But that Sinead hadn’t been on that bed, in that room. That Sinead hadn’t gone through what she had.
That Sinead was an idiot.
There was another knock, and this time the door creaked open. Sinead’s breath caught at the back of her throat. Even Taggart had frozen now, his eyes bulging with the stress of it all, his big tongue licking furtively across his lips.
Whoever had been out there wasn’t out there any longer. They were inside. In here. With her.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” a man’s voice called. Older, she thought, and some vague sense of familiarity made her rising heartbeat level off. “I was passing, and I… I saw the light on. I was hoping to talk to someone.”
Sinead gritted her teeth and forced her legs to move against their will. She stood, inhaled through her nose until her lungs were full, then tried to remember how to walk as she headed through to greet the late arrival.
He had been turning as if to leave when she emerged from the room at the back of the station, and jumped with fright when she said his name.
“Mr Finley-Lennox?” she said, recognising the politician, even from behind.
Oberon turned, looked momentarily surprised, and then a smile spread slowly across his face. “Aha! I was beginning to think the place had been deserted,” he said.
“Almost,” Sinead said. “We were about to pack up.”
“We?” Oberon’s gaze flitted past her to the room she’d come from. “Is there someone else here?”
Sinead had left the door open, so the MSP had a decent view of the inside from where he was standing. There was no point in lying to him.
“The others are going to be back in a moment,” she said. “Would you like to wait a few minutes, or is there something I can help you with?”
“Uh…” He looked her up and down. “Actually, I think you’ll do just fine,” he said, then he closed the station door with a click. “You see, I’m afraid I have a confession to make.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
There was something inherently amusing about a chip shop smoked sausage. The shape played a big part in that, obviously. The size helped. What really made Shona laugh, though, was the way it waggled about if you held it by one end, as she’d demonstrated three times now, in the past two minutes.
They’d swung by the Hilton Chip Shop on the way back to his place. Logan had gone traditional—fish supper, lots of salt and vinegar, couple of pickled onions on the side. Add a wee squirt of salad cream for dipping, and you had Heaven on a plate. Or, in this case, in a cardboard box that was rapidly being disintegrated by hot grease.
Shona finished boinging her jumbo-sized smoked sausage around like it was some sort of large mammal sex aid, and took a bite off the end that drew an involuntary wince from the man on the couch beside her.
“I’m not actually that keen on the taste,” she said as she chewed. “I just can’t resist when I see one, though.”
“I was going to say you’re such a child,” Logan told her. “But I’d have some serious welfare concerns about any child I saw waggling one of those big bastards around like you’ve been.”
“Can I have one of your chips?” Shona asked, helping herself without waiting for his approval.
“You could’ve had chips,” Logan reminded her. “I asked if you wanted chips.”
“I don’t,” Shona said.
“Well, you’re holding a chip now,” Logan pointed out. “It’s there in your hand, see?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want it,” Shona said. She tossed the chip in her mouth. It was hotter than she’d been ready for, and she had to keep it moving with her tongue as she spoke so it didn’t get a chance to burn her. “I’m just eating it out of spite.”
Logan looked down at the contents of her Styrofoam tray. Ignoring the big bite she’d taken out of the end, the tray contained one large, curved smoked sausage, and two pickled eggs that couldn’t possibly have rolled into their current position by accident.
“You mean you didn’t leave off the chips for the aesthetics?” he asked.
Shona looked down at her tray and frowned. “How d’you mean?”
“Well…” Logan gestured at her food. “Look at it.”
“What about it?”
“You’ve done that deliberately.”
She looked up at him, shook her head, then studied the tray again. “Done what? What do you mean? Is this supposed to look like something? Because if so, whatever it is, I don’t see it.”