Drake rubbed a hand up the arm of Margot’s coat, needing the assurance that she was still standing here, alive and talking, after Dieter Regnitz had passed out on that arm. After she’d held him like a friend until the authorities arrived, apparently. He could hardly believe it. Might not have, if Abuelo hadn’t been shouting the same story in Spanish, incredulous, while Margot calmly recited it for the officers who had just hauled the man away. While they’d been driving madly back through London to make sure the villain hadn’t escaped and come back here, she’d been holding him. Praying for him.

The police had already asked questions aplenty. But they hadn’t asked his. He closed his eyes for a moment while he drew in a long breath. And then he rested his forehead against hers. “What would I have done if I’d lost you?”

Margot sighed. Her arms were folded across her middle. And her gaze was locked on the door that had closed behind the uninvited guest and his new escorts. The door that now had a bullet lodged in it. A bullet meant for her.

“He had no moves left to make. He’d already lost, the moment he fired that gun. He just couldn’t see it yet. Couldn’t see that he’d backed himself into a corner. Aji keshi.” Her eyes wandered back to his. And softened. “I felt sorry for him, Drake. If I were in his place, I may have done the same thing. Tried to fill the hole with vengeance, because it’s just so gaping.”

Always surprising him, this one. He smiled and pressed a kiss to her hair. “I’m not ashamed to say that all I feel about him right now is relief that he’s in custody.”

But still Margot frowned. “If they put him in prison, he’ll probably die of pneumonia.”

It was likely. “He has to go to prison, Margot. Those are the consequences for the actions he took. He killed people.” So had Drake though. Was it different, that he hadn’t meant to? That it had happened in action, in a time of war?

Dieter Regnitz obviously hadn’t thought that made it excusable. The English government certainly would say it did. There would be no imprisonment for Drake, no legal ramifications for Maxim Jaeger’s—no, Heinrich Regnitz’s—death. If anything, he’d get a commendation for a job well done.

But it didn’t feel well done. He’d robbed a man of his brother, a mother of her child. He’d made holes in their lives, and it put one in his too. The government telling him it was right didn’t make it feel so.