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He struggled with the darkness stirring within, trying to gain control of himself.

“Esther will go after Lars, and I know her – she’ll catch him.

Then he’ll tell her the truth about what we were all doing there, and she’ll have no choice but to arrest me, too,” he told her despairingly.

The darkness reached up inside, hungrily, sensing an opportunity to be released and have its moment.

“I have to go after Lars,” he said coldly.

“I have to get to him before she does. I have to take care of it. Of him.”

Elsie gazed at him, still holding his face between her hands. “You have two choices, Josiah. You can either find Lars and we take him out of the country so he cannot speak of our secret, or you find him and you kill him.”

“Take him out of the country?” Josiah hissed. “After he butchered Peter? What the hell do you think I am, Elsie? Some kind of saint?”

“No. I know what you want to do. I know what every aching bone in your body is screaming for. You want to go out there, find him, and kill him with your bare hands. That’s what you want to do, Joe. You want to kill him and take your revenge.”

“Yes.” He held her gaze unflinchingly. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”

“It won’t bring Peter back.”

“No, but it’ll be justice.”

“Ah, justice. You and your justice.” She shook her head wearily.

“What does that mean?” he demanded.

She stroked his cheeks gently. “You believe in Josiah’s Justice – that killers must be caught, and escaped indies must be freed, and that it’s your job to do both without either getting in the way of the other. It’s very black and white.”

“I have to have a code to live by, Elsie. I have to make sense of it in my own mind.”

“You just said Lars wasn’t right in the head. He was probably badly treated as an IS. Is it right to take his life for cracking under the strain of an unjust system?”

“I have to draw my line somewhere,” he said firmly.

“And where will you draw it this time?”

“Where I always have. I might not uphold every law of the land, but I’ve never tolerated murder, no matter who commits it – or why.”

“Usually, you uphold the law by arresting people and handing them over to the courts, for a judge and jury to decide their fate. You can’t do that this time without placing us all in danger. It’s a different thing to dispense justice yourself – to take a life with your own hands.”

He pushed her away. “I’m a soldier, Elsie. I’ve taken lives before.”

“In cold blood?”

“You think I can’t do it?”

“Oh, I know you can do it.” She gave a sad smile. “But I don’t know what it’ll do to you. Who will you become if you give in to all the hatred and anger inside you right now?”

“I don’t care,” he said stubbornly.

“I know, but I do – and Peter would, too. Peter wouldn’t ask you to kill for him, Joe.”

It was as if she knew about the promise Peter had extracted from him.

“What’s it to be, Joe?” Elsie pressed.

Josiah knew he had to take action one way or another. If he didn’t, he would lose not only his husband but also the Kathleen Line, Elsie, his friends, his job, his freedom – his whole way of life – on this one terrible night.

Surely Peter couldn’t have meant for him to have to escort his killer to freedom, and yet…

Even as he struggled with himself, he knew that Peter had understood exactly what he was doing when he’d asked him to make that promise.

Peter knew Josiah’s dark side better than anyone.

He knew that if Josiah went down that path he might never return.

Peter’s last act had been to protect his husband.

“I can’t do it, Elsie,” he raged. “I can’t get Lars out of the country. I just can’t.”

“Then you must kill him.” She patted his shoulder gently and returned to Peter’s body.

“Goodbye, Peter. I’m so sorry. You were the best man I ever knew – you didn’t deserve this.

” She planted a kiss on Peter’s cold, unmoving face.

“Good luck, Josiah. I hope you win the battle you’re fighting right now.

” She kissed his cheek, too, then left him in the mortuary, all alone with Peter’s body – and a promise he didn’t want to keep.

“What happened to the man who killed Peter?” Alex asked. “Lars something? Did you go after him?”

“Lars Driessen – and yes, I did,” Josiah said brusquely. “I thought you knew all this – I thought you’d read all those stupid articles they write about me every time I’m assigned to a high-profile case.”

“I have.” Alex shot him a speculative look. “They say Esther found Driessen’s body washed up on the edge of a lost zone near the crime scene a week after Peter was killed. His DNA proved his identity – he was on the IS database, and his fingerprints were all over the knife they took from the car.”

“That’s right.” Josiah nodded.

“So, how did he die?”

“He drowned.”

“I read that,” Alex said, still gazing at him searchingly. “It’s in all the articles. They always say that nobody knows how he drowned, though.”

“And the implication is always that I tracked him down, held his head under the water, and killed him with my bare hands,” Josiah growled.

Alex put down his knife and fork. “Did you?” he asked quietly. “Nobody would blame you if you did.”

“No, I didn’t,” Josiah said brusquely.

He’d gone looking, intending to find Driessen and kill him, but the indie’s body had turned up before he had had a chance to find him.

“It’s possible he simply lost his footing in the dark in his panic after killing Peter – he wasn’t exactly the sanest individual in the world.

Or maybe he deliberately committed suicide when he realised what he’d done, and what he faced if he was caught.

Maybe he threw himself into the water. I don’t know. ”

“But you wanted to,” Alex said. “You wanted to kill him, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Josiah replied honestly. “I wanted to. And I might have, if he hadn’t killed himself.”

“Do you think you could have done it, if it had come to it?”

Josiah remembered his promise to Peter. Could he have done it? Or would he have pulled back from the darkness at the last moment and taken Lars to safety instead? He shook his head. “We’ll never know.”

“You lost a good person, an innocent man, someone you loved – he was killed right in front of you. Of course you wanted to bring the man who did it to justice, but you were denied that.”

“Well, Lars Driessen paid with his life, even though he didn’t die with my hands around his throat.”

“But all those feelings of revenge, that desire for justice, that need to avenge the person you’d lost – they had nowhere to go. You never had closure.”

Josiah looked up, feeling winded. “No.”

“No wonder it’s taken you so long to let it go.” Alex reached across the table and placed his hand over Josiah’s.

“I swear it’s like you’ve reached into my soul and seen a part of me I’ve never shown to anyone in my life before – except Peter,” he said, bemused. “How do you do that? How do you know me so well?”

Alex gazed at him for a long time, an agonised hesitation in his eyes, and then he shrugged.

“Like I said, I’ve read the articles – and there have been plenty of them.

People are fascinated by you. A runaway IS kills your husband in an unprovoked attack and then turns up dead in mysterious circumstances a week later.

You might not have killed Lars Driessen, but you’ve been given all the credit.

People would have rooted for you if you had been the killer. ”

“Maybe it was a good thing I didn’t get to Lars before he drowned,” Josiah muttered.

Alex gave him a questioning look.

“Who would I be if I’d found him and killed him?

Could I have stayed in my job? What kind of a hypocrite arrests people for murder when he’s a murderer himself?

Peter’s dying wish was for me not to seek my revenge.

He made me promise. He knew what was inside me, and where I’d end up if I took that path.

If I’d killed Lars Driessen, I think I’d have disappeared forever into the dark, and I know that’s the last thing Peter would have wanted. ”

“Instead, you’ve remained forever poised on the brink, wondering which way you’d have jumped.

” Alex moved his thumb over the grazes on Josiah’s knuckles.

“A legend was born that night: the indiehunter. Nobody could blame you for hating indies after that, and doing your best to catch every single one who crossed your path.”

“But that’s not what happened.” Josiah withdrew his hand.

“That’s the convenient narrative peddled by the media and social media, and you, of all people, know how easily that gets out of hand.

I didn’t kill Driessen, and I didn’t turn into some demented indiehunter out of grief over Peter.

” On the contrary: he’d thrown himself into developing the Kathleen Line as soon as it was safe to start up again.

He’d made it bigger, stronger, and safer than ever over the past seven years, devoting every second of his spare time to it.

“Yet you’ve pursued several indies,” Alex pointed out.

“Only ones who’ve committed murder, or have information on who did. I don’t go around hunting them for the sake of it,” he snapped. “I’m not a bounty hunter.”

Alex smiled at his tone. “God, it must have driven you nuts to be given that name. How you must have hated it all these years, walking about with that hanging around your neck when you were just trying to be a good investigator.”

“I’ve arrested far more free people than indies in my career, but the press aren’t interested in that.” Josiah sighed. He finished the last mouthful of his breakfast and pushed his plate away.

“So the great indiehunter is a fake.” Alex grinned.

“Of course he is. I never wanted the stupid name. Is the black sheep of the Lytton family a fake, too?” he threw back.

“Nobody is ever completely black or white – even George Tyler.” Alex shook his head. “Shades of grey. Nuance. Context. They make all the difference.”