Drift (Don’t… #8)

Chapter 21 FEEDER

With the cold and dark eating into him but better dressed for it tonight in compression shirt and pants that better fitted… darker running skills, Drift crouched behind the old oak tree and gave a sniff as he let his look run over the road. He’d followed the big bloke Newham here on Friday, but he’d spent Saturday working out the footholds and access points to the grounds before coming back tonight. He didn’t go in blind to locations he wasn’t familiar with. He had caught Newham leaving in a different car, which was enough to say whoever started the name-calling came from inside, and Newham was now perhaps off duty with the change of car.

The wall standing bodyguard opposite was aggressively high, easily fifteen foot, and a hum of electricity ran its veins. The offer made him shift uncomfortably. That wasn’t just a gentle warn-off current to keep the cows out. That was high-end stuff, like running too close to the wrong of the law in order to make sure whoever tried to get in was carried away in a box.

It was going to be a bitch to break through on his own.

The gatehouse around the other side also kept home to a heavy detail of security guards, and the heavy weight of security cameras had his skin crawling enough to want to scuttle back into London centre with his tail between his legs. The walk beyond those walls looked suicidal, making the green laser pointer he held feel like tossing paper at Goliath.

The only, and absolute only advantage he had was height and getting up fast and hard into the trees. That wasn’t saying blackspots could be found up there, but it was damn well safer footing that playing delivery boy and going in through the front gate.

He just needed to get over the bloody perimeter wall first and—

A hand touched his arm, and Drift jerked around as a “shush,” met his harder whisper of—“Fuck. Shit. You out to bury me, West?”

Long red hair tucked out of sight under the hood to her hoodie, West came in close, her look on the wall opposite as a soft break of twig came from behind her.

Drift gave a rough sigh as Brighty came in low and close. “You as well?” He looked West’s way as he took off his own black skull scarf. “You’re gonna get my balls burned by Jackson, you know that, right?” Because this meant she’d been watching where he traced Newham to. Which meant something had her more than uneasy. “You shouldn’t be here. Fuck off.”

“Double-tap,” said West quietly, her look still on the wall. “It’s that with these bastards, or I burn your balls, fuck Jackson.” Her look came his way, the worry heavy enough, but also how it looked like she wanted to say something else as she looked him up and down again, then changed her mind constantly. “You’re delaying. What do you need?”

He looked the fence over. “Let’s go fault . Keep hitting the fence to set the alarms off around the perimeter as much as you can. It’ll get them thinking there’s a fault and take it offline whilst they look it over.”

“Okay. Good.” She nodded. “You get in, get what you want, then get out as fast as you can, okay?”

“Okay,” he said controlling his breathing. He didn’t want to admit how good it was to see her out in the dark after ten. Brighty too, if he was being honest.

The soft sound of tyre on darkened road had Drift slipping back under cover of tree and fern, and he stayed down until the road cleared.

“Don’t linger.” West said it so quietly in his ear he almost missed it. The shiver over having her breath play his ear he didn’t, nor the run of hand down the compression material covering his side. “Not on the streets, Drift. It’s too dark.” Quiet. “We could run, you know…? Maybe take that swim after all? You… maybe me?”

Drift’s heart slipped as he shot her a look. Maybe me….

Fuck. Why do this now?

From her look, he knew why.

She was scared.

So was he, both with what he could face in there as well as out here if he got caught.

“I just need to know who’s in there, okay?” he said quickly, twisting Brighty’s cap to keep his face hidden. “They put the name out. I need to know why.”

“What name?” Brighty shifted in close, wiping at his nose. That goddamn runny nose. “What name, D?”

West threw him a smile, then gave a rougher pull down on his cap that made sure he turned a blind eye. “Shut those earholes let alone your cake ’ole, ass. Grown up talk.” West focused back on him. “You get out… fast. Find what you need to know, then…” A frown, a hand went to her heart, a kiss to her lips before placing it against Drift’s. “My window. You find that again. Don’t make me come looking.”

“Hey,” he said a little too quickly, caught with loving being close to her. Giving a blush, he slipped off his backpack. “Take this back to yours, yeah?”

A little tension seemed to ease in her eyes. “Good to see you showing some sense and getting back to ours, knucklehead. Can’t promise Jackson will be all open arms and kisses, though.”

Backpack taken, facemask down, she was gone, her blend in with the shadows as natural to touch to skin as she haunted this side of the road and ran with the wall, away from the gatehouse. Brighty nodded Drift’s way, then took after her, always in her footsteps.

Burying any mention of Jackson, Drift shifted position a few times, and for a moment the night seemed to hold its breath, almost as if wildlife picked up on the illness caught in the night. Then West and Brighty brought the blackness alive with tossing foliage at the fence, their double-tap to try to disrupt the current anyway they could.

But then West always did pick a good fight.

Drift started to count backwards, hoping to hear the electrics drop on the fence.

Light eased Gray’s fridge door shut, his glass of milk finding the unit a moment later as the small light faded from the kitchen. He’d needed a drink, which was a lousy excuse to be rummaging around in the manor: he had plenty to drink in his summerhouse.

He’d just needed… out.

Only he’d failed to mention it to Gray that he kept bypassing the security system to rummage in the manor since he’d arrived back from Egypt. His bare feet warmed cool tile, and with wearing just PJ bottoms, he wasn’t exactly dressed for a midnight visit either, but he’d needed to ease the pressure, how it killed having Simon close, yet hurt more over this fear he carried over losing him.

Suffocation.

It had such a bittersweet taste to it.

If this was love, it fucking killed him.

He shivered, then a flash of red from the CCTV panel by the door had him stilling. He tilted his head as another check warning point flashed up, and he went over and pressed the intercom. “Ray?”

Nothing came for a moment, then—

“Stay in the kitchen, Light.”

Gray.

He knew he stood in his kitchen? Fuck. Friday night, Simon had mentioned a security issue that had needed sorting with Gray after disappearing for a few hours, but Light hadn’t paid it too much attention. So long as it was to do with home and not culler-related, fine by him. But fuck…. Had Simon noticed he’d started to disappear too and they’d been discussing that? There was no surprise in Gray’s voice over Light using the comm in his kitchen.

“Ray and his team will keep an eye on the breach,” said Gray. “Stay in contact with Simon. He’s in control of shutting the fence down to allow our guests in, but the summerhouse went on lockdown the moment the surveillance was triggered.”

But the manor hadn’t? The shutters to the window remained up. He snorted a smile. So with the summerhouse, was that to keep someone out or Light… in?

Nonetheless, it left Simon in lockdown until the all-clear would be given, and Light’s smile fell. No one out, but no one… in either. Certainly not him.

The motion sensors triggered on the panel again, this time showing a shift from east road to west. “Sappers?” he said more to himself. And Gray was shutting the fence down to allow them in?

“Hmm,” said Gray. “Either testing for weaknesses or to suggest one.” He sounded… odd with it. Not too concerned, which was more than… odd. This was home soil, with Jan and Jack in the mix. “Stay there and don’t screw with Simon’s sensors.”

So that was what Simon had been setting up late Friday night. “Clear.” Light cut the comm and headed over to the patio window to look over at the summerhouse. Although the glass was ballistic proof, he’d learned Gray’s lesson over being stupid enough to get caught in the line of fire, so he kept back, only occasionally holding his phone low and pressing record to get him feed.

The lights stayed off in the summerhouse too, but he knew Simon would be awake now.

A buzz came from his phone, and that just about confirmed it.

I’m getting three. You?

Light wiped a hand over his face. Fuck. Simon had picked up three? Light had only thought two. Where’s the third?

East side. Within the walls.

Simon had let someone in? Who?

Just keep your head down. Don’t react without Gray’s say so.

They’d definitely been expecting someone.

Light gave a rough sigh and rested back against the unit. The cold of the night bit into him a little more, so he headed over to the kitchen table, pulling a chair back far enough so he sat outside of the window’s scope. Bringing a foot up onto his seat and wrapping a hold around his leg, he rested his chin on his knee.

The night felt odd, the threat level… weird, and Light closed his eyes, trying to get a feel for it a little more.

Go back nearly three years, to the threats of prison thrown his way in here off Gray, it had scared him to the core, got him running in so many other bad ways. But now, with the threat of someone outside, possibly making it inside, to Simon? Family?

Light held out a hand, palm flat, and he frowned at how it didn’t shake. It wasn’t that he was passed fear. He felt that enough each time he travelled abroad with Simon. This was just… different.

A chair eased out quietly by him, and a moment later, Gray sat down, his look on Light’s hand.

A moment later, Gray held his out level to Light’s, his run of eye over how neither shook, it seemed.

“Whoever it is, they’re not a threat,” Gray said eventually, his voice as soft as the night as he withdrew his touch. He gave a rough sigh a moment later. “Cattle out of the play pen tonight, nothing more.”

“You can’t know that for sure.” Light looked at him.

Gray tilted his head, then traced a finger over the back of Light’s hand. “You’re starting to.” He eased back and gave a sniff as Light dropped his arm across his knee.

Gray wore suit trousers and a shirt, but he kept his feet bare too. No tiredness infected his eyes, and he seemed more alive in the darkness, more… threatening, the feel entirely different with having him close in that dark. It bled from him in all directions, drowning Light, making him want to fight one moment, but back off before he’d started because the air was too ill, and Gray would walk away where Light wouldn’t. Light felt that.

“Sometimes moments like these are the only place we really feel something,” Gray added quietly. “This build to the kill switch moment. It’s why we keep coming back to it. That intense… vibration. Whether it’s fear… hate… passion… obsession over getting our hands on something… what drives us personally to take a life—” He looked Light’s way. “—or to protect someone you care for… you go back into it to feel it, because you can’t reach it anywhere else. So when you can’t feel it around you like now, you know who’s getting close aren’t the kind to make you… feel. They’re not on our spectrum.”

That hit a hard note, but Light snorted. “That spectrum lied to us both about Cath.” He stayed on Gray. “She got close,” he reminded him again.

“We got close,” Gray said gently. “The thing with our spectrum is that we all share it as killers.” He gave a soft smile as he briefly looked away. “More so with father and son. We’re always going to screw each other’s signals up because of it, like we are with being close now.” He shrugged. “It shows we weren’t born perfect, Light. In fact, we’re more flawed than most. We know we live outside of the pen. That the pen exists. Those inside don’t, but they do get to feel those on the outside sometimes.” Gray held up his hand. “They catch on to our vibrations. So when it comes to you, to this?” He tapped the back of Light’s hand. “You know if you feel nothing, there’s no threat, not if these kind of sappers get through. Ninety-eight percent of them won’t ever pose a threat.”

Light cocked a brow. “ Only ninety-eight percent?”

Gray smiled. “Always leave one percent for the accidentals: those who take you out of the field of play before you get there because of the trainwreck they leave behind for you to trip over.”

Light choked a smile. “And the other one percent?”

Gray’s return smile was soft. “They’re the few who find there’s a pen that comes with a door, and they deliberately stop you from getting into the field of play to calm you down.”

“Ah….” Light blushed, just a little. “You’re not worried about Jack and Jan tonight?” He avoided talk on… Simon himself.

Gray shook his head. “Not now. They’re safe and sleeping,” he said quietly. “They stay that way. George is on watch east side with a security team. No one in. No one out.”

“Always the one percent who screw with your head, huh?”

Gray smiled over. “Wouldn’t have it any other fucking way.”

Yeah, Light saw that, understood it. Yet here he was himself, sitting alone.

“Always the one percent who screw with your head, huh?” Gray said gently.

Light looked his way, and Gray’s look rested on his milk back over on the unit.

“Been noticing a few things lying around of a morning in here. You’ve been playing avoidance for a while.” Gray snorted. “Good to know it wasn’t Jack after all, but—”

“Ask his permission to be in his kitchen, right? Grow some balls?”

Gray watched him for a moment, then shook his head. “He’s not in good head space to talk to yet. Keep your distance, okay.”

It wasn’t even an ask, just a polite request that needed to be followed.

“You weren’t expecting cattle tonight. This is culler business.” Light returned the polite… seriousness, wanting the intel given.

A nod came his way, but Gray offered nothing more.

“Simon’s here,” Light added flatly. “I should have been briefed.”

Gray shook his head and folded his arms. “My streets,” he said softly. “By your own rule, you want nothing to do with how I walk them. Don’t start breaking it now. Keep your head where you need it to be.”

“You should have told me.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Light.” Still that calmness. “I’m guided by confidentiality as much as you are unless we walk the same path.”

Light levelled his look. “You told Simon.”

Gray cocked a brow. “His head is tuned to the game in different ways. He picked up on some signs, not all on the who and why. Allow him to work with the vibrations he picks up as you’re learning to master yours.”

“This you asking to have him collude with you on a culler level? Because I remember that side of my rule too.”

Gray shook his head. “I won’t break that. Only you can. He’s working security to keep family safe, nothing more. He’s also on lockdown himself until Ray’s happy. But take a warning from someone who knows what it’s like to have a lover who steps into our lane… listen to the vibrations he gives off around you. You won’t find peace until you let him find his, even if that means letting him step into the danger lane and you having to step back or step up to the protection.”

Light shivered, the echo of let me burn with you still far too close. Gray spoke sense, Simon… just as a lover wanting to be with a lover, but burn?

“I backed out of Afghanistan because he wanted to come with me.” Not knowing where that came from, Light wrapped a tighter hold around his leg and rested his chin to knee-cap.

Gray said nothing, and Light frowned into the quiet. “I didn’t feel good enough at my job where I know he is at his, and I think sometimes the way I look at him gives off the wrong signals when I’m trying not to. I’m not pissed off at him for being around me. I’m pissed off at myself for knowing I can fuck up. I did with Lee and Brin.” He briefly closed his eyes. “Fucking chlorine trifluoride. I really hate that stuff.” Light screwed his face a touch. “But I feel like it sometimes: burning through anything I touch, like I’m missing a few vital chemicals to stop it.” He looked Gray’s way. “Do you think the textbooks are right? Do you think we’re incapable of loving, and the whole reason I’m fucking up is because it’s something I’m not qualified to mess with? I mean, for Christ’s sake: I didn’t give him any choice but to stay here with me.”

Gray’s eyes softened as he dipped his head a little, getting a closer look that almost called out: that you admitting he needs some freedom, huh? Light ignored it as best he could as a rub came at the arm across his knees.

“Everyone’s born with the capacity to learn, Light. Some of that you’ll get from books, some from older bones like mine, but the rest is learned through experience. Don’t regret the decisions you make in the heat of the moment, regret the ones you don’t change when that moment’s passed and you’ve gained the experience.” He gave a long sigh. “As for the whole are psychopaths capable of love debate? Psychopaths kill in anger, in lust, frustration, sometimes just for the thrill of the kill,” Gray said gently. “They are all feelings activated by specific neuronal populations, so to say we’re incapable of experiencing the good: love, empathy… guilt it contradicts that original analysis of how we supposedly kill in anger, lust, coldness, brutality. Our obsession just distorts the neurological vibrations until we bury one beneath the other. So take no notice of the textbooks. I know it would kill me to lose Jack, Jan… it has over Martin…” Gray looked Light over. “You.” He offered a smile. “So in that sense, I can understand what other people feel over losing someone.” He rubbed at Light’s shoulder. “You’ve lost those closest to you, and it’s jousting with how you… feel around Simon, confusing the signals, blending them until you can’t sort needing to sit here alone from needing to be over there with Simon. That’s love, no matter how extreme it comes. You need to come to terms with that because I think the easy option for you is to think you’re not capable of reading it. You are.”

Light creased his face, and Gray sighed again. “I’m thinking your grandfather has it right about both of us.”

Light looked at him.

“When you love obsessively, you deserve to be loved as obsessively in return.” Gray offered a smile. “And Simon’s still here, with you. When you’re struggling to read other people, take what you’re feeling now and view this from his point of view.” Gray eased back. “It’s one thing I envy about living inside the pen: effortless projection into someone else’s shoes. It’s not that we can’t do it, we just fall so obsessively when we don’t.”

“That obsession got in the way of you and Jack?” Light looked down at his hands. “Is that why you’re warning me off now? Why the vibe feels… off around you?” He looked up. “Because of what happened between you and Martin and Jack’s reaction to it?”

Nothing came for a moment, then—“Yeah. Because of that.” A frown. “In ways I didn’t realise it would knock Jack down.”

“Kind of wish Martin was here to reason it, huh?” Light sighed. “Christ knows I wouldn’t mind having him here.”

Gray fell quiet. A shake of head came eventually. “I need Jack to keep talking to me. Martin will let us know when Jack’s his concern.”

Light nodded and went to say something, preferring talk in the dark. Yeah, Simon had taught him that. But the red light flickering on the wall stopped, and Gray’s phone hummed into life a moment later, making Light ease back and check his watch.

Ten minutes. They’d been here for ten minutes.

A flick at the door lock came a moment later, and Ray pushed through.

“All clear externally,” he said, shifting his Bluetooth earplug into a more comfortable position. His breathing wasn’t heavy, and he looked like he’d been out for a midnight walk around, nothing more.

Gray slipped his phone away. That was no doubt Simon sending the all-clear outside too.

“The fence was hit a few times by two fast runners, but nothing more,” Ray said moving over to Gray. “Secondary external CCTV caught this.”

The touch on the fence was innovated, or ballsy as Jack would say. It was done to look like a fault, one that would see the perimeter fence turned off in theory to get it checked out. And it was there how Simon was playing cat and mouse by allowing someone to get in.

Light leaned in. One image showed a blurred shot of a young boy wearing a cap. The other caught a hooded young woman in a face mask, long, straight hair in a ponytail down her shoulder, and a Witch’s necklace loose around her slender neck. Light didn’t know either girl or boy, but as Gray nodded at Ray and eased back, he seemed to.

“The redhead got away?” said Gray, and Ray nodded.

Yeah, that confirmed it. Colour of hair wasn’t discernible in the photo.

Gray seemed a little angered. “Simon said three,” he said eventually. “The possibility of another?”

Ray put his phone away. “Yeah. His thermal sensors caught movement through the trees, above ground and inside the perimeter fence.” He looked up towards the kitchen ceiling.

Ah. Light eased back and followed the look. Someone was still here.

A knock came at the patio door, and where Light tensed, Ray moved over and handled the lock. “Simon,” he mouthed back over to Gray, and Gray gave the nod. Simon was still main security with Ray, so Ray would have given the summerhouse a brief reprieve over lockdown.

Light got to his feet as Simon came in. He wore his suit, and looked the most… out of place, even with Ray in his suit. Simon’s look showed it: always the last invited to a family meeting.

“Clear external perimeter,” Ray said to him, and Light went over and rubbed at Simon’s arm.

“Interior’s the target. It’ll be breached soon.” Simon flicked Light a look. “You all right?”

Light nodded a little. “Cold.” He wasn’t lying. “Tired.” He meant that too, missing the summerhouse and its darkness surrounding their bed with Simon in it more than he wanted to admit.

Simon eased his jacket off and wrapped it around Light’s shoulders as he kept his annoyed look on Ray. Light smiled briefly down to his feet, the small offer mixing stunning chemistry inside. Yeah, at moments like these, he felt it. “We’ll take the upper floors,” said Simon.

Gray nodded. Light saw why. If they were facing a third kid, maybe youth was the best to face it. Light was the best to face it, although he’d long since passed his teens.

“Check in with George for me too,” added Gray.

Light nodded as Ray tapped his ear. “Don’t lose comm either,” Ray said Simon’s way.

“We’ll know if there’s trouble.”

Light gave a small snort Gray’s way. “Still no invention of the wheel to help us get around this place quickly, then?”

Gray buried a smile or tried to at least. “Just play it careful, both of you.” He turned so serious. “Get me that third kid.”