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There were no power lines crossing the valley. No roofs of sheet metal or slate where the warehouses had stood.

Olivia pushed herself carefully to her feet. Water dripped from the hem of her jacket, and mud streaked both knees. Her shoulder ached where she’d crashed into the wall.

She turned in a slow circle. The quiet made her skin prickle. Where was everyone? Had she gotten turned around and come out a different entrance? The only sounds were the wind moving through the wet grass and, farther down the slope, the bleating of sheep. Beyond her stood Dunarraidh Castle.

Olivia knew the ruins well enough now that she could have drawn the surviving walls from memory. She knew the broken tower, the open section where one side of the roof had vanished, and the footprint of the south wing where archaeologists believed several rooms had remained habitable longer than the rest.

Smoke was rising from that wing. A lower outbuilding had new thatch instead of moss and collapsed rafters, and beneath the castle a narrow track wound through the wet ground where the access road should have been.

Two shaggy ponies moved along it carrying casks wrapped in rough wool.

A rider followed behind them as Olivia stood absolutely still.

“I must have gotten turned around. There has to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this.”

Her voice sounded small in the open glen.

She reached automatically for her phone, but the pocket was empty. Olivia checked the other pocket, then the one inside her jacket, though she already knew what she would find.

She searched them all again. Her flashlight was gone as well, along with the hard hat and the quaich. Great, just great. She’d lost the most important find, the smell that would have helped her recreate the infamous lost whisky and cement her reputation in the industry. Fiona would probably fire her and move on to consultant number nine.

A gas leak in the tunnel could have caused her confusion, though it didn’t explain the lack of roads. A blow to the head might explain the hallucination.

There could be some kind of historical reenactment happening on the property, but Fiona would have mentioned closing the entire distillery, dismantling the power grid, and removing several buildings.

Olivia looked again at the smoke rising from Dunarraidh. Her head hurt. Head injury was currently winning by default.

A horse whinnied somewhere below. The rider on the track had seen her. He pulled his horse around with ease and started uphill at a fast trot.

She remained where she was, partly because running seemed unwise and partly because she had no idea where she’d go. The tunnel behind her no longer looked like the passage she’d entered and the valley below looked totally different. Maybe this guy could explain where she was and how to get back to the distillery.

As the rider came closer, Olivia began noticing details she couldn’t explain.

The horse’s dark coat was wet from the rain and darker beneath the saddle, its tack worn where years of use had polished the leather. The man riding it wore a plaid across his body, mud on his boots, and a dark coat that had been cut for warmth and movement rather than appearance. His hair, almost black where the rain had darkened it, brushed his shoulders, and when he lifted his face she caught a glimpse of green eyes beneath dark brows. The sword at his side was too heavy and too scratched to be decorative.

He looked cold, suspicious, physically capable, and thoroughly at home. The man slowed the horse several yards away.

His gaze moved over her face first, then the waterproof jacket and the pants. Then his attention dropped to her boots.

“Stad an sin,” he called out.

She shook her head. Some of the workers at the distillery had the Gaelic as they called it, so she recognized the sounds if not the words. “I don’t speak Gaelic. English?”

He cocked his head then nodded. “Stop there,” he said, switching to English.

The accent was rougher than the ones she heard every day at the distillery, but the words were clear enough.

Olivia stared at him while the horse stamped one forefoot into the wet ground and blew a pale breath into the cool air.

Some exhausted corner of her mind decided that if this man tried to steal her boots, she was going to hit him with a rock.

His eyes lifted back to her face. One hand rested close to the sword at his side.

“Who are ye?”

Olivia looked at the mud on his boots, the plaid, the horse, and the casks moving slowly along the track below. Then she looked past him toward Dunarraidh, where smoke continued to rise from rooms that had been roofless when she’d gone underground.

She’d spent her career trusting what her senses told her, even when the answer didn’t make sense.