“Switching on,” he said. The laptop’s screen came to life, a random swirl of grays and whites against a blood-red background quickly taking on form.

The interior of Mac’s house.

The white box was the antenna for a millimeter-wave radar, working on a frequency capable of penetrating Victorian brickwork with ease. The operator used a small joystick to direct the antenna, slowly panning and tilting through the house, looking for signs of life…

“Got them,” he announced.

Nina looked more closely at the photograph. “Oh my God, is that Eddie?”

“That’s him,” Mac confirmed. After they’d eaten Nina had changed into a pair of slippers and one of his shirts, which came almost to her knees. While she waited for her own clothes to dry, he had taken her on a brief tour of the house, ending up in a library on the top floor-though it was as much a private exhibition of the Scotsman’s past as a repository for books. One wall was filled with framed pictures from different periods of his military career.

“He’s got hair!” Despite Chase’s military crop in the photo, he still had more follicular coverage than his present-day counterpart. “How old was he in this?”

“That was taken ten years ago, so he’d be about twenty-five.” Mac was also in the picture, as were several other men in desert camouflage. “I think it was his third year in the SAS.”

Nina moved on to the next picture, which looked as though it had been taken in a restaurant or a pub. A group of men around a table all cheerfully toasted the photographer, whom she assumed to be Mac himself. “Oh, wow! Is that Hugo?”

Mac peered at the picture, which included Chase and Hugo Castille, the latter sporting a very unflattering droopy mustache. “So it is. Took it just after we got back from a NATO joint op in the Balkans. You knew him?” Nina nodded. “Good man. Obsessed with fruit, though.”

“Yes, I remember.” Also in the picture was someone she recalled much less fondly. “Oh. And that’s Jason Starkman.”

“Yes,” said Mac disapprovingly, “shame about him. Having an affair with a fellow soldier’s wife, that’s the sort of thing a man should be horsewhipped for.”

“Actually…” Nina began, before pausing, not sure if she wanted to discuss the topic. Mac’s quizzical look encouraged her to press on. “Eddie told me that Starkman didn’t have an affair with Sophia. She made it up to hurt him.”

Mac nodded almost imperceptibly. “You know, that doesn’t surprise me. I always thought Sophia had rather a cruel streak. She had an inflated sense of entitlement, and got quite nasty if anything wasn’t exactly how she wanted it. Not that Eddie noticed it until it was too late, the poor sod.”

“Didn’t you or Hugo think to, y’know, drop a hint?”

“What could we say? He was in love with a rich, cultured and very beautiful young woman. I don’t think there’s anything we could have done to change what he thought about her. Only she could do that…and it still took a long time for him to admit it to himself. The whole experience changed him quite a bit, unfortunately.”

So Chase wasn’t as immutable as he claimed, Nina thought. “Hugo once told me that Eddie used to be… chivalrous?”

Mac laughed. “Oh good God, yes! A true knight in shining body armor. Went out of his way to help women in need, and never asked for anything in return. That’s the kind of behavior that wins a man a lot of admirers.”

“He does seem to have rather a lot of, ah, lady friends around the world,” Nina said.

“And with good reason. A lot of people owe Eddie their lives. But he was also enough of a gentleman to see that they were just friends-until Sophia. Then after that, while he still always tried to help people, he’d also developed a rather tiresomely crass attitude.”

“A defense mechanism.”

“I suppose.” Mac gave Nina a look. “But somebody was clearly able to break through it.”

“For what it was worth,” she said unhappily.

“You’ve been together for, what, eighteen months now?”

“More or less.”

“Which is longer than Eddie was with Sophia.” He left Nina to consider that as he crossed the library, a dividing beam on the ceiling showing where two smaller rooms had been knocked together into one, and reached up to brush a speck of dust off a set of bagpipes mounted on a large shield-shaped plaque of dark wood.

“Can you play them?” she asked, taking the opportunity to change the subject.

Mac smiled wryly. “Not a note. My family actually left Edinburgh when I was ten and moved to Chingford. But soldiers are rather unimaginative when they buy retirement presents. Either that, or they take the piss. I’m not really sure which case this was. But it’s the feeling behind it that counts.”

He smiled again, more warmly, then left the bagpipes and went into an adjoining room. Nina followed, finding herself in a game room, a full-size snooker table occupying most of the space. Mac picked up a white cardboard box from the green baize, snooker balls rattling inside it. He toyed with it for a moment as if about to lay the balls out for a game, then turned to face Nina.

“The thing with Eddie,” he said, “is that yes, he can be… let’s be generous and say annoying. Even before Sophia left him, there were times when I thought a bullet in the head would be the only way to get him to shut up.”

“He does kind of go on,” Nina admitted, half smiling.

“But at the same time, he’s quite possibly the most loyal, courageous and downright indomitable man I ever served with.” He took a cue from the table and tapped it against his left shin. There was a clack of plastic and metal against the wood. “Got this in Afghanistan. It was the reason I had to retire from active duty and go into spook work. Blown clean off below the knee by RPG shrapnel.”

“My God,” said Nina, wide-eyed.

“It was Eddie who got me out of there. Not only did he run into enemy fire to pull me out of a burning Land Rover, and then pick me right up over his shoulder-well, I was a leg lighter, I suppose-but he also took out the men firing at us. That’s the kind of man he is. When it comes to protecting the people he cares about, he’s determined and fearless, and will go to any lengths to do it. From what you said over dinner about how you met, I got the impression you know that from firsthand experience.”

“Yeah, I do,” she said, remembering how Chase had boarded a plane-while it was taking off-to rescue her.

“He’s a man of action,” said Mac, returning the cue to the table, “which unfortunately sometimes means that he acts without thinking. And speaks without thinking. I suppose for the people close to him, it’s a matter of balancing the negatives against the positives… and dealing with the negatives.”

“People like me, you mean?”

He gave her an innocent look. “Perhaps.”

She smiled. “You know, I never really thought of SAS men as relationship counselors.”

“Not every battlefield is out of doors,” he said, returning the smile-

A very faint noise came from above, a brief scrape. Nina barely registered it, but Mac’s head snapped up to search for the source, his smile instantly vanishing. “What is it?” she asked.

“Come with me. Quickly.” His voice was commanding, all business. He headed through the door onto the landing and hurried down the stairs to the first floor, Nina right behind him. “We’ve got to get to the study.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“There’s somebody on the roof. I heard a footstep on one of the slates.” They reached the study. Mac dropped to a crouch, for the first time showing signs of awkwardness on his prosthetic leg. “Keep your head down. They might be watching the window.”

Nina ducked and followed him across the room to a cabinet. He opened it and took out a sinister black pump-action shotgun, which became even more menacing as he racked the slide. Ka-chack. The sound alone sent a chill down Nina’s spine.