Donald’s response had been positive, although Alvis wasn’t sure how honest he’d been. After discussing the coastline in some detail with Allan, all three men were aware of what Rhona and the dog had faced when they’d descended that gully earlier.

And it wasn’t as straightforward as perhaps she’d hoped.

‘There’s an arch ahead,’ Allan told them. ‘We have maybe twenty minutes before high tide and the word from the coastguard is that the sea is choppy. We’ll have to be quick.’

79

‘No, Seven, don’t do it!’

He was frightened of her. The intensity of the feeling that brought almost overwhelmed her. She felt a rush of emotion, almost sexual in nature. It was both exhilarating and powerful. This was the feeling he’d experienced when he’d visited her in her cell, she realized. In the Taliban world where he controlled nothing, he could at least control her. Force her to his will.

Did this mean, when given the opportunity, she was like him?

Such a notion sickened her so much that she gagged. She thought of Sugarboy. What made the two men so different that Sugarboy would not rape her despite the torture that brought in return?

Jack, in contrast, had ignored her calls when she’d asked – no, begged – him not to rape her. Why did he think she would respond differently if given power over him?

Because we are not the same. What happened in the woods taught me that.

Then again, if she weakened and spared him, he would play the role of winner, before he set about what he had really come here to do.

And that, she suspected, was to dispense with her once and for all.

He would put her in the hole. Let the rising tide flow over her, as she had planned for him.

Or drown her out there in the ocean.

He need only hold her head under the water long enough to give the impression of suicide. A troubled returning female veteran, captured by the Taliban. Abused and raped. He would have the story all worked out to tell the authorities. Her comrades had tried to help her, Sugarboy in particular, but in her traumatized situation, she had sadly killed him.

She moved from his imagined explanation of her state of mind to that which he might not be able to explain so easily. How had Sugarboy’s body got onto the mountain? Perhaps the story Jack had concocted about that wasn’t as good as he’d thought. Would the forensic scientist who’d questioned her in the plantation buy the story of the wounds on Sugarboy’s face having come from a fall?

She wasn’t as sure as Jack was about that.

He was talking again, trying to focus her decision on his plan.

‘So,’ he was saying, ‘we’ll stay here until it’s light, then meet up with the guys and leave Skye together.’