Chapter Twenty-Four High Risk #2
Warren’s knuckles blanched on the chairback. Rage shot hot through his chest. He straightened, slammed his fist onto the van doors. “Shit! Fuck! Get him out! Get him out now!”
The tech crew froze, eyes darting. One of them shook his head. “Not our call, Sarge.”
Warren knew it. But he also knew what Reid had just done.
One line, dropped like a match. Enough to taint everything.
Reid had weaponised the wire. On playback, it wouldn’t sound like malice.
It would sound like truth. And it made Jude look compromised.
Sound as if he’d been compliant. A teacher turned asset, bending for anyone who offered the right price.
Unreliable. A defence barrister would rip him apart with it, paint him as unstable, corruptible, even complicit in Radley’s world.
CPS would blanch at the thought of putting him near a witness box.
But beyond court strategy, that had been psychological warfare. Reid had dragged Jude’s most vulnerable history into the room, right in front of Radley, knowing Jude had to keep his composure. And worse—knowing Warren, Naomi, Patel, the entire team were listening. He was taunting them all.
“Get me on mic,” Warren snapped. “Now.”
A tech fumbled, shoved a handset into his palm, tuned to Patel’s channel.
“Get him out,” Warren barked.
Patel’s reply came back clipped. “You’re not making the calls here, DS Beckford.”
“It won’t hold,” Warren shot back. “He’s done his part. Pull him now.”
Desperation clawed at his throat. If he’d been on comms from the start, he’d have caught Reid’s tells, fed what was happening inside the mansion up the chain, built Patel the case she needed to pull Jude clear. That was his job, his skill, and he’d been cut out of it. Sidelined. Powerless.
And Jude was still down there. Alone. With Radley. With Callum.
Someone Warren cared about, more than he dared admit, even to himself. Someone he was falling, hard and fast, in fucking love with.
“DS Beckford, you are to stand down immediately.” Patel’s voice cracked sharp over the channel. “Get off this network and leave the operation to us.”
Fury tore through him, hot enough to choke and he ripped the earpiece out, hurling it at the van doors. He braced his hands on the back of them, breath ragged, about to do something reckless. Career-ending.
But he didn’t get the time.
The ground shivered under his boots. A low vibration, deep enough to rattle his bones. He turned, scanning the screens. “What the—”
Then a sharp crack blasted overhead, and glass splintered, the van jolting sideways on its suspension, the ground lurching beneath him. Warren grabbed the side panel to steady himself.
“Shit!” one of the techs shouted.
An explosion hit like a hammer.
On the screens, the house tore itself apart.
A roar of fire punched skyward, orange light ripping into the night, shards of glass spraying out in a glittering storm that would’ve looked staged if Warren hadn’t felt the shockwave roll through his boots.
The bassline cut dead mid-beat, replaced by the rawer sound.
Screams, high and panicked, carrying sharp across the cliffside air.
The monitors flared into chaos. Cameras fuzzed, feeds juddered, angles slipped into static and smoke. All that money, all that control, gone in a breath. The cliff-top fortress Radley had built now writhed on the screens like a carcass set alight. But Warren wasn’t watching a film.
He was watching Jude disappear inside it.
His heart plummeted. “No. No, no, no!”
Snatching up the comms rig he’d thrown, he willed himself to calm then clipped it back to his belt, jammed the earpiece in.
Static. Nothing from Jude. Nothing but silence where his voice should’ve been.
He shoved the van doors wide, the night air full of smoke and salt, and ran.
Across gravel, through the shrieks of fleeing guests, into the rising plume of fire and glass.
Boots pounding, lungs burning, his body moving before thought could catch up.
Straight into the blaze.
Right into the fire.
The house had blown open like a wound. Smoke poured from fractured panes of glass, alarms shrieked into the night, and the low hum of the sea was drowned beneath the rising chorus of screams. Guests stumbled over gravel and down the long drive, sequins and silk catching firelight, their glamour stripped bare to panic.
Warren sprinted.
“DS Beckford, going in,” he called into comms.
“Negative, Beckford!” Patel’s voice cracked sharp. “You’re not authorised—”
“Too late.” At the threshold, shoulder to the warped frame of the double doors, he forced his way inside.
The blast had gutted the ground floor.
Clean white walls, pale oak floors, glass balustrades and designer furniture were all scorched and shattered.
Smoke bled down from the vaulted ceiling, the air thick with the stench of burning plastic and scorched paintwork.
Shards of glass crunched beneath Warren’s boots, every step snapping loud over the hiss and crackle of flame.
He dropped low, training kicking in. Air was clearer near the floor, and he ripped off his waistcoat, buttons flying among the debris, shoving it over his mouth and nose to scan through the haze.
The kitchen to his left was gutted, high-gloss units blistered and blackened.
To his right, the lounge overlooking the cliff face was a ruin of collapsed ceiling and broken glass doors leading out onto the terrace.
“Talk to me!” Warren shouted into comms. “Where’s Jude?”
Static hissed back. Then a faint crackle. He could hear something. Ragged conversations. Jude, maybe. Radley. Who knew?
“Jude!” Warren’s chest seized. “I’ve got you. Hold on, I’ve got you.”
He was talking to himself, he knew that.
Jude didn’t have comms, only a wire pick up.
But it gave him a sense of security to call instructions regardless and he forced forward, every sense tuned sharp.
His training drilled in: orient on sound, track the path, stay low.
He found the central stairwell at the east wing half-blocked by plaster and beams, the banister splintered clean off.
Naomi’s voice broke in through his earpiece. “I’m out. Fire crews en route. You need to hold position, Beckford.”
“Not happening.” Warren wedged his shoulder to a beam, heaved until muscles tore fire down his arms, and dragged it clear. “He’s alive. I can hear him.”
“Warren—”
He cut her off. “Patch me a fix on his wire!”
The tech came through, urgent. “Signal’s basement level. East wing. Three rooms in. Collapse risk all the way.”
“Copy.”
The stairwell burned hot under his palms as he descended, smoke searing his eyes until everything blurred.
He stayed low, each breath a scrape in his lungs.
Another cough came over the wire and muffled words and conversation he couldn’t make out among the disruption.
But someone was speaking, which meant it could be Jude.
“Keep talking, baby,” Warren muttered away from comms, quieter, as if speaking directly to Jude. “Come on, baby. Give me something.”
The basement corridor was an oven. Heat pressed from both sides, plaster blistered and spitting flame, smoke clawing in layers across the ceiling.
The polished concrete floor groaned beneath his boots, cracked tiles scattered across the path.
He passed a storage door blown clean off its hinges.
Inside, shelving had toppled, boxes of files and plastic binders reduced to ash.
This had been the heart of it. The blast zone. The purge.
A door further down sagged on twisted hinges, smoke belching out in violent gusts with every shift of air. Warren squared his shoulders and drove into it once. Twice. Wood splintered, frame buckled, the noise deafening in the close heat.
On the third hit, the door gave, crashing inward.
Radley’s basement office had been ripped apart by the shockwave.
Bookshelves toppled, leather volumes curled in ash.
The oak desk had been knocked sideways under the force of falling plaster and beams. One wall of glass was spiderwebbed with fractures, heat distorting the cliff rock beyond.
Smoke hung low and choking, curling around the heavy beam pinning Radley to the floor.
Then there, among it all, Jude crouched beside Radley, hands braced on the splintered desk, straining to shift the beam pinning Radley down.
He’d stayed.
And was trying to save him.
Warren’s heart slammed so hard it felt like it might tear through his ribs.
“Jude!” His voice split the smoke as he forced his way across the ruined office.
It wasn’t easy getting to him. The room was a wreck.
Bookshelves collapsed in heaps, charred spines spitting sparks.
Glass crunched under every step, jagged shards catching the firelight, while smoke rolled low enough to claw at his eyes and throat.
Warren kept the waistcoat clamped over his mouth, one hand free to wrench debris aside, shoving a toppled chair here, dragging a splintered shelf there, until the path opened enough to drop to his knees at Jude’s side.
Jude was dazed but defiant, blood slicking down the side of his face in streams. “Radley…he’s trapped!”
“Where’s Reid?” Warren barked.
Jude flapped weakly towards the shelves, where a narrow service door gaped open, smoke curling through the gap. “He ran. Garage exit.”
“Of course, he fucking did.” Warren bit the words off, shoving the last broken plank out of the way to reach him.
Reid was the least of his problems, and he couldn’t get far.
The prick was tagged. He’d make it as far as the cliff edge.
So Warren concentrated on what he could do.
And he cupped Jude’s face in his hands, assessing him, sliding his thumb through blood. “Baby, you’re bleeding.”
He tugged the waistcoat down, dabbing the cloth to Jude’s wound.