CHAPTER 7

There was indeed a body in the freezer in Isobel’s garage.

“We think his throat was slit.” Isobel stood behind Callum as he leaned in to get a better look at the man.

“What gave it away?” Callum couldn’t stop the sarcasm. He took out his phone and started snapping pictures.

Isobel muttered something he couldn’t catch, and started pacing. She’d changed out of his shirt, and, for some reason, that irritated Callum. It was as though she wanted to distance herself from him, and what had happened, as fast as she could. He didn’t like that idea at all, and was irritated with himself that it bothered him.

He tuned Isobel out and lifted the dead guy’s left hand. There was a tattoo on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

“He’s been in prison.”

If he’d been in prison, he’d be in a database somewhere. It would make searching for an identity that much easier. And an identity would help Callum figure out how the guy had ended up in Arness cove with his throat slit.

“Prison? How do you know that?” Isobel was behind him in an instant, trying to peer over his shoulder. Which, considering she was a full head shorter than he was, wasn’t going to work. He moved to the side to make space for her, and pointed at the five dots on the man’s hand.

“Four dots forming a square, like walls of a building. One dot in the middle to show he’d been locked inside.” Callum reached for the man’s right hand, already knowing what he would find. He pointed at the letters above the knuckles of each finger. “ACAB—‘all cops are bastards’.”

Isobel’s eyes were wide again. “He’s a criminal?”

“Woman, he came off a boat that skulks into shore in the middle of the night. Did you think he was a tourist?”

“Is sarcasm your default setting?”

“Aye.” He turned back to the body.

The man looked to have been in his thirties, and there was evidence that he’d lived a rough life. His nose had been broken at least once. There was a patch of hair missing on the side of his head where an old scar was. And he had two teeth missing. Callum snapped photos of the face, making sure to get the front angle and the profile.

He shifted the body to get into the man’s pockets and spotted more of that telltale jail-black ink peeking out from under his shirt, along his hip. He lifted the material to get a look at the tattoo, and stilled when he saw it. Things had just gotten a whole lot worse.

“We need to call in the police.” He kept his voice even.

“We can’t. You promised. I can’t go to jail. I have two kids to look after. I can’t leave my kids.” Isobel was pacing again, wringing her hands and looking as though she might flee at any moment.

“He’s Russian mob.” Callum kept his eyes on her as he dropped that information. “The cops need to deal with this guy.”

She stopped and stared at him. “If he’s Russian, why is he here?”

“The Russian mob are everywhere. And you do not mess with them. Whatever is happening in your cove is way bigger than you thought it was.” Callum didn’t like this one bit. Every instinct he had said to call in the authorities and get Isobel and her family as far from this as possible.

He felt a gentle hand on his arm. The heat from it seared right through him. “I can’t, Callum. Please, don’t make me. There has to be another way to deal with this. Please.”

Callum sighed. He was an idiot. A complete and utter idiot. He should walk away while he still could. He cast a glance at Isobel’s belly, to remind himself that the time for running had passed.

“If the mob is involved,” he said, “this is no amateur operation. These guys know exactly what they’re doing. They wouldn’t have dumped the body on the beach without having a reason. A warning, maybe?” Callum stilled as his heart skipped a beat. He looked at Isobel. “They had to know you’d seen them. How would they know that? Have you had contact with anyone who’s come off that boat?”

Isobel started to shake. She reached behind her, dragged an old wooden chair closer and sat down.

“No.” Her voice was as shaky as her hands. “Maybe the dead-body message was for someone else.”

“Maybe.” But he didn’t think so. Callum’s brain was firing fast, connecting the dots of sketchy information Isobel had provided. He didn’t like the picture that was forming. “Isobel, have you had anything at all to do with these men?”

Her lush bottom lip disappeared between her teeth. It was almost enough to distract him. Almost. She looked up at him through thick black lashes.

“Last month…” She cleared her throat, and Callum didn’t dare move. He knew already that he wasn’t going to like what he heard. “Last month, there was a storm. They dropped a bag on the path up to the bluff and they didn’t come back for it.”

There was a thick silence. “Where’s the bag, Isobel?”

She visibly swallowed. “I took it to Campbeltown and sold the contents to the pawnbroker. I know it was wrong. I know it. I really needed the money and I knew they weren’t doing anything legal. But I still shouldn’t have done it.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I stole from them. You may as well know that about me too. As well as having unprotected sex with inappropriate men, I’m a thief.”

She seemed to shrink, as though to protect herself from the condemnation she seemed sure was coming. She wouldn’t get it from him. He was more interested in the fact that there was something in the bag Isobel could take to a pawnshop. Callum had imagined the boat sneaking in at night had been smuggling contraband—cheap alcohol and cigarettes from Europe was a common haul. Drugs were rarer, but much more dangerous. But neither haul was something she could have sold to a pawnbroker.

“What was in the bag?”

Her wide eyes blinked. Callum folded his arms and waited.

“Camera equipment, mainly,” she said.

Callum felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention. “Was there anything else in the bag?”

“Yes, but I only sold the things I recognised. The rest I gave to Jack to throw away. I asked him to take it over to the bin behind the shop, because I didn’t want it anywhere near us.” Her eyes flickered away from his. “You know, in case the men came looking for it, or the police found me with stolen goods. It didn’t look like much anyway, just some parts from electronic equipment.” She wet her dry lips. “Should I have kept them?”

Callum didn’t bother pointing out that she shouldn’t have touched the stuff in the first place. “What kind of camera equipment was in the bag?” Callum heard buzzing in his ears and knew it was his instinct screaming at him. Everything about this situation was wrong.

“They looked like the kind of cameras the paparazzi use. We googled some of the names, and it was high-end stuff. Very expensive new.”

The wistful tone she used when mentioning its worth made Callum add the pawnbroker to his list of people to have a chat with. From the look on Isobel’s face, she’d been ripped off when she’d sold the stuff. He stilled as the thought registered. What the hell? He was annoyed because the woman he’d had sex with didn’t get a fair deal selling her stolen goods? He was losing his bloody mind. He told himself to keep out of her business, to let the issue of her needing money drop. It was a sensible plan. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one his mouth agreed with.

“You stole to pay the loan shark, didn’t you?”

She winced. “How do you know that?”

“You mentioned him when you were ranting about being a guest on Jerry Springer.”

There was silence. Isobel looked everywhere except at him.

“Have you paid him in full now?” It was obvious that Isobel Sinclair was swimming in trouble and barely keeping afloat.

Her back went straight at the question. “That isn’t any of your business. All I need from you is advice on what to do with the body.” She sounded so prissy that it almost made him smile. Which shocked the life out of him, as it’d been months since he’d felt the urge. Knowing that the subject of her debt would only lead to an argument, Callum returned to the more pressing issue—the criminal in the freezer, and the contents of the bag she’d found.

“Was there anything in the bag that looked like a two-way radio?”

“Walkie-talkie?”

He gave her a terse nod.

“Yes, but there was only one of them, and we thought the pawnbroker wouldn’t buy it if it wasn’t part of a set. So we threw it out.”

Callum pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. This kept getting worse. The equipment in the bag was most likely surveillance gear, and the radio was the owner’s way of keeping in touch with his team. Callum wouldn’t have been surprised if the stuff Isobel threw out turned out to be listening devices or equipment to infiltrate security feeds.

“This is much worse that I thought it was, isn’t it, Callum?”

Callum stilled. He knew he should tell her that it was far worse than she imagined. He should scare her into calling the police. He should hand her over to the authorities and step back. But the sight of her sitting there, wide-eyed and desperate, made all of his protective instincts roar to life. He couldn’t hand her over to someone else to protect. His eyes flicked to her stomach. Whether he liked it or not, for the time being, she was his to protect.

“Was there anything on the beach beside the body?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

She bit that bottom lip again, making him want to soothe her. He actually broke out in a sweat with the effort it took to stay in place.

“We didn’t see anything,” she said. “But we weren’t looking. It was dark and we were too shocked and worried about the…” She gestured to the freezer.

“I need to look at the spot where you found the body, before the tide comes in and wipes the area clean.”

Isobel stood, wrapping her cardigan tightly around her, in a gesture that suggested it was more for comfort than warmth. “There’s a path at the back of the garden that leads down to the beach.” She looked back at him as she headed out of the garage. “Nobody uses this beach. The public path is overgrown and in need of repair. I haven’t seen anyone else in this cove since we moved into this house. Most folk in Arness hang out at the beach farther down the coast. It’s easier to access and much prettier.”

She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, but he let her chat as she led him to the end of the garden. She produced a key to remove the padlock from the gate. “I had to lock it to keep Sophie from escaping and falling off the cliff. She’s just turned three and has a tendency to wander into trouble.”

She seemed proud at that statement, so Callum didn’t bother pointing out that Sophie’s mother had exactly the same tendency.

They went through the gate and turned into the narrow path that ran along the top of the cliff until it met the public trail leading down to the cove below. The road lay beyond the path at the top of the bluff, with an overgrown parking bay nestled behind some fairly tall bushes. The whole area screamed abandonment. It was the perfect setup for anyone wanting to come in from the sea unseen. They could have a car waiting to pick them up and no one from town would be any the wiser. The only house near the path was Isobel’s, and even she couldn’t see the parking bay from any of her windows. Callum felt his jaw clench. What the hell was a woman with two young kids doing living somewhere so isolated? Scratch that. He already knew the answer. Isobel Sinclair seemed to be lacking in the common sense department.

Callum turned and looked back at the house. The small two-storey cottage was one of the generic houses thrown up quickly in the fifties and sixties. With its grey stucco walls, small windows and, most likely, equally small rooms, the homes had been built with function rather than luxury in mind.

“You can see into the cove from that window, can’t you?” He pointed to the one on the top left of the building.

“My bedroom,” Isobel confirmed. “I can see the water, part of the path and a tiny bit of the beach.”

“If you can’t see all of the cove’s beach, how did you know about the body?”

Isobel gave her answer to her feet. “I saw the boat come in, and saw them offload something into their dinghy. It was a clear night; plenty of moonlight. I was suspicious, so I crept out to the point where I could see the beach.”

Callum knew what was coming. He was right. The woman was genetically deficient—her common sense gene was missing. “Which point would that be?” He kept his voice even, a sure sign for anyone who knew him, that there was a good chance he was going to blow.

Isobel pointed along the fence line of her garden. About halfway along there was a flat ridge outside the boundary of her property. The narrow ledge fell into a sharp drop at the cliff’s edge—the crumbling sandstone cliff. For a second, Callum actually felt lightheaded at the thought of her being out there in the dark. She could have slipped and fallen to her death. The cliff could have given way beneath her. Hell, she could have accidentally stepped off into the darkness.

“Are you out of your mind?” he yelled, making her gaze jerk back up to his. “You could have died, woman. It’s a miracle you’re still alive. What kind of irresponsible mother sneaks around on a cliff edge in the middle of the bloody night? Do you have a death wish? Do you?”

She jerked her head back as though she’d been slapped, and for a second he thought she might burst into tears. She didn’t. Instead, her shoulders went back, and her eyes blazed.

“Go to hell, Callum McKay. You have no idea what it takes to be a single parent. So don’t go judging me. In fact, don’t bother talking to me at all. Go on back to your hermit existence. I don’t need you or your help. I’m sorry I told you about the body.”

She spun on her heel and strode towards the gate. Callum took a step forward, his hand shooting out to curl around her arm.

“Well, you did tell me, and now we’re both in this mess you call a life. You might not want my help, but you damn well need it. You don’t have the sense God gave a fly. You’re a walking disaster zone, woman.”

“Stop calling me woman! I have a name. Isobel Sinclair. Use my name.”

Callum stepped into her space, close enough that they were breathing the same air. Close enough to become enveloped in her subtle fragrance, and to feel the heat from her sensuous curves. Close enough to see the blazing defiance in her eyes and to feel that look heat his blood.

“You dragged me into this mess,” he said. “Trust me when I say that I didn’t want to get involved. I was happy living my life away from everyone else. I didn’t come to you. You sought me out. You cannot even begin to conceive how much trouble you’ve stumbled into here. There’s a member of the Russian mob in your freezer. Your prints are all over their surveillance equipment, equipment you sold to a local pawnshop, so it’s easy to track. On top of that, you have a death wish that makes you skulk around the cliff edge in the dark. You don’t just need my help, woman, you need a keeper. And after what happened between us this morning, that keeper is me. I don’t care if you like that arrangement or not. All I care about is keeping you alive until we find out if you’re carrying my child.”

“I’m not pregnant!” Isobel shouted.

“Mum?”

Callum and Isobel spun towards the voice. There was a teenage boy standing on the other side of the gate, and he had Isobel’s eyes.

Isobel made a strangled little mewl of pain, jerked her arm from Callum’s hold and rushed towards her son. She held her hands out in front of her, as though it would calm the beast that was obviously rearing inside the boy.

“I can explain,” she said.

The boy’s eyes stayed firmly fixed on Callum. He didn’t flinch, even though Callum had a few inches of height on him, and a whole lot more muscle. The teen was at that difficult stage where his body had grown, but hadn’t yet bulked out to take on the form of a man.

“Seems to me you’re not the one that needs to explain,” the boy said evenly to his mother, gaining Callum’s respect. He kept his eyes on Callum. “Who are you, and what are you doing with my mum?”

Callum didn’t look away. He stared the boy down, giving him the respect of treating him like an adult. “That’s between your mother and me.”

The boy’s jaw tightened and his fists clenched. He didn’t like that answer at all. But he kept hold of his temper, and Callum’s respect went up another notch. The boy had the potential to turn into a fine man.

Isobel was through the gate and was practically running to get to her son. “Come with me.” She grabbed his arms and turned him towards the house. “I’ll explain everything.” She looked over her shoulder at Callum. “I’ll see you down on the beach.” She turned back, giving her full attention to her son.

But the boy wasn’t done with Callum. His eyes held a message. He planned on talking to the man who was messing with his mother. Callum inclined his head in agreement. He’d be waiting for a visit.

Callum watched until the pair disappeared into the house before he turned back to the cliff path. It was steep and uneven, strewn with rocks and clumps of razor grass. It was exactly the kind of path he’d have run down years earlier, without giving it a second thought. Now he hesitated.

His new prosthetic legs were top-of-the-line, with articulated knee and ankle joints, and a computer that kept everything functioning properly. He could walk up and down steps, one leg in front of the other—an impossibility with most other prosthetics. He could stride over uneven surfaces and even swim wearing the damn things. For all intents and purposes, they were as close to having flesh-and-blood legs as he would ever get. But he still couldn’t run down the path to the beach. He’d have to go down steadily, careful to place his feet in the right spots, otherwise he would have a repeat of his experience in Peru—where he’d lost a prosthetic when he’d slipped off a boulder and got his leg jammed in a crack.

Rage simmered, and he fought to contain it. There was no getting past the fact he wasn’t the man he used to be. He couldn’t do the things he used to do. And he needed to face that truth. He’d tried pretending that nothing had changed, that he was capable of everything he’d done when he still had his legs. All that had happened was he’d been proven wrong in a situation that could have resulted in everyone around him being killed.

He was glad Isobel wasn’t with him as he started down the path. Glad she didn’t see him work his way to the beach with the care an octogenarian would take. Part of him was shamed that he’d had sex with the woman and she didn’t even know he was half a man. The rest of him was glad that his secret was safe. Right now, Isobel looked at him as though he was the man he used to be. She looked at him as though he was able to do everything she thought he could do. She didn’t look at him like he was an invalid. There was no pity in her eyes. And Callum planned to do everything within his power to keep it that way.