“Fine, for the moment.” I deliberately stepped away from his touch and moved back to the other side of the counter, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. I grabbed some more chips, then waved my free hand toward the laptop. “Are you going to use that thing, or did you just bring it in for show?”
“Nothing I own is merely for show, sweetheart.”
“Will you stop calling me that?”
Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Why should I, when it’s nothing but the truth?”
That was a loaded gun I wasn’t about to touch.
He continued, “Why do you think Marsten’s mom holds copies of all the plans and security codes for the research center in Scotland?”
“Because it makes sense to have backups.” I leaned across the bench and watched as he Googled Marsten’s name. “And because he did a lot of groundwork here in the States before he ever shifted operations to Loch Ness, and he was working out of his mom’s house for a long while.”
Hell, he and his family might still have facilities here in the States. Just because we never heard them mentioned didn’t mean they couldn’t exist.
“How big is the research center in Drumnadrochit?”
“Huge.” I hesitated. “Though the center is actually between Drumnadrochit and Abriachan.”
“Oh, I know the area intimately.”
His voice was dry and I smiled. “It’s a very pretty area.”
“And your birthplace?”
I nodded. “Marsten is using my mother’s ancestral lands as his base.”
“He couldn’t have just walked in and claimed it.”
“He didn’t. He caught Mom first, and threatened me.”
He looked at me. “Which is why your dad ran?”
I nodded, rubbing my arms. “Mom gave him no real choice. She made him swear at my birth that if anything should ever happen to her, he’d take me far away.”
“Sounds like she had a premonition.”
“She might have. She was canny like that.”
“Maybe it’s a mom thing. Mine’s like that, too.” He pressed a finger to the screen and added, “Look, there’s an article on Marsten’s old lady in Oregon Home magazine.”
“I don’t suppose it comes complete with pics?”
“Let’s have a look and see, shall we?” He clicked the link. “When did your mother disappear?”
I hesitated. Memories rose, ghosts of a past part of me didn’t want to remember. Not because it was unhappy—it wasn’t, even when we’d left Mom far behind to come to America—but because darkness had overshadowed it. My life after childhood had been very dark indeed.
“I was only five or six when I came here.”
“Explains why there’s only the barest trace of an accent.”
I nodded. “My dad’s American.”
He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “So how did you get caught if you were basically raised here?”
“I hit eighteen and decided that Mom needed rescuing.” I grimaced. “What a bad move that turned out to be.”
“Because the scientists grabbed you?”