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Trembling and indignant that whoever this fucker was had scared me all over again, I told Mum about the other letters.
She marched across the room to grab her purse. “Put on your shoes, now.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to the police station.” Mum’s voice shook as she crossed the room to get my shoes from the front door for me. “Now, Cameron.”
Seeing how worried she was weirdly soothed me. “Okay.”
“And call Forde. He’ll want to know right away.”
I nodded, wishing so much I didn’t have to ruin his day with this rubbish.
If I ever found out who was sending these letters, I was going to make them pay for adding this strife to our lives.
Part Three
34. Forde
Cameron drove us over the bridge to Scaris, the Scotch thistles that gave the island its nickname the Isle of Thistles, blooming in abundance along the coast. They flourished around the rocky soiled beds, especially upon the approach over the bridge.
The bridge had been built in the 1930s to provide easy access to Scaris from the mainland and there used to be a toll on it. I’d visited the island a few times over the years but not since the Montrose brothers bought a huge swath of land on the southwest coast. It had been for sale for years before they decided to invest in it.
There were already signposts up for the whisky distillery. Since there were two other much older distilleries on the island, and the name Scaris had been taken for the oldest of the three, Torin and his brothers had named the distillery after the area it was in: Achnavaig Whisky.
“It’s not open to the public yet,” Cameron relayed as she saw me glancing down the turnoff for it. “It sits right on the water in Achnavaig. There’s nothing else there but the distillery.”
I nodded, sitting back and enjoying the scenery.
It had been two weeks since Cameron had received her own letter from my creepy wee stalker. Just a few days ago, we received word that the police found the same fingerprints on the letters, but they weren’t in the system, bringing us back to zero. There hadn’t been a letter since, and we’d been distracted by the constant speculation and gossip regarding our relationship. We couldn’t go anywhere on the island together without feeling like we were under a microscope.
Torin had come upon us during such an occasion at the Lantern and as an apology for deliberately winding us up the last time he was in the pub, he offered us two nights in his new hotel before it opened.
Cameron wanted to check on the lodges she’d helped design anyway, and I wanted some time with her where we didn’t feel like we were being watched. Now I knew how Quinn and Taran had felt two years ago when the folks of Leth Sholas treated their reunion like their favorite fucking soap opera.
Cameron hit her indicator and turned down a narrow road on the left. Soon the road opened into two newly tarmacked lanes that were surrounded by woodland. “The guys cleared a proper road through the trees to get to the resort,” she explained. “In there somewhere is part of their adventure park. There’s a massive assault course, zip lining, paintball, and all that kind of stuff. It doesn’t open until next spring.”
“We should come back then too.”
Cameron grinned. “I’m up for that.”
I knew she would be. It was one of the reasons she was perfect for me. I reached to smooth a hand over her jeans-clad thigh. She didn’t object when I kept it there.
“Holy shit,” I murmured a few seconds later as the woods cleared to reveal the hotel sitting on the shore.
It wasn’t what I’d been expecting.
“Modern Scandinavian,” Cameron offered quietly as I took it in.
Whatever it was, it was impressive.
It was T-shaped and clad in black-fired wood contrasted with windows framed in a warmer cedar cladding. They’d built it into the surrounding hill at one side and then part of it projected out toward the water as close to the coast as they could get it on steel stilts.
“You can’t see it, but the room that projects out is the dining room, and it’s one massive windowpane with this phenomenal view over the water. You feel like you’re on a boat.”
“I can’t wait to see it.”
There was a generous landscaped car park down from the entrance. I told Cameron I’d get the luggage. As I rounded it to grab my hold-all and Cameron’s small carry-on, I heard her call out to someone. A woman had appeared at the hotel entrance and was waving to us. By the time I approached, Cameron had already hugged the stranger. It took me a second to pay attention to her because the double entrance doors had to be about fourteen feet tall. Everything about the place seemed oversized. It was about making a statement.
