Authors: Jackie Keswick
The two paramedics set to work, and Jack hesitated in the doorway until Gareth pulled him from the vehicle.
“Give the men some room. They’ll let us know when there’s news.” Gareth steered him to where Clive Baxter was waiting beside his car, bottle of water and pack of wet wipes in hand.
“Here,” the detective said as he handed the bottle over. “Do you want something for the headache?”
Jack accepted, noting that the innocent comment painted a deep scowl across Gareth’s face. He swallowed the pills and drained the water bottle, surprised at how dehydrated he felt after such a short time in the club. Baxter produced a second bottle of water and set it on the car’s roof in easy reach, not asking questions or demanding answers while Jack cleaned the blood and dirt from his hands and arms.
“Why didn’t you tell me he kept his boys locked up?” Jack queried when the violence of the evening had been reduced to raw knuckles and a pile of blood and dirt-stained cleaning wipes.
“Because I wasn’t sure.”
“But you had an idea?”
“I had rumors. And you know what they teach us about those.” Baxter looked toward the ambulance. “This boy you brought out… is he one of them?”
“Yes. Enough pluck for several of his size. Goes by Ricky.” Jack finished the second bottle of water and tossed the container into the backseat of Baxter’s car. “Sorry about the messy exit. I suppose he got away?”
The detective nodded. “By the time the teams showed up, he was gone.”
“Well.” Jack had no idea why he felt the need to apologize. Clive knew as well as he did that there was a price to pay for working outside the rules. “We have fingerprints. We may have DNA. And we have a witness.” He leaned his back against the car, mimicking the other man’s stance. “And talking of witnesses, there were two other boys at the club tonight. One blond, one dark. They looked likely.”
To Jack’s surprise, Clive simply nodded. “Daniel and Nico. Your Gareth snatched them on the way out. Social services just picked them up.”
“Just anyone? Or do you know who’s taking the case?”
“Gillian Kent came to collect them, so I’m assuming she’ll keep hold of it.”
Jack opened his mouth to reply when the back of the ambulance opened, and one of the paramedics climbed out. He walked across the buzzing square, shoulders hunched and steps dragging, and stopped beside them.
“I’m sorry… the kid didn’t make it.”
Jack had known it was bad news before the paramedic announced it, but that didn’t make hearing it any easier. He barely noticed Gareth draping a blanket around him and not withdrawing his arm from Jack’s shoulders when he was done. All he could see were deep brown eyes, old eyes that had seen far too much.
“It wasn’t the knife,” the paramedic said, his face a grimace of distaste. “There’s internal bleeding, open lash marks. Looks like he’d been beaten and….”
“…raped,” Jack finished in a low voice when the man couldn’t go on.
“Yes. The knife wound just sent him more deeply into shock. He had no fight left in him.”
Jack straightened his spine with a snap. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Ricky didn’t know who or what I was. He knew what would happen to him if he didn’t do as he was told. And he tried to save me… and others like him. He had courage.”
“’S not what I was saying,” the paramedic placated. “I’m saying that that boy’s body had no strength left. Not after so much abuse. He was probably starved too.”
“Leave no witnesses,” Baxter said softly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say
that
.” A calm voice spoke from behind them. “Good evening, gentlemen.”
The slim, dark-haired woman who stepped between them wasn’t anyone Jack had met before. She was dressed casually in skinny jeans, a dark blue T-shirt and a loose plaid shirt that almost reached her knees. That late in the day, her long braid was on the messy side, but the look in her eyes was alert, and her voice held a determination that Jack took comfort in.
“Dr. Tyrrell?” A deep blush stained Clive Baxter’s ears. “You are working this case?”
“Looks like. Want to fill me in?” She nodded toward the ambulance and waited until Baxter and the paramedic were on their way before she held a hand out to Jack. “Lisa Tyrrell, Special Projects Unit,” she introduced herself. “Ricky may no longer be able to testify against the men who hurt him, but he
will
make sure they’re buried under the jail. I promise.” She rose to her toes and pecked Gareth on the cheek. “Good to see you again, Colonel.”
“You too.” Gareth smiled a tiny smile. “Thanks for coming out so quickly. There’s too much red tape in this mess.”
Lisa shrugged. “Not to worry. I’m good with a knife. I will need the two of you for statements, but I’ll call when I’m ready for that. Best go home before the press gets here.” She didn’t wait for a reply from either man, just spun on her heels and followed Baxter and the paramedic to the waiting ambulance.
Gareth watched her leave, then tightened his arm around Jack. “Come on, brat. I’m taking you home.”
C
HAPTER
SIX
G
LIMPSES
J
ACK
OBEYED
the pressure of Gareth’s arm. He walked the few steps to the parked Range Rover and slid into the passenger seat, glad that nothing more was demanded of him for a time. He knew that this was far from over. He knew that there would be questions and reconstructions and—maybe—repercussions, but all that could wait until morning. Right now, he needed a quiet space to draw breath and reflect. And he was grateful that Gareth understood that.
The car purred to life. Gareth waited until Jack was settled in his seat, turned the heating up and the seat heaters on, and peeled away from the curb. The kaleidoscope of flashing lights vanished behind them, lingering black smoke drifted away, and soon the familiar sights and sounds of London by night soothed Jack’s jangling nerves. The ever-present traffic had thinned. Taxis cruised almost unimpeded, and every now and again the Range Rover slipped past a brightly lit night bus taking clubbers home the long way. Pedestrian traffic fizzled out the farther they moved from the West End, and Jack noted with surprise that it was half past the witching hour.
No wonder he was beat. Since Baxter’s call earlier that evening, events had raced to overtake each other. Usually he knew in advance when Baxter needed help and had time to prepare and plan his involvement. This time Clive’s call had come out of the blue, and only Jack’s experience playing bait and their history of working together had made their attempt at all feasible.
Then Gareth had turned up. Just as out of the blue as Baxter’s call.
Gareth Flynn hadn’t featured in Jack’s life in years—much as he would have wished otherwise. And Gareth’s sudden appearance at his interview had played enough havoc with Jack’s mind that he’d declined a job he actually wanted. He should have known that Gareth would see through his flimsy excuse and not let the matter go. The man was like a Rottweiler with a whorl of Cumberland sausage when he wanted something, so Gareth turning up on his doorstep should have been a foregone conclusion.
What hadn’t been a foregone conclusion was the way Gareth had backed Jack. The way he’d challenged the inspector. The way he’d ditched what he’d come for and joined in Jack’s hunt, no questions asked.
Jack wrapped fingers in his hair and yanked until his eyes watered. The effortless fluency with which he and Gareth worked together after all these years should amaze him or at the very least comfort him. It did neither. Instead it left him downright irritated.
He’d worked so hard to stand on his own feet after he left the army that interacting with Gareth as if they’d never been apart upset his equilibrium.
As did the fact that Gareth had watched him screw up.
Again.
Jack wasn’t proud about losing his temper mid-op, though he was honest enough to admit that it had felt damn good to let rip. He might have gone one better if his opponent had been the guard with the wandering hands. But maybe then the repercussions for his actions would be impossible to avoid.
“Thanks for going after the two boys,” Jack said, voice gruff. “At least one of us didn’t screw up.”
“I couldn’t let you mash that idiot into the road,” Gareth answered as if he’d spent the last ten minutes listening to Jack’s thoughts rather than the car’s engine.
“S’pose not,” Jack mumbled, turning his face to hide his sudden flush. “I bet you’d have done the same had you been in my shoes.”
“Sure. But I was in a hurry, so the other bouncer got off with a broken jaw and a sore head.”
Jack’s head snapped around, and he gaped while his mind played catch-up.
“That kid really got to you, didn’t he?”
Gareth’s voice was soft and laced with concern. It loosened the tight knot in Jack’s chest and sent a wave of warmth through him. Gareth didn’t just understand his need for violence; he also remembered Jack’s need to analyze the events to see what he’d missed. Jack leaned against the headrest and exhaled slowly.
“I should have rushed him to the ambulance.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because he asked to walk.”
“You could have ignored that.”
“After what he’d been through?”
“Right. So how did you screw up if you did exactly what Ricky needed?”
“Because he needed an ambulance more!” Jack couldn’t keep the frustration from his voice. He remembered similar discussions—Gareth providing the voice of reason until Jack’s mind accepted what was—and marveled at how well Gareth still knew him, even after all this time. The thought scared him… and comforted like a warm blanket, or the smell of baking bread.
“You can’t know that,” Gareth replied calmly, and Jack finally believed him, clung to the words as if they were a lifeline. “All
you
know is that Ricky asked you to let him walk. You could have ignored what he wanted—just like everyone else—and he still might have died. You based your decision on Ricky’s choices and needs—and that’s
not
wrong.”
Silence reigned in the car for a time. Jack watched streetlights twinkle on dark water while they crossed the river. He counted the seconds between oncoming cars, then switched to counting cars parked illegally on the pavement and calculated an accumulating total of parking fines. His breathing slowed and deepened, and the pain in the back of his head eased to a mere memory.
“Now let it go, and tell me something else,” Gareth ordered in the calm, deep tone that could carry through mortar fire.
“What do you want to know?”
“Why this particular crusade?”
Jack wondered how to phrase his answer. The words he’d said to Ricky came back to him, and he spoke them aloud before he could filter. “Been there. Got out. Returning the favor.”
“I thought so,” Gareth said after another long silence. Jack frowned. He’d never told the whole story to anyone. A few people knew snatches. Rio Palmer, the dreadlocked hacker who had offered him a home when Jack had had nowhere to go, might know more than most, but even while living with Rio, Jack had kept the details well under wraps. The sudden urge to confide in Gareth made him squirm in his seat, and he clamped his teeth together.
“I wish I could kill whoever did that to you.”
“Too late,” Jack said, voice very soft. “My mother’s been dead for years.”
Time froze, traffic lights winked, and Gareth stared through the windshield as if he’d seen a ghost. Jack thought of castles, of walls and battlements and moats, and the idea of anything being able to shock Gareth Flynn into immobility lightened his mood with a tint of amusement.
“Green, Gareth,” he said, just as the car behind them suggested that they should do more than block the middle of the road.
“She sold me to her pimp one day, when she needed a fix,” Jack continued his story once they were underway again. “I didn’t like the idea, so I ran away.” It wasn’t that simple. It had
never
been that simple. But Jack felt too comfortable there in the dark, with the car’s warmth and Gareth’s scent surrounding him, to step back into that cold and scary place.
“How old were you?”
“’Leven, I think.”
Gareth didn’t comment, but even over the sound of the engine, Jack heard him grind his teeth. The fury expressed on his behalf warmed Jack’s mind and drew him another step closer to letting the events of the night slide away.
“I had nothing to do with her death,” he added as Gareth pulled the Ranger into a parking space across the road from his house, feeling that it might be beneficial to clarify that fact. Especially after his outburst earlier.
“Didn’t think you had.” Gareth turned the engine off and got out of the car.
Jack followed suit, confused when Gareth blipped the locks and started to move toward Jack’s home. “Gareth?”
“You want me to leave you alone without making sure you’re okay? Think again.” Gareth stopped in the middle of the road, waiting until Jack joined him. The frown on his face was impressive but nothing Jack hadn’t seen before.
“Mother-henning doesn’t suit you, Gareth. I’m fine.”
“You’re not
fine
,” Gareth shot back and reached for Jack, peering closely at his face. “Look at yourself! You’re shaking with excess adrenaline. You may have a broken rib needing taping. And when was the last time you ate something?”
That question caught Jack out. He actually had to think about it. “Lunch, with you,” he decided in the end, the defiance in his tone dying a swift death.
“Jesus!” Gareth shook his head and gripped Jack’s elbow a little more firmly. “I’m sure it helps you pull off that look, but I’d rather you didn’t starve yourself to death just for the sake of catching pimps.”
“It’s not that,” Jack disagreed. “Stress makes me sick.” He flushed crimson admitting as much, and Gareth snorted.
“I really should have remembered that.”
“Yeah… because you force-feeding me on that Welsh exercise worked so well.”
“It got you home.”
“I would have got home anyway.”
“Says you,” Gareth said and handed Jack his front door key. When and how Gareth had taken possession of it, Jack had no idea. And that told him a lot.