“I promise you,” Paul said, “whatever Freya found out about me, wherever it took her, I’ll bring her home.”

The words dead or alive knifed through Steph’s head and she pushed them violently away. She glanced at Paul, his clenched arms, the intensity in his face. What was he carrying that made him so sure he was to blame?

“What is there to find out?” she asked as spots of rain landed cold and soft on her forehead.

She watched for his reaction. Did he know what his dad had let slip? Would he be honest with her now?

The rain gathered urgency. Streams ran beneath her collar, drops sticking to her eyelashes.

“Let’s duck in here,” Paul said, pointing toward the church.

They darted up the path. The door clanged shut behind them and the silence inside was chilly but peaceful, Sunday-morning service long finished. Rain dripped from their clothes as they walked down the aisle in a parody of a wedding.

Sitting in the front pew, with blue light slanting through the stained-glass window in front of her, Steph felt The Question rising from her core. The one she’d stopped herself asking him all these years. It seemed even more pertinent now that she knew the true nature of his police work.

Yet still she swallowed it, and instead said: “You were undercover. For three years.”

His head swung toward her. “How do you know that?”

“Your dad told me.”

Paul pressed a hand against his face and she heard him exhale.

“I wish you’d told me,” Steph said.

He stared at the floor. “I couldn’t.”

“I know the details must be classified but you could’ve at least—”

“I couldn’t talk about it, Steph!” His voice surged. “And I don’t just mean because it was classified.”

She felt tears behind her eyes. Paul moved his hand as if he was going to touch hers, but he didn’t: He ran his fingertips along the worn edge of the pew.

“What was your name?” she asked quietly. “Can you at least tell me that?”

There was a pause before he said, “Paul Darren Jacobs.”

“Paul?”

“It’s better to use your real first name if possible. Less scope for slipups.”

“Oh.” Even this small insight made her feel overwhelmed. Clueless.

“Things went wrong,” he said, “when I was undercover. I thought it was all in the past, but now . . .”

Dread shivered through her. “Wrong how?”

“I . . . deceived people. Made bad choices. Lost control . . .” He seemed to coil in on himself on the pew, long legs bent, his spine a question mark. “And there were consequences.”

Steph felt her pulse in every part of her. “Was it to do with drugs?”