During their silent ten-minute walk back to Stromness, Ben wondered how he could ever handle Evan’s secrecy. Such endless trust seemed like a superpower.

Then he thought about what Evan had said last night, that because of his parents’ breakup—and his own with Fergus—he’d thought a spook could never find happiness. Ben was determined to disprove that theory. They would find a way.

Right?

On a back street in Stromness, Evan opened the gate of a play park. “Ah good, it’s still here.” He led Ben toward a six-foot-tall Thomas the Tank Engine and opened its side door. “It’ll be a peedie bit cramped, but at least it’s out of the wind, and it’s as private as this world ever gets.”

Ben eyed Thomas’s moony face glowing in the nearby streetlight and tried to decide whether the cartoon locomotive’s smile was creepy or reassuring.

They climbed inside the train, drawing their knees to their chests so they could fit.

Evan took a deep breath, his expanding ribs pressing against Ben’s. “How much do you know? What exactly did I tell you last night while I was drunk?”

Ben summed up Evan’s confession, how sleeping with an undercover MI5 officer had hurt some guy who’d been dubbed collateral damage. “Then something about choosing one’s family, and that’s when I stopped you talking.”

“Thanks. Did I say where this happened?”

“No, but you’re MI5, not MI6, so it must have been within the UK.”

Evan nodded, then took another long breath. “He wasn’t a terrorist, the man I…associated with. His older brother was.”

Ben gripped the sill of Thomas’s window, bracing himself for a rollercoaster ride of truth—or what he hoped would be the truth.

“About a year and a half ago,” Evan said, “MI5 determined that the brother was part of an established terrorist cell that was planning an attack last summer. We knew the region and the month, but nothing more specific. The group was notoriously suspicious of outsiders, so MI5 had failed to infiltrate. The cell members were pure cagey online and on the phone, so surveillance wasn’t working either. The Service needed another way in. They hoped that my target would—”

“Does he have a name, this target?” Ben’s tongue punched the last word.

“I can’t tell you names and places.”

“Then use filler names so I don’t get confused. Mohammed or Reza or Ahmed or—”

“Patrick.” Evan swallowed. “We’ll call him Patrick, for conversation’s sake.”

Oh. A generic name like “John” could have been a stand-in for any nationality, but “Patrick” was ethnically specific enough to make it obvious this had to do with Northern Ireland. Ben now felt stupid and a bit racist for assuming the terrorists had been Muslim.

“Anyway,” Evan said, “we hoped that even though Patrick wasn’t a member of the cell, maybe he’d know his brother’s plans. The group had been trying to recruit him, see.”

“Did they know he was gay?”

“No. He wanted to come out.” Evan sighed. “He wanted so much more from life than guns and bombs.” He shook his head. “But his being in the closet made it safer for me to get close to him. His brother wouldn’t even know I existed, so I’d never be vetted the way any other new acquaintance would be.”

“If Patrick wasn’t out, then how did you meet?”

“Our surveillance team knew he frequented a particular gay night club. They also knew that like a lot of Irish Catholics, he loved Celtic Football Club.”

The name rang a bell. “You mean Glasgow Celtic? Isn’t that—”

“Aye, Fergus’s favorite team. So I was well steeped in the fandom.” Evan shifted his legs, not that there was a spare inch to do so in their blue plastic confessional. “My supervisors approached me at the start of last year. I’d done some field work but had never gone deep undercover. They explained the attack they were trying to stop and how I could help.”

“They gave you a choice?”

“Of course. It was an enormous job for someone so new to the Service. And to be clear, they never told me to sleep with that lad. My instructions were to befriend him. Beyond that I could use my discretion.”

Ben was confused. “If you weren’t ordered to have sex, then why did you?”

“I thought it would get him to trust me.” Evan looked at his hands clenched in his lap. “I was right.”

“Did you…like him?” This question felt the most invasive of all.

Evan’s face pinched. After a long moment he said, “Going undercover is like becoming a different person. It wasn’t me, Evan Hollister, having sex with that man. It was someone else.” He paused. “Actually, it was more like being two people at once. The real Evan was always in the background, guiding this other version of me, feeding my other self the right questions, taking every precaution to avoid blowing cover.”

“This undercover version of you, is it…” Ben wasn’t sure how to phrase this. “Was he the man I met at Dunleven Castle? Was he the man I had Valentine’s dinner with?”

“No.” Evan seemed offended at the idea. “I’ve always been myself with you.”

Ben recalled how Evan hadn’t really changed after the night he’d revealed his job, apart from being a bit more relaxed. “What about Gunnar?”

“Gunnar’s a different character,” Evan said. “He’s nothing like the man I was in-in that other place. When the operation was over, I left that one behind.”

Ben hoped that was true. He turned back to the facts of the case. “Did this ‘Patrick’ tell you what you needed to know?”

“He told me a lot, because he thought I was sympathetic to the cause—and because he wanted to impress me. Some of his information was incorrect, of course, as he wasn’t truly part of this group. We were careful which tips we acted on, in case the cell was using him for disinformation. We corroborated every bit of intelligence we got from Patrick—not just for the sake of getting it right, but to avoid exposing him as our unwitting agent. If he ever got caught…” Evan stopped and pressed a fist to his own mouth.

Ben’s throat ached. “But he did get caught, didn’t he?”

Evan tilted down his chin and began to drag his fingertips over his forehead as he spoke. “One night we were alone together in my flat. In my bed. It was late June, and the investigation was getting urgent. By then MI5 knew the weekend of the planned attack but still no location.” He rubbed his arms, though it was far warmer inside the train than it had been on the beach. “By this point Patrick and I had something of a routine. We’d get steaming drunk—well, he’d get drunk and I’d fake it—then…then I’d fuck him senseless, and in the aftermath he’d tell me almost anything I wanted to know.”

Ben wanted to stop Evan talking, just as he’d done last night in bed. But his own mouth was frozen open and dry as sandpaper.

“Sometimes he’d repeat himself,” Evan said, “so I don’t think he remembered later what he’d told me. He was so…naive.” He cleared his throat hard. “Anyway, the police would be listening.”

Ben shuddered. “This was all being recorded?”

“Firstly, the Service thought as a last resort, they could blackmail Patrick with the recordings. Secondly, this way I wouldn’t have to remember everything he told me. But most importantly, the surveillance team were my backup. If I was in danger, they could protect me.” His words tumbled out with the force of a waterfall. “I was told that if I went undercover, someone would always have my back. It wasn’t a guarantee of safety, but it was pretty fucking close.” His jaw clenched. “So they claimed.”

Ben wanted to reach out, but feared Evan might snap in half. “What happened that night?”

“It was about three a.m. We were in bed and-and I was…and he was almost…and then suddenly the door opened behind me. Before I could move, someone grabbed me in a choke hold and pulled me off of Patrick. I guess instinct and training kicked in, because my body just went into action.” Evan mimicked his own moves as he spoke. “I made my hand into a hook and smashed down on his thumb, enough to loosen his grip on my throat so I could breathe. Like they teach you in Krav Maga?”

Ben gave a wordless nod.

“Then I shoved my shoulder back.” Evan’s body twitched to the left. “I’d trapped the guy’s hand against my chest, so I turned and bashed him in the face again and again until I saw blood, and then I kept punching, sending him down and down, off the bed and onto the floor, with me on top of him.”

Ben could barely breathe. “You fought him off?”

“I fought one guy off. But there were four. Two of the others grabbed me and put a…” Evan lifted his hands and dropped them near his neck. “…a black sack over my head. I kept fighting even though I couldn’t see, because I knew my life depended on it. But eventually they got me face down and bound my hands and feet. I was still shouting, hoping somebody would hear and call the police. Then one of them kicked me in the stomach so I couldn’t shout for a while.”

Ben felt his own guts tremble. “Evan…”

“And Patrick, they quieted him right away. I never saw him again after they covered my head.”

“How could this happen? What about your backup?”

“The police surveillance van had been hijacked at gunpoint before the other guys broke into my flat. The cops were driven out to the countryside and released alive.” He gave a harsh chuckle. “Which shows some things do change, even in places like that. In the past those cops would’ve been killed—or more likely tortured, then killed.”

“What about you?” Ben whispered.

“I wasn’t killed.” Evan spread his hands to display his presence.

Ben forced out the words, each one splintering his throat. “Were. You. Tortured.”

It was excruciating to admit, but Evan knew he’d never truly recover if he couldn’t name what had happened to him.

“Yes. I was tortured. Nothing sophisticated or systematic—they weren’t CIA-trained or anything—just punching, kicking, pistol-whipping. Quaint, old-school gangster stuff.”

Ben gave a little whimper but said nothing, so Evan continued.

“They rolled me and Patrick up in separate rugs and took us to an abandoned warehouse.” He glanced at Ben’s horrified face. “Apologies for the clichéd setting, but it’s true. Anyway, they sat me up in a chair, still naked, and put a gun to my head.” Evan ran his hand along the train’s window frame to keep himself in the here-and-now. “I knew I should be trying to figure out how to escape, but all I could think about was whether the bag on my head would hold in my brains if they pulled the trigger.”

“Fuck’s sake, Evan.” Ben was leaning forward, head almost between his knees.

“Shall I stop?”

“Only if you want to.”

Evan knew he should’ve taken the out, but he didn’t. Didn’t want to. Didn’t stop.

He’d lost count of how many times he’d told this story. The first was at his debriefing. It had taken hours to blurt all the details amidst his raving agitation and near-catatonic shutdowns. Then he’d told it at the psychiatric hospital the Service shared with its sister agencies and Ministry of Defence, a hospital with top-secret-cleared doctors.

Finally, he’d told it over and over to his MI5 therapist. She’d led him through it slowly, using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy to turn the experience into something he could remember without reliving. Thanks to her, the nightmares were now rare; the panic attacks, nonexistent. Thanks to her, he could recall most of the details without falling into the past, without his body feeling every blow.

All of those recounts felt less threatening than tonight’s, because this listener mattered more than all the others put together. Would Ben be strong and supportive after hearing this tale, or would he be overwhelmed by the horror and need comfort? They’d not been together long enough for Evan to know how much his partner could take.

“They asked what Patrick had told me. They asked who I worked for, though they already knew. They wanted names of my fellow officers. They’d not had much time to search my flat, see, because one of my neighbors knocked on the door, Mrs….” He stopped himself identifying old Mrs. Barnes, who used to bring him rhubarb-ginger scones when she’d bought more than she could eat fresh.

“What’s going on, lad?” she’d called out. “It’s too late for this sort of rumpus.”

“I couldn’t answer her,” Evan said, “so she announced she was phoning the police. The men had to rush me and Patrick out inside the rugs. Sorry if that part was confusing.”

“S’all right,” Ben murmured, sounding on the verge of a dry boak.

“They found my weapon—I don’t carry one here, but all officers carry one in-in the place I was.” It was so hard not saying the word Belfast. “They also got my phones, which were fingerprint-protected, but of course they had access to my fingers.”

Evan paused, remembering the final text he’d received later that day on his personal phone, before it was smashed to bits:

Fergus: Go to hell. You’ll fit right in there.

“Did you tell them anything?” Ben asked.

“No. I couldn’t consider it. If I’d started bargaining with myself, thinking, ‘Maybe I could tell them a peedie bit,’ then they’d have broken me in minutes.” He thought for a long moment before adding, “The Service trains us to resist torture.”

“Oh God.” Ben leaned over to stick his head out the window. “I need a second.”

“Sure.” Evan’s throat was getting scratchy, reminding him how thirsty he’d felt during his eighteen hours of captivity, how they’d offered him water to drink, then poured it over his head instead, just like in that Clint Eastwood film Ben had shown him.

Ben pulled his head back into the train. “Go on.” He took Evan’s hand, perhaps as much for his own comfort as anything. “You must have been terrified.”

“The worst part wasn’t what they did, it was what I feared they would do next. I couldn’t see, so for all I knew they had a whole tableful of torture devices: pliers, hammers, hydrochloric acid...”

Ben swallowed so loudly, Evan worried again that he might get sick. “You sure you don’t want me to stop?”

“I want to hear how you escaped.” Ben squeezed his hand. “But only if you want to tell it.”

Evan was relieved to skip ahead. “Patrick’s brother—we’ll call him Stephen—was the target of our operation. He wasn’t at the warehouse when they brought me in, but when he arrived, he asked his men about Patrick.”

Another memory washed over him, and this one he didn’t share with Ben:

“Hope you boys taught Paddy a lesson about trusting strangers.” Stephen grasped Evan’s hair through the sack. “They say this face could make a dead man sing. No wonder Patrick fell for it, the eejit.”

Evan spat out a gob of blood so he could speak. “Don’t call him that. He wasn’t—”

The hardest punch yet, Stephen cutting off the truth he most needed to hear. “Don’t you dare defend him, spook. You used him.” Another punch, this one to the solar plexus. “You fucked the secrets out of him, ya filthy government whore.”

Evan fought for his next breath, knowing his last would come soon. Stephen had just admitted that the things Patrick had revealed were true, which meant Evan wasn’t getting out alive.

“Wasn’t Patrick in the warehouse with you?” Ben asked.

“No. The head thug—we’ll call him Des—told Stephen that Patrick had been taken down south to keep him safe until all of this blew over.”

“Was that true?”

Evan hesitated, wishing he could let Ben go on believing in happy endings. “They’d been too rough. Patrick died on our way to the warehouse.”

“Oh my God.” Ben’s breath hitched into a sob. “Oh my God.”

Tears could be contagious, Evan knew, so he shifted further into debriefing mode. “His death was my only chance. I knew how much his brother loved him. I thought if I could get Stephen alone and tell him his own men had killed Patrick, maybe I could turn him against them. I could win over the most unlikely ally—not only to survive, but to complete the mission.”

“The mission?” Ben removed his glasses to wipe his eyes. “How could you still think about that?”

“Focusing on the operation was what kept me alive.” He rubbed his palms against the wool of his kilt. “By evening it was obvious I wouldn’t tell them anything useful, and they knew MI5 and the police would be looking for me. So Stephen and Des put me in the boot of a car and drove me out into the woods.”

Ben yanked a packet of tissues from his inside coat pocket and nodded at him to continue.

“When we stopped, Stephen made me walk into the woods ahead of him, just the two of us so Des could keep a lookout. I was still hooded and gagged.” And naked, he decided to omit.

“God…” Tears rolled down Ben’s cheeks, and though he was clutching a tissue, he wasn’t using it.

“After we’d walked a bit, Stephen put me on my knees and took off my hood and gag. For some reason, being able to see again meant everything, even though I knew I was probably going to die.”

Ben whimpered again, but he said nothing.

“Des was too far away to hear us, but he had a line of sight through the trees.” Evan closed his eyes, seeing the scene on the backs of his lids, the literal moment of truth.

Evan pushed out the words through blood-caked lips. “Patrick’s dead.”

“I knew it was a gamble,” he told Ben. “Stephen could blame me for his brother’s death—and in a way, he wouldn’t have been wrong—but I figured what could he do, kill me twice?”

“You lie!” Stephen pointed Evan’s own pistol at his head.

“Ask Des,” Evan croaked. “He’s the one who battered him at my flat. Patrick died in the van. I was there. I heard him—” A stream of blood down his throat choked off his words.

“You heard him what?” Stephen loomed over Evan, eyes reflecting the cold light of dusk.

Evan coughed. “I heard him breathing wrong. And then…not at all.”

Stephen lowered the Glock for a moment, his hands shaking. Then he raised it again. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You’re MI5. You don’t know the meaning of truth.”

“I know Patrick’s dead.” Evan looked up to meet his captor’s eyes. “Because of me, and because of you.”

“After what seemed like a year,” he told Ben now, “Stephen put my hood back on and said to fall over when I heard the shot.”

Ben jerked as though he was bracing for the blast himself.

The gun discharged, and a bullet whistled past Evan’s right ear. He collapsed face down onto the damp forest floor, wrists still bound behind his back.

Stephen bent over and put a hand to the side of Evan’s throat, as if checking for a pulse. “I’m gonna go sort things with Des. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll be back to get you. If you’re lying, I’ll be back to kill you.”

“I couldn’t hear well after the gunshot,” Evan told Ben. “About five minutes later, Stephen was there with my clothes, which they were planning to burn after killing me. I got dressed and followed him to the car. Des was dead.” He didn’t go into detail—not only to spare Ben but also because his memory of this part was mercifully foggy. “He started driving, and the moment we got a mobile signal, I phoned MI5 to tell them Stephen was ready to cooperate.”

“Whoa. Was he a big fish?”

“Not the biggest, but definitely on his way up.”

“What did they do with him?”

“I don’t know exactly.” This was the truth. “All I know is that he told them what the target was. Arrests were made. The public never knew what we’d stopped.” Evan paused, wondering what more he should reveal. In for a penny, in for a pound. “That attack could’ve killed dozens of innocent people, including children. Terrorists in that area used to phone in a warning ahead of time, but this cell was different. They didn’t just want to scare people or make a statement. They wanted to kill.”

Ben finally used the tissue to wipe his eyes and nose. “What happened to you after?”

“First a regular hospital for my wounds, then a psych hospital for my…other wounds. The Service said I could return to work if I continued therapy, which I did. Which I still do.”

“Good. Did they give you, like, a medal and all?”

Evan thought of the Certificate of Awesomeness on his fridge. “I got a commendation for bravery. But the best reward was the choice of where to go next.”

“You came back to Glasgow on purpose? Why?”

“I wanted to make amends. I knew I’d never win Fergus back.” Not that I was allowed to. “But I couldn’t just walk away from the Warriors.” He met Ben’s eyes. “I’m glad I took the hard road, else I’d never have met you.”

Ben’s face softened. “I wish this had never happened.” He dropped his gaze. “But we all know what wishes are worth.”

Despite the cramped space, Evan managed to pull his arm from between their bodies and loop it over Ben’s shoulders. Ben twisted around to hug Evan tightly, his own body shaking with suppressed sobs.

At last he moved back and straightened his glasses. “Can we get out of this train? I can’t feel my legs.”

With some difficulty, they extricated themselves from Thomas’s bairn-size engine cab. Evan marched in place for a few moments to restore his circulation. Then he laid his hand on the engine’s roof to remind himself he was in Stromness, not Belfast, and he was with Ben, not Patrick.

As they neared the play park gate, Ben stopped. “I need to know—after surviving something like that, how can you not be…”

“What, crazy?”

“Broken.” Ben gazed up at him with eyes still wet. “Others have gone through less and come out shattered.”

“Look, I won’t lie and say I’m fine, like it never happened. You of all people know I’ve still got issues.” He took Ben’s hand, clutching it more tightly than he’d intended. “I wouldn’t let those bastards break me, not then and not now. But I know that I could still break one day. You need to know that too.”

“I do.” Ben squeezed his hand back just as hard. “And you need to know I’m here to help with this burden, even when you think you can carry it yourself.” He tugged Evan toward the gate. “Now let’s go and get warm.”

They left the play park in silence. Evan threw a last glance back at Thomas, where as a child he’d played at being an engine driver, here on an island with no trains.