Skye fall, p.1
Skye Fall, page 1
Cover images: Woman © by Coffee And Milk, iStockphotography.com; Castle in Scotland © by Denisa V., Shutter Stock.
Cover design by Christina Marcano © 2023 by Covenant Communications, Inc.
Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.
American Fork, Utah
Copyright © 2023 by Paige Edwards
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., PO Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Covenant Communications, Inc., or any other entity. This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Paige Edwards
Title: Skye Fall / Paige Edwards
Description: American Fork, UT : Covenant Communications, Inc. [2023]
Identifiers: Library of Congress Control Number 2023934071 | ISBN 978-1-52442-458-9
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023934071
First Printing: October 2023
For Angela Carreen
Acknowledgments
Some books take extra time and research. Skye Fall definitely belongs in that category. Special thanks to Deputy Steven Curtis for his expertise on all things law enforcement and introducing me to the National and Global Shield Network, to Melody Williams for her additional policing input, and to A. L. Sowards and Kathi Oram Petersen for their insight on this manuscript. To Ellie Whitney—dear friend and critique partner—and Cassie Shiels—beta reader extraordinaire. To my critique group, Ellie Whitney, Traci Abramson, Kyla Beecroft, and Kori Pratt, for early input on the manuscript. To my amazing street team, you ladies are true gems! Your dedication to clean and wholesome fiction continually inspires me.
To my husband, Ladd, who encourages me on this writing journey and is so patient when I’m chasing a deadline. To my children, Angela, David, Carrie, Ashley, and Shawn, thanks for putting up with my absentmindedness when I’m buried deep in a story. And to my grandchildren, Connor, Nathanael, Hiram, Evie, Braden, Crew, Mariah, Cohen, Brighton, Jazzy, Zoey, Peyton, Emma, Hayden, Olive, James, and Finn, you bring so much joy into my life by simply being you. I love you to pieces.
To my amazing editor, Ashley Gebert, who stretches me and polishes my words to make them sing; you are the BEST. And to Christina Marcano for the eye-catching cover—she and Ashley are a dynamic duo. To the rest of the Covenant team, you inspire and touch so many lives. I am filled with admiration at what you accomplish.
Special thanks to my readers. You make this writing journey so worthwhile.
Lastly, to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for His matchless power and the saving grace He extends to all who are broken in one way or another—how I love Him.
Skye Fall British Vocabulary Words
Abseil kit: Rock climbing gear that helps you work your way down a cliff
Accident and Emergency or A&E: Emergency Room at a hospital
Bonnie: Beautiful, pretty
Bin: Trash can
Bits and bobs: An assortment of small items
Bivi or bivvy: A bivouac shelter, temporary shelter
Bolt hole: A place where a person can escape or hide
Bonnet: Car hood
Carriageway: A divided highway, each of which has two or more lanes
Chat him up: Flirt
Cheeky: Sassy, irreverent, impudent
Chippy shop: Fish and chips shop
Chorie: Thief
Corrie loch: Small natural pool
Crannog: A tiny, tree-covered islet
Crikey: An expression of surprise
Deed poll: A legal document that proves a change of name and is usually posted online or in the newspapers
Dishy: Good-looking
Dungarees: Overalls or jeans made of jean material
Gied the pitch: Run away
Ghillie shoes: Soft shoes used for Scottish country and Highland dancing
Give him a ring or bell: Call someone on the phone
Green fingers: Green thumb
Hauld yer whisht: Be quiet
Hebridean Islands: An archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland
Hillwalking: Hiking
In a mood: Bad mood, moody
Jumper: A wool sweater
Ma heid’s full o’mince: My head is scrambled
Midges: Small black biting flies that travel in swarms
Munros : Mountain in Scotland over 3,000 feet
Och: Oh no
Overalls: Suspenders
Peely-wally: Peaked, pale
Punji stick: Booby-trapped stake
Quickdraws: Climbing extenders that keep the climbing rope path straight
Raasay: Isle just off the northern coast of Skye
Scree: A mass of loose stones on a mountain hillside
SNP: Scottish National Party
Specs: Eyeglasses
Spiffing: Great, fabulous, awesome
Switched on: Alert
Tattie scone: Scottish potato scones
Thieving’ chorie: Petty thieves
Thick: Dense, dumb, slow
Tricams: Climbing protection equipment, temporary anchor points on the rock
Whinged or whingeing: Whining, complaining
Windscreen: Windshield
Worktop: Countertop
Veg: Vegetables
Verra: Very
Chapter 1
Secrets. Everyone had them. Isla, however, was heartily sick of hers.
She gripped the platter on the seat beside her as the London Uber swerved out of its lane and skidded to a halt in front of a row of terraced houses, the wet tarmac hissing beneath its tires.
“Here you are, miss,” the driver said.
Traffic had been uncommonly light from her house in Knightsbridge to here in the suburbs, and she had arrived early—forty-five minutes early, to be exact.
Isla’s stomach lurched as she glanced at the cars lining the street. Shay’s car was missing. Sometimes her boyfriend took the tube home and left his vehicle at work, but in all likelihood, his job as a police officer on the terrorist command for the Metropolitan Police often required extra hours. She might have a long wait before he came home.
Pulling out her mobile, she texted him: Arrived early. Traffic was light.
She and Shay had been dating for only six weeks, but when they’d grilled dinner at his place over the weekend, they’d made plans to celebrate today. Clutching his birthday cake covered with cling film, she climbed out of the vehicle.
“You’ll be all right carrying that, miss?” The driver grinned so wide his smile almost touched his bright-purple plugs.
“Quite.” She moved to close the door, but the driver hopped out and shut it for her.
He couldn’t be too much older than her own twenty-one and obviously needed a tip. She set the cake on the boot of his car and fished inside her coat pocket for a ten-pound note, then reclaimed the cake.
“Thanks.” The driver gave her a cocky salute. A second later, he zipped down the street.
She started up the pavement of identical attached houses. When she’d met Shay during her first week on the job as a nurse in the hospital’s Accident and Emergency room, she’d been completely gobsmacked by the tall policeman. And Shay appeared to reciprocate those same emotions. So today, after the festivities, she had determined to entrust him with her carefully guarded secret. If she couldn’t trust a cop, who could she trust?
But her nerves jangled when she considered how he might react when he found out she had kept her real identity under wraps. She wasn’t Isla Moore, but Isla Montjoy, the daughter of Sir Timothy Montjoy, home secretary to the British prime minister. Weary of peers claiming friendship because of her famous father, she changed her surname just before she entered Scotland’s University of Edinburgh to enjoy a more “normal” experience. Hopefully Shay cared enough by now to overlook her duplicity.
The rain, which had been spitting off and on, decided in that moment to pour like a free-flowing tap, the drops pelting her body. Drat. She’d forgotten her umbrella.
Protecting the cake, she hurried up the steps to ring the bell, but the plastic casing over the ringer had broken, so she rapped on the door instead. Not a sound emanated from within.
The stoop had no overhead covering to protect her from the weather. She drew up her hood and glanced in dismay at the cake she had spent all morning decorating. Water had puddled on top of the plastic wrap. This would never do.
Using her mobile app, she ordered an Uber to take her to the closest coffee shop. Eleven minutes until pick up. She and the cake would be a sodden mess by the time it arrived.
Setting her jaw, she faced the street, her backside pressed against the door in the hope Shay’s eaves would partially shield her from the deluge. The door gave behind her, and she staggered to maintain her balance. The black door did not swing open fully; something appeared to be shoved up against it. Whatever it was, it had kept her from tumbling into Shay’s entrance hall.
An open door was never a good sign, especially not for a policeman who had a tendency toward paranoia where safety was concerned. Shay even kept a security keypad outside his home office door. And though she had visited his home several times, she had never once stepped inside that room.
Shay’s front door not latching brought to mind all the ride-alongs she had taken with emergency responders for her clinicals. She grabbed her mobile and texted Shay, then waited five beats before she pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. Could Shay be physically hurt?
Alarm tumbled inside as her focus shifted fully to Shay and his safety. She set the cake on the top of the stoop, all worries for its preservation taking a backseat to the more immediate concern. Had someone broken into Shay’s house? Was he lying on the opposite side of the door?
She pressed her shoulder to the steel panel and pushed with everything in her, shoving the door just wide enough to squeeze through. One quick glance about the small hall disclosed the hinderance. A tightly sealed wooden crate had kept the door from opening. Another scan of the small foyer revealed the empty peg where Shay usually hung his coat. She had indeed beat him home. A sigh escaped her, and relief turned her limbs to jelly.
Thank you, Lord. She scooted the crate a few more inches, then retrieved the cake from the porch. She’d leave it in the kitchen, then go outside to meet the Uber.
“Hello,” she called, just in case Shay had taken the underground and discarded his jacket upstairs.
Stepping through the sparsely furnished lounge, she entered the kitchen via the dining room corridor. His flat had few creature comforts, save for the coffee machine, large-screen telly, and plain blackout curtains at the windows. With his odd hours, he often needed a lie-in during the day.
One glance at the kitchen turned her legs to ice and sent her heart into a good imitation of a full-on, atrial fibrillation episode. Semi-automatics lay on the kitchen island, clearly seized by Shay and his team. On the floor beside the island stood a wooden box with a pried-off lid, just like the crate in the entrance hall. More guns appeared inside.
Plastic bags containing a white powdery substance lay stacked pyramid-style two meters away on the island worktop. Those definitely did not look like flour and sugar. As a nurse at St. Thomas’s Accident and Emergency, Isla knew more than her fair share about street drugs.
During one of their conversations over the last six weeks, Shay told her that confiscated property went directly to the MET’s evidence lockup. So what was it doing in his flat? Had Shay’s team stopped here to drop their goods on their way to another call?
Men’s voices reached her from the office just off the dining room corridor. Shay was home?
“You lot need to take our haul and clear out. I don’t want my girlfriend seeing this.”
Prickles crawled up the back of her neck. Shay didn’t want her to see what? The weapons? Or drugs? Why didn’t he want her to see this? Were they up to something nefarious?
If she left before they exited the office, no one would be the wiser for her visit.
“How soon before this shipment leaves?” a man with a raspy voice asked.
Step by step, Isla tiptoed her way to freedom. One meter across the kitchen floor and a floorboard creaked. Isla stopped abruptly. The cake lurched, and she righted it with shaky fingers.
“Tomorrow. My contact will fly them out of the Norwich airfield. He owes me a favor,” Shay responded, his words distinct.
No. Not Shay. But the evidence lay strewn about her, leaving no doubt as to his corruption. A sob bubbled inside her and threatened to burst. Isla shifted, and the board groaned again. She shut her eyes and held her breath, her heart banging so loud it threatened to cut off her hearing.
Silence.
“Did you hear something?” a fellow drawled.
“No. Quit being so jumpy.”
“Where’s the shipment going?” the raspy-voiced man asked.
“The States—Virginia to be specific,” Shay said. “To a paramilitary group called the Southern Nationalists.”
“As long as it leaves the UK, I don’t much care where it goes,” said a different man, his tone well-modulated. “No chance of them tracing the sale to us?”
They were bent—every last one of them.
Isla’s stomach cramped. She had to get out of here before they found her. Pivoting, she navigated the room but misjudged the crate’s proportions beside the island and rammed it with her hip. The cake jolted from her arms and skimmed across the counter’s surface. Its momentum knocked a semi-automatic to the floor with a clatter before it stopped, teetering on the edge.
Footsteps pounded in the corridor, coming fast.
Isla barely made it to the far side of the island before Shay and Joseph Bartoli, a gray-haired man with youthful features Shay had introduced her to last week, and Judge Higgs she identified from a case that had made BBC News, charged into the kitchen.
“Isla,” Shay exclaimed, consternation coloring his voice. “What are you doing here?” His face mottled with red and white splotches against his fair skin.
Inhaling sharply, she pointed a trembling finger toward the cake. “Traffic was light. It was raining, and your front door was open.” Her voice quivered, but she forged on, pretending she had not overheard their conversation. “Happy birthday.”
Ignoring her entirely, Shay snapped his head in the judge’s direction. “You said you secured the door.”
“That’s irrelevant.” Judge Higgs glared at Shay. “I hate to state the obvious, O’Sullivan, but she’s got to go. She’s a loose end.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t be hearing him right.
Bartoli blocked one exit, and the judge stepped back to fill the other.
Her mouth went dry. Cornered three to one, she hadn’t the slightest chance of escape. Lifting her chin, she pointed to the weapons, her chest heaving with suppressed emotion. “I trusted you! People trust you as a police officer . . . What have you done?”
“The system lets criminals walk free. We mete out justice to those the system has failed,” Shay said as though explaining something elementary to a child.
“By selling confiscated weapons? And drugs? You lot are no better than the criminals you arrest.” The words came out barely more than a whisper, but Isla refused to cow.
“The Justice Seekers need funds to operate. What we do makes a difference,” Shay said, his eyes pleading. “Join us. You can help put real criminals behind bars.”
“You’re delusional. All of you are bent,” she spat, her gaze darting from man to man.
“There are more Justice Seekers than you know, and we are making a difference.” Shay rose to his full height, his face implacable. “I gave you a chance, Isla. You refused. We can’t have a witness betraying our work.”
“We haven’t got all day.” Bartoli jerked his chin toward Isla.
Shay advanced on her, his steps slow and measured.
Isla backed up and rammed into a cupboard. She snatched the first thing at hand, a knife from its holder beside the cooker. “Please. Don’t.” She held the blade in front of her toward him, to hold Shay off.
Shay’s eyes glittered with sudden menace, his features barely recognizable. Moving so swiftly she hardly saw him coming, he chopped down on her forearm and twisted her wrist with the opposite hand.
Isla sucked in through her teeth, and her grip loosened on the blade. Gaining control of the instrument, Shay struck just as Isla rotated to get away. The knife entered her flesh just below her navel and continued around her side as she spun.
Nothing happened for a moment. She stood teetering as something warm saturated her clothes. Then, like a tsunami, it hit—pain engulfed her in a vortex of agony. She crumpled to the floor, the air whooshing from her lungs.
Shay’s image floated above her, then blurred and faded into oblivion.
Chapter 2
Two years later
Isla stood on Loch Duich’s rocky shore, chalk in hand while a sea eagle skimmed the loch’s surface, the flap of its wings carrying across the water. Four hundred meters away, the A87 hummed with early morning traffic as it passed Eilean Donan Castle’s car park.
She swiped the chalk across her paper and blocked out the foreground using sure, deft strokes. If only she could block out the memories as well, memories that kept her up at night with her ears straining for noises that didn’t belong.
