Ewan’s phone powered up, and he started to dial.

‘What about Iain?’ Grant’s voice asked through the radio.

He asked about the computer before he asked abou t Marshall. How revealing.

‘His body’s in here next to the desk. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s him.’

‘And McCormick?’

‘…Nowhere to be seen.’

‘Wait wait wait,’ said Alex. ‘Why did he ask about McCormick? Why on Earth would he be in Marshall’s office?’

Ewan’s brain had never been particularly fast when it came to academic subjects, but his strategic instincts operated like lightning. If McCormick had entered Marshall’s office – for the first time in his life – and the computer had suddenly been destroyed, there was only one logical explanation. The bomb had been with him all along.

And if McCormick could no longer be found, despite being guarded well enough to have no chance of escape, there was only one logical explanation for that too.

Lorraine answered the phone.

‘Did she push the button?’ came her tight, choking voice. One sentence alone was enough to reveal her level of distress.

‘Yeah,’ Ewan answered. ‘We all did.’

A yell, strong enough to rattle Ewan’s eardrum, sounded in his earpiece. It was loud enough to catch the attention of Alex and Kate.

‘Lorraine?’ Ewan asked. ‘…What just happened?’

*

Shannon had tuned herself out of the conversation. Listening to Lorraine’s explanation had been traumatic enough the first time, and she already knew what had happened. Marshall was dead, his office and computer destroyed, and the AME project had been utterly annihilated just hours before it would have rendered her father invincible.

And all it had cost them was the life of Joseph McCormick.

Shannon hadn’t had much longer to deal with the news than the strike team. Lorraine had finished her explanation about a minute before half past, which left Shannon mourning McCormick while he was still alive.

‘Just come home,’ Lorraine finished. ‘The mission’s over, and McCormick can’t come with you. Get out while everyone’s still distracted.’

Shannon could hear Ewan’s voice shouting in the background, but Lorraine hung up without letting him finish. She turned to Shannon with a look in her face that was nothing short of harrowing.

‘The whole world’s uglier now,’ Lorraine groaned.

‘My father lost his shield,’ Shannon replied. ‘He won’t be invincible after all. It could have been uglier, I guess.’

But not much uglier.

I t’ll be even tougher for Lorraine once she gets home , and tells the others what she did.

‘I couldn’t stop Joey Shetland from killing himself,’ she wailed. ‘I couldn’t save Callum Turner when his insulin ran out. I couldn’t cure Roy Wolff’s stomach cancer. And now I helped McCormick engineer his own death. What kind of nurse…’

‘You can’t save everyone, Lorraine.’