“Hell, no,” he snarled. “Not unless you want me to cut your nuts off. He’s mine. Stake out the place, get me the information, and I’ll go in and take him down.” But Chiswick might actually be close this time, he thought. He could feel the blood pumping through his veins as he considered it. It had been years since anyone had humiliated him the way Caleb had. He couldn’t wait to pound that son of a bitch into the ground. “But I’m going to trust you on this, and you’d better not fail me. I’ll be leaving Naples in a couple of days to join you. I’ll call you when I’m near enough to rendezvous with you at MacDuff’s Run.” He concluded, “So get your ass in gear and do your job,” then pressed DISCONNECT.

*  *  *

Courtyard Stable
Next Day

“It’s about time you got here.” Jane’s tone was caustic as Rodland came down the steps to the storage unit. “It’s almost two in the afternoon. Where have you been? So much for devoting your entire time to guarding me even if it meant battling MacDuff.”

“Stop complaining. MacDuff told me he was sending Fergus to watch over you.” He dropped to his knees beside her. “Besides, it was entirely your fault. I ran into MacDuff on my way here this morning and he was actually fairly civil to me.” He made a face. “Though he does have a puckish sense of humor and insisted that he show me the dungeon that he’d been threatening me with during our first encounter. When we got there, he bet me that I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the damn place.” He shrugged. “What could I do? I had to prove my worth, didn’t I? He wouldn’t have trusted you with me if I hadn’t.”

“So you let him lock you up?”

“It seemed the best thing to do.” He grinned. “But I made sure that it would work for us.”

She was frowning. “You got out of the dungeon?”

“His dungeon was a piece of cake after the prisons I’d occupied in Afghanistan. They didn’t know how to build them right in the good old days. But I deliberately stalled for an hour or two to make MacDuff feel good about how hard I was finding it. Then I was duly humble when I supposedly discovered the way out of his precious hoosegow. Though I let him know how upset you were going to be because I’d wasted all that time and we’d probably both have to work late going through these diaries. That should give us a little extra time if Kilgoray takes longer than you think it will.”