Chapter Seventeen Serve and Protect
Chapter seventeen
Serve and Protect
Freddie didn’t sleep much.
No surprise there, really.
He’d thought after two mind-blowing orgasms he’d have passed out til Sunday. But it wasn’t what had happened that kept him awake. It was who .
Nathan Carter.
Fifteen years of imagining that moment.
Fifteen years of half-remembered touches and what-ifs, running mental scripts of how it might go when, if , Nathan ever came back. Some versions ended in shouting. Others in declarations. Some in kisses that meant everything. Some with nothing at all.
Reality?
It had landed somewhere far messier.
Hot and hard, breathless and brutal. Not tender, or slow, but real . Clinging. Desperate. As if their bodies remembered something their mouths still hadn’t learned how to say. And somehow, it was more than Freddie ever let himself hope for. Because Nathan didn’t just want him.
He still wanted him.
This wasn’t about scratching an itch. Wasn’t about nostalgia, or unfinished business. It had weight. Legs. Possibility .
Okay, so they hadn’t talked about what came next.
Not really. No talk of labels, of what they were now.
Fuck, they hadn’t even exchanged numbers.
Nor did he know how Nathan knew where he lived.
Were they still expected to keep sneaking around like the ghosts of their teenage selves or walk into the light of day as something solid, seen, claimed?
But Freddie felt something . Something worth holding onto, even if it was complicated as fuck.
And maybe that was what made it worse. Lying in the faux dark, staring at the ceiling, wondering who Nathan had been with during the years between.
Because it hadn’t just been Freddie left in the wreckage.
Nathan had lived. Loved, maybe. He said he’d been with Katie but there had to have been others.
Men? Women? Who had touched that skin? Who had kissed that mouth? Traced that tattoo with their tongue?
Those thoughts sent acid sliding through his chest.
Anger. Jealousy. Regret .
Sleep never stood a chance.
So, a little after five, he dragged himself out of bed and hit the gym early before the after-work crowd descended, all full of protein shakes and poor form.
The weather outside was grim. Low clouds clung to the rooftops, a grey making the whole town look as if it had forgotten how to breathe. Worthbridge always had a way of feeling heavier when something pressed on his mind. The streets knew .
After the gym, Freddie swung by the café just off Station Square where the usual lad behind the counter, who changed his hair colour more often than Freddie changed his socks, was sporting a neon green fringe today.
He raised an eyebrow. “Night shift?”
“Yeah.” Freddie couldn’t quite keep the grumble out of his voice.
He used to like nights. There was a rhythm to them. A quiet hum in the town when everything else shut down. It gave him the day to himself. Time to see his mum, to help Piper with whatever chaos her life had dished out that week. Night shifts felt like they gave him more time.
But now?
Now he’d give anything for a normal schedule.
A nine-to-five. A dinner hour. Something he could build a life around.
Someone . He wanted to finish work and ask Nathan round.
Cook him something half-decent. Open a bottle of wine that didn’t cost a fiver and taste like vinegar.
Take him to bed, not because they were desperate and half-undressed and pressed against a wall, but because it was real.
Theirs .
Freddie finished the last of his takeaway coffee in the car on the way to the station, nerves curling tighter in his gut with every swallow.
He parked in the rear staff bay and entered through the side door, keying in with his fob.
The corridor smelt of old tea, damp paperwork, and that strange mix of sweat and stale deodorant clinging to every station in the country.
The locker room wasn’t much better with a couple of early-shift officers finishing up, chatting low, boots clunking on the tiles.
Freddie moved to his locker, spinning the dial, going through the motions he could do in his sleep.
Off with the civvies. On with the blues.
Like peeling himself away and covering his real self over with the vest. That familiar hug of pressure across his ribs as he fastened the Velcro made it easier to push everything else down.
But it didn’t quite work tonight.
The taste of Nathan still lingered. Phantom pressure on his lips, ghost heat at the base of his spine. And what he’d asked, and everything he hadn’t, squeezed harder than Kevlar ever could.
When Freddie stepped out of the locker room, Becca was already waiting for him in the corridor, arms folded across her vest, one boot braced against the wall, hair pulled back in a tight plait. She wore that look. Calm on the surface, eyes a little too still.
“DI wants us both.”
Freddie had expected it. Knew it was coming. But the words still landed like a punch to the ribs. “Carrick?”
“And DS Bowen.”
That made his stomach twist.
Both of them. Together. This wasn’t a debrief. It wasn’t a quiet ‘good job, well done’ behind closed doors. This was something else entirely.
They walked together to the incident room where Carrick stood behind the central desk, DS Bowen beside him, tapping on her iPad, the case logs open on the whiteboard behind them.
“Webb. Lambert,” Carrick greeted, voice clipped. “Sit.”
They obeyed.
“We’ve been going through the surveillance logs and body cam footage from the raid.”
Bowen turned the iPad towards them. “There’s a gap in the timeline. Both your GPS locators show no movement. Comms were silent. And Webb, your body-worn video was off for the duration. ”
Freddie kept his expression neutral. “Wasn’t intentional. We were caught between units when the perimeter shifted. Comms were overloaded in our sector. Cross-talk from Bravo and Delta. Interference. Things got messy.”
“It didn’t get messy for anyone else,” Carrick cut in. “All other teams maintained regular comms. No interference. Your silence stands out.”
Bowen tapped the screen again, then laid a printed still down on the table in front of them, black and white, grainy CCTV from the alley behind the target address.
It showed two figures: one tall, one smaller.
The larger had an arm around the other, hauling them forward in a low, fast run.
Protective posture. Head ducked. Tactical movement.
Freddie’s gut tightened.
“There’s no authorised movement logged before the green light,” Bowen said. “No unit called extraction. No handover. And yet…”
Carrick leant in, eyes locked on Freddie.
“We have visual confirmation of someone removing a teenage male from the scene before entry.” He tapped the logbook on the desk.
“There’s no record of the boy being found.
Not by you, nor by the secondary team. He doesn’t appear anywhere in the incident log.
No ID, no statement, not even a verbal acknowledgment.
And yet he was there.” Carrick prodded his finger on the picture.
“We have him on camera entering the property. And someone got him out before the breach.”
Becca shifted in her seat. “Do we know who they are?”
“Nathan Carter.” Bowen folded her arms, eyes fixed on Freddie.
“Civilian. Ex-British Army. And Alfie Carter’s father.
The boy you arrested last Sunday, Webb.” She let that sit for a beat.
“You remember that, don’t you? Gave you a run for your money on the Whitmore foot chase.
Bit of a handful. You logged that . But nothing from last night?
No ID? No mention?” She narrowed her eyes.
“You’re telling me you didn’t recognise him when he turned up at your crime scene? Or did you decide not to log it?”
Freddie sat completely still, pulse pounding beneath his skin. “It was dark. Hard to make out anything.”
“Then let’s make sure we’re all on the same page.
” Carrick folded his arms. “There is no mention of Carter in your notes. No visual ID logged. No attempt to report civilian interference. And yet somehow Nathan Carter entered an active scene, removed a minor, a key witness or a potential victim, before police units were authorised to breach.” He let the words settle like dust, then, “Do either of you want to tell me how that happened?”
Freddie’s blood turned to ice.
Carrick watched him like a hawk.
“Do you want to explain why a civilian was inside a live operation scene before the breach?”
Freddie opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Becca shifted forward. “Sir, if I may… we weren’t even certain what we saw.
Everything happened fast. We tried raising comms, but the channel was overloaded.
At the time, we thought it might’ve been a tactical extraction by another unit.
Off the books. We didn’t want to flag something mid-op without confirmation. ”
Freddie blinked, the mix of gratitude and guilt hitting hard and immediate. He could’ve kissed her for stepping in. And throttled her for doubling down on the lie.
Carrick raised a hand. “You guessed. And chose not to report it.”
Silence.
“You’re being given the opportunity now to account for this anomaly. Otherwise, it goes up the chain as a deliberate breach of protocol. You understand the severity?”
Freddie nodded once. “Yes, sir.”
There was a long pause. Bowen stared at him, cool and assessing.
Finally, Carrick straightened. “Nathan Carter is not listed as authorised personnel. He entered an active crime scene without clearance. Motive doesn’t change the fact he obstructed a live police operation. That’s an arrestable offence.”
Freddie’s throat tightened. He could feel where this was headed, every word a step closer to the inevitable. “You’re asking us to arrest him.”