Chapter Nine Dead Air #4
He wasn’t ready to say it. Not here. Not in a half-flooded living room with dawn clinging to the windows. He’d spoken the words enough times in counselling rooms smelling of lavender and neutral paint. It hadn’t become easier. It had only become rehearsed.
Jake dipped his chin. “Course. Aye. Sorry.”
There was no frustration in it. No curiosity pushing past the boundary. Jake knew loss. Different shape, maybe. Different wound. But loss all the same. And Jake didn’t have a body to anchor his grief to. No funeral. No finality.
Harrison wondered then which was worse.
Knowing the one you loved had left this world by choice…or knowing they hadn’t chosen to at all.
“So…” Jake inhaled, shifting the conversation deliberately. “Hartswick’s your new start?”
“Yeah.” Harrison wrapped his fingers tighter around his mug. “Came for the quiet.”
Jake cocked his head. “Staying for the chaos?”
Harrison didn’t answer. He might have bought a house, but staying implied permanence. He wasn’t ready to claim that yet.
Jake drained the last of his tea and glanced out the window. “Rain’s easing. I’ll get back up there.” He rose.
“Do you normally start work at this hour?”
Jake looked back over his shoulder. “Do you normally finish work at this hour?”
A breath of laughter escaped Harrison. He inclined his head. “Touché.”
Jake waited a moment, then, “There’s no word?”
“Not since I left.”
He gave a nod. Controlled. But his jaw tightened. “I was out with the search earlier. Door to door. Went home. Couldn’t sleep.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Kept thinking about your soggy floor. So I’ll fix it enough that you don’t drown in here.”
“How much?”
Jake frowned as if the question genuinely puzzled him. “How much what? Time? Won’t take long.”
“How much do I owe you? What does it cost? What are your rates? You’re not on the trading sites for me to check.”
“Oh!” Jake rubbed his neck. “Nowt.”
“Nothing? Your rates are nothing?”
“I mean…no. I have rates. Though, round here, I’m mostly paid in brew.” He lifted the drained mug, then took a step into the kitchen to dump it on the counter, then came back. “But, well, you can pay me by…” He swallowed. “…finding her.”
Harrison held his gaze. He couldn’t promise those outcomes. He knew better than anyone what that might cost. And it wouldn’t put food on Jake’s table. But the plea in his eyes wasn’t about money. It was about faith.
So Harrison gave a small nod. “I’ll do my job.”
Jake turned towards the door. “Then I’ll do mine.”
But before he could watch Jake leave, Harrison called out. “I read Robyn’s file.”
Jake stopped, and his shoulders went rigid before he looked back over his shoulder. “All of it?”
“Enough.”
Jake’s chest rose with his inhalation. “So this is where you tell me you don’t want me on your roof.
In your house. Anywhere near you.” He shook his head, as if used to being told ‘no’ because of the record that preceded him.
“I’m qualified. Prison taught me more than my old man could.
I’m a good roofer. I know I’m an ex-con, but…
I can fix your roof better than anyone on any of those sites you’ll use. And I’ll do it for free.”
“No, that’s not…” Harrison tilted his neck. “I’ve been a detective long enough to get a read on people. I know what I’m looking at when I meet someone. What you did for the previous owner. What you’re doing now. That’s enough for me.”
Jake searched his face, wary.
“I mentioned it because…I’ll re-examine it. Her case.” Harrison held his gaze. “Properly. When I get the time.”
Jake inhaled sharply. “Will you look at him?”
Harrison held the silence for a second, long enough to make clear this wasn’t a conversation for rooftops and damp carpets.
“I’ll look at everyone.” That was the only promise he could safely make.
Jake nodded. Then he gave a small smile and let himself out.
A moment later, the steady percussion of work resumed.
Hammer to slate. The scrape of tile, the muted thud of boots on the roof, and it seemed to ease him.
So Harrison leaned back against the arm of the sofa, letting the rhythm work through his thoughts.
It’d been a long time since there’d been noise in his house that wasn’t the echo of his own movement.
He meant to sit there for a minute. Only a minute.
But the muted sounds through the ceiling and the faint, steady scent of another man nearby loosened him. The tension he’d been carrying all evening eased, and he drifted.
His eyes closed of their own accord.
And when he woke, the house had gone quiet again. Proper quiet. The kind he knew too well. But something had changed. The damp smell had gone. The slow, persistent drip had stopped. The air felt… lighter. Held together. And in the kitchen, two mugs sat washed and drained on the side.
But the strangest thing?
The blanket draped over him.
Soft. Carefully laid. Tucked in enough around his shoulders to keep the warmth in without trapping him there.
Harrison stilled beneath it.
It was that same steady presence, even in absence.
As if someone had come into his life, set something right, then left before he could ask them to stay.