Nick sat on the ground, his backs to the bars. “Noticed the medic has you wrapped around her little finger.”

Finn had taken off a while back and Sean sat in the office, reading a book by the light of a lantern. The sun had set about an hour back. Sean and Nick had always gotten on okay. They’d had a decent working relationship. While the big man could be rigid, he played fair. Military through and through. Nick had never been part of Sean’s inner circle, but he’d thought they’d understood each other. Being accused of the sort of shit Emmet was capable of had disgusted him. And worse, it made him feel vaguely ashamed. Because if he hadn’t been standing against Emmet, what the f**k had he been doing?

Good question. One he was finding increasingly hard to answer.

He kept catching himself grinding his teeth, cracking the joints in his fingers. Nothing about this situation was okay.

Sean smiled. “Roslyn seems pretty convinced that you’re trustworthy. That you wanted Emmet dead and we misjudged you.”

“Everyone wanted Emmet dead.”

“Not everyone.”

True. Justin and Pete had thought the lunatic was packed full of good ideas. Ideas about raping and murdering and all sorts of shit most people couldn’t stomach. Nick had wanted him dead. But he hadn’t stood up to him. He’d followed orders, just like he’d been trained to do. When he finally stopped to think for himself everything had long since gone to shit and he’d been hiding in a bottle for over a month. Something he’d have to live with for the rest of his life.

So many regrets. So much guessing about what was right and what was wrong. It all f**ked with his head.

“You ever think about the airport? The quarantine?” he asked.

Sean’s nostrils flared. “I try not to.”

“All those people.” Nick shook his head, hating the memory. Those first days of the plague were the stuff of nightmares. He could still remember the stink of fear filling the air, and the terror on people’s faces. Every five minutes a new command would be handed down with the latest contradicting the last. No one knew what was really going on, because no one knew how to stop it. They’d been screwed from the start. “They were terrified, didn’t know what to do. Who could blame them, faced with a field full of tents and people in masks, men shoving machine guns in their faces. I would have panicked too. Man, I would have gone ballistic.”

“Yeah.”

“Was it worth it? Us killing innocent civilians?” he asked. “They were just people on holidays. Wankers in business suits. They weren’t terrorists or anything and we had to shoot them in the back if they made a run for it. What the f**k does that make us? Not the good guys, that’s for certain.”

The captain didn’t answer straight away. He stared at his book with a heavy brow. “If we’d been able to stop the bug at that point, we’d have saved millions of lives.”

“Hmm.” It sounded nice, but the chances of it ever happening were nil. As many seaports and international airports as there were in the country and the amount of travel people did, keeping out a microscopic germ wasn’t possible. Maybe birds had bought it in. No one had figured out if animals could carry it too. There hadn’t been time.

“We had to try,” said Sean, his voice low. “We couldn’t just sit by and do nothing.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” Nick snorted, hung his head. The prison bars pressed into his back. “We’ve done some dirty jobs over the years. Things that needed doing, but nothing like that. When did you start questioning orders, huh? When did it get too much for you?”

Sean just stared at him.

“Ever have trouble sleeping at night, captain? Or is your conscience perfectly clean?”

No answer.

Fuck him.

Nick turned back to Roslyn, watched the easy rise and fall of her chest. Her breathing calmed him. Her very existence gave him hope. Always had done, from the first time he saw her. He had no idea what life was for, couldn’t answer a single one of the big questions. But if he could keep her safe, make things better for her, then that would satisfy him. Make up for some of the blood on his hands. Funny, he could barely remember any woman that came before, but there wasn’t an inch of her he could forget.

“To answer your question,” Nick said, “yeah, I care about her.”

Sean set his book down and walked toward the jail cell. “Problem is, Nick, you can be a dickhead on occasion. You like acting up. Makes you less than dependable.”

Nick just waited.

“Maybe you were angry over the way we sent you packing,” said Sean. “You could have been using her to get back into Blackstone. Could have had something planned with Pete and Justin, for all we knew.”

When he didn’t answer, the captain went on.

“The truth is even more insane. How could you have brought that girl, chained her up and yet still have managed to persuade her to give you a chance?” Sean said with a harsh laugh. “I mean, how the f**k did you pull that off? Explain it to me, please.”

“Well, what you have to understand,” said Ros, her voice husky from sleep, “is that I base my decisions on how people behave toward me. And while there might have been some initial early hiccups, there are still far more marks in the win column.”

Nick shuffled over to her bedside, forgetting all about Sean and his bullshit. “How you feeling?”

“Hey.” Big blue eyes watched him steadily. She held out her hand and he went to her. “He earned my trust, Sean. Yes he made some mistakes. But you have to keep them in context. Every time it mattered, he came through for me without hesitation. Actions do speak louder than words and he risked his life for me more than once. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak to him that way.”