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He didn’t ask a single question about the chapter. Instead, after Sparrow fell asleep in his arms, he pulled up a chair at the long bench and said, “Right. Talk me through what you actually do.”

Moff covered the operational side, Dion talked about the clients and Robin filled in the gaps. Dutch had read everything before he got on his bike. That much was obvious from the questions he asked about rotation lengths, difficult principals and what happened when a job went wrong at two in the morning in a town where the police knew their faces.

Then he stopped asking about the firm and started asking about the men.

Where Moff had served. What Dion had done before. Whether Nick had started on doors like the rest of them. He asked Robin about the house and got the whole story of the roof and the four winters it had taken to finish the place.

“And Simon?” Dutch asked.

“Out on a job. He’ll be back tonight,” Robin said. “You can talk to him tomorrow.”

Dutch didn’t try to charm them. He asked, listened and drank the tea Robin gave him. When Moff answered a question about Iraq in four words, Dutch didn’t push for a fifth.

At six, Robin brought out the whiskey. By seven, Dion was telling the story about the wedding in Bellingham and Dutch was laughing with one hand over his eyes.

At eight, Dutch joined me on the pier.

“The gray one doesn’t like me,” he said.

“Moff?”

“Barely said a word all night.”

“Dutch, he’s said about nine hundred words. That’s the most I’ve heard out of him in a year.”

Dutch looked at me.

“He likes you. He’s sat next to you all night. If he didn’t like you, he’d have found something to fix at the other end of the building by four thirty and you wouldn’t have seen him again.”

Dutch looked back through the boathouse window at Moff.

“Right,” he said. “Noted.”

The next morning, I had to talk them into going for a ride. “Sparrow and I won’t disappear,” I told them. “We can manage a few hours without the best security in the business.” Seb still made me promise to call if anything went wrong.

I stood outside the boathouse with Sparrow on my hip and watched all seven of them—Dutch, Robin, Moff, Dion, Nick, Simon and Seb—ride up the harbor road towards the point. The two halves of my life were riding together, and I wanted it to work more than I was ready to say.

Four hours later, they came back and something had shifted. They were louder for a start.

Nick was calling Dutch “Prez.” Moff was arguing with him about a stretch of road. Simon and Dion were talking over each other, while Robin stood in the middle of it all looking pleased with himself.

Seb caught my eye across the room and nodded once.

For the first time, I could picture it working.

Colt, Holden and Handful arrived at the agreed time that afternoon. They found Dutch sitting on the pier with his boots up. Colt swore. Holden shook his head. Handful got off his bike. “You absolute snake.”

“Afternoon, Handful.”

“You said Wednesday.”

“It is Wednesday.”

A fisherman at the next berth was struggling to get a crate into his boat. Handful set down his helmet and took the other end. By the time the crate was aboard, he’d been invited out fishing the next morning.

That was what the chapter would give JW Security that they didn’t already have. Handful could walk into a room full of strangers and have them laughing before the kettle boiled. They saw the grin and the clowning and took him for harmless. By the time he asked the question nobody wanted to answer, they’d already told him more than they meant to.

Robin cooked for eleven while Colt sat on the front-room floor with Sparrow, a saucepan and a wooden spoon. The first clang startled her. The second made her laugh, and Colt cheered her on until she was hitting it hard enough to drown out the kitchen. Robin yelled that if dinner burned, Colt was paying for takeaway.