All evening Evan had avoided Ben in hopes of maintaining his cover. This last-minute wedding-planner substitution had taken the police by surprise. Evan’s lead officer had considered dismissing him in the name of caution, then decided it would have looked suspicious to their operation’s target.

Especially if that target ever showed up.

“Anything else?” Evan asked Ben.

“That’s all for now. Thank you so much.” Ben spun away and made a beeline for the table at the far end of the ballroom.

Evan watched him go, unable to do otherwise, and equally unable to forget the night they’d met—at Evan’s ex-boyfriend’s wedding, of all places. Ben had approached him during Fergus’s reception, taking pity on Evan’s awkward isolation. He’d been kinder to him than anyone in months, despite what Evan had done to Fergus.

Or rather, what Evan hadn’t done.

Adjusting the cutlery, Evan watched Ben from the corner of his eye. The wedding planner was now patrolling the room, stopping every few feet to consider the table angles. His sweet, full lips pursed as he pondered, and his thick, dark brows pinched together beneath his black-framed glasses. His sleek ebony hair was swept up into a quiff that was a cross between hipster and Buddy Holly. A unique face for a unique man.

On the evening of Fergus’s reception, Evan and Ben had found each other again and again, with Ben asking increasingly creative questions, going far beyond small talk and easy assumptions. It seemed he wanted to know Evan as he was, not as everyone said he was. That night, for the first time in years, Evan had felt truly seen.

As a spy, that feeling terrified him. As a human, it thrilled him. He wanted more.

A voice spoke in his ear. “Zero Three, do you read? Zero Two,” said Detective Sergeant Deirdre Fowles over their radio system. “Visual signal.”

DS Fowles was watching him from the hotel’s security room. She could see he and Ben were alone in a quiet area, which meant Evan couldn’t speak out loud.

He scratched his right ear to signal affirmative.

“Zero Three, did Mr. Reid recognize you?” Fowles asked. “Does he know who you are?”

Evan wasn’t sure. For a moment there’d been the light of recognition in Ben’s eyes, but then he’d seemed to dismiss it. The police knew that he and Ben were acquainted—which is why they’d warned him, too late, of the lad’s approach to the ballroom. But they didn’t know Evan had asked MI5 to do a background check on Ben so they could date.

He scratched his left ear to signal negative. No one knows me, he thought bitterly, and no one ever will.

“Copy that, Zero Three,” Fowles said. “DI Hayward says you can stay. We’ll need you if Backspace ever shows up. In the meantime, keep your distance from Reid. Acknowledge.”

Evan signaled affirmative.

“Zero Two out.” Fowles went silent.

A glance at Ben showed him facing the other way, shifting one corner of the wedding-party table a few inches to his left, then his right.

How could Evan keep his distance when there might be an attack? He wanted to hover beside Ben, bodyguard style, to protect him from the monster who wished to eradicate him and his clients in the name of purity.

Evan pulled out the phone he used as Gunnar to see if Jordan Lithgow (code name Backspace) had texted him in the last few minutes. Their conversation remained where they’d left it half an hour ago:

Gunnar: It’s starting. Where are you?

Jordan: got hammered last night rough all day

Gunnar: You chickening out?

After several minutes…

Jordan: nah their not worth it

Evan gave a frustrated sigh and shoved his phone back into his pocket. Had that BVP bastard lost his nerve, or had he got spooked by something Evan had done or said? If the latter, did Jordan still plan to attack this wedding and simply not tell him?

Now that Ben was here, the thought made Evan’s heart trip over itself.

He went back to aligning the cutlery, the mindless task freeing his brain to work out what, if anything, could have tipped off Jordan.

Evan had met Lithgow in October by volunteering at the same North Ayrshire wildlife rescue center. (For some reason, extreme-right-wing types were often animal-welfare advocates, using their objections to kosher and halal slaughter methods as an excuse for anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.) He and Jordan had bonded over normal lad stuff like football, food, and their love of animals.

For weeks Jordan shared no hint of his political views. But Evan recognized the coded fascist tattoos on his knuckles, and he saw the way the man looked at the volunteers with darker complexions.

“Truth is the living heartbeat of every believable lie.”

Evan had learned this from his acting coach, the one hired to teach intelligence officers how to behave undercover. “If your emotion is real, your words will feel real,” she’d told the class. “You may have never lost a child, but you’ve lost something—a dog, a job, a best friend who moved away. You may never have been held prisoner, but you’ve felt trapped by circumstance with no dream of escape. Use that. It may save your life one day.”

She was right. Suspicious by nature, terrorists could detect the slightest discrepancy between words and body language. Feelings had to be real, even if their justifications were phony.

So it was on the thirtieth of December, as he and Jordan drove into the countryside to release a rehabilitated stoat back into the wild, that Gunnar revealed how his girlfriend had left him for a woman.

“Aw, no, man,” Jordan had said. “That’s a shiter.”

Evan then tapped into feelings about Fergus, who was marrying another man the following day. “I feel so helpless. Like, there’s nothing I can do, because I can never change what I am.”

And there lay the truth at the heart of Evan’s lie: He’d lost the love of his life because he was born this way. He’d tried to be an architect like Fergus, to live in this world as an honest, simple, real person. But spying was in his blood and in his soul.

Jordan had taken the bait, offering up vile views about same-sex marriage as they’d stopped at the designated spot in the woods. Evan had agreed, mentioning how Gunnar had come to the UK earlier that year partly to escape Norway’s lax attitudes toward “moral impurity.”

After the stoat had zoomed into the underbrush without looking back, Jordan closed the animal carrier, then leaned close to Evan. “I’ve got a plan to sort things.”

A few weeks later he’d arranged for Gunnar to work a single shift tonight at this hotel, where Jordan was an assistant catering manager. Something was going to happen.

Unfortunately, Evan still had no clue what that something was. The hotel had been searched for explosives, and undercover cops were on site ready to nab Jordan if he brought in a weapon—a knife, a gun, a bottle of acid, whatever. But he’d never shown up. According to the surveillance team, Jordan had been at his flat all day, leaving only to buy cigarettes from the corner newsagent.

In case Jordan was sending an associate to carry out the attack, the police were monitoring every wedding guest, with undercover officers acting as coat check staff offering to stow their outerwear at no charge. A wise precaution, Evan thought, but he doubted Jordan would delegate a task he so clearly relished. Why had he changed his mind at the last minute?

A new voice came over the radio, that of the op’s lead officer, Detective Inspector Raymond Hayward. “Zero Three, do you read? Zero One.”

With a glance at Ben, Evan signaled affirmative.

“Here’s an idea,” said DI Hayward. “What if you texted Backspace and told him the wedding planner was Middle Eastern? That might change his mind about not coming.”

Evan couldn’t believe his ears. Without hesitating, he signaled negative.

“Zero Three, that’s not a request.”

His blood boiling, Evan scratched his left ear again, this time using his middle finger.

The radio went silent. Ten seconds later, the ballroom door opened and DI Hayward stepped in, dressed in the same server outfit as Evan.

“Gunnar, I’m afraid you’re needed in the kitchen.” Hayward turned to Ben. “Apologies, sir. I’ll send in another staff member to assist you.”

Evan stalked out of the ballroom without looking at Ben. He followed Hayward down the hall and through an unmarked door into the security facility. In front of a bank of monitors, DS Fowles sat with the hotel security chief and a pair of constables. Deirdre gave Evan a sympathetic grimace as he and Hayward swept by.

The detective inspector took Evan into a tiny bare room and shut the door behind them. “Switch off your radio so we can speak freely.”

Evan obeyed, then said, “Sir, I can’t use a civilian as bait for a terrorist attack.”

“You can do it, because I ordered you to.”

Evan was pretty sure that as an MI5 officer outside police chain of command, he didn’t have to follow Hayward’s orders, but he preferred not to test that assumption. “It’s an interesting idea. We could have used an undercover officer with a similar ethnic background, giving them a false name to protect their identity.”

“Too late for that,” Hayward said. “It takes time to build a legend that can be backed up in case Lithgow ran a search on them. Reid is our best chance.”

“Sir, if I tell Jordan Lithgow there’s a gay man of Iranian heritage handling same-sex weddings, then Ben Reid will become a top target of every extremist in Scotland. We can’t protect him twenty-four-seven.”

“We only need to protect him tonight,” Hayward said. “Lithgow won’t share this juicy secret. You know how competitive these XRW types are. He’ll want Reid for himself.”

“And if he doesn’t, then we’ve put a civilian at risk for nothing.”

“Civilians are always at risk, they just don’t know it.” Sighing, Hayward combed his fingers through his dark hair. Every strand stood on end, making him look like he was wearing a perpetually alarmed cat on his head. “If Lithgow fades away, Operation Caps Lock will be downgraded, maybe even suspended.”

Evan had worried about that. Counterterrorism resources were finite, and tonight’s operation must have cost thousands of pounds. “Could you search his flat?”

“There’s not enough evidence for a warrant. He’s coy on the phone, and everything he told you in person was too vague.”

Evan gritted his teeth at the mention of his own shortfall. “I can get better intelligence, or the surveillance team might—”

“Surveillance is expensive. So are you. So are all those undercover cops out there.” Hayward gestured at the door, whacking his hand against it. “Ow.” He rubbed his knuckles, his face growing redder. “You’re the one who scared him off. Now you’re the one who’ll lure him back.”

For a moment, Evan doubted himself, nearly succumbing to the detective’s manipulation. I failed. I’m the only one who can make it right.

Then logic stopped that spiral, reminding him that even if Jordan’s no-show was Evan’s fault—a theory with no evidence yet—it didn’t mean he should follow this dangerous order.

“I won’t do it, sir,” he said. “Not like this.”

Hayward’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted his hand into the tiny space between their bodies. “Give me Gunnar’s phone.”

Evan took a step back, his heel striking the wall. No way he’d let anyone give Ben up to a potential terrorist.

“That phone is property of Police Scotland,” Hayward said. “Now hand it over.”

“Fine, I’ll text him.” Evan pulled out Gunnar’s phone and brought it close to his face as he thumbed in the message, using his greater height to keep the screen from Hayward’s view.

Gunnar: Stay away. Police here. Drugs bust.

Evan hit send, then handed the phone to Hayward and said, “Sorry,” though he wasn’t.

The detective inspector looked at the screen. “Are you—” His lips kept moving, but no more words came out. His grip on the phone tightened with such ferocity, Evan worried the device would shatter.

It buzzed with an incoming message. Hayward read it, then shoved the phone into Evan’s chest and jerked open the door. “Never trust a spook,” he grumbled on his way out.

Jordan’s reply had just come in:

!!!?!? ok staying home thx mate your my hero

Evan’s stomach curdled at Jordan thinking him a hero and a friend. But maybe by warning him off, Gunnar had gained Jordan’s trust, which could pay off later in the operation. Assuming the operation continued.

The most soul-twisting fact of counterterrorism work was that sometimes a few dangerous people had to stay free in the short term—leaving innocent lives at risk—in order to thwart a lot of dangerous people in the long term. It was a troubling tradeoff, but one Evan accepted.

Just not tonight.

The reception went off without a hitch—apart from the bagpiper playing a wee bit out of tune and the best man being too drunk to give a coherent speech. By the time the guests had cleared out, Ben felt exhausted but giddy, like he’d just finished a triathlon whilst being chased by a tiger.

Now he stood beside the gift table, overseeing the parade of packages heading for the best man’s SUV. Elsewhere in the room, Evan—aka, Gunnar—was clearing the tables. As he stretched forward to lift the floral centerpiece so he could remove the tablecloth, Ben took a moment to admire his…everything.

Why was Evan here in disguise? Wasn’t he an architect? Perhaps he needed extra money but was embarrassed to admit it. A second job was nothing to be ashamed of, not in this economy.

Or maybe Evan was an undercover cop. Maybe he was working with the man whose conversation Ben had overheard with Richard, the hotel’s events manager. They’d said something about “blow his cover” and “limit exposure between him and Reid.” Ben remembered seeing a headline somewhere that certain hotel chains were running drugs out of their kitchens.

Whatever the reason, Evan clearly didn’t want his cover blown. So Ben turned away now, leaving him to his secret mission. Besides, he needed to peruse Corinne’s notes one last time.

He cursed when he realized the “Brought In” list contained a third page with one item—or rather, three large items. After a quick poll of the remaining wedding party, it was clear Ben was the only person with both room in his car and the sobriety to operate it.

At least it gave him an excuse to do what he already wanted.

Ben strode over to the table Evan was clearing. “I wonder if you could help me…Gunnar, is it?”

“Heh?” Evan turned to him, crumpling the pesto-stained white tablecloth into a ball. “Oh. Hi. What can I do for you?” His smile was smooth and serene. If Evan was worried Ben recognized him, he was hiding it well.

“The vases at these three tables, see, they’ve been in the McKay family for generations. I need to load them into my car and return them to Mrs. McKay tomorrow.”

Evan looked at the vase in front of him. “With or without the flowers?” he asked, turning the ths into ds.

“With. Sorry, I know you must be knackered, but as you can see”—Ben lifted the vase and set it down with a thud—“they’re a bit heavy for one person.”

Evan looked at the tablecloth in his hands, then his eyes flickered with that incoming-transmission look. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

Hiding his smile, Ben returned to supervising the gift parade, ensuring none of the packages took a tumble or ended up in the wrong hands.

Evan soon returned, and together they lugged the three massive vases out to Ben’s car, parked in the alley behind the hotel. Once he’d secured the last of the clay monstrosities on the floor of his back seat, Ben turned to Evan with a grateful smile. “You’re an absolute star.”

“My pleasure.” Evan brushed his hands together, then frowned at his left palm.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just a little cut from the edge of that vase.”

“Let me see.” Ben stepped close and took his hand. Evan caught his breath but didn’t pull away.

Ben was sure they’d shaken hands when they’d met at Fergus and John’s wedding. So if this wasn’t their first touch, why was Ben’s pulse suddenly thumping in his ears? “Do you—do you want a sticking plaster?” he asked, though the scrape really didn’t warrant it. “I’ve got some in the glove compartment.”

Evan’s eyes met his, the golden-framed glasses lending them unusual warmth. Then his head jerked to the side. “What’s that noise?”

“What noise? Where?” Ben’s heart now pounded more from fear than desire. Had some hooligan seen them touching hands and decided to stomp them into the dust? That rarely happened anymore in Glasgow, but Ben didn’t want to buck the trend.

Evan motioned to the big green rubbish skip against the hotel wall, about twenty feet away. “Stay here.” He crept forward, head swiveling, one hand hovering near his hip as if ready to grab a weapon.

As Ben followed, he heard a loud rustling from the large steel container, but he kept going. Better to face a threat together than separately.

Evan paused beside the rubbish skip, head cocked. From inside came a plaintive “Mrrrrow?” Ben’s shoulders sagged with relief.

Evan lifted the skip’s right-hand lid, murmuring something that sounded like, Vor ah doo, katungeh?

Ben came up beside him. At the sound of another soft, sweet meow, he lifted the left-side lid, wrinkling his nose at the stench of rotting food.

A ghostly form moved inside the skip. Its face turned upward.

“Aaaaaugh!” they cried out, leaping back. Both lids clanged shut.

“What was that thing?” Ben asked.

“I don’t—could it be…” Evan lifted the left lid again, cautiously, and peered inside. “That is the most sad creature I have ever seen.”

Ben slid next to him to look. The cat was a pale gray, a color which on a paint can would be called Despair. Its long fur was matted into clumps near the tops of both forelegs, making it look as though it was wearing shoulder pads. One pale-blue eye was squeezed shut, while the other blinked up at them through a sheen of rheumy pus.

“Mrroww?” it asked again, propping its forepaws against the side of the skip.

“Ben, hold the lid.” When Evan’s hands were freed, he reached down, extending the backs of his fingers near the cat’s head. After a quick sniff, the cat rubbed its chin against Evan’s knuckles.

“That face,” Ben whispered. “Looks like someone ironed it.”

“It is very flat. He’s probably part Persian.”

“Ooh, I’m part Persian too, so it must be a sign. Let’s rescue him. And since I live in uni housing with no pets allowed, I really mean you rescue him.”

“How?”

“Take him home. Take him to the vet. Be a hero.”

For a moment, Evan’s eyes turned almost sad. Then he nodded and pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket. “Hold up the lid, and when I pull him out, close it—softly, not to scare him—then get that empty box behind you.”

“Right. Fire in.”

Evan leaned over, reaching down with both hands, murmuring that katungeh-sounding word again, which Ben assumed was Norwegian for kitty. He admired the man’s devotion to his cover.

Evan lifted the reeking feline from the rubbish skip. Ben set the cardboard box on the ground and held the flaps open so the cat could be placed inside. He’d never seen such a pathetic beast—and yet it was purring. Then again, he’d purr too, had Evan been holding him with such care and consideration.

“Let me drop you home in my car,” he said, though he knew the offer would be refused.

“No need. My flat is near.” After giving the cat a last pat on the head, Evan closed the box’s flaps so they interlocked, then lifted it as he stood. “I guess this is goodbye.”

“Is it?” Ben pulled out a business card and slipped it into Evan’s outside jacket pocket.

Evan started. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you my card.” As Ben pulled his hand back, it brushed against a solid object in the inside pocket, something that felt bigger and heavier than a phone.

“Are you offering to plan my wedding?” Evan gave a crooked smile that flipped Ben’s heart. “Is this how you discover a man is single?”

“Caught out.” Ben held up his hands in mock surrender. “Text me a pic of our wee boy after he’s been seen to.”

“Okay.” Evan started to turn away.

“Wait! He needs a name.” Ben’s mind latched onto the song that had been stuck in his head since the grooms’ first dance. “How about Terence, as in Trent D’Arby?” He sang a bar of “Sign Your Name,” swaying in a way he hoped was awkwardly charming instead of just awkward.

Evan seemed to consider it. “A street cat like this needs a more tough name. What about ‘Trent,’ as in D’Arby?” He paused. “And Reznor.”

“He does looks like something out of a Nine Inch Nails video.”

They shared a last lingering glance, and Ben wanted more than anything to touch Evan’s cheek, which was turning rosy in the cold air.

Then the box shuddered. Evan tightened his grip as he turned away. “Shhh,” he murmured to the cat. “You’re in safe hands.”

Wonderful hands. Ben headed back to the ballroom for one last check. Hands I’ll be dreaming about tonight.

He stopped short just inside the back door, then smacked his forehead. Those hands would remain just a dream forever, because if Evan kept Trent, he couldn’t bring Ben home without blowing his “Gunnar” cover.

Ben made his way into the ballroom, feeling guilty for his dismay. They’d saved a life tonight, serving a greater good than any romance. Still, he wished that just once, he wouldn’t screw himself over by doing the right thing.