“You won’t do anything of the sort. This is my mess. I’ll fix it. Just…just help me set my uniform back to rights.”

Silently, he came forward, redoing my belt as I buttoned up my shirt and tried to straighten out my hair. Glancing in the mirror, I saw that my lips were red and swollen, my cheeks flushed. This was so, so bad. There was no way of convincing Tony that what he’d seen hadn’t been what it looked like.

“I have to go,” I told Lee, stepping away from him and heading toward the door.

“Wait,” he said, grabbing my wrist.

I turned back, our gazes locking, and a sense of despair washed over me. All my recklessness had finally reached its climax. Either Tony was going to report me for seeing a man currently under police investigation, or he was going to keep my secret, and I had no idea which option was for the better.

“I’ll come see you tomorrow,” Lee promised.

“Yes, fine,” I replied, flustered. “Right now I just need to go and deal with Tony.”

With that I yanked my wrist from his hold and walked out of the ladies’. When I climbed into the car beside Tony, I found him staring straight ahead, his mouth a firm line. A moment of quiet passed before he spoke.

“How long’s it been going on?”

Guilt and remorse roiled within me. We were supposed to be friends. Friends didn’t deceive each other like I’d deceived Tony. “I never meant for any of this to happen. You have to believe me when I say that.”

“How long, Karla?”

“Two months, maybe a little more. The first time I met him was six months ago, but nothing happened between us for a long while.”

Tony shook his head and let out a slow breath. “You know what? I should’ve seen this coming. Looking back, all the signs were there. I just never expected this from you. You’re supposed to be one of the good ones. Fuck knows there’s so little of us left as it is.”

“I am one of the good ones. My relationship with Lee is entirely personal. It’s never had anything to do with my work.”

Tony gave me his fatherly stare, the one that made me wither in place. “So you’re telling me the time we searched his garage and came up empty, it had nothing to do with you?”

I turned to him, my expression agonised. “Okay, yes, but that was the only time, I promise. He was with me when you called and overheard the conversation. I never told him anything. It was just bad timing.”

“Can you even hear yourself right now? You’re having a relationship with a known felon. Christ, your own father is working on the case that will put him behind bars. You’re one of my closest friends, Karla, so please listen to me when I say this. You need to get out now before everything implodes around you.”

My voice was barely a whisper when I replied, “I’ve tried to get out. It’s not that easy, especially when feelings are involved.”

Now he looked concerned. “Do you love him?”

“No!” I exclaimed. “Of course not.” A pause. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in love.”

He was quiet for a long minute, and I could tell that his temper was dying down a little as he contemplated things. His voice turned softer. “Look, I get it, believe me, I do. The bloke is charismatic, and, from speaking with him in the interview room, I get the sense he’s out to set his own version of justice on the world. There’s an appeal to that, and in a certain way I can respect it. But when it comes down to brass tacks, that boy lives in a different world from us, Karla, with an entirely different set of rules.”

“I know that, but it’s not been easy for him. He practically raised his brothers all by himself. That family had nothing. If either one of us were born into that, we’d be living by a different set of rules, too.”

Tony stared at me sadly, his breath leaving in a heavy rush. “You do love him.”

I focused on my lap. “Maybe.”

He reached over and took my hand in his. “Listen, I have your best interests at heart. You’re young. I look at you like I would one of my own daughters, so when I say this, it’s with the utmost care. You need to step away and put this in the past. There’ll be other men, ones who don’t hold the ability to wreck your life, your career. You’ll just have to go through the heartache before you can come out the other side.”

I stared at the hand he was holding, completely deflated. Tony was talking sense, and I knew he’d never give me bad advice. He cared about me, and he was right. I had to be the strong woman I always claimed to be and stop seeing Lee for good.

“Are you going to report me to Jennings?” I whispered into the quiet of the car.

Tony let out a gruff breath. “If you promise to end it, then no. I’ll forget this night ever happened.”

“Thank you,” I said, looking him in the eye, and I meant it. This was my final chance, and I had no intention of screwing it up.

***

The following day I was off work. It was late evening and starting to get dark, and I was on my way back from the corner shop, where I’d gone to pick up a few things. I was walking alongside a row of storage compartments, where some of the locals kept their cars and household tools. There were lots of them around London, because most people lived in flats and didn’t have anywhere to keep extras like ladders and lawnmowers. I kept thinking I could hear feet pounding from above my head, but maybe I was imagining things. Why would anybody be running along the roofs?

Reaching the break between one row and the next, I looked up just in time to see Lee leap through the air, bridging the six-foot gap and making a perfect landing on the next row of compartments. For a second I stood there in awe. The sight was just so completely unexpected, and something about the way he moved niggled at my memory, like an odd sense of déjà vu.

“What are you doing up there?” I called, stopping in my tracks to peer up at him.

When he saw I’d spotted him, he stopped, shooting me a cheeky grin before backing up a few steps, then taking a run and jump to the ground. Whoa. He crouched when he landed, and I couldn’t hide that I was impressed.

“I thought it was only Trevor and Liam who did…all that stuff.” I motioned with my hands, pretending like I hadn’t known.

Lee rose to standing, the grin still on his face as he dusted himself off. “Who d’ya think taught them?”

“Oh,” I breathed, unsure what else to say. I wanted to ask him where he learned, if he ever got scared that he might fall and really hurt himself, but I didn’t. Now wasn’t the time. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to see you, like I said I would,” he replied, stepping forward and taking my hand, his fingers intertwining effortlessly with mine. He was already tugging me forward, relieving me of my shopping bag before I could try to stop him.

“Let go, Lee.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Just give me half an hour, okay? Then I’ll leave.”

Knowing he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, I allowed him to lead me inside the block of flats opposite mine. We climbed almost fifteen flights of stairs before we reached an emergency exit and Lee pushed it open, leading me onto the roof of the building. I pulled my hand from his, not too thrilled to be up so high. I didn’t have a fear of heights, but there wasn’t any proper sort of railing around the edge of the roof, which would make anyone a tad nervous.

Folding my arms across my chest, I shot him a wry look. “You’re not going to try to push me to my death, are you?”

Lee smirked and came to pull me forward once more. I noticed somebody had left an old couch up here, and there were a bunch of cigarette butts on the ground alongside a few empty beer cans. Lee plopped down onto the couch, but I resisted when he tried to pull me down with him.

“I’m not sitting on that.”

Without a word he stood, unzipped his jacket and laid it down for me, leaving him in only a grey long-sleeved T-shirt. Finally, I sat, inhaling his scent on the fabric almost against my own will.