Chapter 4 #2
Not wanting to face the wrath of Blake for upsetting his mate, Taylor playfully tipped his head. “It’s not Falkington City. It’s Dingly Heath.”
“The retirement village?”
Taylor bit the inside of his cheek. “Yep,” he said, popping the P.
Pember let out a bright burst of laughter, clearly relieved that Taylor had steered the conversation away from dead friends and lost jobs. “You’ll smash it, I’m sure. Just… don’t steal your colleagues’ food, okay? Or use the intox machine for personal reasons.”
Taylor pouted. “I knew Wallace had cake.”
“I mean, you did invade our lab every day. All Wallace could hear from his office was you guys snoring.”
Shrugging, Taylor took another sip of Coke. “What can I say? It was tiring work, being a task monkey for Major Crime.”
Pember downed his coffee before hopping off the plant pot. “Just try your best, and please sort your exhaust out. I swear your car gives Blake heart palpitations.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Taylor replied, moving towards his own back door. “And you put a muzzle on that bloody bird, because it gives me earache.”
“Do they make muzzles for birds?” With that, Pember disappeared into the house and closed the door behind him.
“They should,” Taylor muttered, stepping back into the kitchen.
Clattering around, he made himself a bowl of cereal, grumbling as he dug a spoon into the bowl that had Cereal Killer etched across it in looping letters.
He chewed loudly, pushing the food around his mouth, between his teeth and over the back of his tongue.
It was a trick he’d picked up when he was a kid, when his mum was too depressed to feed him.
It convinced his brain that he was eating more, and pulverising it thoroughly staved off the hunger pains for longer.
He didn’t need to do that now, but the habit had stuck.
Leaning back in the swanky leather dining chair (that had also been a cast-off from the restaurant), Taylor glanced at the clock and then over his shoulder at the front door. Johnny would be back soon and they’d have to face the music.
He dropped the cereal bowl into the sink before throwing half a banana and a couple of handfuls of leftover blackberries into the bullet mixer on the corner of the worktop.
He ran the fruit between his fingers, feeling the squishy bumps under the pad of his thumb.
After adding milk and Johnny’s strawberry protein powder, he whizzed it all up and tipped it into a glass.
Right on cue, he heard voices coming from the front of the house, and when he looked out the bay window, there were Blake and Johnny at the bottom of the garden steps. Johnny was bent over, dry-heaving as Blake slapped him on the back.
Taylor laughed and opened the door. “Can you not kill my housemate, please? I need him for rent money.”
Johnny flipped him the middle finger as he straightened, his black vest and running shorts clinging to his sweaty skin and showing off his perfectly defined abs and cut hips. The bastard looked like a silky black seal with an eight pack.
Borderline public indecency.
Taylor glanced guiltily at the set of weights in the corner of the living room. He really should start up again, sooner rather than later.
Despite breathing hard, Johnny bounded up the garden path and slipped the glass out of Taylor’s hand. “Thanks,” he said, pressing it to his mouth.
Blake cocked a brow and watched them as they stood squashed together in the doorway.
“Hope you enjoyed the cake!” Taylor called, scowling at the other alpha as he pushed open his own gate and hopped up the steps.
Blake smirked, pushing his slightly greying brown hair off his forehead. “Enjoy Dingly Heath,” he said, before slipping inside and closing the door.
“Don’t antagonise him,” Johnny said, finishing the smoothie and shoving Taylor inside.
Taylor slumped into the middle of their tatty sofa, throwing both arms across the back. “What do I care? He’s not our sergeant anymore. Why do you even go running with him? He’s so fucking miserable.”
Johnny sighed, grabbing the towel he’d left by the door and running it around his neck. “He’s actually a pretty nice guy, if you ever bothered to get to know him. Worships the ground Pember walks on, that’s for sure.” His eyes flitted across Taylor’s chest. “Is that my shirt?”
“Yep. Looks good, right? Had to roll the sleeves up though. You and your fucking sloth arms.”
Johnny threw the towel, hitting him in the face with a damp slap. “Shut up. At least I don’t look like I’m about to do a set on Magic Mike. You’re going to give the old people heart failure.”
Taylor shrugged. “Maybe I’ll attract a cougar. Oh, and fuck you very much for the wake-up, by the way.”
Johnny laughed and ran a hand through his curly hair. “You are very welcome. Have you eaten?”
Taylor scoffed. “Obviously.”
“Good. I’m going for a shower, then let’s hit the road.”
Grey. Grey, grey, grey, grey. That was Falkington. Fucking grey.
The drive took twice as long as their commute to West Newton, and crossing the border between the two divisions was like going from one country to another.
As soon as the Falkington County Council sign came into view, the countryside fell away and a concrete jungle with a canopy of high-rise flats sprang up.
Everything was a wash of colourless, soulless shit, from the streets to the shopfronts to the people themselves.
He and Johnny had been to the city for firearms training, but the few times they’d dared to check out the nightlife it had been fucking dire.
The clubs were rough as hell, the beer was watered down and a man could find himself without a kidney if he so much as looked at a bouncer the wrong way.
Plus, one of Samantha’s murderers came from there, an omega called Ru, so it must be fucking bad. Taylor shuddered.
“Grim, isn’t it?” Johnny said, rolling up the window as the smell of piss wafted through the car.
Taylor swallowed, braking as the traffic lights ahead turned red. “That’s one word for it. I mean, look at this guy coming up.” He pointed to a man crossing the road. He had a plant pot on his head and bin bags around his legs.
Johnny hummed. “What? The pot is clearly meant to deter the aliens, and the bin bags keep all his internal organs in.”
“Uh-huh. And her?” Taylor said, tapping the steering wheel and pointing to a woman who was pulling cat food cans out of an industrial sized bin and… licking them.
Johnny shuddered. “Good source of protein, so I hear. Dingly Heath can’t be any worse, right?”
Sniffing, Taylor turned his gaze back to the road. It wasn’t until they’d traversed the ring roads and navigated several more roundabouts that the high-rises began to fall away. It was still a sea of endless shit, but at least there was some clean air between them and the road ahead.
Johnny tapped his boot against the dashboard. “I’m sure it has its charms.”
Taylor tilted his head to work out a crick in his neck. “If you say so.”
As they rounded a sweeping corner multiple speed signs appeared, followed by ‘SLOW. SLOW. KILL YOUR SPEED, ELDERLY AHEAD.’
Taylor laughed and shook his head, “I think we’ve found it.”
Another massive sign seemed to come out of nowhere with palm trees and a bright orange sunset framing the words ‘Welcome to Dingly Heath, Britain’s Most Motivated Town.’
As they slowly crossed the line from Falkington City to Dingly Heath, they came face-to-face with a sea of Victorian-style bungalows, complete with slate roofs, lead drainpipes and white facias all lined up in neat little rows.
The utterly perfect spacing from kerb to path to front door made Taylor’s neck tingle.
“Just look at those hanging baskets,” Johnny said, inclining his head towards a particularly complicated contraption with metal bees and frogs. “Dad would have a fucking field day.” He stuck his phone out of the window and took a picture.
Taylor’s skin itched at the sheer tidiness of it all. He preferred organised chaos, not whatever this shit was meant to be. Not a blade of grass out of place or piece of litter in sight.
He let the car coast along the cobbled road between the houses, suddenly very, very self-conscious of the orange stripe and Tasmanian devil bobbing from the roof.
“Look out,” Johnny said, gesturing towards a group of brightly coloured anoraks. “Horde approaching at twelve o’clock.”
Taylor slammed on the brakes with unnecessary force as a group of old ladies tottered around on their canes, some of them stepping into the road ahead. He revved the engine, making their heads pop up like a group of meerkats with silver perms.
Smirking, he did it again, louder that time, causing a couple from the group to throw their arms up.
“Stop it,” Johnny growled.
“What? Just keeping them on their toes.”
One of them looked around, spotting the car, then they all raised their walking sticks and shook them like a group of angry villagers with pitchforks. Taylor let out a satisfied hum.
Johnny punched Taylor’s knee. “For fuck’s sake, Tay. Look what you’ve done. Oh God, what’re they—”
Two broke away from the group and headed straight towards them, sticks held high and brilliantly bleached false teeth clattering in their mouths.
“Shit, they’re closing in,” Taylor said, throwing the car into reverse.
What followed was a maelstrom of multi-coloured walking sticks swinging wildly, and as Taylor backed the car away he realised he had totally underestimated the speed of the elderly.
One of them smacked the car bonnet. “Oi!” he shouted, rolling down the window. “Put those down, you daft old—”
“Taylor!” Johnny snapped, driving his fingertips into Taylor’s knee. “Turn the fucking car around. You are not pissing off the locals before we’ve even got to the nick.”
Taylor scoffed. “I am not pissing them off, they’re pissing me off.”
“Taylor,” Johnny growled, voice growing low. His wolf flashed behind his eyes, pupils growing wide and dragging Taylor in. “Stop it.”