The sun was on a downward trajectory, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, and silhouetting the handful of grey clouds into dark bottomless voids.
A glance in the driver’s side wing mirror showed that Taggart’s head was still hanging out of the back window, his stupidly long tongue trailing out behind him and flapping in the wind.
The road rose, then dipped sharply, and both detectives made a sort of hurp noise as their stomachs smooshed upwards. That one had made even Logan feel queasy. It would likely have killed Tyler altogether.
“Rough road, but pretty nice around here,” Sinead remarked, as they turned a bend and saw a stretch of beach lining a body of water on the left. “I think that’s Loch Moidart. Maybe Loch Sunart. Something like that, anyway. We used to come out here when I was younger. Before Harris was born. He’s nearly as bad as Tyler on windy roads.”
“Aye. It’s nice,” Logan agreed, but he barely glanced at the scenery unfolding beside them. Instead, he stretched out his fingers, wriggled in his seat, then exhaled. “How are you doing?”
Sinead turned away from the view to look over at him. “Fine, sir. Aye. You?”
“Fine. But, I mean… How are you really doing?”
Sinead frowned. “Still fine.”
Logan kept his eyes on the road ahead. Sinead waited for him to say something more, then went back to looking out of the window.
“It’s just…”
She turned back again. Waited.
“Just what?”
“After, you know. Everything that happened. To you. Recently.”
“Oh. That.” She rubbed a hand across her mouth like she was checking how dry her lips were. “I’m fine. Not like it’s the first time something like that happened.” She smiled, but it was a poor attempt. “I seem to have a bit of a knack for being taken hostage.”
It was more than that, though. They both knew it. What had happened… The things that had been done to her… And the things, worse still, that had almost been done…
“I was talking to Maddie today,” he said.
Sinead sat up at that. “Your daughter? Wow. That’s… that’s great news! I didn’t think she was speaking to you.”
“Just barely,” Logan replied. “But she was talking. About things from before. About Owen Petrie.”
“Oh.”
“And something she said, it got me thinking,” Logan continued, slowing to let a car coming in the opposite direction squeeze past on a rare straight section of road. “I, eh, I have this tendency to assume things are fine.”
“Things are fine, sir,” Sinead insisted, but Logan pressed on, regardless.
“I think that because the immediate danger has passed, then that’s it. Trauma over. Everything back to normal.” He turned to look at her, and the look on her face told him everything he needed to know. “But that’s not how it works, is it? Not for most people.”
“I mean…” Sinead began, then she sighed. “No. That’s not how it works.”
“No,” Logan said, nodding. “Which brings me back to my earlier question. How are you really doing?”
Sinead pulled the strap of her seatbelt away from her shoulder, then replaced it in more or less the same position. She crossed her feet, decided she didn’t like it, then crossed them again the other way.
Eventually, when she had finished footering, she gave the tiniest of shrugs. “Good days and bad.”
Logan said nothing, just left the silence waiting there to be filled.
“I’ve been getting a lot of sleep paralysis,” she told him. “Wake up frozen, and think I’m back there. Think it’s happening again.”
“Have you spoken to a doctor?” Logan asked. “Could be some lingering effect of the drugs.”
“They ran tests. Reckon it’s psychological.”
“I see. Well, I mean, that’s no’ really a surprise, given everything.” He flexed his fingers on the wheel. “Still can’t believe that bastard of a constable. I wish you’d said something earlier about him. We could’ve…”
“I know. I should’ve told you,” Sinead admitted. “Although, I’ve thought about it a lot. What he did. Tried to do, anyway. And, the fact of it is, if he hadn’t been there—if he hadn’t failed to report back—they might not have found me.”
Logan gave this some thought, but couldn’t argue with the logic. “I suppose. And what’s Tyler saying about it all? The sleep paralysis and stuff, I mean.”