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“It seemed pretty standard,” Logan said. “Except for the part about why she’s been blacklisted in the hotel community.”
Lake’s eyes turned to steel. “That’s being dealt with. Callum wasn’t too pleased about his sister-in-law being blackmailed for sex either.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask to be included in whatever Callum had planned for the sleazy hotel owner, but he didn’t have the right. Agnes had made it clear they were nothing but work colleagues. And that knowledge sat in his gut like cement.
“What wasn’t in the report?” Logan asked his boss. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“More than you’re capable of processing.”
“About Agnes, dickhead.”
Lake did that smile-twitch thing he did, rather than just smiling like the rest of them, before leaning in to rest his forearms on the table. “When Agnes’ sister Isobel first walked into Callum’s life, I did a deep dig into all four sisters. I didn’t want my business partner taking on something he wasn’t ready for.”
This wasn’t news—Lake looked out for his own. “But you must have been happy with what you found. Callum and Isobel are married.”
“Isobel’s a sweetheart who attracts trouble. Callum can handle that. Mairi, the youngest Sinclair, is a bit of a wild child, but now that she has her business and a man to occupy her, she’s calmed down some. And Donna’s the sensitive one. She needed someone to protect her, which her husband, Duncan, is doing just fine.”
Logan was used to Lake knowing everything about everyone, so he wasn’t surprised by his assessment of the Sinclair family. “And Agnes?”
Lake’s ice blue eyes met his. “She’s the protector.”
Something in the way Lake said it made Logan sit up straighter. “What exactly did she do to protect them?”
“See.” Lake pointed a finger at him. “That kind of question is why I hired you and why I put up with you calling me dickhead on occasion. Agnes has a sealed juvenile record a mile long.”
Logan didn’t bother asking how Lake managed to get access to sealed records. His boss had connections that even government intelligence agencies would envy. He would have found court documents child’s play to attain.
“Most of her arrests ended without a conviction,” Lake said. “But she did community service for one offense.”
Community service wasn’t uncommon as a punishment for wayward teens. Logan thought back to the way Agnes had denied she’d stolen from the hotel. Just that one word: No.
“What did she steal?”
Lake’s eyes flashed approval. “Just about everything that wasn’t pinned down. She was the main breadwinner for Isobel and her baby, and then their two younger sisters. She was fourteen when she moved out with her pregnant sister. Seventeen when the other two sisters joined them. Donna and Mairi were still in school.”
Logan’s mind was going a mile a minute. “Food, clothes, nappies—am I right?”
Lake nodded. “Everything her family needed that she couldn’t afford to buy on the money she made from her cleaning jobs.”
“A judge would have understood that. I don’t see her getting community service for it. Counseling, aye, but a sentence?” He shook his head. “What else is there?”
“Her father was, is, an alcoholic. The bastard kind. Beats their mother, who’s so out of it on pills I doubt she even notices anymore.”
Logan let out a low curse, his mind instantly going to his own kids. “Did he hit the girls too?”
“Only the once. He turned up at their flat in Campbeltown. Agnes was a few days shy of her eighteenth birthday. He wanted money. Social Services had cottoned on to the fact the girls weren’t living with him and had stopped him claiming money to support them. Furious, he figured they owed him for the loss of income, and he threatened to have the two youngest girls sent back to him or put in care. Agnes told him to go to hell and that he wasn’t getting any money from them—not that they had any to give. He didn’t like being told no. And being drunk, he struck out, hitting Donna.”
“The weakest link. The bastard.”
“Yeah.” Lake took a sip of his coffee, his eyes on Logan. “He hit her hard enough to give her concussion. She doesn’t remember any of it, but there are hospital records.”
From what little he knew of Agnes and her sisters, he guessed she’d gone ballistic when Donna had been hurt. “What did she do to their father to get her arrested?”
“Hit him with a wooden chair. When it broke, she used the leg to beat him senseless. Broke his nose, took out three teeth, damaged the sight in one eye, and pulverized the fingers in his left hand by jumping on it. It took two cops to get her off him.”
Logan nodded. “I would have done worse.”
Lake inclined his head in agreement while Logan reached for his own coffee, wishing it was something stronger.
