The Reborn (43 page)

She saw it all happening again. The passing car, the shot. He sensed her fear and drew her close.

‘Glasgow’s my city. I’m safer here.’

‘You weren’t before.’

‘It’s different now. I’m dead.’ He raised himself on one elbow and grinned down at her. ‘You just had sex with a corpse, Dr MacLeod.’

She took a taxi home. He didn’t come down with her to the foyer nor would he promise to be back in touch until, as he put it, it was over.

She wondered if it would ever be over. If he did give evidence, what next? A new identity, a new life? She couldn’t imagine that, and nothing he’d said suggested that’s what McNab had in mind.

‘I can’t hide from every maniac I’ve locked up,’ he’d grinned.

She asked the taxi driver to drop her on Kelvin Way, deciding to walk home through the park.

Dry, crisp weather had hardened the ground, but the spring flowers were beautiful. Rhona felt absurdly joyful, a feeling she realised she hadn’t experienced for a long time.

59

The latest Reborn was almost ready to be shipped. It was going to a couple in London whose own baby had died of meningitis hours after birth. He hadn’t copied the photograph they’d sent because it was an ugly little bugger, like a shrivelled raisin. His own version was what he thought the baby boy might have looked like at two months. He’d toned down the redness of the face, filled out the creases and opened the eyes, making them a lovely dark blue. He laid the Reborn in its satin-lined box and put the lid on, then settled down at the table with a sheet of lined prison paper and a pen and began to write.

About the Author

Lin Anderson began writing whilst working as a teacher, and now writes full time. THE REBORN is her seventh novel.

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