Chapter 26 STREET LEVEL
Unable to take a breath, calves and stomach pulling in ways it left him doubling, Drift slumped down the brick wall lining the larger-than-life rundown townhouse behind him. Moonlight lifted high above the row of houses opposite, but the chill that had his fingers ceasing up didn’t register, nor the ice that soaked through from the concrete pathway to his ass.
He’d run, but his head hurt too much to try and fight through how he’d found a safe way home.
Giving a groan, he folded his arms across his knees and dropped his head down. The grip around the phone he’d stolen hurt, but he hid it in the crook of his arm, not ready to acknowledge it beyond being something he held on to.
“Fuck.” It’s all he had as he eased back against the wall and hit the back of his head off its hardness a few times. “Fuck, fuck- fuck —”
“Hey, hey-hey.” The whisper came low and fast, but so did the darkened shape that seemed to shift around the wall like a ghost caught in a breeze. Warm hands cupped his jaw, forcing a look onto a Witch’s necklace loose around a slender neck, then West’s eyes were all he could see. “ Where the hell have you been ?”
The words came out snarled and the grip to his jaw hurt before West came in close, her breath warming his cheek as she rested her head hard against his.
“What have I said about keeping me fucking waiting, Drift?”
He tried to speak, to fight through the debris in his head and find ways to talk over why it hurt to, but all he had was shivering with how close West’s blue eyes seem silver in the near-morning moonlight. How close they shone to his own and that bloke’s silver eyes and….
He groaned, and West pulled back, at first frowning, then rubbing at his hand.
“Just how long have you been running, baby?” She cupped his hand and blew hot air into it before glancing up to the townhouse. “C’mon. Let’s get you in.” She stroked at his cheek. “Then we talk if you want to, okay?”
She got up and pulled him to his feet, and he rubbed at his head as she tugged him around the back of the townhouse. Broken glass crunched underfoot, and she winced back his way as they reached the back door. A soft creak met her touch as she opened it, but no flick of light came on, just her pause to listen to the kitchen and the darkness from the rooms ahead.
“Okay.” West nodded his way, seeming satisfied, and he looked down at how she hadn’t let her hold on his hand drop. “We—”
A huge bulk shadowed the hallway, its fold of arms stopping West as she spoke.
“Christ, Leon.” She snapped a teatowel from the back of a chair and threw it at him. “Get another hobby that don’t involve you playing night stalker.”
A chuckle came from the doorway. “You walk louder than a monkey on a bed of nuts, Westie.”
“I’ll bloody monkey walk over your nuts if you don’t move.”
Leon snorted. “Kind of my job tonight, you know, me not letting you nut-walkers back in after curfew.” He still blocked the doorway. West still hadn’t moved to try and push past him. Neither did Drift as a look came his way. “Might have bloody known it’d be you…”
Not glancing away, Leon started to let out a whistle, but West shifted so fast, covering his mouth.
“Give us a break.” She kept her hand on his mouth. “Please. At least til morning’. I’ll get you a few vapes for it.”
Leon tried to pull away, tried to catch West’s wrist and take the grip off. “Hm—”
“Please.” She brushed a hand at his cheek. “Whistlin’ Dixie for Jackson is only gonna piss him off this late. He loves his beauty sleep… needs it even.”
A light came on in the hallway.
“Do I now?” Jackson rounded the bottom of the staircase, and shirtless and bare footed despite the cold playing outside, he padded over in dusty jeans to Leon.
Leon glanced back, then winced West’s way as he moved past Jackson and walked away. But then Drift knew Jackson needed no one else to back him up. The scar running left to right along his throat marked the last ones to try as he’d been roped. Jackson had walked away. The others hadn’t.
Drift knew the story. He’d been there on the wrong side to help write it.
West glanced Drift’s way, then dug her hands in her coat pocket. “Look, I—”
“Leave it.” Jackson shifted a look to the clock, then eased against the doorframe and lit up a smoke. “Fuck off to bed, both of you. We’ll talk in the morning about you breaching curfew, West.”
Drift let the shivering take hold properly, and as West held out her hand back to him, he took it and started to pass Jackson.
“Because that curfew….” The flat tone in Jackson’s voice had Drift pausing almost shoulder to shoulder with him. “It’s there to keep West here safe, right?” He held Drift’s look. “I mean, that is why you brought her here? To keep her safe… here? Cut down on the bruises she’s forced to cover up with makeup?”
Drift looked at her, at the bruise to her jaw that had almost faded. Sadness punching through his displacement, he offered a nod, nothing more.
Jackson looked him up and down, then focused on his eyes, and unease ran under Drift’s skin with how it held the same intrusiveness as back at the manor home. “Fuck off, then,” said Jackson. “Get your heads down for a few hours. You and me will more than talk in the morning, when I’ll make it sink in.”
Drift didn’t need telling twice, neither did West as she dragged him towards the stairs. Hushed talking came from the living room, three, maybe four pale faces lifting their way to get a look even though Drift knew more were huddled down in there as Leon settled back into being watcher. West sent a shush their way, and the living room fell a little too quiet as Drift followed her upstairs.
The townhouse had three floors, but it was the loft and that taste of the familiar that took Drift’s head. West shared it with ten other girls, some of them on beds, most on the floor, only two of them cuddled up to boyfriends, but only soft snores and a stray creak of bed met him as he went in.
West’s single bed slept beneath an oval window, the moonlight brushing over bedcovers that already had him tugging out his sleeping bag from underneath it. She had learned fast. Yeah the window gave her the kind of view he’d always catch her staring up at, but beyond the stairs, it was the quickest way out of the townhouse, or into it when she’d been out walking after curfew to get a better view of those stars… depending on that wild streak of hers that always looked for trouble.
Drift struggled to unroll the quilt on the floor, so West took it off him and laid it out as he toed his canvas shoes off and managed to scowl down at his feet as something slipped from his hand, nearly smacking into a foot. His coat came off next, but he slept in his clothes for the same reason West slept close to the window: quick ways in, quicker ways out. He also kept to Jackson’s house rule over not taking to West’s bed. Beds you earned here, which meant staying here to earn it on a daily basis. Walk out, all claims to a bed were lost. Climb in someone else’s, and you were royally fucked.
Drift didn’t mind. He’d been brought up sleeping on floors. At least this one had the warmth from the heating soaking through it. The streets never came with that luxury, so this…?
He slipped into the sleeping bag.
This was heaven compared to how he’d spent most of his youth out on the streets until he’d met Grant, then later Jackson through Grant.
The bed creaked for a moment, and Drift opened his eyes as a quilt was dragged over the sleeping bag. West slipped in next to him a moment later, and she came in close, tugging the duvet up to their necks before cuddling in close.
“Jackson suh-suh—” He tried that again. “Jackson sees us, he’ll be handing my nuts to Klaus and Gena, forget Leon.”
West chuckled and the lightness of it brushed his cheek, warming where it touched. “Yeah, one each to keep the twins happy for all of two seconds with the size of your baby nuggets, huh?”
He tried to find a laugh but failed as he stroked at her jaw.
West rubbed at his arm as she stayed in close, and Drift eventually screwed his eyes shut and rested his head against hers.
“I think…” He screwed his face, eyes shut to the world around him. “I think there’s family back there. Blood family.”
The rubbing at his arm stopped, then a dig into his pocket came. The Anadin pack was slipped out, and a tablet brushed his lips a second later. Drift snarled, pulled back from it, but West shook her head, and almost without thinking, he let her in before dry-swallowing it. The packet went back in his pocket as her gentle stroke at his jaw kept him sane.
“Fuck. He had my eyes, West.” He slipped a hold around her, stopping any effort off her to warm him beyond her heartbeat. He needed hers to try and help calm his own down. “They knew before I went in there that I carried his eyes, but his eyes….”
“Easy, baby. Easy,” West whispered in his ear. “A brother? Maybe?”
He shook his head but couldn’t voice anything beyond that. If the man was his father, he must have been bloody young when he slipped beneath the fucking covers. But family…?
“Fuck.” He tightened his grip on West, sickness turning his stomach.
He had very bad luck with family away from the streets. Mostly because he’d stood for so long on the edge of a dark, empty chasm when it came to picturing blood relations. Now damn strange, breach-of-personal-space shapes slithered just out of sight in the blackness, wanting to break free and grab him in close by the throat, climb into his head, until all he had left was to hide from them all in… blackness.
And blackness.
At least two of them back there carried black eyes under threat.
Ava’s eyes.
Light rubbed at his head and made the kitchen his first stop. Although it had been two hours since Jude had bolted, his head still throbbed from the beating it had taken over the music, and he grabbed a pack of pain killers and downed two from it before tossing them back in the medicine cupboard.
Fight. Light could do that. Work out poisons… no problem. But track a street kid who did nothing but bolt in territory well above ground level? Didn’t matter where he’d looked, Jude had left no tracks to follow, and those he had were no doubt lost amongst broken branches.
The perimeter fences should have stopped him. It hadn’t stopped Light when he’d gotten out, but breaking the circuit wasn’t rocket science. Would it be to Jude? Or was he just that used to staying above ground, where fences and barriers had no place in his world?
As voices drifted through from the Oval as Light made it back into the hall, he padded that way, not really questioning why he took an extra bottle of water beyond how he knew it had been two hours since he’d left. Knowing Simon, the talking he’d needed to do over app-jacking Raif’s phone, he’d need a drink. Probably pain killers too.
By the main desk in the Oval, Raif and Simon stood working away next to Gray and his laptop. Light went over and handed Simon the drink. He took it and downed some before resting it on the desk, looking uncomfortable with Raif breathing down his neck over the intel he’d taken.
Martin sat on a leather two-setter sofa not far away, head back, eyes closed, and face too pale as he seemed to shut out the noise in sleep. The bleeding had stopped by the look if it, but a few drops dried on his chest, saying it had taken a while. Jan sat opposite, tidying away the first aid kit, and every now and again, his look would flick to Martin.
Simon scrolled the footage forward twenty minutes to when Jude had bolted. “Where was his exit point?”
Gray looked the footage over. “Raif was here two days ago, but Jude didn’t breech the perimeter until today.” He tapped the screen. “He’s spent time on recon. He’d have had at least two… maybe three exit routes planned.”
Raif winced. “And security was lessened to allow him in. He could have taken a window at the end of the hall. Fuck….” He scrolled to where CCTV picked Jude up entering the grounds. “That’s one hell of a top-tier feeder there.”
Light saw his concern as it played out as a body heat signature. Jude kept to the thickest branches of the trees, using the wood surrounding the manor as both cover and access, and he moved bloody fast. There was no fear, not of heights. Not of weaving from one branch to another at those heights in the dark, sometimes dropping to the floor for a moment before finding easy footing up the trunk of another tree.
Light would hate to see him run where he felt most at home, because he had a feeling he’d know how to avoid all CCTV so no one caught him. The black skull he’d wore ensured no facial ID, and it sat on Gray’s desk now.
“You should have told me this shifted to culler activity at home.” Light went over to Gray. “If I’d have known Jude was a Feeder and used the high ground, I could have tried to plan for it.”
“Likewise,” Gray said flatly, not even gracing him with a glance. “Simon got access to classified intel off Raif: the Night-walkers, along with the latter possibly working with culler knowledge and my profile in mind. That should have been disclosed to me prior to allowing anyone in here.”
It looked like Simon had been talking to Gray, but maybe that had been why Gray had asked Light to make sure Jude had gotten out safely. “He’s deadlocked between us both,” said Light. “Having this conversation between us and talking over him proves that.” Simon… back in the bedroom and his look that had been so damn haunted? “That’s rectified now,” Light said flatly. “He works with you from here on in on this.”
Gray frowned slightly as Simon shot a look up from the laptop.
“You just give me your goddamn word he works from here, where he’s best,” said Light. “You don’t send him out on the streets. He gets protected.” Light scrolled through the CCTV footage to when the cameras caught Jude in the hall. “Jude, whether he wants it or not, he’s a part of family now too.” He pressed play. “He gets protected regardless of who’s out there. Do we have a deal?”
Gray tilted his head slightly, then focused on Simon. “Pay grade increased. Earn it. Get access to my files and hack the toxicology reports on all victims: see if they’ve found traces of an unknown drug. Run your checks via the dark web for similar MOs that deal with unknown poisons and mention of kids and parks.”
Gray’s attention shifted to the laptop, to how Jude’s touch was caught on the stereo. “He profiles through playlists,” he said flatly. “It allows access to names, working theories on sex, age, possible state of mind. All to potentially give him the upper hand on his marks.”
Raif cocked a brow and got a closer look at what Jude was doing with the playlist. “Now that’s… original.”
“Is it?” said Martin.
Jan must have seen Martin stir, because he’d already gotten up and poured him a drink. He took the ice water over and offered it down, and Martin took it without much fight as he kept his head rested back.
“Meaning?” said Raif.
“Routine,” Martin said quietly back to Raif as Jan took a seat next to him. “He simply exploits it. He knows most homeowners check downstairs first for the unwanted visitor, leaving upstairs unguarded. He also knows that most homeowners have streaming devices on both floors. So whilst the homeowners check downstairs, he gets what he needs from the most private part of the home, where people relax the most. But he fucked up over the laser pointer. He didn’t know Simon had long-since fitted them with his laser detection devices.”
Raif nodded. “Thing is, he must be used to handling stolen goods. He’ll know phones are tracked. He won’t risk going back home.”
“For those last few moments, he looked like Jack,” Jan said quietly. “Yeah the need to run, but not from danger… to safety. He’ll go home.”
Martin fell quiet, and how Simon kept a check on the laptop called out the signal had stopped somewhere. Light knew intel and surveillance needed to be setup in order to find out just who he’d run to now.
“Any luck with dusting for prints?” asked Gray as Ray came on through, removing some plastic gloves.
Ray shook his head and pocketed his gloves as he came over. He pointed at the laptop, where it was clear as day that Jude had touched the stereo with no gloves on. “Hall, columns, access point on the roof, there’s no trace of prints, and there damn well should be.”
Jude. He’d hid his hands in his pockets when Light had checked them out over his comment over musicians’ hands.
“Fingerprints.” Light looked at Simon. “Jude’s have been acid-burned away.”
Raif stiffened. “Fuck,” he breathed. “He’s been Night-walker at some point.”
Gray’s look went back to his laptop, his mood changing entirely. It rested on Simon a moment later. “Get a DNA sample from Jude’s mask. Compare it to the emesis sample taken from the crime scene in Wales—”
Someone had vomited at the crime scene? Jude had? Light frowned. Gray thought he’d been there. Which meant he’d run a check on the Wales sample prior to this, but any DNA Jude had stored from when he was a kid would have been taken by the likes of the hospital. Their databases weren’t tied to the MI5 Dunbar database. He wouldn’t have been found in any official search.
“Somebody with parkour skill good enough to avoid CCTV was up on those rooftops,” said Gray.
Martin’s head came up off the settee as his look rested on Gray. “Oh that talk,” he said flatly. “I suggest you make it now.”
Saying nothing, Gray went and crouched by him.
Light was damn curious over the earlier request for the toxicology reports. That meant something was in the bloodstream that Gray thought shouldn’t be there, and that… that did itch under Light’s fingers to look into. Was that why the threat level had been increased to biological warfare? But that would be a walk into Gray’s streets, ones where Light had damn well lost Brin to. It was soul-tearing enough to allow Simon in with Gray, even if just from the sideline, so to walk into it as well? No. He’d fuck up. He’d end up losing Simon this time by walking it, because Gray was right: him and Gray, they fucked up each other’s signals far too much, but it was everyone else that caught the shrapnel.
“So sorry, Gray.” Sat next to Martin, that came from Jan. “I should have stopped him from leaving—”
“Simon was right to let him leave when he saw him take the phone,” said Gray, crouched in front of Martin. “This isn’t down to you. Jude shouldn’t have taken the phone.”
“Why not?” Martin levelled a look on Gray, his drink rested on his knee. “He’s lived life in the void, where talking comes with repercussions. So he takes personal data to avoid trouble. He trusts the perceived honesty of a phone over ours.”
“He took Ray’s phone,” said Simon. “Head of Gray’s security.”
“You’re missing the fucking point,” Martin said flatly. “He took Ray’s . He didn’t take yours, he didn’t take Light’s, or Jan’s, or Jack’s, or even Gray’s even though he pinned him as ‘poppateer’.” Martin had already reviewed the footage too. “He took the one person’s in the hall who didn’t have a family tie. That’s him saying the theft isn’t personal.”
“Fingerprints,” Simon said just as flatly as he worked. “He’s had them burned away. That and he has the Night-walker parkour skill and tech knowledge to dodge CCTV.”
“We’ve all had our fingers burned in one way or another, asshole.” Martin looked his way. “But he chooses to keep running, where you? You stay and burn here with the rest of us. Who’s more the threat in his world?”
“So who’s he running back to, then, Mart?” said Simon. “You see a name in his eyes too and the size of his crew, because that would really cut security time here.”
“Jesus, are you that fucking slow without a laptop to molest?” Martin looked his way, and Light warned him to back off with a glance. Martin levelled a brief fuck you glance his way before focusing back on Simon. “Jan’s right. He’ll run to home. Why? Because he took off his fucking mask as soon as he saw the cameras. He was playing distraction for a reason beyond saving his own skin.” He rubbed at his head again. “Each time there’s been a girl caught watching out for the threat around him, which running with the basics of the birds and bee sting logistics—he doesn’t want her hunted, which suggests he’s better at running and going underground than she is. Find the home, you’ll find the bird, and he’ll hear her caged call. But I can tell you now, he may have run with the Night-walkers, but it didn’t make him one of them. Colour to your eyes you can’t fake.”
“He still ran with the Night-walkers despite not having a taste of you in his eyes,” said Simon. “The question is still why. So cage the girl, he’ll hear the call, and then we’ll find out why. But we need to know who else he’s running back to.”
Martin held his look. “That talk from another caged bird?”
“Joanna.” That came so softly from Jan, sending the room into silence. But he didn’t look at Martin. “With anyone you could have slept with, why her for god’s sake? Why Cutter’s daughter?”
Martin fell quiet, then took a sip of his water. “What, exactly, do you want my answer to be here, Jan? That maybe I didn’t know who she was, and at seventeen, nothing but sex on the mind, we fucked like rabbits like most normal kids? Or maybe you want the romanticised version, hmm? That she was the only twisted girl around wild enough to lay naked with me in the aftermath of fucking, that we… fell in love as well as bed together? That’s how your world goes around, right?”
Jan snorted a bitter smile. “My… world , as you call it, consists of psychopaths, sociopaths, and multiple-personalities that come coated in blood no matter which skin is worn.” He looked his way. “Take my offer of a friend now. Because I lie with you, Gray, and Jack with no black in my eyes. And you? You’re not facing a killer or Cutter now: you’re facing your own boy with no black in his eyes. So between you and me, just who do you think will know what could happen if he does step in here, huh?”
Martin said nothing for a moment, then he took another sip of water.
“She was Cutter’s daughter,” he said eventually. “Nothing more needed.”
“He didn’t know about her. You didn’t have to touch.”
“Didn’t I now?” He levelled a look Jan’s way. “And what, exactly, do you know about me, my world, and my touch, huh? You draw conclusions through Jack’s half-baked versions and Gray’s penalty-time appearance.” He eased forward slightly. “First memory I have? I woke naked in Cutter’s bedroom, cuts running my inner thighs. I didn’t know Jack then, how much he thought he loved Cutter’s blade, how he hid behind me when it got too much. I just knew Cutter, his blade, and that I didn’t fucking like it, fuck anyone else. And that’s exactly what Jack needed to fashion.”
Martin rested on Gray. “So you come talk to me about Jack. You tell me just how butthurt he is over learning about Joanna and Jude, and I’ll remind you every goddamn time: Not. Jack. Ever. Fucking. Here. I love, live, and touch on my terms, my way, no one else’s—because that’s how I was damn well born in order to keep that bastard and myself alive. And that includes fucking with Cutter’s daughter in order to drive home no part of his life is untouchable around me.”
Gray looked down, rubbing at his head for a moment. “That’s not the issue, not deep down, Mart.” He looked at him. “We are, and it’s why it looked like he was trying to pull back control a few hours ago in the hall.”
So that had been a new development. Light frowned as Martin leaned forward.
“So talk us to me,” Martin said quietly. “Because I swore for a while back there at least, me and Jack… we were okay. I backed off from you all to ease his head after I knew I’d fucked with it too much.”
Gray nodded. “Yeah. I know. He missed you for it as well for a while.”
“But?”
Light’s attention stayed solely with Gray as he spoke about Chris’s accident, Jack’s near-hit with a car, how it had seemed Jack was missing Martin one moment, then wanting to start a fight over losing faith in Martin’s ability to protect them both because of Gray, the next.
“Oh.” Martin rested his elbows on his knees, leaning close to Gray. “So he now thinks I’m a flawed defence system because I touched his threat, huh?” He cocked such a dark smile. “And here was me just getting off on bringing that… threat to heel.” He cupped Gray’s neck, but there was no malicious play meant with it, nothing… intimate… and he searched Gray’s eyes for a moment. “You tell him from me….” he said quietly. “Back off.” He cocked a smile, but it was so cold. “Don’t make me the threat. Not when it comes to security, not when it comes to Jude. There’s Jack’s soft emotions fucking up his heart, so Light’s right. Jude gets protected no matter who runs out there thinking they pull his strings. And he’ll be protected my way, without Jack if need be.”
Gray nodded—only blood started to drop from Martin’s nose, just a thin line, and Martin wiped at it, looked down, and—
“Oh… now what are you doing, our kid. You feel that warning?”
A rub came at head, a lift of silver-grey eyes that seemed oblivious to the trail of blood. Then a hand wiped across another trickle, and—
A look went down at the blood staining a hand, and all feeling seemed to flatline in silver eyes.
“Yeah,” said Jack. “You come push my buttons, fucker. Let’s see who has final control.”
Jan shot a look up. “Jack? You felt Martin? You… heard him?”
As Jack looked his way, almost not seeing Jan like Jan was caught in the middle of a street brawl he had no place to be, Gray wiped a hand across his face and briefly closed his eyes.
“Fuck.” Light voiced everything that seemed to hit Gray’s look.
Vibes. Even if Jack hadn’t heard Martin, he looked like he’d felt something, and that seemed to change the whole bloody dynamics to everything.
Jack looked set for the end of all fights.
Gray glanced back at Simon. “Work with Raif: Get surveillance on Jude’s address,” he whispered quickly back to Simon, then he was back with Jack and the steady look coming Gray’s way.
Jack’s look never shifted from Gray’s. “What address, exactly?” He leaned in close. “More to the point: why fucking Jude’s?”