Deadly Code by Lin Anderson Page A

retorted.
    'And you don't?'
    It was hard not to, once you were here.
    Rhona waited in the car for her turn to drive up the ramp. She'd returned to the islands every time a major change happened in her life. Maybe that was part of the reason she was here now.
    Instead of turning left for the village, she pulled into the ferry car park and fished out a card.
    She texted Dr Lynne Franklin that, if the offer of a job still stood, she was open to discussion.
     

Chapter 17
     
    They had been lucky to get this far unnoticed.
    Spike looked up at the towering cliffs and tried to remember exactly where he had landed the dinghy the last time he had been here. He had escaped for a weekend's fishing. Anything to get away from the rising tide of his father's frustration and anger. Calum was ill again. While his mother walked the floor with his baby brother, his father cursed the genes that had given him such a sickly child.
    The sun was sinking rapidly now and a snare of panic caught at Spike. He ignored it and pulled the rope towards him, curving the dinghy into the wind. The pebbled strip of shore hung under the cliffs. When he felt the bump as the rudder scraped bottom, he slipped over the side into the water thick with seaweed, so brutally cold he gasped.
    Esther looked wan but she rallied as he began to pull ashore. She laid Duncan in the stern and plopped over the side to help him. The cliffs cut out the dying rays of the sun and Spike saw, despite her encouraging smile, that her lips were blue.
    They pulled the dinghy as far under the cliffs as they could, then Esther lifted up the silent child and kissed his startled face. Spike hoisted the bags on his back, conscious of how far they still had to go before they could light a fire and get warm. His hands and arms were aching, a dull rheumatic pain that set his teeth on edge. He looked down at his hands, but they were mere shadows in the fading light.
    Spike made Esther climb the steep path in front of him, worried she would slip and fall. She was bending to balance the weight of the baby, placing her feet carefully on the uneven surface. When they reached the top, they both fell into the heather and breathed in great gulps of air.
    It took more than half-an-hour of walking through the twisted heather stems before they reached the corrie. Whoever wrote songs about marching through heather, thought Spike, had never tried to walk in the stuff.
    Behind him Esther was humming a tune. It had worked like a lullaby, because Duncan was asleep, his face squashed sideways to her back.
    They had been climbing since the cliff edge. Head down to negotiate the dull brown knots of heather, Esther had been unaware of what was unfolding around her. Spike waited for her to catch up so that he might watch her when she raised her eyes and took in where she was.
    The first time he had found this spot, Spike had been almost blinded by anger and fear. He had left the house before he did something stupid. Before he smashed everything in that room. Before he hit the man he called father.
    Then he reached this place.
    The setting sun was throwing its last rays at the loch, staining the surface red. Spike watched Esther's delight blossom, knowing how she felt.
    A sudden lightness filled his heart, stirring him on.
    'Come on,' he said. 'Come and see your new home.'
    The blackhouse was surrounded by early grass, a green patch in a sea of brown heather. Once it had been a croft, with a family and animals and crops grown in the runrig system that still rippled the hill behind. Now only the left-hand section was wind and waterproof. Spike had made it that way on his various visits, and he'd brought food and bedding and fishing gear. At first it had been fun, like camping out. Then it became more serious.
    He ignored the familiar fear that dogged his memory and went inside. The fire was set in the hearth, although the kindling looked damp. He substituted some windswept heather and drier sticks from the bunch in the