Ray really wished he had a gun. The chances were high that Fraser was already dead, and even if he weren't, these guys would leave no witnesses. But he still had to go. He had to try.

With nothing more to go on that a vague idea of how to reach the moor from the bridal path that lead from the castle to the village, Ray set off. He'd borrowed a flashlight from a storeroom, along with a pair of binoculars and a good sized craft knife which he slipped inside his boot. No way was he going into this completely unarmed.

He figured that they might be watching the style that spanned the fence, so keeping low, he shoved his way through thick bushes and shrubs until he found a tree with an overhanging branch that looked strong enough to take his weight. He lowered himself down onto the grass and went into a crouch. He was wearing dark clothing, so he was fairly sure he'd escaped detection so far.

It was an overcast night. Clouds blocked out the moon so it was hard to make out anything at all. Inky darkness spread out all around him. He couldn’t even see the vapour of his own breath. "Where are you, Frase?" he murmured.

Perhaps it had been stupid to set out across the moors in the dark. He could have waited until it was lighter, could have gotten directions on how to find the cottage, but he'd been too wound up to wait. Taking a deep breath, he began walking in a random direction.

An hour later, he was cold, wet and covered in mud from stumbling around in the dark but he was no closer to finding any cottage. He'd hoped that there might be a light on that he could follow, but so far he'd only come across sheep and they hadn't been very forthcoming with information, despite Ray's threats of violence and the mention of mint sauce.

He'd walked into the big rock outcrop before he even saw it. After a few moments of swearing and hopping around, Ray flopped down onto a rock and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Stupid rock," he growled.

The rock growled back.

"Um… who's there?" Ray felt like a complete idiot talking to a rock, but he'd definitely heard something. Reaching for the knife in his boot, he tried to remember if Scotland had any dangerous wild animals. Lions? Nah. Tigers? Don't be stupid Kowalski. Bears? Maybe they had bears. Maybe that's what sporrans were made off…

"Grrrr. Wuff wuff, yip!"

"Jesus, Dief, is that you?"

Suddenly there was a wet nose making intimate with his groin. Dief whined and barked his happiness and relief at seeing Ray and Ray, for his part, didn’t even complain about the dog-breath and the licking. "How you doing, buddy?" he asked.

Dief said something in wolf, which could have been anything from 'I'm fine' to 'shut up and make with the doughnuts', then placed his head in Ray's lap. Figuring that maybe the wolf needed his ears scratching, Ray pulled off a glove and groped for the head, finding to his dismay that the fur was matted and wet. "Awww Christ, Dief, tell me you ain't been rolling in sheep shit?"

Ray pulled the flashlight out of his pocket, deciding that he was probably not being followed or they would have jumped him long ago. He directed the beam at Dief and swore. Not sheep shit. Blood.

"Fuck. Looks like they hit you with something, huh?" The fur around Dief's head and neck was red with blood. Ray checked carefully for bullet wounds but found none. Dief flinched a couple of times, but allowed the touch. "You know where the bastards got Fraser stashed?"

Dief whined and limped off into the dark. Ray followed, keeping the torch trained on the wolf but his eyes trained on the horizon. They would pay for this. Anyone tried to rough up the wolf, they would have a Mountie and a Chicago cop to answer to.

***

It was hardly any wonder that Ray had missed the cottage. Not one glimmer of light shone out from its windows. Either they were waiting in total darkness for him to arrive, or they had blackout curtains pulled shut. Either way, he'd never have found it without Dief.

"How many goons in there, boy?" He asked before realising what a stupid question that was. He didn’t speak wolf. How the hell would he be able to…

But Dief surprised him, pawing the ground three times like a shorter, furrier version of Trigger the Wonder Horse.

"Three?"

"Woof." Might have been a sneeze but Ray was fairly sure it was a nod of affirmation.

"Alright, great. This is great. We can do this. Element of surprise and all." Ray squinted down at his watch, but couldn’t make out the face in the gloom. The sky was still inky black but there was a faint streak of purple beginning to show on the horizon. Dawn was fast approaching and he didn’t have much of a plan.

A low growl from his side alerted him to the fact that something was about to happen so he threw himself flat onto the muddy ground and scrambled behind the cover of a gorse bush. A second later, the cottage door opened, painting a stripe of yellow neon right across the place he'd been standing. A large figure appeared in the doorway holding something bulky in his hands.

"Stupid mutts," the man muttered. "Nothing out here but sheep!" Ray heard a click, and the searchlight flared to life in the guys hands.

"Fuck!" he whispered. The bush was not going to hide him for long, especially as he'd just realised the goon had dogs with him. Dief hadn’t mentioned that part. Beside him, Dief pawed his arm to get his attention. The wolf looked at him long and hard, licked his ear and then took off at a dead run, making sure to run right through the beam of the searchlight.

The two dogs went wild, barking and straining at their leads. "Jesus, it's that fucking white wolf. I thought we'd killed that already!" Keith’s voice cut through the gloom.

Ray kept his head down, muscles shaking with the tension of being at full alert, ready to leap up and move the second it was needed.

"Let the dogs go." Keith instructed. "They'll tear him to pieces."

Ray's eyes narrowed. He didn’t think Dief had much of a chance against the two Rottweilers either, but the wolf was a wild animal. He'd put up one hell of a fight. And he'd effectively saved Ray from detection. If Dief came through this in one piece, Ray would personally buy him a whole bag of donuts.

The two men remained in the doorway with the searchlight trained on the receding dogs until they were out of sight. Keith grinned sadistically when he heard a loud yelp. "Ye got tae give the wolf it's due. He's got have balls the size of basketballs to come back here looking for the Mountie after the kicking we gave him."

The other guy snorted and clicked off the flashlight.

“Okay, keep alert,” Keith said, “I need to go and fetch Carboni at the airport. Anything else goes wrong, and you get to explain it to the Boss himself.”

Keith climbed into a land rover and roared off with a squeal of tyres.

Then the door closed and Ray was plunged back into darkness.

He rolled onto his back and fumbled for the knife in his boot. He didn’t have a whole lot of time left to him. It was now or never. He commando-crawled his way towards the cottage, ignoring the sharp stones that tore at his knees and elbows, and the cold mud that squelched beneath him.

At the side wall of the cottage, Ray got carefully to his feet, keeping low and pressed against the cold stone. He made his way around back. Peering into the window didn’t help. As he'd thought, there seemed to be a heavy blackout curtain blocking his view. The second window was similarly clad.

Something bumped against his boot and he looked down. A log sticking out from the bottom of a woodpile. Ray ran his hand along the wall until he found the edges of a door. The handle moved without a noise and the door opened easily enough. Thank God for small mercies. Ray slipped inside quickly.

He was in a storeroom of some kind. Boxes were piled up against the walls and equipment was hanging from the ceiling. It was going to be damned near impossible to get across the room in the dark without kicking or knocking something over, but his only advantage against two guys with guns, was surprise.

Like a blind man trying to navigate without his cane, Ray threw out his arms and inched his way towards the sliver of light coming from under a door. It was taking too long, but he had to keep his impatience in check. Wouldn’t do Fraser any good if he blew it all now. Unless Fraser was already dead, which was entirely possible but… well he wasn’t gonna think about that right now.

The voices from the other room became clearer as he drew near. The two guys were playing poker, and probably using real money too, not candy. They were probably drinking whiskey. Who played poker and didn’t drink, right? Apart from Fraser, of course? That would slow down their reflexes a bit, but they would still have their guns close by. Maybe even in a holster. If he'd had his glasses on, he was fairly sure he could throw the knife with enough force and accuracy to pin one guy's skull to the wall like a hunting trophy. But by then, the other guy would have blown his fucking head right off. Back-up would have been nice, but if course, if Fraser was still breathing… which he was, of course he was… he was obviously in no condition to help.

Ray took a deep breath, pressed his forehead to the door and began counting back from three.

"Angus, it's freezin' in here. Go fetch some more wood for the fire."

Ray's head snapped upright.

"What am I, your fucking servant? Get it yourself."

Ray groped along the wall, hoping to find something to hide behind, but there was nothing. Even as he half listened to the two guys arguing about who was going to go for wood, his brain was zooming through all the possible outcomes, considering and rejecting plan after plan. He was screwed, he was fucked…

"Okay, okay, keep yer shirt on!" The door flew open and Ray flattened himself against the wall. A dull, overhead bulb flared on and the guy called Angus stomped to the back door, muttering all the way. So long as he didn’t turn around, Ray had a chance. He'd been holding his breath so long his hair was turning blue. Finally the guy disappeared through the door and Ray let out his breath in a tight woosh.

Decisions, decisions. Which goon did he take down first? The light in here wasn’t real good, but he could now see that the back door had one of those old fashioned drop down latches. Decision made, Ray padded to the back door and dropped the latch, effectively locking goon number one outside, then before the guy could start making a fuss, Ray liberated a good sized length of lead piping and took up his original position again.

Angus kicked the door a couple of times with his foot before he realised he was locked out. "Very funny. Now open the buggering door before I put a bullet in ye."

Ray raised the pipe over his head and waited.

"I'm not kiddin', Hamish. OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!"

"What the hell you playin' at?" The goon called Hamish complained as he lumbered into the storeroom. "I never locked the door in the first…"

Thwack!

Goon number two went down like a sack of potatoes. Ray frisked him for a gun but didn’t find one.

"Hamish? You okay, Hamish?"

Goon number one sounded a bit worried, and Ray had no idea if the guy was armed with anything more deadly than a log. Quickly, he ran into the main cottage and checked the front door was secure. It was.

"Frase!" he yelled. No point in being quiet anymore. Even these ass-holes must have worked out that they'd been rumbled by now. A muffled thump came from behind a door in the hall and Ray kicked it open. The knob impacted with the stonewall and shattered but Ray didn’t notice. He was too busy looking at his partner, lashed to the bedposts like some kind of wet dream.

He tugged the gag out of Fraser’s mouth. "You're not dead?" he finally managed to choke out.

"Apparently not," Fraser replied. "Although, I am a little stiff. How did you find me?"

"Not me. Dief." Ray quickly cut Fraser loose, keeping half an ear on what Fraser was saying, and half and ear on the noises coming from outside the cottage. Angus was busily trying to find another way in. He'd already discovered that the front door was locked. Ray heard the sound of a safety coming off and swore under his breath. “Who the hell takes a gun out to collect firewood? Get down."

The bullet took out the window, scattering shards of glass all over the room. Fraser had rolled under the bed, pulling Ray with him. Ray gave him a quick visual once-over, finding no obvious injuries. Fraser gazed back. "Ray, do you have a gun?"

"Nope. Got a knife, and piece of lead piping… "

"Which would be just wonderful if we were playing Cluedo, Ray, but not much use against actual firearms."

As if to emphasise the point, Angus emptied a clip into the room, taking out an ancient painting of the Virgin Mary and the light bulb, plunging them into darkness, but failing to hit either of the two men hiding under the bed.

"On three, we make for the main room. Okay?"

"All right, Ray." God, he loved it when Fraser did as he was told. He was more than aware that the goon in the storeroom could come too any minute and then they would be in real trouble. He needed to find a gun, and quick.

"Okay, one… "

Angus fired again, this time shattering the bed knob, taking out an antique pitcher-dish combo and shaving about an inch of the top of Ray's hair.

"…twothreego!"

They made it to the storeroom in one piece just as Hamish was struggling to get to his feet. "What the…"

Thwack!

Ray felled him again. “Cluedo my ass!” he yelled. “The lead pipe totally rocks as a weapon.”

Fraser rubbed his eyebrow as he regarded the fallen malfeasant. "You hit him a little hard, Ray. He'll be lucky to survive this without brain damage…"

"Hey," Ray barked, "tryin' to rescue you here. Quit whining about my methods, thank you kindly."

Fraser rolled his eyes. "My apologies, Ray. Please continue."

Ray found some rope and trussed Hamish up like the turkey he was. If he did survive the encounter with Ray, this time, he was going nowhere. "Guy outside's got us pinned in here. So long as he's got plenty bullets on him, we're sitting ducks."

"Perhaps we should try reasoning with him?"

"Are you nuts?" Ray admonished. "They're hired guns. They got no reason to reason."

Fraser flattened himself against the wall and peered through the open storeroom door into the main area of the cottage. "I could distract him while you sneak up from behind and maim him with your big metal stick."

Was that a hint of sarcasm Ray was hearing? "Or you could just talk him to death. My way's quicker and way more humane." Ray tossed the pipe from one hand to another, trying to look threatening.

Fraser sighed and peered out into the hall again. "Whatever we decide to do, we should do it soon. I fear that by dawn, we shall have rather more company than we can handle."

"Carboni?" Ray asked. Keith had said he was going to pick him up at the airport. Ray had assumed that was just a threat to scare the hired help.

Fraser shrugged. "Apparently, they grabbed me by mistake. Hardly surprising, as it was dark, and I was wearing your jacket and cap. From what I could glean, their boss no longer trusts them to get the job done and he's coming to do it himself."

"Well good,” Ray cracked his neck, "bring it on."

They both hit the floor at the same time when Angus aimed another salvo into the building, this time through the living room window. The stuffed stag trophy over the fireplace hit the floor in a cloud of dust and the only remaining light bulb shattered.

"This guy is seriously pissing me off!" Ray growled, crawling across the floor to get closer to the living room window. "Show yer ugly face, buddy, and I swear to God, I'm gonna rearrange yer features so good your own mother won't recognise you."

Ray plastered himself against the wall and took several steadying breaths. It was getting lighter outside. He could make Fraser's huddled form on the floor, the outline of the doorframe, the stag's severed head. It had gone deadly silent in the room, bar from the sound of Ray's breathing.

The chances that Angus had run out of ammo, or decided to skedadle were remote, and Ray got the feeling this could just be the calm before the storm. Using the wall to brace himself, Ray got slowly to his feet. If their friend were smart, he would stay as far away from the window as possible. Ray lived in hope that Angus was as stupid as he looked.

"You guys might as well give up,” Angus yelled. "You got no weapons, and I got nothin' but time."

Fraser appeared out of the gloom on the other side of the window. "He has a point, Ray. Its almost dawn."

"Yeah, yeah, he holds all the cards. Any bright ideas?"

He could make out Fraser's hand come up and imagined he was scratching his eyebrow with his thumb as he so often did when thinking things through. "I'm afraid I'm all out of bright ideas," Fraser admitted. "He's obviously in a position to see right into the room."

As rescues went, this wasn’t exactly Ray's most shining moment. He was beginning to think that the only way to end the stalemate was to jump out of the god-dammed window wielding the pipe like a sword. He might actually have done it too, if he hadn’t been beaten to the punch.

Angus let out a yelp of surprise, his gun went off, but what really got Ray's full attention was the deep, resonating growl from outside. Taking a huge risk, Ray peeked outside and a grin spread across his face. Angus was face down on the path with a snarling white wolf standing on his back, one massive deerhound on either side holding down his arms. The Rottwielers were nowhere in sight.

"Dief!" Fraser scrambled out of the window, and kicked Angus's gun out of the way for safety's sake. Not that the guy was going to be stupid enough to reach for it with Dief's fangs inches from the back of his neck but it was standard procedure. "Thank you kindly for joining us. Good call on the reinforcements.”

Dief snorted.

Ray finally managed to haul himself through the window and retrieved the gun, dropping his metal pipe in the herbaceous border. "Hey, mutt. I owe you doughnuts. And a couple of rump steaks for your buddies here."

Jamie and Jock licked their chops in anticipation, so Ray made sure not to turn his back on the dogs as he patted Angus down for concealed. He wasn’t sure how much American the mutts could understand, but he wasn’t taking any chances with his backside with them around.

Fraser appeared at his side with a convenient length of rope with which Ray trussed up Angus. Then it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Ray wasn’t even sure where they should head for. If deMarco were behind all this, then going back to the castle would be a mistake. He looked around helplessly at the featureless landscape. Taking a deep breath, he turned to ask Fraser how they should proceed only to find that Fraser was gone.

"Gonna tie a godammned bell around his neck, I swear to God…" Ray muttered, backing away from the still prone Angus to look left and right. He wasn’t too worried about Angus crawling off if he went to look for his partner. Jamie and Jock bared their impressive teeth every time the goon so much as twitched.

Before he could make his way to the window, an engine spluttered to life just around the corner and suddenly there was Fraser, sitting astride the rustiest, most decrepit motorcycle Ray had ever seen. Looked like it was a prop from the set of The Great Escape or something. But it was running, and no doubt way faster across the bumpy Mooreland that they would have managed on foot.

"Fuckin' A!" Ray exclaimed.

"I'm afraid I couldn’t see any helmets, Ray" Fraser apologised, as Ray climbed on behind him.

"You can write yourself a reprimand later, Frase," Ray yelled over the revving engine. "Just get us the fuck out of here before Carboni shows up."

"As you wish." Fraser stuck his index finger in his mouth, held it aloft and closed his eyes, before deciding on the correct direction. "Hold on tight," he warned.

Ray was more than happy to oblige. Fraser was big, and warm, and solid between his legs. He allowed himself a few seconds to imagine Fraser in biker's leathers, before realising that he needed all his wits about him just to stay attached to the bike.

Off they raced, swerving to avoid boulders and thorny vegetation; Dief and the Deerhounds galloping alongside. If he put aside the fact that any moment now they were likely to be shot at, it was quite good fun. Like being a teenager again, riding pillion on his cousin Ivan’s Harley.

An early morning mist clung to the ground as they got deeper into the moor. It looked really eerie, and meant that they were hitting every concealed pot hole and bump but Ray tightened his hold around Fraser's waist and decided to worry about the bruising his ass was getting later.

Which was right about the time he began to hear the sound of an engine coming up fast behind them.

"Frase?"

"I hear it." Fraser leaned forward and squeezed every last Shetland pony's worth of horsepower out of the battered bike, but they both knew it wasn’t going to be fast enough.

The bright beams from a set of headlights bounced off the mist, almost blinding them but Fraser just kept going. Ray closed his eyes and waited for the shot that would end it all. His fingers gripped the material of Fraser's jacket and he leaned in close and whispered in Fraser's ear, "Just in case this is it for us, Frase, I need to get this off my chest. I’m in l…….."

The bike hit a pothole, swerved sharply to the right, and they hit the ground with a wet splat!