was never a good sign. I shivered again, grabbed my gloves and put them on, then rubbed my hands together to warm up.
When the light turned green, I breathed a sigh of relief and stepped off the curb. A black car came screeching toward me.
“No!” Robin screamed, and yanked my arm. I fell backward and landed right on my ass. Again. Pain shot up my spine and I groaned as I lay back on the sidewalk.
The car roared away down North Bridge toward the New Town and disappeared. He never even slowed down.
“Damn, that hurt,” I muttered, staring up at the sky, trying to figure out why this kind of thing kept happening to me.
“ Brooklyn?” Robin called out. Seconds later, her face appeared in my line of vision. “Are you okay? Did you see that? The guy didn’t even stop. Are you hurt? Can you talk? Oh, my God, please say something.”
“I’ll live,” I managed to say. But my butt was going to be bruised.
I heard footsteps running toward me. “Are ye all right, miss?”
I tried to focus as another pair of eyes stared down at me.
“Tommy?”
“Aye, it’s me,” said my cute, would-be kidnapper from this afternoon. “And the slightest bit too late coming, I see.”
“Excuse me, but who’re you?” Robin demanded, then looked back at me. “Who is he?”
“Long story,” I muttered.
“Are ye all right then, love?” Tommy repeated.
“Have you been following us?”
He ignored my question as he crouched down and slipped his warm hand behind my neck. “Let me help you up, miss.”
“We haven’t met,” Robin interrupted, holding out her hand to the handsome gunman.
Tommy, always polite, pulled his hand out from under my neck and stood to shake Robin’s. That was okay; my head barely bounced more than once on the hard cobbled surface.
“Tommy, meet Robin,” I said, waving in the air to introduce them. “Robin, Tommy.” It was about all I could manage between moans, what with my head reverberating from hitting the pavement.
“Pleasure to meet you, Robin,” he said with enthusiasm, then remembered his duty and knelt down on one knee, attentive once more. “Did you happen to get a good look at the car, miss?”
“My name’s Brooklyn, by the way.”
He smiled and took my hand in his. “’Tis a lovely name.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“The car, dear,” he reminded me gently. “Did you see it?”
“It was big and black, with tinted windows. Looked like a Mercedes.”
“No particular markings?”