Noah laughed. “Bitching cold? That doesn’t sound like fun to me.”
“It’s actually exhilarating. It’s a beautiful nook just north of Inverness. Donal wants to retire there.” He looked at Samuel and said. “I doubt he knows I’ve been shot.”
“We’ll tell him,” Samuel assured.
Wanting him to concentrate on what had happened, Nick pressed on. “Do you remember a flash drive?”
“A what?”
“A flash drive,” Nick repeated. “We think you had it in your hand and that you put it in Isabel’s pocket.”
“You had a gun in your other hand,” Samuel said.
“The weapon wasn’t mine,” Walsh said. Frowning as though unsure of what he had just declared, he asked, “Was it?”
“No, it wasn’t,” Noah said.
“You were shot twice while you wrestled with him to get his gun away. It’s possible that, somewhere in that struggle, you got the flash drive from him,” Samuel said.
“And then you got up and staggered around the corner while you were losing copious amounts of blood,” Noah added. “We know that’s a fact because you left a blood trail.”
Walsh grimaced.
“You really don’t remember getting shot twice?” Samuel couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea of someone losing all memory of such a traumatic event.
“It’s coming back, but it’s hazy . . . except Grace Isabel MacKenna. I see her as clear as ever. I don’t know why.”
“Maybe because she saved your ass,” Noah said.
Samuel pulled out his phone. “I’m going to show you a video. Hopefully watching it will jar your memory.”
Opening the video on his phone, he held it so that Walsh could get a clear view. Walsh watched intently, flinching when he saw himself fall into Isabel’s arms. The entire video lasted less than a minute, and after it ended he asked Samuel to play it again. At the spot where the assailant rounded the corner and Isabel shot him, he asked Samuel to pause the action. This time he sat forward and studied the screen.
“That’s not him,” he stated.
“What do you mean it’s not him?” Nick asked.
“That’s not the man I was fighting. I remember now. The man I took down had red hair. It was the color you don’t often see, and I guess that’s why it stuck in my mind. This is some other guy.”
“And you’ve never seen this man before?” Samuel asked.
“No.”
“Was there anyone else around when you first saw the man going after Grace?”
“I don’t think so. He seemed to just step out of the shadows. Maybe there was an alley. I don’t recall.”
Samuel turned to Nick and Noah. “Isabel said she saw a redheaded man at a distance. None of the witnesses saw him, so I was certain she just imagined him, or he was a bystander who didn’t want to get involved. I should have dug deeper.”
“So the man Isabel shot was not the man Walsh took down,” Noah said.
“Apparently not,” Samuel admitted. “There were two coming for her.”
Nick’s reaction to the news was a mixture of anger and worry. “And that means one is still out there.”
? ? ?
AS SOON AS THEY WALKED OUT OF WALSH’S ROOM, SAMUEL HEADED BACK TO HIS OFFICE TO
begin the hunt for the second man. Nick turned to Noah. “We need to talk to Gladstone.”
They went into an empty waiting room, and Noah shut the door for privacy. It didn’t take long for Nick to get Gladstone’s office and home numbers. Checking his watch, he calculated it was late
afternoon in Scotland, and he made a call to the solicitor’s office.
A woman with a thick brogue answered. “Mr. Gladstone is just finishing up with a client. Would you like to wait on the line, or may he call you back?”
Nick wasn’t in the mood to be patient. “This is Special Agent Nick Buchanan, FBI. It’s important I speak to Mr. Gladstone now.”
“Oh,” the woman said, as though startled by the authority in his voice. “I’ll just put you through.”
A few seconds later Gladstone was on the line. Nick introduced himself and then Noah.
“We have you on speaker,” he explained.
“Two FBI agents. What is this about?” Gladstone asked.
“Detective Craig Walsh,” Nick answered.
“What’s happened? Is Craig all right?”
“He will be,” Noah said. He then told him about the shooting and explained that Walsh had only just awakened. “His memory is still cloudy.”