Stupid.
Utterly stupid.
Mr Warren Bailey was far, far too good to be true.
Chapter three
Deep Undercover
“Honey, I’m home.”
Warren threw his duffel on the bottom stair, dust motes spiralling in the slant of afternoon light. The place smelled faintly of coffee and old wood polish. Too quiet for comfort.
His first full day asMr Warren Baileyhad gone well enough. Easier than most covers, because he hadn’t needed to twist himself into something ugly. He wasn’t wearing the skin of a thug or a runner, not pretending to be a dead-eyed muscle-for-hire. Bailey was decent. Straightforward. The kind of bloke he might’ve been if life had cut him a cleaner deal.
“Ha-fucking-ha,” Naomi’s voice drifted down the stairs, dry as sandpaper.
Warren chuckled under his breath. Sarcasm, always his first weapon. And she’d know the truth in the joke, too.
Still bizarre, though, sharing a roof with her again.
Bizarre as fuck.
Fresh paint and something faintly medicinal welcomed him back into what would be his house for the next however many days, weeks, months.Years, if this assignment went sideways. But, whatever, it had a new-build palatable sterility. Artificial cleanliness trying a little too hard to pass as lived in. Whitewashed walls, flatpack pine, and a silence scraping beneath his skin. It was always jarring. Stepping into a life that wasn’t his and pretending it could be.
This one more than most.
A quiet semi-detached three streets from the sea. Lawn trimmed to council standard. Neutral furnishings chosen to offend no one. A family home. At least in design. A place he’d once been saving for. When he’d been picturing cooking his mum’s Caribbean curry on a Sunday in a sunlit kitchen, mowing the grass with a half-broken strimmer, bouncing a toddler on his knee while a second begged him to fix the trampoline he never had time to build. Inviting his sisters, their kids and his parents over for a barbecue after church.
Y’know, all that normal stuff.
Domesticity most people took for granted.
A far cry from the piss-slick bedsits and cockroach flats he usually got dumped in for these long-haul ops. And for one fleeting moment, he’d almost had it. Almost carved out something real.
Until she walked out.
“Got the beds sorted, at least,” Naomi called as she came down the stairs. “Duvets are new. Still got that weird plastic crinkle.”
Warren grunted in response. Not quite a laugh.
Not quite ready for one either.
They’d arrived at the house last night. One look said it belonged to a retired librarian with a fondness for jigsaws andbridge nights rather than two undercover officers embedded in a trafficking op. But that was the point. Nondescript. Safe. Enough personality to pass a casual glance, not enough to draw attention. He’d been so wiped last night he’d crashed on a bare mattress in his clothes. No briefing. No strategy session. Exhaustion and the promise of a training day beckoned before they could properly get to work. Naomi had been pulled away, too. Something urgent, probably linked to the broader case files. He hadn’t had time to ask before his alarm went off for school.
They hadn’t even had time to figure out howthiswould play.
Them. Living here. Together.
Pretending to be something they weren’t, in a town that didn’t know them, surrounded by people they’d eventually have to lie to.
Again.
Warren exhaled, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure if the tension was from the hard mattress or the fact that, for all their training, they were going in undercooked. They’d wing it, of course. They always did. That was the job.
Blend. Breathe. Observe. Pretend.
And pray he wouldn’t lose himself in the performance.
