Chapter Twenty-Four High Risk
chapter twenty-four
High Risk
Warren watched Jude disappear down the corridor, swallowed by the swell of bodies and the hush of the house. He knew what lay beyond. Stairs, a basement, walls too thick for sight or sound. Out of reach. Out of his hands.
His gut clenched.
He forced himself to move, champagne flutes chiming as he slipped through sequins and smoke.
He should’ve been focused. Counting heads.
Noting who handed what to whom, the folded notes passed palm to palm, the powder dusting glass surfaces.
That was his role tonight: eyes on the floor, feeding back surveillance intel, maintaining cover.
And he should’ve been grateful they’d even let him do that.
Because none of this would hold in court.
His word was compromised. They couldn’t put him in the witness box after he’d crossed the line, after he’d laid himself in Jude Ellison’s bed.
That was why they hadn’t trusted him with an earpiece.
Why Patel had benched him the moment his involvement blurred into something personal.
He was here on sufferance, only because Naomi had vouched for him.
He felt like a civvy. Present but stripped of authority.
A body with no weight.
Technically, he was still a Detective Sergeant.
Still carried the warrant card. He could make arrests if he wanted to.
And as his gaze swept the room to the clusters by the windows, the men loitering at the marble bar, there were plenty who should be in cuffs.
The cocaine alone was enough to justify a raid.
But it wouldn’t touch Radley.
Nothing would. Not unless Jude got him on record.
Not unless the wire did its job.
And Warren had to stand here and pretend he wasn’t listening to silence.
That he wasn’t helpless while Jude walked deeper into danger.
His chest burned. Every instinct screaming to move, to put himself between Jude and the jaws closing around him.
But instinct was how officers got killed.
How operations got tanked. How the bad guys got away.
So he forced himself to work. Tray down, swap for another, sweep the room.
Mark the pair of men tucked by the windows trading rolls of cash.
Note the lieutenant in the far corner, hand never straying far from his jacket pocket.
But the ache didn’t ease. Jude was gone from sight.
Downstairs, somewhere the surveillance cams couldn’t reach. His voice absent in Warren’s ear.
Warren was blind.
The party noise dulled, so he pushed through the doors into the back kitchen.
Naomi was there, ushering a pale woman with a baby out through the exit, voice low and calm, hand on the mother’s elbow.
Warren caught only fragments—safe place, straight through, don’t look back—before the door closed on them.
He stacked the tray of empty flutes by the sink, feeding glasses into the industrial dishwasher to keep his hands moving. When Naomi came back in, he jutted his chin towards the door.
“Who was that?”
Her expression tightened. “Graham’s mistress. Or was. Kid’s his. Vivienne made sure they crossed paths tonight.”
“Christ. What’s she playing at?”
Naomi rubbed a hand across her face. “Told you she’s setting the stage for something big. Wouldn’t be surprised if she drops a divorce petition before dessert.”
“So Radley might be happy trading the mansion for a cell before the night’s out.”
“If we’re lucky.” Then her eyes cut to him. “But why are you in here? You’re meant to be eyes on.”
Warren slammed the dishwasher shut. “I can’t stand there pouring drinks while he’s down there blind. Callum’s glued to him, Radley’s circling. He shouldn’t be in that room alone.”
Naomi stepped in, close enough he could smell her perfume beneath the tang of bleach and lemon oil.
It shot him with a harsh reminder. That once, he’d been hers.
That perfume had sat on their shared dresser in the bedroom of their flat in south London.
And he’d never worried about her the way he was Jude. He’d never risked anything for her.
“You think I don’t know that?” Naomi said, voice low, so as not to be caught beyond the walls.
“Then pull him.” He waved a hand at the exit the woman and baby had fled through. “Like you did her.”
“We can’t. Not yet. Radley’s not giving us anything we can hold. He’s too careful.”
Warren leaned in, voice dropping, heat pushing through his restraint. “He’s a bloody teacher. Not a UC. And you’ve thrown him in with a wire and the man who spent years breaking him down. You don’t think Radley will smell that?”
Something flashed in Naomi’s eyes. Anger, guilt, maybe both. “You think I haven’t costed every risk? I vouched for him. And you. Put my name on you both. You think that doesn’t keep me awake? But if we pull him too soon, Radley walks. And everything we’ve built, months of work, dies right there.”
The words landed hard, the way they always had when she’d cut through his fury with the truth.
Warren swore under his breath. She was right. And he hated it. “What’s happening? You can hear him. Tell me.”
“I can’t tell you, Warren.” She held his gaze. “You feel something for him that isn’t part of the job. I know you can’t help it. I know you better than anyone. But it means I can’t let you in on this. And you have to own what happened.”
The way she’d said his name had been deliberate.
Personal. The way it had been once whispered under sheets, in the dark, when saying his name had meant comfort instead of conflict.
Back then it had been an anchor, something to cling to when the world they worked in cut with jagged edges.
A reminder that not everything they touched turned to blood and money.
“I do own it. I accept the failure. But I’m not walking away from him.”
Naomi’s voice softened. “Then get back on the floor. If anyone clocks you gone, it puts him more at risk. You do your job. I’ll do mine. And maybe you’ll get him back.”
He held Naomi’s gaze a moment longer, the old current tugging sharp and unwanted, then shoved through the doors, back into the main house.
Back into his role. Where he moved through the crowd like a shadow, watching, absorbing.
He’d done parties before. Backrooms thick with smoke.
Hotel suites where the carpets were soaked in champagne and blood.
He’d stood shoulder to shoulder with the men who ran it all, played the hired muscle when the job called for it.
He’d seen the worst of organised crime dressed up in silk and cologne.
But this… this was different.
Everything was out in the open. Drinks pouring, coke chopped fine on mirrored tables, deals whispered but not hidden. Masks weren’t slipping, they were gone altogether. Pairing that with how he hadn’t even been checked on arrival, simply accepted via Naomi, there was something off about it all.
He then clocked Vivienne Radley, circling the place with a glint in her eyes.
She didn’t do careless. She staged every move like a conductor with a baton.
Which made this, everyone gathered here with every string of the empire tied under one roof, something closer to theatre.
A performance. Flaunting it all, as if she wanted it seen.
Then there was the woman. The affair. And the baby.
Brought here for some reason. To distract Graham? To tell him she knew?
Or to put her in the path of danger?
He drew in a sharp breath, a cold prickle racing along his spine.
He made his decision.
Checking once over his shoulder to ensure no eyes were on him, he left the house and cut across the wide gravel drive.
The mansion loomed behind him, glass walls pulsing with bass, every chandeliered window a kaleidoscope of wealth and rot.
Beyond the manicured lawn, woodland hugged the cliff edge, dark and salt-thick with sea air.
Warren took the cover, moving fast through the trees until the glow of a screen bled faint through the branches.
Then there, parked nose-first by the cliff wall, blacked out, low profile, was a van.
Nothing more than another service vehicle if anyone happened to glance but Warren knew better.
He rapped once on the back doors, then harder.
The doors cracked open, and a young comms officer blinked up at him. “Sarge?”
“I need an earpiece. Now.”
The lad hesitated. “We’re—”
“Now.” Warren stepped into the tech van.
The officer didn’t argue again. Thirty seconds later, the bud was in Warren’s ear, static hissing before it cleared.
He scanned the bank of monitors stacked inside the van.
Angles from covert cams hidden in light fittings, hall corners, exterior drive.
Nothing from the basement. Of course not.
Jude was still down there. Still with Radley. Still with Reid.
Alone.
“I can’t hear him,” Warren snapped, leaning over the officer, palm flat on the back of his chair.
“I’m patching you in now.”
Another crackle, then—
Jude’s voice.
Soft, strained, each word measured as if it cost him blood.
“Teaching doesn’t stretch far these days… you find yourself looking for other ways to keep the lights on.”
Radley’s voice slid in after, silk over steel. “A man who admits his limits. Refreshing. But money, Mr Ellison, comes with obligations. Can you live with that?”
Jude’s breath hitched, faint but audible. “I can live with what I have to.”
And then Reid’s laugh. Close, cutting, meant for Jude’s ear alone but carried to every one of them through the wire. “Told you he was pliable. Didn’t I?”
Warren could almost feel Callum’s hand around Jude’s throat, squeezing through the wire.
“He’s always been pliable. Tell him he’s special and he’ll bend for you. Not just papers marked and kids kept in line. No, Jude sells himself, don’t you, lamb? Always has, if the price is right. Made me quite the earner before Winchester.”