From a short distance away, the white piece of paper under my car’s windscreen wiper fluttered in the breeze, innocuous even as it tore through my peace of mind.
The folded note bore my name—my old name—written in a bold pen.
We’d been found.
My heart pounded, and panic washed through me. A day of travel lay behind us. Weeks of planning this journey now wasted. We’d have to get back on the road and leave Scotland again. I dug my fingers into my hair, stifling a howl of frustration.
All the preparation. All the careful arrangements. Ruined.
With rigid, locked muscles, I glanced around the car park, squinting at the people hustling in and out of the service station. Someone was watching us. We had to go.
“Da? You’re crushing my hand.” Isla tugged her fingers from mine. “When we get to the cottage, I want to put my unicorn duvet on my new bed, then I’m going to line up all my books on the shelf. There will be a bookshelf, won’t there?”
I answered through gritted teeth, “Sorry, sweetheart. We cannae go.”
My tiny daughter’s expression dropped. “No! Ye promised.”
I’d promised more than that, though she’d never know exactly how much. Gripping her hand once more, I strode the distance to the car, alert for attack.
Isla wailed, dragging her feet.
“Remember what I told ye?” I asked her. “We need to stay safe.”
“I know. That’s why I’m Isla Ross now, and not our other name. That’s why we came here. Da, please don’t change your mind.”
We reached my newly purchased off-roader, and I snatched the paper from the windscreen. “This is why. Someone has followed us and put this here. We have to leave. Right now.”
Under her mop of blonde curls, Isla’s eyes widened. “No, Da—”
“I know you’re disappointed, but we have each other and that’s all we need. I’ll do anything and everything to protect ye.”
Tears filled her eyes, and I clamped down more on my urge to yell. This wasn’t fair, not on the six-year-old who needed a stable home. Not on me, a man exhausted by worry.
We had nowhere else to go.
“I wrote the note!” Isla burst out.
I halted my spiralling thoughts. “What?”
“It’s mine. I put it under there for you to find when we came back from the bathroom. I’m sorry.” She burst into a flood of tears and threw her arms around my waist.
Fear receded, and I stared at the piece of paper, crumpled in my hand. L. MacNeill, it read. I flipped it open, and inside was a red heart, drawn in crayon.
I love you, daddy. From Isla, was scrawled underneath.
Oh fuck. Oh fucking God.
I’d officially aged a year in sixty seconds.
“Sorry,” Isla blubbed.
I crouched and wrapped her in a hug. It took a long minute before I could speak. “Christ, sweetheart. Naw, it’s me who’s sorry. I jumped to a conclusion.”
“I wrote it when we were driving, using the new pens Auntie Blair gave me. I thought you’d like it. My letters are so neat.”
“They are. Perfectly so.” I hushed her, stroking over her yellow hair, so different to my dark-as-night own.
I needed to calm the hell down.
No one knew where we were. Even my sister didn’t have our new address. Isla was still safe. We could continue.
With another hug, I strapped my lass back into her car seat and kissed her forehead, then drove us on.
The last forty minutes took us deep into the Highlands of Scotland, to a remote estate where I had a new job and we’d settle in a new home. For a while, we could hide and be happy.
Yet the echo of my alarm still infected me.
I drove, edging over the speed limit, needing to escape the sense of danger.
Finally there, I pulled up outside our cottage—one of two that backed onto a thick pine forest and a good distance from any other property. Isla sat forward, peering out.
“What’s that woman doing to her door? Is she painting words on it? That’s naughty. I can see a ‘B’, then an ‘I’ and a ‘T’. Oh, but the paint is running.”
I stared, too. Our neighbour, a woman I’d yet to speak to but who my boss had assured me would help with childcare if my job called me out late, was gazing at her front door, not noticing us.
Then I saw the painted slur.
There was no chance she’d done this herself.
My anger spiked again because I’d had it with threats, worry, and stress. With driving four hundred miles and thinking I’d have to drive us back.
Whatever the fuck was going on here had one pissed-off Scotsman to contend with.
