She’d been instrumental in bringing two serial killers to justice. But the unique alliance she’d formed with Tony, a psychological profiler with more than enough twists in his own psyche to confound the most devious of minds, had breached all the personal defences she’d constructed over a dozen years as a police officer. She’d made the cardinal error of letting herself love someone who couldn’t let himself love her.

His decision to quit the front line of profiling and retreat to academic life had felt like a liberation for Carol. At last she was free to follow her talent and her desire and focus on the kind of work she was best suited to without the distraction of Tony’s presence.

Except that he was always present, his voice in her head, his way of looking at the world shaping her thoughts.

Carol ran a frustrated hand through her shaggy blonde hair. ‘Fuck it,’ she said out loud. ‘This is my world now, Tony.’

She raked around in her bag and found her lipstick. She did a quick repair job then smiled at her reflection again, this time with more than a hint of defiance. The interview panel had asked her to return in an hour for their verdict. She decided to head down to the first-floor canteen and have the lunch she’d been too nervous to manage earlier.

She walked out of the toilet with a bounce in her stride. Ahead of her, further down the corridor, the lift pinged. The doors slid open and a tall man in dress uniform stepped out and turned to his right without looking in her direction. Carol slowed down, recognizing Commander Paul Bishop. She wondered what he was doing here at NCIS. The last she’d heard, he’d been seconded to a Home Office policy unit. After the dramatic, anarchic and embarrassing debut of the National Offender Profiling Task Force that he’d headed up, no one in authority wanted Bishop in a post anywhere near the public eye. To her astonishment, Bishop walked straight into the interview room she’d left ten minutes before.