Page 97 of Highland Spy

Ariana’s hands balled into fists at her side. “Did you have to kill her, too?”

Footsteps sounded on stone nearby. Someone was coming.

A flicker of panic flared within Connor. He shot his hand out toward her and caught her arm. “I dinna kill either of them. We need to go.”

The shuffle of footsteps was coming closer.

“Get out of here.” His voice came out in a growl in his desperation. “Get out of here and pretend like ye never came in here to start with.”

He shoved her toward the door, but did not move to follow her. He intended to stay. He would face the repercussions of murder—ironically for people he hadn’t killed.

Ariana hesitated and he could see loyalty and fear warring on her lovely face—the shift of her gaze from him to where Lady MacAlister lay on the bed.

A door creaked open and it took Connor a moment to realize it was not the locked door at the front of the room, but a concealed partition in the wall shifting outward.

A hidden door.

They were both caught.

Ariana’s hesitation had cost her freedom.

Connor moved to stand in front of Ariana and faced the woman who pushed her way into the room.

A tall, graceful woman with brilliant red hair regarded him with a note of noble disinterest, leaving him to wonder who the hell she was and why she was in there.

• • •

They were killers and they would die.

Together.

Ariana had heard the footsteps approach, and while she appreciated Connor’s attempt to protect her, she would not allow him to take the burden alone.

After all, it was she who’d told him Lady MacAlister would eventually be there. It was she who had put both people at risk.

The realization churned sourly in her gut.

She hadn’t understood how much danger she’d placed them in. She hadn’t known Connor’s intent wasn’t to get information on MacAlister.

It was to kill.

The very action which had left Ariana horrified the day before when she’d taken the life of the guard, he was doing it now. Willingly.

What was worse, he continued to deny to her he’d even done it.

And she did not believe him.

Connor.

The man she trusted and let love her the previous night.

A murderer.

No longer could she consider herself a spy helping a good cause. She had been assisting a murderer. A man she had trusted to be good and just, a man she had thought she loved.

A man she had given her virginity to and whose quiet anger she had endured afterward. And now Lady MacAlister, a woman who had offered her kindness, was dead.

Her nose tingled with the burn of impending tears, but she willed them away.