Chapter 30

LIAM

If the army taught me one skill, it was how to survive on catnaps. Almost two years after leaving, I still only need to catch a few Zs before chasing the dawn to Cornwall.

As soon as I cross the county border, I'm sorely tempted to break every on-site school rule by pulling into Glynn Harber's car park out of school hours and heading straight for the stables. Not to sneak into bed with Rowan at five o'clock in the morning—although I wouldn't say no to crawling under his covers. No, the real reason I feel the need to check in is a text I only noticed after my Blackpool job was finally done and dusted. For now, I make do with pulling into my usual sea-view spot at the campsite where waves roar as I reread that message.

Dom: Your boyfriend okay? Maisie told me it all got a bit shouty between him and Teo in the playground.

I've spent the whole drive back picturing another shouty outburst, because I've seen Teo explode before, haven't I? Only he'd also thrust his drumsticks at Rowan, who hadn't been one bit fazed. Whatever caused this latest outburst probably won't have fazed him either. That didn't stop me from sending a pair of messages of my own before starting the long drive south.

Liam: You okay, Row?

Liam: And Teo?

Now I stretch out on my bed in the back of the van and scroll through his answers.

Rowan: I'm making things right for him.

Rowan: Miss you x

Same. I can't wait to see him, even if this weekend has to be about immovable demolition deadlines. I'm still going to carve out time for him and I'll carve out even more once that library is a pile of rubble.

Maybe stone and hammers aren't romantic, but I've never been one for hearts and flowers, have I? Wouldn't say I'd ever been one for love songs either, but I lie back and yeah, the sea still roars along with my personal radio station, but it's Rowan's song I hear. His lullaby lilt. All that bruised and battered angel softness. And that's what falling for him has made me. I'm so soft for him I almost drift off again to his melody and lyrics, only…

Neither of those replies answered my first question, did they? I sit up, about to send another are you okay question.

A knock on the van door stops me.

I slide it open. It doesn't matter that the man waiting outside isn't in uniform. He's definitely a soldier. "Liam Sexton?"

"Yeah."

It's barely past five, too early for visitors to my van or for sending worried texts to Rowan. It's also too early for seagulls to cry when this soldier repeats what Teo once did while I watched from a study window, but not by thrusting a pair of drumsticks at my chest.

He shoves a letter my way. A request. An apology. A song that's pure Rowan from start to finish.

I read it, and here's a second skill the army taught me.

By the time I turn the last page?

I'm combat-ready.

Rowan's gone backto his old school, Ed Britten tells me as he drives us both to Glynn Harber in his minibus.

Part of me listens. The rest of me rewinds and replays every mention of a place Rowan told me plenty about without ever speaking. Each remembered old-school shiver has me rubbing my arms as we pass fields full of sheep with their lambs. By the time we reach Glynn Harber's car park, I've never been closer to staging a one-man hijack—to taking the wheel of this vehicle and stamping my boot on the accelerator.

Because that letter? Those lyrics?

They don't quite fill every gap about a stupid game he played once and lost so badly, but here's the thing about Sappers like me. We don't only dig trenches and build bridges, we also clear mines, so I know an IED when I spot one.

Rowan believes something bad happened to him.

Not being able to name it still terrifies him.

I'm gutted that he was ever frightened. That he is still. And that he's ashamed of actions made under duress, even though the duress I read between these lines isn't explicit. Another passenger in this van fills in why Rowan ends his letter with an apology.

"I was a contestant as well," Pasha says. "Only I played the game a bit differently to Ciaran."

Ed corrects him. "Differently to Rowan, you mean, not Ciaran," He aims this at me. "We only ever knew him as Ciaran." He steers his bus up Glynn Harber's drive and parks beside a tall willow. He also chuffs. "Everything about that contest was fake, not only some of the contestant names. The whole thing was manipulation central on fucking steroids."

Pasha nods. "I played strategically. Used to hang out in the sound booth. Got to know the sound engineers and listened in with them." He touches his ear, only not for tinnitus reasons. "The production team were wired up during our rehearsals. They'd decide which of us would win or lose each heat days before each live performance. Would chat about it. Contestants couldn't hear those conversations through their earpieces, but the sound engineers' headsets picked up every word. Listening in was the best way to figure out the next twist in the game before it happened."

He tells me what makes Rowan's apology redundant.

"Early on in the contest, the show moved between major cities. I listened in on a conversation about a party held for one of the show sponsors. How they made special requests for which contestants attended. I wasn't invited."

"Me neither," Ed says. His gaze is fixed on the school front door. "We were under orders to stay in our hotel because they only wanted the youngest contestants. The prettiest."

That's Row.

I'm a second away from grabbing the keys. From taking the wheel and leaving. A smouldering fuse inside me is an inch away from exploding. What Pasha shares is a whole other detonation.

"I overheard one of the production team tell someone from management that she was almost certain a kid got roofied or had too much booze that night. One minute they were fine. The next they were in one of the sponsor's laps, and alarm bells started to ring for her."

Alarm bells ring for me too.

I'm in a vehicle, not in a pub hallway. I can still almost feel Rowan's first brave kiss. Can still hear what he told me before that bell over the harbourside door tinkled and I thought I'd never get to see him again. "Row doesn't drink. Never has."

Pasha shrugs. "All I heard her say was that this kid was out of it. I didn't recognise the name she mentioned, which makes sense now. She just said that she got them back to their hotel room safe and sound to sleep it off there. Said they were out for the count, sleeping like a baby while she kept an eye, so there's no way some wild gang-bang happened."

He folds a letter detailing what a kiss-and-tell story suggested Rowan had instigated—that he'd begged for—that almost went public in all that graphic detail, and Pasha's knuckles turn as pale as those sheets of paper. So do mine when he adds, "And I overheard someone at the top of the management tree saying, ‘Good. We can use that.'"

And now I know how.

Blackmail. They threatened to leak details Rowan didn't know were fabricated, and made him their puppet.

I was seventeen once. Signed up to be a different kind of puppet maybe, when I was too young to know what I was doing. Never regretted doing my duty for my late Queen and country until one shell too many. But deep down? I was always cut out for protection, not for violence.

Right now?

I've never felt closer to killing because this letter? This sad song? These unfinished lyrics?

He isn't sure if he consented.

Pasha's apologetic. "I had no idea they were holding all of that over him. And that tattoo pic? There were cameras running twenty-four seven everywhere in our shared house. They said they'd warn us before turning on the ones in our rooms." His chuff is dismissive. "Of course they didn't. I'm willing to bet they doctored a still from that feed. The only thing Rowan ever did wrong was believe his bedroom was somewhere he was safe to change his clothes or kick down his covers." He shoves a hand through black hair, his eyes as soulful as little Hadi's. "I promise I didn't know who they were talking about. I checked in on all the kids. None of them seemed in trouble. Of course, Rowan wasn't then. They hadn't started to put him under pressure."

"It doesn't matter." All that does is getting to him, and fast. He needs to hear the truth from someone who was there, so he can believe it.

Fuck hijacking this van to do it. I'd grow wings and fly Pasha directly to him if Luke Lawson didn't choose this moment to open the school front door. I'd still wrestle the wheel from Ed if Luke wasn't joined by two kids, and yeah, they're both tall, but Teo's never looked younger to me.

Rowan's arranged a big chance for him, Luke says. Secured access to the kind of studio equipment that could be Teo's golden ticket, so I resist that hijack urge and we get going. Our journey is silent until Ed can't resist what is second nature for anyone in the armed forces.

"So, where'd you serve?"

I don't care where our tours might have intersected, but a quick glance over my shoulder shows two boys looking wretched, so I swap stories about Hummer hijacks, about how Matt howls every time he's happy, the massive wazzock. How Neck Brace got his nickname and how Twin Two is a TV addict. I'm not a chatty person, but morale matters, and at least Teo looks better until I make a quick call to Dom.

I stare out the side window as M5 traffic merges with M4 stop-start nonsense right when I should be meeting his tight deadlines. "Sorry, I'm going to mess up your work schedule."

"Thought so." Dom must have more intel now compared to when he sent last night's text. He tells me what he's found out from his husband. "Austin said Rowan turned down a chunk of cash in exchange for singing for some TV crew. Turned down studio time with them for Teo as well. That's when it all kicked off."

Teo's head bows in the periphery of my vision, so I guess he heard that. He also speaks up, and yeah, he looked young before. Now he's older than his years.

"I don't want their cash or recording time. I just want Mr. Byrn to come back."

Me too, mate.

That means I have to end my call and turn in my seat and get honest, because I've been the last man alive on a bomb site, haven't I? Doesn't mean I fired the shell that left a brother buried. "This isn't your fault." Maybe his hope-filled eyes are why making another call is easy.

It's still early. I'm not surprised Rowan doesn't pick up. I leave a murmured message. "Of course, the minute I'm gone, you get busy saving more lambs." I don't know how to finish. I'm not a lyrical fucker. I settle for starting with what I know is true about him. "Pretty sure you're strong enough to save yourself." I end with what will always be true about me. "Just know I've got more rope if you need it."

We finally reach our destination,arriving at a school nothing like Glynn Harber. For a start, its steel gates are massive, and swing open way too slowly. So slowly that I'm tempted to scale them.

I don't know what I expect when they eventually part and Ed steers us to a huge building that could hold Glynn Harber ten times over. It isn't to get greeted with warm handshakes from a headmaster I always pictured as shiver-inducing. This smiling man introduces himself as Rowan's stepdad—and that's enough of a head trip—but him holding my hand for longer, his grip somehow grateful, is another. "Rowan told me to expect a student, not an army. You're his soldier?"

I nod.

I am.

Here's another head trip—this headmaster clasps my shoulders. "Rowan's told me all about you." He doesn't let go. "Thanks for being there for him when…"

He could finish with when I wasn't. He chooses a different ending.

"…when he was finding his way back to me." He clears his throat, and I thought Rowan had the market cornered on grit. This man's got plenty. "It's been a long, long wait, but worth it." He clasps my shoulders tighter before letting go. "He'll be pleased to see you."

Rowan is.

One day, I'm going to have the time to rewind and replay this moment as well. To remember each of our footsteps echoing as we're led through an empty school to a recording studio where Rowan's oblivious to our entry while in a soundproof section, drumming away on a full kit.

Who knows what clues him into the fact that he isn't all alone in a space he told me was a sanctuary but I can't help seeing as solitary confinement. All I know is that six of us have made this drive from Cornwall, and more people than me have learned to love him lately, but I'm the one he launches himself at first.

And yeah, he could have taken the long way round his kit instead of crashing through his cymbals, and sure, he could have dropped his drumsticks instead of almost stabbing me with them, but I can take a few more war wounds for him.

At least there's no need for rope to save him today and no room for a lamb between us. There also isn't any guilt at giving thanks for being spared by a blast that stole a brother.

Yes, I lost someone I can't ever replace. I'm also sure he'd approve of what I get to do when two ex-competitors share what they know with Rowan.

Ed and Pasha repeat their story, and he staggers again, but that's okay.

I'm here to catch him.