Having followed the coordinates with Tariq screaming down the phone that they needed to hurry, Ben had been the first to arrive, only to depart again more quickly to be reacquainted with his lunch. Whereas Jo, considering her young age and lack of experience, had more than proved Ros's decision to make her section chief a good one, by somehow managing to ignore what was left of Connie and turn her attention to Harry and John.

'Sorry Jo, but it will be fifteen minutes at least before there's any chance of a doctor reaching you, just do what you can,' was the message that had filtered through from Alec, as she'd scrambled her thoughts into some sort of order and switched onto autopilot. John was awake and John was still breathing, clutching his arm where he'd been shot but still managing a weak smile, whereas Harry who was slumped in an uncompromising heap had his eyes closed and looked truly dreadful. First things first, do what you're training's taught you, check his pulse, please God he's not dead, just go through the routine, she told herself, clambering over the now collapsed bed.

'Come on Harry, Ruth's going to kill me if anything happens to you,' she told him, tearing off her jacket and rolling it into a ball, before hauling him onto his side and then as gently as she could, placed it under his head, shouting at Ben to get himself back in there.


Landing a helicopter on a small patch of grass in the heart of central London came with a multiple of problems. But when you'd been told that the two casualties, both of whom were vital to the nation's security had the potential of serious injuries, but not only that, that once they'd been stabilised they needed to be spirited away without being identified, your job as a pilot became ten times more difficult. A small cordon of police had been sent to surround the entrances to the makeshift landing site, so the few onlookers that had deserted the race and headed in the direction of the thundering blades, had seen nothing of the doctor and his young trainee that had raced towards the house. When they'd left their respective homes earlier that afternoon, it was to act as a first responders should any of the runners or spectators require medical assistance, but not until they arrived at what amounted to blood bath, did they realise why they'd been told that at the end of the evening, they'd have to be debriefed at the headquarters of MI5.

'Security Services, thank god your here,' Jo told them, flashing her id card briefly, before indicating that Harry whose head she was cushioning was the priority. That Connie was dead there was absolutely no doubt, so quickly giving instructions to his younger colleague as to which drugs to administer and best stem the blood flow that was seeping from a still conscious John's shoulder, the doctor turned his attention back to the once Head of Counter Terrorism and his colleague.

'Does he have any historical health conditions that you know about?' he asked her, feeling fairly sure that someone of Harry's status must had received his fair share of injuries throughout his illustrious career.

'Stress if that counts, his job's dreadfully stressful,' she answered him, her voice beginning to lose it's assurance, when he told her that given Harry's age and more importantly the incarceration that he'd been recently been subjected to at the hands of the previous occupant of the room, his head injury took on extra significance.

'It's essential that we keep him calm, talk to him,' the doctor told her, preparing a sedative, as Harry briefly opened his eyes muttering incoherently and thrashing about, until with the two of them restraining him, he finally went quiet. It was at this moment that his breathing became shallow and their main cause for concern and the need to get him to a hospital more urgent.

'Special is he?' the doctor asked Jo, who was cradling Harry in her arms and absentmindedly stoking his face, trying to ease the increasing tension that was enveloping not only her, but the room.

'Very, in more ways than you can possibly imagine,' she told him, as Harry lay unresponsive and deathly quiet.


As the nation woke up to a brief statement from Downing Street, that the combination of pressure of work and a recent marital breakdown, had resulted in the Home Secretary Nicholas Blake tragically taking his own life at his private residence in Surrey, and that the Police Helicopter that had landed on the playing field of a school close to the finishing line of the marathon, had done so to take a heavily pregnant mother who'd gone into labour to hospital, where she and her twin girls were now doing well, Harry and Ruth were sleeping. Harry because he was still heavily sedated and Ruth because she was simply exhausted.

A sleep deprived Ros found herself being summoned to the Home Office, for what had been described as an urgent meeting with the new Home Secretary Andrew Lawrence, who had stepped in overnight.

'I'm delighted to meet you Miss. Myers,' he told her, striding across his new office and warmly shaking her hand, before offering her a seat and a welcome cup of coffee. He was about her age, far too young in Ros's opinion to have been elevated from the back benches to a position of such high office, until he told her that the Prime Minister and some of his colleagues had been keeping an eye on Blake for some time, and he'd been primed to be the new broom, for when they eventually found a legitimate reason to sack him. His apparent suicide had come as a great shock, but with little regret, even Ros thought sounded callous, as she tried to calculate what if anything this new Home Secretary wasn't telling her. Still if Harry did intend throwing in the towel and she was offered his job on a permanent basis, then she thought it best to keep it simple and let Andrew Lawrence think that for now at least, she was a pushover. That's how Harry had played it for years, until the gloves came out of his pocket.

Gloves, on my God, she thought, as for one fleeting moment a vision crossed her mind, but surely the timeframe couldn't have made it possible for Harry to have made a sideways visit to Surrey before he'd turned up on the grid, or could it? He'd certainly done it before, when he'd taken her with him and shot Katchimov after Adam had been killed.

'Miss Myers?'

'Sorry Home Secretary, I was just thinking about Harry,' she told him, dragging her mind back from what amounted to a murder.

'Understandably how's he doing by the way, does he have someone at home to look after him?' was said in a tone that indicated that he wasn't just asking the obvious, but was genuinely concerned, far more so than Blake had ever been, which at least was a positive start and hopefully indicated that unlike most politicians, this one had some semblance of humanity.

'Stable as far as I know, my section chief's with him and I'm getting regular updates,' she told him.

Well I hope he's in safe hands and makes a full recovery,' didn't mean that he knew about Ruth, although apart from Harry, just as Jo was, that's who was uppermost in Ros's mind.


Away from the Home Office an equally tired Alec was still holding the fort on the grid, while Ben, Malcolm and Tariq had been sent home with orders that they weren't to come back in until mid - morning.

Jo who had travelled in the helicopter with Harry and John, despite being tired had spent the night at the hospital, hell bent on staying there until Ros told her otherwise.

In the bed on the opposite side of the room to Harry, John who had undergone an operation to remove the bullet which had been lodged in his shoulder was recovering sufficiently to be awake and resume his smile at Jo.

'Shouldn't someone be holding my hand?' he asked her with a twinkle in his eye, nodding across towards Harry, whose hand had been held by Ruth, from the moment that she'd been allowed in to see him.

'That's her isn't it, the one that Harry was talking about?' John persisted, having decided that to assume nothing in this crazy new world that he'd been plummeted into was the best way to get answers to his questions.

'You'd do well not to speculate,' Jo told him, dragging herself back into her section chief roll, which coincided with Malcolm walking into the room brandishing a cup of coffee, with strict orders from Ros that after she'd drunk it, that Jo was to go home.

'How long's Ruth been here?' He asked her out of John's earshot.

'All night,' didn't surprise him, she'd raced off the grid as though the hounds of hell were after her. 'She's only just fallen asleep, you should have heard her when she first arrived, she's got more guile than anyone gives her credit for and when it comes to Harry, God help anyone who tries to cross her.' Malcolm didn't doubt.

'What's happening?' he asked her, as Harry moaned.

'He's not in pain, well apart from an obvious headache, so they've assumed he's dreaming again, Christ knows what about, but until his breathing settles down they're keeping him sedated,' she told him.

Had Ruth been awake, she'd have been able to tell them exactly where Harry's mind had headed. Another senseless death that had piled another layer of guilt ,on a mountain that was already too high to climb.

'Why would they do that, isn't it better to let him wake up?' Malcolm asked her.

'Apparently not, it's got something to do with the combination of a physical and psychological trauma being more dangerous,' she said, making him promise to call her if there was any change, before gabbing her now pretty much wrecked jacket and heading out through the door.

'That's her, the one he's in love with,' John tried again, this time with Malcolm, but got the same response. If what Ros had told him, then this young man was going to get a salutation for bravery followed by a job offer with five, but until when or if Harry and Ruth went public about their relationship, that was all he was getting.


Harry was striding across a huge expanse of beach and far into the distance, Ruth was waving to him. Which would have been perfect, except that it wasn't a wave to say hello, it was a wave of warning. Far closer to Ruth than he was, Connie was marching towards her brandishing a gun and with every step that he took the distance between him and Ruth was increasing, whereas Connie was getting nearer. 'Think, decide, act you idiot,' he was telling himself trying to run, as the blood thundered in his ears and with every step that he took his legs were getting heavier. He was going to lose her, this time there would be no redemption. 'I love you Ruth,' he called out to her, but it was disappearing on the wind.


Forty eight hours later.

A relieved John had been discharged, with the proviso that he stay at home and rest for the minimum of a week and make sure that he took the antibiotics he'd been prescribed. Until now, home had amounted to the underpinnings of Westminster Bridge, whereas home in this case had been decided upon as Ben's, where both Ros and Jo had been to visit him. Ros to tell him that he needed to make an appointment to come and see her whenever he felt better and Jo after much pestering, had finally been persuaded to hold his hand.

Alone in his room apart from his nurse and a doctor, because even the ever present Ruth had been dragged to the canteen by Malcolm to get some breakfast, the fog that had been camped in Harry's mind was slowly starting to clear, although he had one hell of a headache. He knew that he hadn't been drinking and he also knew that he wasn't lying in his own bed. The room felt airless and smelt somehow different, whereas he and Ruth always slept with the window slightly open so that they could wake up to the dawn chorus that invaded the garden. Not only that he could hear voices and a man that he didn't recognise was saying 'this looks promising, do we know where she's gone?'

'The canteen I think, shall I send someone to fetch her?' and Harry realised that he felt hungry. Toast would be nice, he wondered if Ruth had gone to make him some toast?

'Are you Miss Evershed?' and Ruth's breakfast was abandoned.

'The doctor thinks he's starting to wake up,' was said to her departing back, as she raced down the corridor with Malcolm trying to keep up with her.

She planned on telling him that this had to be the last time and if he put her through anything like this again that she'd kill him herself, that was until she pushed open the door and walked into the room. The back of his bed had been raised slightly, and he was just, well he was just Harry. Not the Section Head who had sent her to hell and back over the past few days, but her Harry who was smiling at her, as with the sheer relief at seeing him awake and calm the tears coursed down her cheeks.

'Ruth,' was all it took for her to walk across the room and with a nod from the departing doctor, sit on the side of his bed.

'Forgiven?' he whispered as she leant in. Of course he was. He was back, he was hers she knew that, and in that moment there was no one else but them.

'I'll um,' God she'd forgotten poor Malcolm.

'Thanks again, for everything, you're a sweetheart,' she told him, realising that this outpouring of affection was embarrassing him, when he nodded towards the door and indicated that he'd make himself scarce.

'My pleasure, see you both soon I hope, can I tell the others?' he asked her, giving her a huge cuddle.

Ruth nodded, ' Only that Harry's awake though, then give us a few days to get back to normal, then pop in to see us,' she told him.

Rest and plenty of it, the doctor prescribed Harry, and if his headache sorted itself out then they could start talking about him going home, but not for at least three more days.


Ruth had kept her counsel. She'd also maintained her resolve to have that conversation, to put to bed once and for all, the demons that still haunted Harry. If they were going to spend the rest of their lives together then it had to be done, either by her or with the threat of a visit to five's headshrinker, and getting Harry to do that would be like asking a pig to sprout wings. So it was two weeks later when having done as he'd been told by spending the entire time relaxing, either watching cricket on the television, listening to music or sitting in the garden, when Harry decided to have his version of that conversation, which in his case consisted of 'where do you want to live and will you marry me darling,' that Ruth got in first. She'd thought long and hard about what she intended saying to him and concluded that short and to the point was the only answer.

'I want there to be an 'us' Harry, just as much as you do. But,' she added, stalling the words on his lips and the smile on his face as she produced the USB, rather than the bacon sandwich that he'd said he'd fancied.

So she'd found it, something that he'd written on that particularly dark morning, one year to the day when she'd sailed away from him. He couldn't actually remember the full extent of what written, so suggested that 'as he'd done as she'd asked of him and hadn't actually got himself shot, if it he might be let him off the hook?' No such luck unfortunately, as Ruth looked at him as though he was insane, took a deep breath and ploughed on.

'I'm not suggesting that you forget them Harry because that would be impossible, just accept that like we did, they all joined the service knowing full well that the likelihood of them walking away unscathed would be a matter of luck. But this ridiculous guilt that you're carrying needs to be put to bed Harry, we have to move on from this or I'll, I'll - -' she'd what, she'd lost her train of thought.

He was smiling at her in the infuriating way that always lead them to him getting what he wanted, but in this it case prompted her to grit her teeth and try not to let him get away with it.

'I'll,' she tried again.

'Go and make me that bacon sandwich?' He suggested.