Chapter 10
Reeze rode through town faster than he usually did, not recklessly, but fast enough to make people pay a little more attention when the bike slipped between the cars.
The engine vibrated heavily beneath him, sending those familiar tremors through his body, up his spine and behind his ribs, but it didn’t do a damn thing to quiet the thoughts that continued racing through his head.
The man in the yard bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
Not only because he had been standing there waiting, but because of the way he had done it, calm and confident, as though he had already known Reeze would walk out of the building with Charlie.
That was almost the worst part. Not that he had shown himself, but the way he had looked at them, as though he had already seen something they themselves hadn’t quite had time to understand yet and had decided exactly where it was heading.
Reeze took the bend towards the industrial estate without easing off the throttle much.
The morning light still lay pale across the corrugated roofs and warehouses lining the road, and farther ahead the gates to the club grounds began to appear between the buildings.
Just seeing them made some of the tension leave his shoulders.
It was ridiculous, really. A few metres of fencing, a clubhouse and a yard full of men who mostly behaved like overgrown teenagers, yet it was home. A place where he knew who belonged and who didn’t, where everyone was supposed to be, what threats existed and how they were dealt with.
The phone vibrating inside his cut shattered that feeling immediately.
Reeze swore under his breath and slowed before glancing at the display.
Charlie.
Something tightened in his stomach. She didn’t call in the middle of the day for no reason, and he pulled over, killed the engine and removed his helmet while the phone was still ringing.
“Yeah?”
There was no immediate answer, only the sound of her breathing.
It was a small thing, something most people probably wouldn’t even have noticed, but Reeze had already learnt what Charlie sounded like when she was calm, when she laughed, when she was irritated and when she was trying to pretend everything was under control.
This was none of those.
“Charlie?”
“He’s back.”
The words were quiet, but clear enough to drown out everything around him. The traffic farther away, the sounds from the industrial estate and the people moving along the pavement seemed to disappear until there was nothing but her voice.
“Same place,” she continued, drawing a breath. “By the car park.”
Reeze closed his eyes for a second and forced himself to think. That bastard shouldn’t have been back already.
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s just standing there, looking up at the window.”
Something hardened inside him. Not anger, not yet, but that colder, more methodical part of him that woke whenever someone threatened the people he cared about.
This was no longer about some idiot who had happened to notice Charlie and taken an interest. The man wanted to be seen.
He wanted her to know that he could turn up whenever he pleased, and that made the whole thing considerably worse.
“Is the door locked?” he asked calmly.
“Yes.”
“Chain on?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You don’t open that door for anyone, you hear me? No one.”
He heard her moving through the flat as they spoke, quick footsteps crossing the floor and something lightly striking a wall. Then she fell silent for a few seconds, and when she spoke again her voice had dropped even lower.
“He’s smiling. Like he thinks it’s funny.”
Reeze clenched his jaw hard enough to feel it in his teeth, but his voice remained steady.
“Listen to me. Move away from the windows and close the curtains.”
He heard fabric being pulled across the rail.
“Okay.”
“Good. I’m coming back.”
There was a brief silence before she asked, “Did you even make it to the club?”
Behind the fear he heard something else. Guilt, almost, as though she had already begun convincing herself that this was her fault and that she had dragged him into something he otherwise wouldn’t have had to deal with.
Reeze leaned his head back against the cold brick wall behind him and closed his eyes.
“Charlie.”
She went quiet.
“I don’t give a fuck where I am. I care where you are.”
Her breathing caught for a moment at the other end of the line before a quiet “Okay” reached him, almost a whisper.
He ended the call, pulled his helmet back on and started the bike.
The engine answered with an angry roar as he turned around and left the industrial estate behind again.
Speed limits weren’t particularly high on his list of concerns right now, because all he could see in his mind was Charlie alone in that flat and the bastard who, for whatever reason, was still standing outside.
Charlie remained in the middle of the living room with the phone in her hand after Reeze ended the call.
The flat suddenly felt strangely quiet even though it wasn’t.
The fridge still hummed in the kitchen, somewhere else in the building a door slammed and a child laughed outside before the sound disappeared between the buildings.
Completely ordinary noises she wouldn’t have given a second thought on any other day, but now she noticed every single one while trying not to think about the man outside.
She knew Reeze was right. She should stay away from the window, sit on the sofa and turn on the television, or do anything except stand there staring at the curtains as though they might somehow provide an answer.
Still, her eyes kept returning to them until eventually she gave up.
With a quiet sigh, she crossed the room and pulled one curtain aside just far enough to look out.
She regretted it immediately.
The man was still there. The grey Volvo remained in exactly the same place, and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere.
That was almost what unsettled her most. He wasn’t standing there like someone waiting for a friend or killing a few minutes before an appointment.
He stood there with purpose, like someone who wanted to be seen.
The longer she watched him, the less she believed any of this could be a coincidence.
Dennis had always been the sort of man who let other people do the work for him when it suited him.
He was perfectly capable of shouting and threatening her himself when he was angry, but when he truly wanted to unsettle someone, he found other ways, other people, different methods.
She had seen it often enough over the years to recognise the pattern, and the thought made her stomach tighten.
At that moment, the man looked up.
Their eyes met through the narrow gap between the curtains, and Charlie barely had time to react before a slow smile spread across his face.
It wasn’t mocking or openly threatening, almost the opposite, and somehow that made it worse.
It was the smile of someone who already knew he had succeeded and had got exactly the reaction he had come for.
Charlie stood there a second too long before releasing the curtain. The fabric dropped back into place between her and the yard, but it didn’t help. She still knew he was down there, that he could see the building and that he was waiting for something.
Or someone.
The phone felt unusually heavy in her hand when she opened her messages to Reeze. She mistyped the first attempt, deleted the second and started again before finally forcing herself to stop thinking and simply write.
He’s still there. Sitting in the car now. Engine running.
She pressed send before she could change her mind.
Reeze spotted the Volvo the moment he turned into the yard. It was still parked exactly where Charlie had described it, and that alone made something tighten in his gut. The man hadn’t even tried to hide. If anything, he seemed to have settled in as though he had all the time in the world.
It was almost provocative how normal everything around him looked.
A few children were still playing with a ball farther away between the buildings, while an elderly woman stood on her balcony with a rug hanging over the railing as though this were any other ordinary day.
Meanwhile, a strange man sat outside Charlie’s flat and didn’t appear remotely concerned about being noticed.
Reeze let the bike roll slowly past the Volvo, and when their eyes met through the windscreen, he didn’t need a badge or an introduction to know what he was looking at.
After enough years, you learnt to recognise cops.
It wasn’t the clothes or the car. It was the posture, the eyes and that particular certainty some of them carried, as though they had an unquestionable right to be wherever they chose.
The man behind the wheel didn’t look remotely uncomfortable about being caught either. If anything, he looked amused, as though this was exactly the reaction he had been waiting for.
Reeze turned the bike around, stopped a few metres in front of the Volvo and got off without hurrying.
The engine fell silent behind him as he removed his helmet and hung it over the handlebars.
The man remained in the driver’s seat with one arm resting against the door, watching him through the open window as though they already knew each other.
“Problem?” he asked calmly.
Reeze rested one hand against the top of the door and leaned down slightly.
“You’re standing in the wrong yard.”
A small smile touched the man’s face.
“Public car park.”
“Nice way of saying you’ve got no fucking business here.”
The smile remained, not large enough to be openly provocative, but more than enough to irritate him.
“I’m just waiting.”
“For what?”
The man shrugged.
“To see how long you last.”