Chapter 29 THE THREAT
“Oh I see how this goes now,” called George from back down by the main gates, causing a frown off Ray for the intrusion.
He glanced over, and the security lamp by the security booth showed George making changeover checks now he just came on duty. Steve wouldn’t be far behind with the start of the night shift. But as for Ray, he was just clocking off. “How what goes?” he said.
“Big boss is away this evening in Nottingham, so you’re off for a skive all of your own.” George even threw in a wink.
“Hey, less of the lip.” Ray carried on up the pathway to his gatehouse. “But stay around another five years or so, I’ll let you in on the little hidey-holes I use to skive from Gray too.”
“Oh, God. You have some?” George laughed uneasily. “Please don’t make me wait five years.”
Ray chuckled, and George saluted before carrying on his checks with the automatic gates. Simon would usually have his fingers in the main security checks this time as well, trying his cat-and-mouse game on with Ray over trying to find flaws—a little spy v spy fun to begin with, but damn annoying as Simon’s boredom spiked and he’d gotten meaner. Light’s mood played rugby with Simon’s, but where Light had been given an outlet, Simon’s had been restricted, and one thing Ray hated was wasted intelligence. It only ever turned in on itself.
Ray had sent up a silent prayer to whichever Norse god had shown mercy his way when Simon worked MI6 business away with Light, but he hadn’t started to really relax until Simon started back working under Gray a few days ago. In the Oval with Raif now, Simon kept to working surveillance on Jude. With Raif’s knowledge of the streets and crews, Simon worked both via drone at roof level. The past few days had been focused on seeing who came and went to the house, and just who they could match ID up to. Not going down well with Gray, he’d been called away on an emergency call, and the four rings he’d received called something serious had gone down with the Night-walkers.
Ray would get the brief later. He’d learned early on to read the signs around Gray without asking too many questions, but then they were both born-and-bred military intelligence, with Gray having come up out of nowhere through the ranks, then bypassing Ray and leaving him in the dust as watcher. Unlike most who moved up the chain of command, Gray’s ability to drop all tolerance for rank and go for the throat kept good men at his side, even if his look called he wasn’t one to walk with the good for too long. Ray had made sure he had the men and equipment at his side, at first with Gray unaware he was on the end of the call, then later with Gray having head-hunted him after he did find out. They worked so well together because they’d had over twenty-five years working around each other. To him, and he knew this was hard, Jan had no place with Gray, not in theory anyway. Jan was far too… civvie. Martin… yeah, he belonged in a cage in one of Gray’s not-safe-for-MI5-work playrooms, but Jack…?
Ray gave a long, hard sigh, then made damn sure to keep to his own rule of leaving work and… Jack at the front door right along with his suit jacket.
“Hey, you’re late.” A kiss came at his cheek, and a hand rested against his abs. Ray bit back a wince as he gave a sigh and leaned in to return Shelley’s kiss. Flour dusted a strand of her hair, and he smiled and ran a touch along it to clear it off. She could best Jack in the kitchen, with her steak and kidney pie already drifting through to the hall and calling get in here . Although with all the Christmas decorations they’d setup with it just being over a week away, he knew she’d be throwing some mince pies in the oven too.
“Go on, go get washed up.” Shelley wiped her hands on her apron, looking every way the cook but for the trouser suit she wore. She hadn’t gotten back long from the salon she owned, but she had a habit of walking in here and warming the place up with no need of any central heating to fight away the chill, especially with the smile she lowered his way. “Although I’ve just unwrapped some candid fruit that might need some… surveillance work.” She knew he was Gray’s head of security, that he’d served in MI5, but he wanted to keep that warmth in her smile utterly separate from what else he’d done over the years.
But candid fruit? Christ, she knew his weakness, and Ray’s stomach growled. He was already easing past her and heading for the kitchen. “You were late too,” he called over his shoulder as she followed him in. “And in my defence, you only have to walk out the door and call my name around here to find out where I am.”
Shelley laughed. “Not quite true, there, sweetheart. I still get lost around here. And as you hate even ordering in, I had to go do the boring stuff, like shopping and pop in to see my mum. We were running low on the essentials.” She nodded off to the right.
Some wine bottles stood in a box, and he took the hint and went over and added them to the rack before making a beeline for the goods on the table. He ignored the bags of fruit: apples, four varieties of, oranges, pears… yeah… no. He was already sick of the diet Shelley had put him on. He kept in shape. He had to around here, but the candid fruit, with a sweet glaze on it that crunch beautifully in the mouth like fine glass… they were all his.
Jack had made them a few times, but Ray swore he screwed them up deliberately, never giving the glaze enough time in the heat, making the coating of the fruit more like chewing gum. Yeah, Jack was too much of a good cook to screw up so… innocently.
And that’s where him and Jack, they had a serious problem. Jack had that beautiful lost-look to his cheek, but at times, damn vicious times, all innocence was dropped from his look that had nothing to do with Martin.
Ray shook work off, harder this time, and closed his eyes and took a bite of the candid fruit. “Hhm.” The crunch was… heaven.
“One, no more.” Shelley threw him a look as she made it over to the cooker to switch the spuds on. “I’m watching you.”
Ray laughed and made a point of tossing the last half of the candid fruit in his mouth, then he pinched a second from the tray. “One for now, and one for— oh, fuck .” Ray winced and tongued at the inside of his cheek.
“You okay?” Shelley frowned back at him.
Ray thumbed at his tongue. A touch of blood lined the pad. “The force be too strong with that last bite,” he mumbled. The crack of hard glaze had caught the inside of his mouth, and he sighed, taking the warning and slipping the other one back in the bowl. “Shower it is.”
Shelley’s chuckle followed him out of the kitchen, and Ray started to undo his tie before heading up to the en suite.
“Half an hour,” called Shelley. “Don’t make me come looking for you.”
Easing into a smile, Ray felt a damn sight better stepping out of the shower compared to when he’d first climbed in. His line of work coated the skin with a layer of dirt that only thickened over the years, but the only time it had ever bothered him was when he’d agreed to work with Gray, behind private doors. Ray wouldn’t have it any different, but it came with a pretty array of colours to his skin and crack of bones sometimes that he’d never get used to.
Stood in front of the mirror overlooking the sink, Ray prodded at his ribs, left side. The latest bruising from Jack’s kicking had faded a few weeks ago. He’d been lucky to walk away without any cracked ribs this time, and Shelley, bless her soul, she’d said nothing, although the tiredness in her eyes over the same old, same old had lasted well after the bruises had faded. Ray had known what he’d signed up to with Gray, had negotiated a damn good payment plan to make sure Shelley would be taken care of in the event of him not walking away from the debris field, but keeping it professional when Jack came on the scene had pushed him to breaking many a time.
He liked having Jack around, had gotten used to the chaos, Ray just didn’t trust him as far as he could willingly throw his dead body at times for all the blind aggression he threw behind closed doors. Gray could control his. Martin was all about control. But Jack… he came with mindless brutality and no safety reset button beyond a sedative and four-point restraints. And Ray didn’t always carry them on him.
Giving himself a quick dry down, Ray gave a sniff, for a moment catching something run under his nose that made him frown. Whatever it was drifted away on the deodorant he put on, and the aftertaste of the spray forced a rub at his head as a dull thud set in. He shrugged it off eventually and grabbed his boxers.
Then it came again.
A slight scent of… what?
Ray turned his head to the hallway.
What was that?
Jacket potatoes left too long on the stove? Huh? Who cooked jacket potatoes on a stove?
Dropping his boxers, he headed downstairs. “Shell?”
Craig Stickland’s “Starlit Afternoon” soothed the quiet of the hall as he reached it, and Ray offered his Echo device a distracted smile as he headed into the kitchen. He’d spent hours thumbing through music to play for Shelley at their wedding, and this… this one had nailed every moment of them first meeting on a beach in France. She’d more than stolen his head as she danced by the campfire with her uni friends.
Humming it softly to himself, he frowned at the light trace of smoke coming from the stove.
“Shit….” Grabbing a tea-towel, he pulled the boiled-dry spuds off the ring and ran some cold water into the pan, the hiss adding a breath of steam to the kitchen window. He managed to save the vegetables, but the pie would definitely be getting some packet mash served with it tonight.
“You that knackered, love?” He checked the pie to make sure it was still living and thanked the Norse gods again for small mercies, especially as the fire alarms hadn’t been triggered. He could just imagine the piss-takes there off Jack and Jan. “Shell?”
A glance back over his shoulder to the hall saw only darkness and shadow.
Odd, he could have sworn the hall light had been on when he’d come down. Yet as he stared, even the shadows in there seemed to thicken and start to creep like vine into the kitchen.
Buzzing came from close by, and Ray looked away, trying to pinpoint where… from what.
Body thick, full, the fly sat on an orange neatly stacked in a fruit bowl with the others, and Ray moved, waving the bastard off. He may not have liked the good for you in life, but Shelley did, and no way was he letting the fly take a bite of that.
He took out some fly spray from underneath the sink and let rip.
It hit the floor, legs kicking wildly, and Ray found it a home in the bin.
Back on the table, though, an orange rolled off the fruit bowl, only stopping when it hit a mug of cold tea, jolting Ray as he glanced at it.
Frowning, Ray went over. Feeling damn stupid standing there, he gave it a poke, not understanding why it had been disturbed.
Green mould rolled into view as it toppled over.
Ughh. “Fruit’s out of date, love.” He poked it again, then checked a few more over, and—yep. “They’re all gone. You keep the receipt? I think you’re gonna need it.” He binned the lot in the bowl, then went to grab the one left on the table.
Thick bodied… bloated, a white maggot with a splash of red wriggled free of a split in the green mould. Movement was sluggish, deliriously content, almost as if it was too fat to do anything else but roll towards the candid fruit tray, the trace of red coating the glaze—and everything in that sweet tray suddenly came into such sharp focus.
Strands of long brown hair mixed with the red streaking the glaze, dragging a crazy mosaic through the red, one the fat maggot looked intent to maul its way over.
“Shell?” He barely recognised his own voice, because he knew those long dark strands, had ran his hands through them to catch a stray touch of pastry, and pastry still stuck to the strand now and—
“Shell… you…” His heart caught in his mouth. “You still here with me, baby?”
“Starlit Afternoon” started up again, and it locked him in the kitchen, away from the warmth of the beach in France, from those first moment Shelley had smiled his way, right to the last moment of her kiss to his cheek in the hall, erasing all memory until all he saw was strands of hair, dragging a red mosaic path over candid fruit.
As if catching a scent of a better prize, the maggot changed direction, heading for the edge of the table.
A strangled gurgle escaped Ray’s throat.
On the corner edge, chunks of skull mixed with hair and blood, and for a moment, all Ray could do was watch the drip, drip-drip of blood onto the floor. Larger bloodied trails dragged across the kitchen, heading for the back door, and Ray looked back at the fruit, to the piss-take of the maggot, almost helpless in its blindness, in its aggression to never stop, to just react… just eat, always hunting out food at night when Ed had shut the kitchen down, tripping the alarms to dig into Ray, always to eat—to gnaw through everything: bruised skin, blood, skull, and now—
“ Shelley ?” Ray cried it out, not stopping until it hurt, screwing his eyes shut to the backdoor, how life had been dragged out through it, how when it came to blood, bruises, and broken bones, it only ever led back to one twisted and mindless maggot who shifted shape.
“Me, not her.” He grabbed his firearm. “You hurt me. Never. Fucking. Her, Jack.”