A second gunshot rings out, closer.
There is a low door on their right with a laminated sign listing mops, buckets and someone called SHARON. Henry yanks it open. The smell of bleach and dust rolls out, along with a mop that tries to brain him.
“In,” he says. “Everybody.”
Nell attempts to respond and is shoved sideways by Roger, who has decided, as usual, that if an adventure in a cupboard is about to happen, he is going to be first. Claude hesitates, so Nell leans out partway, bangs her head on the doorframe, grabs his collar with both hands and hauls him in while Henry pushes from behind.
Henry ducks low and pulls the door shut plunging the closet into blackness. A mop handle wedges itself into his ribs. There is scuffling in the blackness and the most ungodly smell.
“Ow,” says Nell. Something is poking her in the back. She’s fairly certain it’s Henry’s elbow.
“Shhh,” Henry whispers sharply. “Don’t move.”
“I cannot move,” Nell says. “Someone is sitting on me. What on earth is that horrible… Oh.” It’s Claude.
Claude smelled outside the broom closet, but inside the broom closet the stench is almost unbearable.
Nell shifts, trying to find a more comfortable position, and feels something crinkle in her pajama pocket. Oh no. The dog treats. She’d grabbed a handful on the way out, a leftover instinct from late‑night garden jaunts with Roger.
Roger’s nose twitches. His head swivels. In the dark, Nell can feel his laser focus zero in on her pocket.
“No,” she whispers. “Roger, don’t you dare—“
But it’s too late. Roger lunges, pawing at her hip. Claude, not to be left out, joins the fray. Nell tries to fend them off, but there’s no room to maneuver. Elbows and knees bump, mops clatter, and Henry grunts as a stray paw catches him somewhere sensitive.
“Your Grace,” he says through gritted teeth, “please tell me you didn’t bring snacks.”
“They’re not snacks,” she hisses back. “They’re rewards. For good behavior.”
As if to prove her point, Roger’s teeth close on the pocket of her pajamas and tug. The fabric strains. Nell grabs his collar, trying to push him back. Claude, sensing weakness, redoubles his efforts.
“Gentlemen,” Nell says desperately. “This is not the time—Ouch! Did someone just bite me?”
Henry fumbles in the dark, his hand brushing her arm, her shoulder, her hair. For a moment, Nell forgets about the dogs. Forgets about the gunshots. Forgets, almost, to breathe.
Then Henry’s hand closes on his phone. He thumbs the screen, and the broom closet is awash in blue light. He takes in the scene: the dogs, the scattered equipment, Nell’s pajamas askew and her pale blonde hair a riot of pins and static.
“Well,” he says. “This is a predicament.”
Roger’s nose is wriggling into Nell’s pocket. Claude has somehow gotten his head wedged under her elbow and is pushing upward like he’s trying to tunnel through.
Nell laughs.
“Shhhh,” Henry says. “Everybody calm down.”
“This is ridiculous,” Nell gasps, digging the treats out of her pocket. “We’re hiding in a broom closet from a gunman, and all these two can think about is snacks. Here. For heaven’s sake.”
She holds out the treats. Roger and Claude swallow them whole, leaving Nell’s hand covered in slobber.
Henry shakes his head. “They have their priorities straight.”
Nell’s laughter subsides, but her smile lingers. In the dim light of Henry’s phone, his eyes are warmer than she’s used to seeing lately. He hands her a handkerchief.
The next gunshots crack from inside the hallway—close enough that Nell feels it in her teeth. Roger and Claude snap to attention.
“Who is shooting at whom out there?” Nell whispers.
“I don’t know,” Henry says. His fingers fly over his phone screen, typing out a number, then a code, then a message. “Help is on the way.”
Nell nods, trying to calm her racing heart.
She looks at Henry, at the determined set of his jaw, the focus in his eyes. He’s texting with one hand, the other resting on Roger’s head, a gesture of comfort for both the dog and himself.
“Mr. Templeton,” Nell says, “what do we do now?”
Henry finishes his message and slips the phone back into his pocket. His hand finds hers in the darkness, his fingers intertwining with her own.
“Now,” he says, his voice low and steady, “we wait. And we trust each other.”
Nell squeezes his hand, taking comfort in the strength of his grip, the warmth of his skin against hers.
Nell leans her head against Henry’s shoulder, feeling the steady beat of his heart.
“I’m glad you’re my husband,” she murmurs, half to herself.
“I am not your husband,” Henry says.
One of the dogs huffs, as if in disagreement.
“You are,” Nell insists, shifting to look up at him. “You’re simply on delayed activation. Like a parking permit.”
“That is not how marriage works.”
“It is how this marriage works. Aunt Gilda started a guest list. Mrs. Patterson has laid on extra napkins. We plan to serve mousse. One cannot simply walk away from mousse.”
Henry sighs. “We have an agreement.”
Nell waves her hand dismissively, nearly smacking Henry in the nose in the process. He ducks, bumping into a shelf and sending a cascade of cleaning supplies raining down on their heads.
“It’s not just in my head that we are not married,” he says, brushing a sponge off his shoulder. “We are, in fact, not married.”
Nell considers this briefly., “Only on a technicality,” she says. “Like Pluto.”
“Your Grace.”
“You were the one who decided to complicate a perfectly simple later‑marriage arrangement,” she goes on, her elbow digging into his ribs as she tries to get comfortable. “All you had to do was survive your absurdly secret work, I would continue my perfectly respectable crime‑adjacent romance writing career, and in three years—once no one was actively shooting at you in stairwells—we marry quietly. Small notice in The Times, large one in the Thames House office gossip email. Credits roll.”
“It was not simple.”
“It was extremely simple. You decided you couldn’t love me and work with me.”
Henry doesn’t move. Nell feels the silence stretch between them, taut and fragile as a spiderweb.
“My Lady,” he says at last, his voice rough. “I did not decide I couldn’t love you and work with you. I decided loving you would make the work impossible.”
Nell’s heart stutters in her chest. She twists to look at him, her nose nearly brushing his in the darkness.
“Oh,” she says softly. “Well, that’s just a filing issue, then.”
“A filing issue?”
“You mislabelled a folder,” she explains, her breath warm against his cheek. “You put Operational Compromise where it clearly should say Feelings: To Be Dealt With Later. Very human of you. You can sort it out at year three, when the marriage goes live.”
Henry makes a strangled sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. “That is… ”
“You keep saying ‘that is not how any of this works,’” Nell points out, “and yet empirically, here we are. In a broom closet. With two dogs and a mop. Hiding from a gunman. If that’s not proof of concept, I don’t know what is.”
“You proposed to me,” he says quietly, “on a cliff. In a storm. After being shot at.”
“I did,” Nell agrees. “Excellent scene. Very strong second‑act turning point.”
“You were standing,” he says, “eighteen inches from the edge.”
“I wasn’t going to fall off a cliff if you said no, Mr. Templeton, if that’s what you’re implying,” she scoffs. “That would have been appallingly on the nose. I sell millions of books. I have standards.”
Henry’s eyebrows rise. “So you’re saying you didn’t need me to say yes to keep you safe?”
“Of course not. I needed you to say yes because you wanted to marry me. Eventually. After the shooting stops.”
His hand finds her chin in the darkness, tilting her face toward his. But whatever Henry is going to say, whatever he’s about to do, is cut off by the sound of footsteps outside the door. Heavy, deliberate footsteps, drawing closer with each second.
Nell and Henry freeze, their eyes locked, their breath held. Roger and Claude scramble to stand ears pricked, their hackles rising.
The footsteps stop. Right outside the door. Slowly, the handle begins to turn.
The door swings open.
A man fills the frame, backlit by the corridor’s fluorescent glare. Black jacket, something corporate embroidered on the breast: security, maintenance, pest control, one of those jobs that make you permitted everywhere and noticed nowhere. In his right hand: a Glock, held with the casual competence of someone who’s done this before.
He takes them in. Nell in pajamas. Henry in yesterday’s tuxedo. Two oversized dogs and a mop bucket on its side.
“Out,” he says. Eastern European. Polish, maybe. “Hands visible.”
Henry’s angling, putting himself between Nell and the barrel. Roger’s hackles lift in a stiff ridge. Claude flattens tight against Henry’s leg.
“We’re just...” Nell begins.
“Silence.“ The word comes out like a crack across knuckles. “You move, I shoot the dogs.”
Nell can feel Henry next to her, calculating, every muscle tensed, but his voice has not changed.
“All right,” Henry says. “We’re leaving. Slowly.”
They step into the corridor. The man gestures with the Glock, sharp and economical, back toward the loading bay. Nell’s mind is racing. The gunshots. The violin. Sebastian Vane walking off stage with the wrong Stradivarius. And now this man asking about it.
“Where’s the violin?” the man asks.
“What violin?” Nell says.
The man’s eyes narrow. “Don’t be stupid. The Vane brothers’ violin. The Lady Aurelia. Where is it?”
“We don’t have it,” Henry says.
“Then why are you here?”
“Crossword,” Nell says. “I needed to check something about the acoustics. For eleven down.”
The mans eyes are flat and empty. Nell knows he will pull the trigger.
Roger doesn’t wait for him to decide. He launches, teeth bared, straight for the man’s knee. Fast and sideways and entirely committed. The man yells. Stumbles back. The Glock swings wide.
Henry is inside the man’s reach before the gun can track back, one hand on the wrist, the other driving up under the elbow. The gun goes off—a crack that punches the air and leaves her ears ringing. The bullet buries itself in the ceiling. Acoustic tiles rain down.
“Your Grace,” Henry says, voice tight. “Run.”
“I’m not—” There’s a fire extinguisher on the wall two feet away, and she has read enough thrillers to know what one does with fire extinguishers when men point guns at people. She yanks it free, hefts the weight of it. Claude scrambles backward in full panic and slams into the wall. The man’s eyes turn toward the noise. Nell swings. “—leaving you.” The extinguisher connects with the side of his head with a deeply satisfying clang.
The man drops.
Henry catches the gun before it hits the floor, ejects the magazine with one smooth motion, and pockets both. He’s breathing hard. There’s a new rip in his jacket.
“Good swing.”
“Thank you,” Nell says. “I’ve been practicing.”
Henry’s eyebrows rise. “Practicing.”
He turns. “Roger, out!”
Roger releases the man’s knee and trots over to Nell, looking extraordinarily pleased with himself.
Henry looks at the man on the floor. “We need to move. There are more.”
“Where?”
“This way.”
Nell hears it then: shouting. Male voices, multiple, coordinated, close.
“Run,” Henry says.
They run.
Roger shoots ahead like he’s been fired from a cannon. Claude limps behind, his gait wrong, uneven, too slow.
They cut left through a door marked PRIVATE. Roger skids to a stop, claws scrabbling on linoleum, spins, then bolts past them back down the corridor.
Henry grabs Nell’s hand and pulls her right. Roger brakes again, pivots, nearly collides with Claude, and shoots ahead. Claude is falling farther behind now. His breathing comes in ragged pulls, ribs pumping hard under wet fur.
“Here.” Henry yanks open a door: stairwell, industrial, narrow, staff only.
The voices aren’t distant anymore.
Roger bounds up the stairs in three leaps. Henry takes them three at a time. Nell follows, wellingtons slapping concrete, her chest burning. She glances back.
Claude has climbed three steps. He stops. Sways. His front legs are shaking.
“Come on, sweetheart!” Nell calls from the landing. Clapping her hands, desperate now. “You can do it!”
Claude takes one more step. His back legs give out. He goes down hard on his haunches, panting, eyes wide and lost.
Below them, the stairwell door slams open. Voices pour in.
“Wait!” Nell runs back down, dropping to her knees, sliding her arms under his chest. He’s all ribs and trembling and damp. “Henry!”
Henry’s already there. Together they get their hands under Claude and lift. He’s heavier than he looks and lighter than he should be, deadweight and shaking, legs scrambling uselessly for the stairs.
The voices are in the stairwell now. Footsteps, fast and getting faster.
They haul Claude up between them, half-carrying, half-dragging. His claws scrape concrete. Nell’s arms are screaming. Henry’s jaw is locked, breath coming hard. Roger appears above them on the next landing, looking down, ears flat. He barks—sharp, commanding, move. Splitting the air in the stairwell. A drill sergeant losing patience.
They haul Claude up the stairs between them, half-carrying, half-dragging, his legs struggling for purchase. They reach the landing, gasping, and pull him forward by his collar, one hand each.
“Mr. Templeton,” Nell pants. “Where are we going?”
“Roof access. Service exit. Car park.”
“Do you have a car?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the plan?”
“Steal one,” Henry says.
They hit the fire door with their shoulders. It crashes open. Morning slams into them: cold air, diesel, the distant wail of sirens closing in.
Henry scans the nearly empty car park. Staff vehicles, last night’s concert-goers who took cabs home. His eyes lock on a dark blue Volvo estate. Ten years old. Forgettable.
“That one,” he says.
“Excellent choice,” Nell says, still catching her breath. “Practical. Spacious. Swedish engineering.”
“It has a dog guard,” Henry says, pulling a slim leather case from his inside pocket and selecting two narrow metal tools that look like dental instruments designed by pessimists.
“You carry lockpicks in your dinner jacket,” Nell observes.
“I carry lockpicks everywhere,” Henry says, already working the driver’s door. “It’s a professional courtesy to my future self.”
The lock surrenders in under twenty seconds. Henry pulls the door open, slides into the driver’s seat, and begins doing something efficient and vaguely criminal under the steering column. Nell opens the back door for the dogs. Roger hops in as if he does this sort of thing all the time. Claude hesitates.
“In you go, sweetheart,” Nell says.
Claude looks at the car. At Nell. At Henry. At the car again. Then, with the gravity of someone committing to a significant life choice, he clambers in and sits beside Roger, who licks his ear in what might be encouragement or might just be Roger being Roger.
Nell climbs into the passenger seat. Henry has the dashboard open, two wires twisted together, and is doing something with a third that involves his teeth.
“Is this going to work?” Nell asks.
“It usually does,” Henry says.
“Usually?”
The engine turns over with a cough, then settles into a steady idle.
“Always,” Henry corrects, and reverses hard out of the space.
They’re halfway to the exit when Nell sees it: a black Mercedes pulling into the car park entrance, moving too fast, windows tinted.
“Mr. Templeton.”
“I see it.”
He accelerates. Takes the exit ramp at speed. The Volvo’s suspension bottoms out with a jolt that rattles Nell’s teeth, and then they’re merging into Kensington Gore without signaling, without slowing, into a gap that isn’t quite big enough. A horn blares. Henry doesn’t flinch.
The Mercedes follows.
Behind them, Roger stands up, nose pressed to the rear window. Claude copies him, swaying on unsteady legs.
“They’re not very subtle,” Nell says.
“They’re not trying to be.” Henry takes a left, then a right, weaving through early Sunday traffic—taxis, delivery vans, a man walking his terrier who leaps back as they blow past. A horn. Another. The Mercedes stays three cars back, predatory and tenacious.
“Where are we going?” Nell asks.
“Thames House. MI5 headquarters. If we can make it.”
“Look,” Nell says.
A second black Mercedes slides into view ahead of them, blocking the turn onto Millbank.
Henry swears. Actually swears. Nell has only heard him do this twice before, both times involving gunfire.
He yanks the wheel hard right. The Volvo lurches, tires shrieking, and they careen down a side street. A recycling bin goes over with a crash. Nell grabs the door handle. In the back, both dogs lose their footing and slam into the side panel.
The first Mercedes is still behind them. The second has turned. It’s paralleling them one street over—Nell catches flashes of it between buildings, keeping pace.
“They’re boxing us in,” Henry says.
“Then don’t let them.”
He takes the next left without braking, accelerates through a light that turns red while they’re under it, and merges into the westbound traffic on the Embankment. For five seconds, maybe ten—Nell thinks they’ve lost them.
Then the first Mercedes reappears in the rearview mirror. Three cars back. Closing.
“Mr. Templeton,” Nell says. “We can’t go to Thames House.”
“I know.”
“If they follow us there—”
“I know, Your Grace.”
She looks at him. His jaw is set, his hands tight on the wheel, his eyes flicking between the road and the mirror. He’s calculating angles, distances, and probabilities. She can practically see the MI5 training running its algorithms behind his eyes.
“I have an idea,” she says.
“Does it involve more dog treats?”
“It involves my Aunt Gilda.”