“We can give it a check, if you like?” she tried instead. And for the next hour they helped Reverend Lincoln search his room for bugs or bombs, not that any of them really knew what they were looking for.

It felt kind of shitty, in a bunch of different ways, to be pretend-helping somebody who probably needed real help. And who they potentially could really help if they’d been less worried that he might also be a multiple murderer. So when they were done, they went back to their room feeling like arseholes, sat on the bed, and indulged in a small round of self-recrimination.

“But it could have been a trick,” Liza insisted. “And while I don’t like keeping things from people, I’d dislike putting you in danger even more.”

Hanna grudgingly agreed. “I can’t believe we’re in a situation where we’re having to ask ourselves questions like, ‘Should we tell the seemingly friendly vicar who we know also used to work for a shadowy underground mastermind about the secret data drive the femme fatale gave you, or would that get us both killed?’ I thought we were just going to take walks by the loch and maybe go horse riding.”

Laying back on the bed, Liza smiled. “I think I’d have liked to go horse riding.”

“I thought you might. You said you always wanted a pony.”

“Yeah, although I think that was mostly the idea rather than knowing anything about them at all.”

For a moment Hanna was quiet, then she lay down beside Liza and said, “So I was trying to work out if there was some cool, romantic pony-related gesture I could spontaneously make, but I tried to think of some things and they all came out really fetishy.”

“Yeah.” Liza risked a smile. “‘I wanted a pony as a kid,’ isn’t the same as, ‘I want to do pony play right now.’”

“Noted. I did book us in for the horsies though. We’d have gone on Sunday. There’s this trail they do up through the mountains with lookout spots and things. I thought it’d be really nice.”

Liza reached out a hand across the bed to take Hanna’s, and they lay awhile, fingers entwined. “Yeah, that would’ve been lovely.” Then, after lying there a little while and just enjoying it, she added. “Or maybe it just would have given me a really sore arse.”

“It might have done, but it’d be a sore arse in a good way, I think.”

“Ah, well. That makes all the difference.”