“Do we tell the Council we found it?” Tavis asked. “I hadn’t intended to mention it.” He glanced at Anna. “I shouldn’t have until we know for sure if the Council is trustworthy.”

“I think we’ll keep it quiet for now,” Sean said. “Only those in this room will know.” He looked at each of them—Anna, Tavis, Duncan, Brodie, Faelan, Bree, Cody, Shay, Ronan, Declan, Niall, and Shane. “We need to do some more investigating. And I believe I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

Tavis touched his chest. “Me?”

“Faelan told me about Ian’s letter, about your son. If not for you, Duncan and I, and several others, wouldn’t even exist.”

“You have a son? Had a son?” Anna asked.

“I just found out,” Tavis said.

“You had a son and didn’t know it?” Not only had he lost his family—father, mother, brothers, sister—but he’d lost a wife and child. “I didn’t know you were married.”

“I wasn’t.” Tavis shifted uncomfortably. “His mother was a lass I knew. A nice lass,” he said defensively. He cleared his throat. “She loved me. I didn’t know she was with child. When she died, Ian and his wife raised him.”

Anna’s head was spinning with the revelation. Tavis with a son. A lover.

“As I said, I owe you my thanks, and my existence,” Sean said. “Duncan and I wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

“Can I call you grandfather?” Duncan asked, smiling. Something he didn’t do often enough.

Tavis just smiled and shook his head.

Sean handed the satchel back to Tavis. “I didn’t touch your journal.”

“My journal?” Tavis frowned.

“There’s a journal or a ledger inside. I didn’t open it. I thought it belonged to you.”

Tavis reached inside and took out a thin notebook. “Angus had this with him. He must have put it here.”

“I saw him with a notebook when he was at the bed-and-breakfast,” Bree said.

“Angus’s notebook.” Anna’s throat tightened. “I’ve been looking for it.”

“Anna should have it,” Sean said.

Anna took the book and opened it. Angus’s scrawled handwriting was easy to recognize. Oh, Angus.

“Does he say anything about what happened here?” Bree asked.

Angus had lived for mysteries when he was alive, and now his death had left the biggest one of all. Anna knew Bree still felt bad that she hadn’t warned Angus. She had sensed danger around him but thought he was a demon, not realizing he was a warrior working undercover.

Anna flipped through the notebook, looking for recent entries that might shed some light on his death. Angus’s writing wasn’t always easy to follow. He wrote as he thought. Scattered when he was distracted, and when he was hot on the trail of something he could go on and on. Reading his notebook was almost like talking to him. She could feel his excitement in the words. She skimmed the pages, recounting relevant entries, such as when he’d found Nigel Ellwood’s letter—it made her sad that he hadn’t told her that—right after he’d found Ian’s notes about a possible traitor in the clan.

She read aloud how Angus had thought he’d found Faelan. Ian had left clues to where the time vault key had been hidden, buried in Aiden Connor’s grave, and when it didn’t open the time vault in the crypt, Angus decided it must be a decoy. He’d found the second time vault in the chapel cellar and freed the warrior inside, not realizing he’d freed Faelan’s brother instead. Angus’s handwriting grew scratchier as he wrote. He was frantic with his discovery, and terrified that Jared, the archaeologist, would find him. Angus had suspected that Jared wasn’t what he pretended to be. He’d followed Jared and discovered that he was involved in the gathering of demons. He suspected it had to do with Druan’s virus.

I’m going to confront Jared and make him talk. That was his last entry. The room was silent.

“I guess he found out Jared was Druan in disguise,” Brodie said quietly. “That’s probably how he got some of his injuries.”

“And Druan sent his demons to finish him off,” Ronan said.

He’d tracked them down and killed them, but they wouldn’t say who’d sent them. If only she’d replaced her phone, he might still be alive. He wouldn’t have told anyone else about his discoveries until he was certain what he’d found. But he had tried to call her. If she’d known, she could have come to help him before it was too late.

“Poor Angus,” Sean said.

Anna quietly slipped away as the others began talking about traitors and demons. She went to her room and sat on her bed, holding the notebook to her chest. There were other scrawled entries that made no sense. I need to tell Anna, but I don’t want to trouble her. And later, I must tell Anna. No matter how difficult it is. She hadn’t read those aloud. They were too personal. “Tell me what? What was so important, Angus?” Was he referring to his feelings for her?

How could she have not known how he felt? No wonder he was so angry when he found Ronan in her bed. Sex might not be the big evil she’d thought, but it caused a lot of trouble.

What was she going to do about this thing between her and Tavis? She’d never felt anything like this. It was like an obsession. She thought about him constantly. She wanted to touch him all the time. She needed space to think and remember who she was. A warrior. Always a warrior. No matter how good sex with Tavis was. And how much she wanted to touch him and hold him.

She started to lay the book aside when she noticed a piece of paper stuck between two pages. It wasn’t Angus’s handwriting. The paper was stained and yellow with age. It was Ian’s notes. The page she and Angus had found in the treasure room in Scotland. This should be given to Tavis. His brother had sacrificed and suffered to make sure Tavis was here to save Faelan. It might be one of the few things left to remind him of Ian.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ANNA WALKED TOWARD Tavis’s door and raised her hand to knock, but stopped.

What are you doing? You can’t go to his room. Not after what happened at the bed-and-breakfast. You can give him Ian’s letter later. She returned to her door, stopped, chewed her lip for a moment, and then walked back. She was still waiting for the courage to knock when the door opened. Tavis had on the boxer briefs she’d bought him. That sent a thrill up her spine—not just the sight of Tavis in his underwear, but Tavis wearing something she’d chosen for him. It was so intimate.

But she didn’t want intimate. No intimacy.

“Anna?”

“You open the door in your underwear? Geez.” What if she had been another woman? Sorcha for instance.

He frowned. “I knew it was you. I heard you muttering. Are you all right? You look bothered.”

“I found something in Angus’s notebook. It was written by Ian.”

“Ian?” A pained look crossed his face. “Come in.”

She looked at his body. “You’re not dressed.”

“Sorry.” He left the door opened and grabbed a pair of jeans. Jeans she’d bought him. “I think I’m getting better at this,” he said, pulling them on. He grabbed a shirt, again, one she’d bought. She was definitely feeling bothered now. There was something so intimate about seeing a man she’d had sex with wearing clothes she’d bought him.

“Are you coming in?”

Even though he was dressed, she hesitated. It didn’t seem to matter what he did or didn’t wear, he just affected her in the strangest way. But she didn’t want him to be alone when he read it. Or maybe he would rather be alone. “I thought you might want to read it in private.”

“I’d rather you were with me.”

Another thrill. Dammit. Tavis Connor was derailing her plans. Maybe she needed to go back to ignoring him. But she followed him inside.

Tavis took the paper and sat on a small settee next to a lamp. “It’s his hand, all right.” He smiled. “He was always jotting down notes.”

Anna sat beside him. “Like Angus. Did he look like you?”

“No. He was thinner, lighter haired. A bit of a mischief-maker.”

“He must have been a great warrior. And a great brother. It couldn’t have been easy doing what he did. I don’t think I could do it.”

“He didn’t want to. He begged me to find another way. At the time, I thought I was the one with the hard task. Now I think it was him. He was the one who had to tell Ma she’d lost two of her sons and her husband. He had live with the worry of not knowing if Faelan and I would survive the time vaults. Or even be found. He had to raise my son.” He rubbed a hand over his chin. He looked different without his beard, even more handsome, though he needed to shave again. “I’m having trouble dealing with it. It doesn’t seem possible, even though I have Ian’s letter as proof.”

“Duncan is living proof. It isn’t Faelan he resembles so much. It’s you.” Anna put her hand over his. “I can’t imagine how it feels to lose a son you didn’t know. I wish I could help you.”

“You have.” Tavis touched her face. “You have more than you know.”

Too much intimacy. She needed to get back to safer ground. “So tell me about your son’s mother.”

He looked almost embarrassed. “She was kind. And persistent.”

“You said she loved you?”

“Aye, so she said. I tried to…avoid her, but it was hard.” His cheeks colored. “I mean, it was difficult staying away from her, with her coming around all the time.”

“What happened? If you don’t mind telling me.”

“She cornered me one night, and I wasn’t thinking with my brain. We were careful though. I didn’t even…” He looked embarrassed. “Even spill my seed inside her.”

Anna touched his arm, and his muscles tightened. “I’m sorry you lost him, and her.”