“Then pull him.” He waved a hand at the exit the woman and baby had fled through. “Like you did her.”
“We can’t. Not yet. Radley’s not giving us anything we can hold. He’s too careful.”
Warren leaned in, voice dropping, heat pushing through his restraint. “He’s a bloody teacher. Not a UC. And you’ve thrown him in with a wire and the man who spent years breaking him down. You don’t think Radley will smell that?”
Something flashed in Naomi’s eyes. Anger, guilt, maybe both. “You think I haven’t costed every risk? I vouched for him. And you. Put my name on you both. You think that doesn’t keep me awake? But if we pull him too soon, Radley walks. And everything we’ve built, months of work, dies right there.”
The words landed hard, the way they always had when she’d cut through his fury with the truth.
Warren swore under his breath. She was right. And he hated it. “What’s happening? You can hear him. Tell me.”
“I can’t tell you, Warren.” She held his gaze. “You feel something for him that isn’t part of the job. I know you can’t help it. I know you better than anyone. But it means I can’t let you in on this. And you have to own what happened.”
The way she’d said his name had been deliberate. Personal. The way it had been once whispered under sheets, in the dark, when saying his name had meant comfort instead of conflict. Back then it had been an anchor, something to cling to when the world they worked in cut with jagged edges. A reminder that not everything they touched turned to blood and money.
“I do own it. I accept the failure. But I’m not walking away from him.”
Naomi’s voice softened. “Then get back on the floor. If anyone clocks you gone, it puts him more at risk. You do your job. I’ll do mine. And maybe you’ll get him back.”
He held Naomi’s gaze a moment longer, the old current tugging sharp and unwanted, then shoved through the doors, back into the main house. Back into his role. Where he moved through the crowd like a shadow, watching, absorbing. He’d done parties before. Backrooms thick with smoke. Hotel suiteswhere the carpets were soaked in champagne and blood. He’d stood shoulder to shoulder with the men who ran it all, played the hired muscle when the job called for it. He’d seen the worst of organised crime dressed up in silk and cologne.
But this… this was different.
Everything was out in the open. Drinks pouring, coke chopped fine on mirrored tables, deals whispered but not hidden. Masks weren’t slipping, they were gone altogether. Pairing that with how he hadn’t even been checked on arrival, simply accepted via Naomi, there was something off about it all.
He then clocked Vivienne Radley, circling the place with a glint in her eyes. She didn’t do careless. She staged every move like a conductor with a baton. Which made this, everyone gathered here with every string of the empire tied under one roof, something closer to theatre. A performance. Flaunting it all, as if she wanted it seen. Then there was the woman. The affair. And the baby. Brought here for some reason. To distract Graham? To tell him she knew?
Or to put her in the path of danger?
He drew in a sharp breath, a cold prickle racing along his spine.
He made his decision.
Checking once over his shoulder to ensure no eyes were on him, he left the house and cut across the wide gravel drive. The mansion loomed behind him, glass walls pulsing with bass, every chandeliered window a kaleidoscope of wealth and rot. Beyond the manicured lawn, woodland hugged the cliff edge, dark and salt-thick with sea air. Warren took the cover, moving fast through the trees until the glow of a screen bled faint through the branches. Then there, parked nose-first by the cliff wall, blacked out, low profile, was a van. Nothing more than another service vehicle if anyone happened to glance but Warren knew better.
He rapped once on the back doors, then harder.
The doors cracked open, and a young comms officer blinked up at him. “Sarge?”
“I need an earpiece. Now.”
The lad hesitated. “We’re—”
“Now.” Warren stepped into the tech van.
The officer didn’t argue again. Thirty seconds later, the bud was in Warren’s ear, static hissing before it cleared. He scanned the bank of monitors stacked inside the van. Angles from covert cams hidden in light fittings, hall corners, exterior drive. Nothing from the basement. Of course not. Jude was still down there. Still with Radley. Still with Reid.
Alone.
“I can’t hear him,” Warren snapped, leaning over the officer, palm flat on the back of his chair.
“I’m patching you in now.”
Another crackle, then—
Jude’s voice.
Soft, strained, each word measured as if it cost him blood.
