“Did anyone hurt you?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“No. They kind of ignored me. There was a TV in the room. That was nice. And a couple of books. And they brought me food three times a day.”
That was something at least.
“I think that’s all we need,” I said, glancing at Fletcher and Dunnel to make sure they had no other questions. “Thank you both for coming in today. I know this was hard. I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been through this week, but I want you to know that we caught the guys. They won’t be bothering you again.”
The five of us stood up, and Ainslee held out her hand to me, though it turned into a bone-cracking hug. “Thank you,” she whispered in my ear.
I squeezed her back in reply, and when she released me, she had tears in her eyes that she quickly wiped away. She took Finn’s hand. “What do you say to the nice inspectors?”
“Thank you,” Finn chirped obediently, and Fletcher and I waved goodbye as Ainslee led him towards the door.
She paused in the frame, though, and looked back at us. She hesitated there, weighing whether or not she actually wanted to ask us what was on her mind. “My ex-husband… he was involved in this, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “He helped us find Finn, but he wanted his involvement kept quiet.”
“Do you know where he is?” Ainslee asked, her voice thick.
“No,” I answered honestly.
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Do you want him to?”
She thought about it for a long time, her face twitching as it cycled through emotions. “I honestly don’t know.”
Twenty-Eight
Alec MacGowan stood outside Ainslee Wair’s home exactly one week after he had helped MacBain and Fletcher rescue his son. He was trying to work up the courage to knock on the door or at least drop off the letter he had written and rewritten and rewritten again, but he found that his feet were rooted to the spot beneath an old oak tree, and all he could do was stare at the house.
Escaping the police-riddled island had been less harrowing than this. The building had been empty of Holden’s goons, and he’d gotten lucky going out the back door rather than the front as MacGowan’s team had everyone backed up by the door, taking the kidnappers down as quickly as they could. Alec scooted around the overturned chest on the floor and stepped outside to find the whole island lit up with bright white lights, making it nigh on impossible to hide.
He used the confusion to run for the dock, hoping his pontoon hadn’t drifted too far from where he’d left it. One of the officers spotted him, firing over his head, but the man named Elias tackled him and then disappeared into the water. Alec ran all the way to the end of the dock and leapt off, hitting the frigid firth with a splash that was lost amongst all the shouting.
It took him ages to find the boat. It had drifted closer to the island but to the left, so at first, Alec overshot it, his eyes searching the dark for the dull gleam of the hull. He began to tread water as he looked around. The first fingers of panic tickled his spine as he realized he might run out of strength before he found it.
Luckily, he caught sight of the island’s lights reflecting off something in the water to his left, and he found the pontoon boat a couple of hundred metres away. He decided to cut straight across to Tain, though he knew the police would be all over the town. He beached the boat on the shore and stayed well clear of the flashing red and blue lights as he found another car to hotwire to take him back to Inverness.
The smart thing to do would be to head down to Edinburgh or even further south to England and disappear for a while, but he wanted to make sure his family was okay.
So there he stood. Outside Ainslee’s house. Unable to take a single step closer.
There were so many things he wanted to say, so many things to apologize for, that the weight of where to start sat so heavily on his shoulders it drove his feet deep into the damp ground. He pulled the letter from his pocket and looked at it. It had taken him five pages to explain, but he still wasn’t sure if he had covered it all or if his words even made sense. He sighed. He’d written Ainslee’s name on the outside of the envelope, but he longed to form those syllables on his lips, to taste the way they sounded.
He hadn’t the courage.
But he also couldn’t leave without doing something.
Alec knew Ainslee and Finn were home. He’d watched them return from the grocery store, though his dark clothing helped hide him in the shadows of the gathering evening. The two of them went inside, closed the curtains, and didn’t come out again. He would have given just about to be in there with them, comforting his son, but he lost that opportunity long ago. It broke his heart.
He slipped up to the front door and gently slid his letter through the mail flap. The metal creaked and groaned as he pushed it open, and the envelope hit the floor inside with a thwap. Alec slunk away again, wishing he could see through the door to make sure Ainslee picked up the letter. He would just have to hope.
Alec hid himself within the bushes beneath the living room window. On that night, on the island, he’d thought his heart would break when he saw Finn in that room. He’d been pale and wide-eyed and trembling like a leaf in the wind. Alec needed to see him again, in the present, to make sure that he was really okay.
There was a gap in the curtains over the window, just wide enough for him to crane his
