Page 82 of Better the Devil

Sinead didn’t say anything more than his name. She didn’t have to.

Harris sighed, fully aware that there was no way he was leaving this house until he’d spilled the beans.

‘I wasn’t supposed to say anything,’ he mumbled. ‘But, I mean, it’s fine now, I suppose. You all know.’

‘Know what?’ Sinead asked.

Harris’s gaze flitted from his sister to Tyler and back again. ‘About her dad getting out. I mean, he’s out now, so you all know, so I suppose I don’t have to keep it a secret now.’

Sinead glanced back over her shoulder at her husband. A look passed between them before she turned back to Harris.

‘No. No secrets needed now,’ she confirmed. ‘We know he’s out.’

Harris seemed to relax a little. ‘Good. Fine. Well, she’s been weird since she heard.’

‘Since she heard a few weeks ago?’ Sinead asked.

‘Aye. Freaked her out a bit, I think. I wanted to say something to you, but she begged me not to. Said she was fine, and that she could deal with it.’

‘Deal with it?’ Tyler repeated.

Harris shrugged for the fourth and final time.

‘I need to go, or I’ll be late.’ He headed for the door. ‘Good luck,’ he called back to them. ‘And that one was for both of you.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Logan stood in his hallway,one arm inside the sleeve of his coat, his phone pressed to his ear with the other hand.

The sound of Shona belting out Meatloaf’sBat Out of Hellfrom the shower, which had been going on for a good four or five minutes by this point, seemed to fade into silence.

‘What do you meanshe knew?’ Logan asked.

He listened as Tyler explained again. As he told him word for word what Harris had said.

‘Weeks?’ he repeated, when the detective constable had finished. ‘What do you…? No. She’d have said something.’ He looked at the front door, through which Olivia had recently exited in her school uniform. ‘She’d have told us.’

Wouldn’t she?

Bosco himself had said Olivia had been shocked to see him.

She couldn’t have known he was getting out.

Could she?

‘We’ll talk about it when we get to the station,’ he said, buying himself some time to think.

He ended the call, then almost jumped out of his skin when a hand slipped onto his shoulder from behind.

‘Jesus!’

Shona grinned at him from the first step. She was largely cocooned in towels—her bigBack to the Futureone wrapped around her like a strapless dress, and a plain white one bundled on top of her head.

‘No, he’s got other appointments, so he sent me instead.’

She held her arms out to her sides and sang a Heavenly chord, then hurriedly grabbed for her big towel as it started to slip.

Her smile, which had been splitting her face in two, faded a little when she saw Jack’s expression.